DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN INUYASHA, ADMITTING THAT IT IS CREATED TAKAHASHI RUMINKO-SENSEI NOR DO I CLAIM THE SONF BROKEN VOW, SUNF BY LARA FABIAN. I ALSO DO NOT MAKE PROFIT FROM THIS.
A/N: The song is too sad and sweet, I blame my sister for introducing me Lara Fabian. I just adore her voice. Anyway, I'm still learning to improve my writing and to mind my grammar. Do be kind and review just so I may improve in the art of literature. Thank you for time and effort.
BROKEN VOW
Higurashi Kagome flied through the thickets and bushes, uncaring of the scars that she is sure to find later in the day. Her unbidden tears blurring her sight, making the incoming sudden drop of the forest ground beneath her feet unseen.
Falling to her knees in a painful heap and continued to roll on her lithe figure, soiling her once pristine shadow mauve summer dress. Once the rolling stops, she laid still and trembling slightly with the wretched sobs coming from deep within. Her light clothing torn here and there, slightly smudged by the forest’s after rain’s floor. Hairs entangled wildly and knotted with dried leaves and twigs, she resembled a forest nymph to those known less.
She did not know how long she laid on her side and elbows, crying her heart out. Only that she noticed how the sky has darken and dusted with twinkling stars out to guide lost traveller in a time where compass is hard to come by. Sniffling, she wiped her still sorrow eaten face for all she’s worth.
“I made a vow… But it seems that I could not keep it…”
She then tried to stand on her feet only to gasp in pain and fall back onto her knees like a broken queen. Kagome growled in both her frustration and her still aching heart, “What did I do to deserve this?! All I ask is for his heart! His loyalty to his vow to me!! His eyes only upon me!!! Is this a punishment for such selfish desires?! Have I not given parts and pieces of myself enough?!!”
She looks at the waning moon rising to the sky like a lord rising to take his throne. Shaking with the emotions bursting through her heart and skins, she sighed, “A love only for me… Just me and none others,”
“Tell me her name I want to know…
The way she looks and where you go…
I need to see her face. I need to understand…
Why you and I came to an end…”
“I know I’m not Kikyo and never will be…” Kagome mourned, remembering the scene that she tried her hardest to unseen. The broken words and the vow that somehow sounds so familiar to the one he made to her not long ago. But perhaps she had it wrong, perhaps that vow have never been hers but Kikyo’s.
She chocked back a renewing sob. It’s no use to spill tears on those who could never and will never appreciate it.
Not far from her, another presence has decided to take a night patrol, a ritual that he found able to calm his running thoughts, chaos and disorder in his usually calm and orderly thoughts. Western Lord Sesshoumaru is having a rough day in the youkai royal court for he has yet to find one worthy as his mate. A position such as his must find someone who is as worthy as him and that is saying it lightly if one does not know what he would demand- yes, demand- of his mate.
Loyalty came to his mind as first and foremost. After all, who is he if the one who is known to devote her to him can easily set her heart upon another? No, this will not and must not do. She MUST be loyal to him, the future family that they were to have in the near future and the Western Court!
Understanding him, which, to his dismay, such existence of such being are close to none what-so-ever. Able to match him in her own way, but this itself are hard to find yet again. Sesshoumaru, had he be any lesser being, desired to pull his much enviable hair by the roots at the conclusion since he knew such female (or male) could never exist.
He is a complicated kind of alpha, little pleases him if any. Yet he find comfort and content in things that most will take for granted, such as a child’s laughter in the air, the smell of the forest after a shower of storm, a simple but amusing bicker of a clumsy loyal retainer, the shapes of the clouds and the colours of the day.
If any such female exist, he could only think of one. But even she is unqualified because of certain reasons. But, if only he can find someone like her of his own kind…
“Tell me again I want to hear…
Who broke my faith in all these years…?
Who lays with you at night, when I’m here all alone…
Remembering when I was your all…”
That soft voice, beautiful yet broke teased his sensitive hearing. Sesshoumaru tensed as he waited in baited breath for more, longed to ho hear and seek the owner of such heavenly voice, broken in pain as it is. He can hear from her voice that it is a pain of the heart…
“I let you go… I let you fly…
Why do I keep on asking why?
I’ll let you go, now that I found…
A way to keep somehow…
More than a broken vow…”
He can feel how his powerful legs carried him to the owner of the voice. A strange emotion stirred within him, awakening a part of him long thought inexistent.
Kagome rubbed her sprained ankle in hope to ease the pain slightly. Her head pounding and she feels rather odd upstairs. Mayhap insanity is feeling pity over her repeatedly trampled heart. She thought back on the wordings of the song by one of the foreign singers of her time. Inuyasha have never been hers to begin with, and she has nothing to take his place in her wounded heart.
“Who am I kidding? I’m just a silly little girl who dreamt too big even for me to make true,” She chided herself with a wry smile, feeling warmer by the minute yet trembling in an uncommon cold. How can the world’s temperature drop so suddenly? It is unnaturally so.
“Tell me the words I’ve never said…
Show me the tears you never shed…
Give me the touch, the one you promised to be mine…
Or has it vanished for all time?”
Feeling more and more tired all of a sudden she laid on her back, her arm’s circling her body in seeking of more warmth. Her eyes closed since she felt as if it is boiling in her skulls. Nausea hitting her and chocking her throat badly, making her gag in reflex. After a moment, her throat settled back.
“I’ll let you go… I’ll let you fly…
Why do I keep on asking why?
I’ll let you go now that I found…
A way to keep somehow…
More than a broken vow…”
Sesshoumaru stopped when he heard the owner of the voice stopped in a soul wrecking sobs. Tsukuyomi, how pained she sounded!! Hastening his steps, he quickly moved toward the owner…
Kagome hoped for a swift death. She feels so bad and so lonely. She wanted to call out for Inuyasha but knew he wouldn’t come. Somehow, the thoughts of him coming to her rescue seemed wrong now. He would only see her as weak and a cry baby. She cried out her pain…
“I close my eyes…
And dream of you and I and then I realise…
There’s more to life than bitterness and lies…
I close my eyes…”
Sesshoumaru stopped at the sight before him. Crumbled like a withering summer rose before him is the human miko that travelled with his half-wit brother. If his memory serves him well, her name reminded him of a child’s rhyme. A bird of sort…
Why is she upon the forest floor? Where is the half-grown whelp of a hanyou? Did he not realise that his woman is here alone and unarmed?
“I’d give my soul away to hold you once again…
And never let this promise end…”
He is about to turn his path from her when her voice reach him. The song definitely depict of her long and loyalty to half-brother. But is he wrong to assume that this woman-child before him belong to the whelp? If so, then why is her song filled with pain of betrayal and let-go? Why is ot filled with such soul wrenching regret and sorrow?
“I’ll let you go… I’ll let you fly…
Now that I’ll go, I’m asking why?
I’ll let you go now that I found…
A way to keep somehow…
More than a broken vow…”
Her voice grew weak and drifted into a tired soft ending. Kagome has come to a decision; too tired of all the divided heart and choices, so now she decided to let him go, making his decision for him. Hopefully, this way less heart will wallow in pain. She drifted into the darkness, unknowing of her silent spectator.
Sesshoumaru approached the fainted girl. His memory recalled her name, a caged bird named Kagome. And indeed she has a voice enviable to a phoenix in heaven. Perhaps, she is not so unqualified after all. Perhaps she is what he needed after all this time. Coming to a decision to his long night internal debate, Sesshoumaru bended and scooped the limp girl into his arm, almost immediately to drop the girl back to the ground. The heat rolling off her person is almost unbelievable!!
He wondered why he didn’t notice her sickness before this. A sniff from his nose answered his question; the scent of her tears interfered with the scent of her fever. Coming to a quick decision, he quickly fled to a nearby water source.
Wading into the cool river, he scalloped cups of the icy liquid and let it drip slowly over her person. She moaned and shivered, snuggled closer to him. Unfortunate for her, his armour give little comfort. He continued his actions until he is sure that her temperature has dropped enough that she wouldn’t be in so much danger. Placing her on the riverbank, he shed off his heavy armoury and took off his elaborate kimono. Wrapping her secured in the expensive royal garment, he quickly donned his armour back on before picking the shivering bundle of miko in his arm and quickly moved toward the village where he can smell his half-brother and her friends are.
Kagome woke up the next day under heaps upon heaps of winter blankets. Strangely, she can’t feel their scratchy texture upon her person at all. Instead, it feels soft like silk. She poked out her head from beneath her cocoon of blankets and immediately she can sense a kind of tension in air. She wondered where Sango and Miroku are since she believed that it is one of either two that found her sick in the forest.
When she pushed the blanket off, the soft silken feel slide on her arm not unlike a kimono. Once she gets a good look at it, she is hard pressed not to gasp at the sight of the familiar red and white silk kimono that she is wearing. It is of a fine weave and sown with great care details, it could only belong to a royalty in such an era like that of Sengoku Jidai.
Kagome looked at her by the hut’s door and smiled before shooting a question, her throat cracking, “What’s going on outside?”
One look from Sango to the kimono adorning her figure quickly answered her question. She then proceeded to explain, “He said he found you in the forest, already sick and lost to the world,” Sango kneeled next to her, “He act strangely too, if the death glare to Inuyasha is any indication at all. It’s kind of different than the usual ones that he send during our past encounter,”
“How so?”
Sango then frowned, “He told me to say this to you when you woke up since it is obvious Inuyasha wouldn’t have him in the village and he himself doesn’t seems so keen on staying either, so he waited at the edge of the forest,” She looked at Kagome in the eye, “I don’t know what you did, Kagome-chan, but he said this; ‘If you could let him take his place for his vow is eternal and ever unbroken,’. What does he meant by that?”
Kagome at first frowned before suddenly she lit up like a lamp in a middle of a lightless night. With her miko senses, she sensed him at the edge of the forest near the hut and quickly rises to her feet, only to wobble for a moment before forcing herself upright. She politely decline Sango’s offer of shoulder and walk on her own to hut’s door.
Sure enough, Inuyasha is growling warningly at a pale shadow at the edge of the forest. Kagome can feel his eyes on her person immediately the moment she appeared by the door. Ignoring Inuyasha’s gruff order to go back in and lay down, she stared straight into his eyes.
She showed her confusion but also noticed the firm and stubborn decision in his eyes. He wanted this, wanted HER but left the end of the rope for her to take. But that doesn’t mean he will back down. He will continue his pursue until she say yes. Coming to a decision, she decided to give whatever this is a chance before saying yes. Sliding his kimono of her shoulder, she hold it in her arms but didn’t let go. Understanding dawned in his eyes and he presented a small smirk before a slight nod of his head, indicating his understanding and turning his back on her.
The pursuit is on and the decision is hers. But in the end, the Western Lord will have his bundle of miko back…