Aftermath
Summary: The jewel was done, Naraku dead, and the world saved. All that was left was the aftermath…
Kagome sighed as she sat in the backseat of the car, glaring out at the red clouds. Her eyes started to lose focus as the red clouds were replaced with blood, rivers of it. Soon she was able to hear their screams and smell their burning flesh.
"Kagome!" She blinked, tensing for a blow and when it did not come she blinked again. Who had called her name? She looked around and realized where she was. She sighed lightly and glanced to her right to look at her younger brother in confusion.
"Nande?" Souta glanced down at her hands and she followed his gaze.
"Oh." Souta shook his head at her as he pulled her bloody hands into his, he grabbed a rag and alcohol wipes from his bag and started to wipe away the blood.
"Are you okay?" She nodded, she was fine. She didn't even notice that she was digging her nails into her own flesh, nor did she feel the sting of the alcohol wipes her younger brother was using.
She was in a word numb.
Even so she watched with tired eyes as her brother easily wiped away the blood and began banding her hands. If only it could be that easy…to just wipe it all away. Yet she knew, her hands would forever be tainted, they would be forever stained by the blood of thousands of innocent people.
Always.
She nodded at her brother in thanks when he let her hands go. She placed them in her lap and once again looked out at the darkening sky. She blinked when she noticed there was a crescent moon out tonight.
She shook her head lightly as Sesshomaru's face appeared in her mind's eye. Pristine, cold, calm, and collected, perfect. It was replaced by a flash of red, blood red. His face reappeared in her mind's eye. Scrunched up in pain, blood leaking from the side of his mouth, his eyes dulling. Haunting…and accusing. It was her fault that he was dead just like the others.
She sighed and looked away from the sky to look at her hands, which were resting in her lap, and leaned her head back to look up at the dull grey of the car's interior.
She blinked as a flash of Miroku's eyes appeared in her mind. His eyes were the same color as he watched Sango get impaled by a tentacle, who was to occupied with hugging her dead brothers body to her as she sobbed, to notice. After which he screamed tearing off his beads and let his wind tunnel run rampant. Sucking in friend and foe alike.
Shippo and Kouga had been two of their friends to be sucked in. Kagura and a few random demons had fallen to the same fate. After which Naraku sped up the wind tunnels growth and in a flash of light Miroku was gone leaving behind nothing more than a giant crater and a deafening silence.
She sighed and looked back down at her hands, the blood stained bandages captivating her attention. He eyes flickered with something as she remembered yet another random scene from her past.
These hands…they had bandaged Inu Yahsa after everything was over. She could almost smell the scent of blood, rotting corpses, and bile again. All around them were fallen bodies both friend and foe. The air was filled with death and the sounds of pain and crows cawing, circling, waiting, to devour the flesh of those that had fallen.
Even so she focused on her task, not noticing the copious amounts of blood that poured from her small tattered and broken body. To this day her body was covered in scars, the physical embodiment of her sins and her past.
She glanced down at her forearms and stared unblinkingly at the scars there. Her eyes dulled. Inu Yahsa had tried so hard to keep her from leaving him. He had snapped when the aftermath of what had happened hit him. He didn't want her to leave him either, he was afraid of being alone again. Even so she had to leave, she had to. But he wouldn't let her. In the end she had to fight back, she had to fight her protector for the very right to live. For nothing they did in his time would keep her alive…no she needed the medical attention of her time.
She still remembered his teary and crazed eyes as he tried to reach down into the well and grab her by her forearms, cutting her deeply with his claws, and haul her back up. Luckily for her she was already covered in blood, both her own and others, so his grip was lost and she plummeted into the well. It's magic wrapped around her comfortingly as Inu Yahash'as pained scream echoed in her very soul.
It still haunted her every night in her dreams, as did every other thing that happened on that day. In time the events of those days became nothing more than a nightmare…until she remembered they were real and that she had the scars to prove it.
"So…how as your secession?" Kagome jumped and turned to look at her younger brother a strained smile on her face, her heart beating a mile a minute.
"Fine…I might be able to lessen up on my meds soon." Souta nodded and grabbed her hand tentatively and held it.
"That's good." She nodded and smiled at him, her eyes dull and semi crazed looking.
"Yeah it is. Thanks for being here with me Shippo." With that she turned to look out the window her eyes glazed over. Souta sighed sadly and met his mothers gaze in the rear view mirror before looking away. It seemed no matter what they did she would always be stuck in the past…
Even so they, he and his mother, would always be by her side and try to help her with the aftermath of her feudal fairy tale.