Green Thumb
She is cultivating a garden inside of her heart. It keeps her fresh, keeps her distracted. Keeps her busy. Her companions, battered by the torment that Fate had provided for them, have become dependent on the joy she projects, and it is not a surprise to her. She is addictive, and they love it—and it gives her a sense of purpose, of pride to know that she is their lifeline, their sustenance.
She sometimes feels like she doesn't have to eat, or drink, or sleep. All she needs are her flowers, springing out of the fertile ground of her soul, roots winding deeply into her, drawing forth from the seventeen-year-old heart all the—ahh but it is a technical practice of hers. It has been lifetimes in the making, a special kind of magic that she has devised all on her own. It is her secret, her dirty laundry that she hides from prying eyes. It is the dust that she sweeps under the rug, the picture that she hides in the desk.
It is in every direction that she never looks, and in every word she never speaks. It lurks there, somewhere in the shadows—because where there is light, there must be the darker patch. It surprises her to think that no one remembers that, or to think that they have made an exception to the rule—just for her.
And just as they have tried to make their exception to the rules—just for her—so does she create this garden, solely for herself. It is a selfish place, immaculate and methodically plotted, the necessary attention to detail devouring every minute of her time. In spite of all of her time and all of her energy, still it hungers, and she feeds it willingly because she knows its' nature.
Something in the garden stirs, jaws opening wide—
This garden of hers is not a lovely place, filled with bright colors and sweet smells. It grows from the hate, grows from the pain that festers inside of her, like a rotting wound kept ever fresh by the daily reminders—
Inuyasha, jaw set as he weighs them—the future against the past, life against death, Kagome against Kikyo—Inuyasha, eyes equal parts eager and hard as he creeps away in the dead of night, thinking that she will never notice, will never think to suspect, will never question—
Inuyasha, she says, you seem tired. Did you not sleep well?
He will never know that she watches him every night when he leaves, secretly delighting in what she can feel growing darker inside of her, liking the pain because it reminds her of what is real.
And so the black flowers grow tall, and the thorns grow thick. Leeching off of all those truths she never tells anyone, growing strong with every night she spends alone, it leaves her nothing, and that is how she wants it— and all anyone can see is the purity that they come to expect: the kind miko, the loving girl from the future, bearing gifts of candy and peace and support—and so she can give them what they want. She can offer them the girl they hope for. She can be the ideal that they seek.
They will never have to know— they will never have to know that in her dreams she is dressed in black, and she hunches over her black garden, urging the flowers to grow taller and wilder to match what she feels on the inside. She tends to this nightmare garden with bitter lullabies and poetry while leaves and torturous vines drawn in shades of gray climb over the carefully constructed flower boxes, crawling over the gray cobblestone pathway, winding towards the center, twining towards her feet, striving to reach out and lash out—
Every time she wakes up, and every time she reassures herself: she is a meticulous person. She tends her garden with every ounce of devotion she had once offered— And so it is impossible, she knows, for this to go wrong. It is more than anger management; it is more than subscribing to the brighter side of life at the cost of—
And what will it cost her, this careful spit of the soul?
As she tends her garden, she weaves ribbons—two, four, sixteen, two hundred fifty six, sixty five thousand and some change—a thread for a ribbon, a ribbon for a memory—
She builds herself a tapestry of these ribbons—attention to detail, she reminds herself every so often, and bends closer to her work.
It feels to her like she belongs to a society to which only she is eligible. It is a society for seventeen-year-old girls that are tired, and seventeen-year-old girls that are frightened—a club for seventeen-year-old girls to garden, and weave. She has made no friends in this club, for she is acutely aware that she is only transitory—blink for only a moment, and she will be gone with her duty done, left as only a smear on a inn guest list, or a keening echo in a well.
It doesn't bother her, now, because she is distracted.
No one else has noticed, and that is how clean the split is. She had donned the outfit one morning, although it had been a hot summer day, and they had been hiking through the mountains. Teasing, she had made a show of snapping the green doctor's gloves—and with surgical precision, she had placed the scalpel at the base of what she imagined her soul to be and cut—
And now she can see herself, if she turns just so. The doorway catches and swings open, and there is a whole soul staring from bottomless blue eyes, but then—and it only takes a moment or two—the door snaps back closed and, uninterested, she returns to her sewing, momentarily abandoned by the garden, paying no mind to the distance in herself.
He has planted gardens like this before; has made one for Inuyasha and Kikyo, has made one for Sango, has made one for Miroku—has made sure that all of his gardens mixed and tangled and eventually provided the seeds and strength for what has now become her diversion.
He has helped her break—has wedged himself into the fracture in her soul, and he calls it love.
She gathers details on their journeys. She knows that the best lies are those with more than a few grains of truth. The closer one is to the edge, the more difficult it is to see where the line is actually drawn. She has begun to confuse herself, already, and she is pleased. Initial details become blurry, become distant, and she turns to what she weaves, because here is the story that she wants. Here is the story that she has made for herself.
So she pays attention. She remembers the color of his eyes, and the sound of her voice, and the shape of the clouds on this day and the feel of the grass under her hand on this day—and she assimilates them, gathers them together and sews them into a whole, and this time—
This time—
This time when he strikes, she is ready; she has a place to make him comfortable. It's appropriate, she decides, because—he's inspired so much of this hateful life inside others; others that will never recover. He has the gardening touch, and he has the smile.
This time, he is taken by surprise when he sees her and recognizes, this time, what she has been planning all along. He is drawn, he can't help it. He takes a step and Inuyasha takes the movement as a threat—(and the flowers swell)—throws himself into the fight, always acting, never thinking. The others follow; ready to end this, ready to rid themselves of this spider-web, ready to fight, ready to die—
And then she is alone and kneeling, fingers cold and clenching around a small pink bauble—more than a myth and more than a curse—and she bows her head and her lips move, and—a thread for a ribbon, a ribbon for a memory—she gathers the enemy close and, trying not to look at the red and the black and the terror, invites him in.
Welcome to my garden, she whispers, and he thanks her.
This is my doing, he thinks with a shiver, wholly in love.
Afterwards, she walks to the well, gathering the threads around her. The grass is so soft, and so green, and the sky looms above her, brilliant and blue, and she doesn't care, because in a moment or five, this will be the only thing she sees. She thinks back to the red, and the black, and the terror, and this is what she will not remember—
She scratches some dried blood off of her finger and gives up. It's useless, she tells herself, and puts her hands on the rim of the well. She thinks: Inuyasha— And she feels herself grow a little colder.
She counts her heartbeats, and on the sixth one she jumps, superstitious and forgetful and confident, because six is her lucky number and the ribbon is tied around her mind and her garden has company, a keeper who can understand, maybe a little.
She is swallowed by the blue, and she lets her mind go and lets the ribbon catch—
And then she is climbing out on the other side of the well; clean and pristine as the day she fell in because there is a little red ribbon around her memories and not a doubt in her mind—
"Mama," she cries, running towards her house happily. "Mama, it's over—"
She will not understand, later, why she never dreams of anything but a garden, and a creature with a story that she never wants to hear.