It is a truth universally acknowledged...
That a zombie in possession of brains, but be in want of more brains.
Which is to say, I was not dead...just sleeping in your mind.
Since last being here, I have: 1) Moved 300 miles away from my previous residence. 2) Gotten a job wherein I am referred to as the "Demon Lady" of my particular department (I teach). 3) I got married. 4) I now live near goats (to me this is novel).
So, uh, is there anyone still alive out there?
So, once again paraphrasing the great Jane Austen, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a husband and a life must be in want of writing fan fiction..."
And thus, you have it, audience that probably no longer exists...and, appropriately, its for a fandom that pretty much doesn't exist either!
Summary: After the well closes forever, InuYasha must take the slow path back to the woman from the future from whom he’s been separated. Along the way, he discovers that some of the greatest acts of bravery may appear on the surface to be acts of cowardice.
But there’s one person InuYasha will be a coward for: her.
Spoilers through the last chapter of the manga. This fic assumes that the last chapter did not happen.
Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha. I just play in the sandbox when the two page drabble (now in chapter five) burgeons into sixty-seven pages with ideas that won’t leave me alone.
Beta'd by the wonderful Earl of Birkenhead. :)
Cowardice
sciathan file
I. Hope
In the beginning, when the well hadn’t brought her back to him, he couldn’t say if he thought the 50th year, or the 100th year, or even the 300th year, would be the worst. If he ever thought of it, he knew that waiting that long was difficult.
No, the first year, the second year, the third year, before he had really learned, before waiting and caution had become habits, carefully ingrained elements of his psyche and being…those were the hardest years of his life. In those years he remained who he was when she had known him, like an unfinished story, passively waiting on the last page for another reader.
In those years, he still had hope.
Hope, as it turned out, was the single most dangerous thing he had ever been given in his entire life.
Hope made him struggle. Hope made him fight. Hope refused to let him submit. Hope burned in him like the certain knowledge that she had been born for him, just as he had been born for her. Hope scorched him like the vow that he would lay down his life to protect her’s. Hope made him hold onto the belief that, just as he cleaved their enemies in two, he could stare down the curtain of time and make it part for him through the sheer determination of his will.
Hope directed his feet to the well every third day in those early years. Three, she had said, while explaining stories from the school thing of hers, was a magic number. He had held onto her magic from another world with everything he had. He held onto the belief and hope that she had taught him.
And, when hope failed him at last, he had to make slow peace with the idea that he would just have to survive. He had managed to live this long with a target on his back and without hope goading him on, what was five hundred more years?
Over the short next few years after his hope had deserted him, a new realization dawned on him: being a hanyou who had lost his home three times-one place, three women-and who lived by fighting with everything in him, five hundred years was impossible. Fighting was no antidote to time. Fighting was, in fact, venom to his system.
All he knew, in all those nights crouched at the well or in the branches of their tree, the Goshinboku, when the leaves turned from golds and reds to greens in a blink of his eyes, was that he wanted to go home. And that home was her.
The interim between hope and hopelessness, however, before he had learned what was required to endure getting back to her, was filled by recklessness fueled by despair.
There was nothing during that time that Tessaiga could not overcome. No demon too big. Even on the night of the new moon, he rushed at bandits brandishing a rusty sword, Miroku and Sango hot on his heels trying to tackle him before he did something stupid (even if, arguably, he was already doing something stupid).
Shippou, with his big mouth, had reminded him of who he should be after a particularly stupid stunt that left him bleeding for two or three days on a futon in Kaede’s hut.
“If Kagome were here she’d call you ‘InuYasha no Baka!’”
Then, quietly, Sango sighed, “Kagome-chan would be sad to see you like this.”
Miroku, twisting the bandage just a bit too tightly, quipped, “She would sit you into a hole in the floor.”
Even in her absence, she reminded him who he needed to be. And the hope that lingered on reminded him that she expected him to be someone worth knowing when they met again.
***
Which is to say, I was not dead...just sleeping in your mind.
Since last being here, I have: 1) Moved 300 miles away from my previous residence. 2) Gotten a job wherein I am referred to as the "Demon Lady" of my particular department (I teach). 3) I got married. 4) I now live near goats (to me this is novel).
So, uh, is there anyone still alive out there?
So, once again paraphrasing the great Jane Austen, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a husband and a life must be in want of writing fan fiction..."
And thus, you have it, audience that probably no longer exists...and, appropriately, its for a fandom that pretty much doesn't exist either!
Summary: After the well closes forever, InuYasha must take the slow path back to the woman from the future from whom he’s been separated. Along the way, he discovers that some of the greatest acts of bravery may appear on the surface to be acts of cowardice.
But there’s one person InuYasha will be a coward for: her.
Spoilers through the last chapter of the manga. This fic assumes that the last chapter did not happen.
Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha. I just play in the sandbox when the two page drabble (now in chapter five) burgeons into sixty-seven pages with ideas that won’t leave me alone.
Beta'd by the wonderful Earl of Birkenhead. :)
Cowardice
sciathan file
I. Hope
In the beginning, when the well hadn’t brought her back to him, he couldn’t say if he thought the 50th year, or the 100th year, or even the 300th year, would be the worst. If he ever thought of it, he knew that waiting that long was difficult.
No, the first year, the second year, the third year, before he had really learned, before waiting and caution had become habits, carefully ingrained elements of his psyche and being…those were the hardest years of his life. In those years he remained who he was when she had known him, like an unfinished story, passively waiting on the last page for another reader.
In those years, he still had hope.
Hope, as it turned out, was the single most dangerous thing he had ever been given in his entire life.
Hope made him struggle. Hope made him fight. Hope refused to let him submit. Hope burned in him like the certain knowledge that she had been born for him, just as he had been born for her. Hope scorched him like the vow that he would lay down his life to protect her’s. Hope made him hold onto the belief that, just as he cleaved their enemies in two, he could stare down the curtain of time and make it part for him through the sheer determination of his will.
Hope directed his feet to the well every third day in those early years. Three, she had said, while explaining stories from the school thing of hers, was a magic number. He had held onto her magic from another world with everything he had. He held onto the belief and hope that she had taught him.
And, when hope failed him at last, he had to make slow peace with the idea that he would just have to survive. He had managed to live this long with a target on his back and without hope goading him on, what was five hundred more years?
Over the short next few years after his hope had deserted him, a new realization dawned on him: being a hanyou who had lost his home three times-one place, three women-and who lived by fighting with everything in him, five hundred years was impossible. Fighting was no antidote to time. Fighting was, in fact, venom to his system.
All he knew, in all those nights crouched at the well or in the branches of their tree, the Goshinboku, when the leaves turned from golds and reds to greens in a blink of his eyes, was that he wanted to go home. And that home was her.
The interim between hope and hopelessness, however, before he had learned what was required to endure getting back to her, was filled by recklessness fueled by despair.
There was nothing during that time that Tessaiga could not overcome. No demon too big. Even on the night of the new moon, he rushed at bandits brandishing a rusty sword, Miroku and Sango hot on his heels trying to tackle him before he did something stupid (even if, arguably, he was already doing something stupid).
Shippou, with his big mouth, had reminded him of who he should be after a particularly stupid stunt that left him bleeding for two or three days on a futon in Kaede’s hut.
“If Kagome were here she’d call you ‘InuYasha no Baka!’”
Then, quietly, Sango sighed, “Kagome-chan would be sad to see you like this.”
Miroku, twisting the bandage just a bit too tightly, quipped, “She would sit you into a hole in the floor.”
Even in her absence, she reminded him who he needed to be. And the hope that lingered on reminded him that she expected him to be someone worth knowing when they met again.
***