Hollars 12
The Half Dead Girl
An AU where Kagome never falls in the well, but she still has the jewel in her, and Kikyo was still brought to "life" in the past- but without freeing Inuyasha from the tree.
Chapter One: Happy Birthday, Kagome!
Kagome was always sick.
They never knew what was wrong with her. Her grandpa had spent most of her childhood coming up with more and more outrageous tests to put her through. The doctors eventually turned him and her both away when he drug her, ten years old, to the nurse with a claim that it had to be a severe case of gout causing her pain and making her sickly. She'd turned red beneath her black hair, shuffling on her feet as the nurse rolled her eyes.
Kagome had known, of course, that he was only trying to help, but she'd missed so much school. She missed her friends—her friends who asked what she'd been in the hospital for this time, with a laugh, as if it was always a joke—and she missed her textbooks. History was her favorite. It called to her, like some happy memory from far, far away.
When she twelve years old, she'd ran off into the forest. She was tired of sitting indoors, of watching Sota (healthy, energetic Sota) running in the dirt outside.
The forest was only small, and no one ever ventured inside. Kagome was always too nervous to mention it. Something about it was dark, but not in an ominous way.
It sounded like a lullaby, a cool blue shadow on a hot day to nap under. It called to her like history did, and Kagome wondered sometimes if there was magic inside. Magic that could fix her, could take away this sickness she always felt.
Until she was twelve, she'd been too afraid to enter the woods. But then she'd heard it.
It wasn't her name, but it was the same shape. It was the same feeling in her mind, like a bell that chimed only for her.
And she'd run to it. She'd run barefoot, faster than she had in her entire life, jumping over trickling, dying streams and thin, gnarled roots. Kagome crashed through the trees like a lame animal until she felt the pulse of her heart thump heavy in her chest, and her lungs squeezed gasps of air out in painful puffs.
She'd stopped in front of a tree. It was greater than her arms could reach around and tall enough that she couldn't see the top. It wove into the rest of the small forest, branches tangling with branches, moss hanging from it in strange, stringy vines.
She'd heard the sound again, this monumental chiming, and it tugged at some long forgotten string inside her.
The tree was hollow, curved and gnarled around cobwebs and inverted roots.
She tried to stave off the curiosity.
You know what your bones are like, Kagome. You'll climb up there and fall right down and break something.
She'd never actually broken a bone before, but that was only by some strange miracle. She'd expected it to happen often.
She'd never been good at listening to anyone, though. And most especially not herself.
So she climbed up, brushing the cobwebs from the inside.
It felt like a fairy tale, for a moment. Sunlight spilled weak between the leaves, a warm nudge in the strange tree's direction.
Its roots were easy to climb, though they seemed to shift and tremble beneath her feet. It was as if the tree, too, was excited for what she might find.
Her hands connected against something warm, something puffing warm breaths against her fingers. She'd jerked her hand back, screaming. Her scream died in her throat.
Inside the tree was someone. Someone alive.
Kagome leaned forward, pulling away dead leaves and bits of twigs, until she found a girl.
A girl with white hair. Her face was all fine bones and high cheeks and soft honey-gold skin. Ears like a cat's rested on top of her head, velvety beneath her fingers. Kagome jerked her hand away again, looking behind her at the pile of junk she'd removed from the strange girl's resting place.
She placed her hands against the girl's cheek, feeling the burning warmth of skin against her skin. Very alive skin, not cold or stiff or rotten with the stink of death.
Kagome took a step away, tried to breathe through the surprise, and then went back to look again.
There was something, something broken and sharp sticking from the girl's chest, right above where her heart should be.
It didn't seem to bother the girl at all.
Kagome bit her lip, climbing the roots again, struggling to keep her footing as everything shifted and twisted below her.
She wrapped her hand around the shaft stuck in the girl's chest, pulled.
Nothing happened. The girl didn't even wake up.
Kagome felt the thin sliver of wood pulse in her hand, barely a ba-bump in her palm.
She screamed, and this time, she didn't stop until she'd reached her home, out of breath and covered in bruises.
She hadn't even felt them.
The forest became her new favorite place to go.
She never quite memorized the way to the tree. It was impossible to keep track of her steps in the forest. It was dense and green and full of black bark. The lullaby softness of it lulled Kagome into wandering, and her feet always wandered back to the place where the girl slept.
The girl, who had remained alive and asleep and bound to the tree by whatever stuck in her chest, was Kagome's secret. When she sat at home, too frail to go to school for the day, her hands cold and her heart feeling too slow and heavy, she wondered about the girl in the forest.
She wondered what color her eyes were.
Were they blue, like the ocean in a storm?
Were they green, like the stark contrast of new leaves on the old forest floor?
Were they brown, like the rich earth laying and waiting and growing new things?
Kagome liked to imagine that they were some other color altogether. When the girl opened her eyes, Kagome would discover a new color, and that color would change her world.
Somewhere between fourteen and fifteen, she fell in love with a girl in a tree. A girl who listened to all her secrets, who's face shifted in the changing hours of sunlight. Kagome knew that all she had was an idea of a person, but it was a truly lovely idea. And despite herself, she fell in love.
She dated. She dated a boy in school who had the exact shade of blue she imagined the girl might have, his smile all teeth and his kisses harsh and hungry. Koga had touched every part of her body at sixteen, and he had declared her to be his the moment he laid eyes on her.
People hadn't understood why she'd bother with him, who wore leather and played with knives, and shouted more than he talked.
But he also ran track, and brought her crushed flowers, and when he took her out, they stood in his group of friends like a bodyguard. She'd never felt safe before, but Koga had almost taken her there.
Then he'd asked her if she loved him and she remembered the girl, sleeping in the forest, and the tight-tug of that bell chime calling her back.
And they'd broken up.
Hojo had pursued her all through high school, and she'd never once dated him. His hands were too gentle, his smile too wide. There was something in him that left her sighing and waiting and wondering while he talked to her of books and medicine and her many years of illness. Maybe it was that he thought he could heal her, and she'd forever given up on being healed. She didn't want it, didn't need it. She'd finally stuffed one of his home remedies for chronic pain back into his arms and told him to fuck off.
It had been the talk of the town for her entire last year of school.
She'd broken poor Hojo's heart, and now no guy or girl would touch her.
At seventeen, she didn't care.
Then, her eighteenth birthday came, and her world was upturned in one swift kick.
The girl in the tree woke up.
"Kagome, are you sure you're up to going out to the forest today?" Her mother's voice rang from the kitchen, and Kagome stifled a groan.
They only cared.
A lot.
Enough to ask nearly every time she left if she was up to it.
"I'm fine mom. Come on, it's my eighteenth birthday! Let me do something just once without acting like it's going to break me." Kagome's toothpaste fell back into the sink. She cursed at it, then put more on. "I've been to the forest a hundred times by now, there's nothing in there going to eat me."
"Then at least let someone go with you." Her mother's voice was right outside the door now, and Kagome felt a beat of guilt.
She shook it off. Today was the day she was going to go up to that girl, and wake her up. One way or another, that girl was getting away from that tree.
Kagome only hoped it wouldn't kill the girl before she ever learned her name.
"Mom, the forest is the one place—"
"That is all for you." Her mother sighed. "Yes, I know dear."
And she did know. They'd had this conversation a hundred times before.
We only want to protect you, dear.
Kagome finished running the brush over her teeth. She'd always had good teeth.
She'd always had good everything. She had good bones, she had good teeth, she had a good liver and good kidneys and if she never heard the word good again, she'd jump for joy. Being good had never made her healthy and it was the most frustrating part of everything.
Her doctors had told her that she was making up her illness, for attention or out of spite or to skip school.
They never seemed to care that she was exhausted walking up the stairs, that she had headaches nearly every day of her life, that all her joints and muscles ached when she ran in gym or stood for work.
Or climbed the shifting roots of the Girl's Tree.
Kagome bit the inside of her cheek, the minty fresh toothpaste leaving a cold residue against her tongue. "I promise, I'll be back in the morning mom. I just want to spend this day by myself. We can go get Udon for tomorrow night."
She pushed the door open and her mom pulled her into a hug. "Alright, honey. Just be careful, okay?"
"Promise, mom." Kagome smiled, burying her head into her mom's shoulder for just a moment. "Hey, save some cake for me, yeah mom?"
"It's your birthday, dear. Of course we'll…" Her mom's smile faltered. "I'll hide some from your grandfather."
"Thanks!" Kagome swiped up her backpack, trying to hide the bursting seams from her mother. "Make sure he doesn't eat it all!"
"Happy birthday, dear!" Her mother called behind her as she rushed from the back door, crashing through the small yard and into the trees beyond before anyone could ask her why she had a pick, a shovel, and several other tools stuffed haphazardly into her backpack.
Turned out, she didn't need any of them.
But that didn't stop her from dragging the bag through the forest and yanking it off of snared branches and throwing it down several times in fits of frustration.
By the time she reached the girl, her hands were covered in small cuts and her arms and legs were smudged with dark bruises.
She was more angry than excited.
Until she saw the girl's eyes, closed as always, and realized she might see the actual color for once.
Kagome set to work, but the tree was hard as iron. No matter how many times she swung the pick axe at its trunk, it wouldn't chip. She tried to dig up the roots, but they only seemed to shift and slither away from her. She'd tried to cut out the back of the tree, where whatever pierced the girl must be stuck, but her grandfather's collectible sword only hacked at the leaves and left them in scattered pieces on her feet.
"I am so sick of this, do you hear me?" Kagome shouted, and it felt good to shout. It felt like her lungs filling up, like her anger blowing out of her in a heavy wind. "I want you to wake up! I want to know what you sound like! I want to see your eyes! I want you to be more than a person I've made up in my head!"
She hadn't realized she was crying, but at some point she had.
She'd fallen during her tirade, a cut on her knee and a rip in her shirt.
It was a nice shirt, pink and lace and a sweetheart cut. Kagome had picked it out just for this occasion over a year ago.
And nothing was going as she'd expected.
"Wake up, damn you!" She scrambled back up the roots, her fist pounding against the girl's chest. She growled in frustration when nothing happened.
She'd always been a patient girl. Never good at listening, but she'd always known how to wait for what she'd wanted.
She'd waited to stop being so sick, and that had never came.
She'd waited to feel the bell-chime call from someone else, and no one had ever reached her.
She'd waited until she was 18, until she wasn't too young or too naïve or too anything, to come save this girl.
And now.
Now she wasn't strong enough to break this tree.
Kagome shouted again, her hand wrapping around the splintered, moss covered shaft in the girl's chest, and pulled.
It was a last attempt, a desperate grab she hadn't expected to work.
But then she was falling back, the broken thing sliding away easily into her hand.
It was an arrow, the arrowhead still slick with red-hot blood. Kagome screamed, still falling, and wondered if she'd killed this girl she'd placed all her hopes in.
Something reached out and grabbed her, too strong, too solid to be a person.
Fingers popped as they tightened on her arm, nails digging too sharp into the sleeves of her shirt. It hurt, and it was frightening, and this wasn't going as planned.
Kagome's eyes were scrunched shut. This touch couldn't be the girl's touch, because the girl had never looked anything but peaceful and a bit sorry in the tree.
"You're wrong."
The voice that spoke wasn't a bell-chime. It wasn't sugar-soft or princess sweet. It didn't sound like some maiden graciously accepting the help of her savior.
It sounded like a thousand years of dry throat and a biting edge of nightmares.
"W-what?" Kagome squeaked, and finally she peeked out from her lashes. The eyes were gold, and they were open wide, staring at her.
"You're wrong. You smell wrong." And suddenly those eyes were close to hers, a warm nose nudging against her neck. "You smell like her, but different too. What did you do to Kikyo?"
There was something… Kagome recognized something like hope in this person's voice. And she recognized something else. "You're not a girl."
"I'm—" The person stopped, their mouth falling open. "I'm not a girl! Of course I'm not a girl! Now I know you're not her!"
"I'm Kagome. I thought you were a girl." Kagome reached out, carefully, and patted the spot where the arrow used to be. "You had an arrow in your chest."
"Yeah, I've been hurt worse. What do you mean you thought I was a girl?" The voice snarled and the hand on her arm dropped.
"Well, you didn't really look like a boy, with the… with the hair and all." But now that Kagome looked at the person, standing and out from the shadow of the tree, out from the twist of branches and the ever-returning cobwebs, they didn't look like a girl.
"I'm not a boy either!" The person crossed their arms, then flinched. "I'm a demon. Now, where's Kikyo?"
"Who's Kikyo?" Kagome frowned. There hadn't been any girls named Kikyo in her class, or any other classes from around here that she knew of. Then again, who knew how long this girl had been in the tree.
Kagome felt shame flash through her, but brushed it away. If someone had been looking for a girl—no, a demon—with cat ears and silver hair, she'd have known by now. "What's your name? How long have you been stuck to this tree?"
"I don't know." They were exasperated at first, but then Kagome saw the realization dawn on them. "I don't know… What… Where's Kikyo?"
"I don't know who Kikyo is, but I'm Kagome." She reached out her hand, but the demon knocked her away. They still stared down at her, though, a fight raging in their eyes.
"You look just like her…"
"But I'm—"
Then the demon ran away, and took all of her hopes of a girl to love with them.