Title: and we passed through the vale of tears
Warning: mild gore; horror
Pairing: InuKik
a/n: Drabble for Inuvember, Day 1. Also, it is 'vale' and not 'veil'; title is part of a quote from the short story below.
"Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone."
― Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
"I'm not bleeding."
Kikyou's voice trembles as she stares at her wounded hand, and if she'd had any life left in her, she might have shed tears. The thought makes the ordeal hurt all the more, because the span of her life can be chronicled into a series of what-might-have-beens and priestesses-don't-cry; the fact that she must abide by the same rules in death - that she couldn't cry even if she wanted to - is too ironic for her tastes.
Kikyou knows better than anyone that there is no hell like needing to scream and having no mouth to do so, andthis tearless, human-less body was simply an extension of the existence she could never really seem to escape, regardless of time or how many times her soul was ripped apart and stuffed into different vessels.
InuYasha looks at her, mouth falling open a little, tongue running over teeth. Wordlessly, his eyes rove to her broken hand - fingers, shattered in pieces but not bleeding. There should be blood in a person's wound, he thinks.
So he reaches down, plucking her breaking hand and heart, and drags the jagged edges of her clay fingers across his cheek, splicing the skin, allowing crimson to seep in the spaces where her veins should have been, giving her the life she could never have.