Forbidden
By Ayrith
She reeled back, stunned, horrified, unsure of how to answer without falling down and breaking right there. The silence hung thick in the air, her eyes wide and his eyes unrevealing. Too distraught and confused to think straight, she held her breath, felt the air catch in her throat, wondered pathetically if perhaps things would smooth themselves out without her help and much inevitable pain. As fool-hardy as it was -- she knew it all too clearly and unfortunately so did he -- a part of her was hoping, wishing, that she wouldn't have to deal with this…and now of all times!
But the look in his eyes never changed, his face as impassive as ever, and suddenly the world began to pitch violently. She swayed, almost stumbling on her feet, but his dark eyes anchored her to the spot, demanding and waiting and pleading...
For the life of her, she could find no familiarity, no recognition in that solemn face; no smile that would tell her this was all a joke. And it scared her.
Her eyes watered, fogged, and then suddenly fear engulfed her heart. He couldn't see her like this! She couldn't show him how he effected her. And so her hand came out, almost as though with a mind of it's own, and it struck.
Both Sango and Miroku were stunned when he hit the floor harshly from her blow.
His head whipped back and jarred with the ground ruthlessly and their eye contact broke. The moment his gaze was not on hers she fled, ran with all her might, outside the hut, past the shocked Kagome and Inuyasha, through the fields, the forest, the trees that were only hazy blurs in her vision. Crystalline tears glimmered from her watery eyelids and fell from her eyes as she ran, betraying the pent up pain that broiled within her, revealing to the world what one who was falling looked like from on the inside.
All because of a simply sentence. A simple sentence that should not have broken her but had. A simple sentence, a confession, that should have carried her on white swept wings into the awaiting arms of a man she loved to the very pit of her stomach and the end of her existence. He had gotten under her skin, she had let him, and now both of them would pay the price.
I love you.
I love you too, her mind screamed, even as she fled from him. I love you too, she sobbed, even as she ran from him, leaving him ashamed and hurt and unloved. I love you too, she cried, but I can't.
Because I'll never be able to love you when the rest of me belongs buried with the past.