Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha. Idiom definition was from the Cambridge Idioms Dictionary, 2nd edition.
Warning: some violence, implied adult situations
Pairing: Naraku/Hitomiko
Six Layers of Skin Deep
by queen-of-sinking-ships
To 'get under (someone's) skin':
1) To annoy someone.
2) To affect someone very strongly in a way that is difficult to forget.
i.
She finds spiders everywhere: beneath her blankets, buried between stones by the river, crawling up her calf under her red hakama in the middle of the night. At first, she would scream and struggle and swat away the little beasts like any other child, fearing the touch of eight legs against her pale, pure skin.
After the demon in the baboon pelt - the one who wanted her life, the one who reeked of poison and death, Naraku - kills her master, Hitomiko decides that spiders are the least of her worries.
ii.
The bells are heavy and make too much noise, yet Hitomiko refuses to part with them. The handle of the set has grown smooth and worn to the touch, molded faintly into the shape of her fingers, though she rarely uses the bells in battle. Her spiritual powers are (like Kikyou's) far too strong (like Kikyou's) to be limited by any weapon (like Kikyou's).
"Though you are young, your spiritual powers rival that of Lady Kikyou's, who passed away many years ago."
Recalling her master's final words, Hitomiko frowns, because she knows the famed priestess died at the hands of a demon, and she cannot help but think that history had a strange tendency to repeat itself.
iii.
She cannot forget him; cannot forget that silky voice, cannot forget that purple miasma, cannot forget the sight of her friends' flesh slipping from their bones as he smirked and praised the strength of her barrier while she cried.
Naraku called her 'Lady Hitomiko' before anyone else had. When they'd met, Hitokmiko had been seven years old – hardly a priestess, much less a lady.
Hitomiko watches a black widow scuttle across the temple floor, dragging a trail of milky thread in it's wake, and wonders if addressing her as an adult had made it any easier for Naraku to try and kill her.
iv.
Now she is twenty-two and grown, but Hitomiko still can't forget.
Sometimes Hitomiko thinks that she catches deep, dark whispers coming from the forest; sometimes she sees spider webs turn black and curl at the ends, tangled in the trees and leading to a cold, regal face of a man she knows-yet-does-not-know.
One day, she feels his fingers crawling up, up her neck (cool and dead and white and spidery) and she shrieks, "Leave me be!"
Of course, there is nothing when she whirls around, fingers poised to cast a spell, breath trapped in her throat, not again not again not again –
v.
So when Hitomiko hears that rich, horrible laughter slink out of the brush, into the wounds the possessed traveler had inflicted on her back, she is stunned, but not necessarily surprised.
("I…know…that voice – " Hitomiko gasps, feeling him slip into her blood, bury underneath her skin, press against her heart; a parasite, a disease, a...)
vi.
There is a spider between her legs – she can feel it's slow, creeping steps circle the inner bend of her thigh, lazily making it's way up, up, up – but Hitomiko says nothing of it to the women weeping at her deathbed. With a weary, wary heart, she gives the girls instructions of what to do with her body once she has passed.
(The spider stills, as if listening the priestess' last words, before sinking its fangs into her, hungrier than ever.)
a/n: Playing around with formatting; the 'bold' feature on FF doesn't seem to work on Doc Manager, so I had to use Word to write this, which I dislike.
Hitomiko's character shows up in the Final Act, episode 16, I believe (not sure where she shows up in the manga). Naraku tries to kill her as a child, but she survives – later, he possesses her body as an adult and causes general havoc. I think what struck me about the episode was how clearly traumatic Hitomiko's childhood encounter with Naraku was, because she still thought about it into her twenties. The idea that she could still be so haunted by him years later (fears that were proven to be correct) was very interesting to write.
Reviews, sharing, etc. are always greatly appreciated. Honestly, if you hate it, please tell me. I want to see if I could have done something better.