Standard disclaimer applies.
Summary: Kikyo is a ghost stuck in purgatory as a punishment for deeds that she committed in the past. She didn't know how long she was going to be stuck there, but when she stumbles upon a familiar face, she thinks that maybe a little payback is in order... InuKag
Believe it or not, but yes, this is a romance between Inuyasha and Kagome. Keep reading to find out how!
The Poltergeist
One
By: Lunaria
Purgatory: (Lat., "purgare", to make clean, to purify): a place or condition of temporal punishment for those who, departing this life in God's grace, are not entirely free from venial faults, or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions.
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It was the silence that got me at first.
Life is so full of noise; cars, bikes, the giggle of girls, the voices of men, the wind, the trees… everything, when you really think about it, has a voice. I did. I guess it only took death to really make the silence that more deafening. When you could no longer hear, when your sight has been permanently grayed, hell takes on a new meaning. Let me clear some things up for you:
I am a poltergeist.
I killed my lover, and as punishment I have been barred from heaven and expelled from hell – because once you die you realize that hell's not even a punishment for the dead; it's merely the road you take on the way for forgiveness. In the end, Gods always forgive. Except for me. I wasn't deemed worthy of either world, so they sent me back to earth as a ghost, and being a ghost was a shitty way to exist. Or un-exist, as the case may be. Even after five hundred years, I'm still a little iffy on what you call the in between world. I've heard whispers of purgatory, and I'm fairly certain this was it. I'm dead, there's truly nothing of me that takes form. I'm merely a spirit, a wisp of consciousness that can't even make a sound.
My world is gray. I cannot hear the wind, and I now sympathize with dogs because everything I see is black and white. I'm merely here, walking around Japan because I can't sleep and, really, there isn't anything else I can do besides walk and stare at people. I don't know why I'm still here after all this time. Back when I was alive there were people – and demons – that killed more people that I ever did, and in more gruesome ways. They were allowed into hell. Why wasn't I? Why couldn't anyone forgive me?
My lover was in the wrong. He was going to cheat on me. The crime hadn't been committed yet, but I saw how his eyes started straying. That lowly village girl, the pretty girl that picked flowers. He always used to stare at her, and for longer periods of time, every time he saw her. Normally I wouldn't really care, because people had passed through the village all the time, sometimes beautiful women, sometimes not. The arrival of a new face was always cause for a few stares. But this girl stayed. She was just a traveler, but when she saw my lover, I guess she saw something there that made her want to stay.
But he was mine. And she wasn't allowed to have him.
I guess I went crazy. It wasn't exactly hard. The line between crazy and normal isn't really all that hard to see, because it's so thin you'd miss it if you weren't careful. Once you begin to slide off the normal wagon, the line gets clearer and clearer the closer to crazy you get. All you need is a motive, a plan, and the will to take away a life that doesn't deserve to live. Oh, and lack of emotions too. They just get in the way. Guilt after the deed could eat you alive, as it surely did to me. I did after all kill myself, but in a much neater way than I did my lover. With him, blood went everywhere. I couldn't wash it off my skin, it stayed there and stained, no matter how many time I tried to wash it off in the river. Eventually, I figured the best way to get it off is to take a good, long soak, so I went deeper into the lake where I drowned myself.
Anyway, it worked. When I became a ghost, I didn't have a spot on me. Clean as a whistle, as some would say.
Or maybe it's there, and I just can't see it because I can't exactly see color. Hmm…
Well, anyways, there's really no point in thinking about it. I know there's not exactly anything else to think about, but to dwell on my sorry ex-existence really was depressing, and I didn't want to be some empty eyed type of ghost. I at least wanted to be vivacious, even though I haven't seen myself in over five hundred years. Ghosts were not prone to show up in mirrors.
The world around me sped up as time passed. The days of living in villages turned into days of people living in cities; a giant metropolis of what they now called cement and metal (I know this because I can read, and years of reading over peoples shoulders has paid off) Cars roared down roads, people rode bikes. A ton of people still walked, but houses just got bigger and bigger, sometimes growing up rather than out. I could read the language still, and when I took the time to read, they called them skyscrapers. They were everywhere, clouding up my beautiful world. The village I once lived in is now called Tokyo, and it's so desperately over populated that I'm sure one of these days it will collapse on itself. Some things are not meant to always grow. Some things, I think, are meant to stay the same.
I could see the wind blow, but it didn't really touch me. Nothing could. I could see dogs bark, but I couldn't hear them. But then… oh my God. I saw a wisp of blue. Of color! I ran, desperate, because I hadn't seen such color in so many centuries, that I desperately wished that I could cry. In joy. Blue. I saw the color blue.
When I finally caught up, I realized it was a girl. A school girl. Her back was to me, and she was carrying groceries up shrine steps where her little brother seemed to be taunting her. I ran in front of her to see her face, so overjoyed that I wasn't prepared for what I saw. I stopped dead in my tracks, and let her pass through me. How can this be...?
That girl... she was me.