Courage, Withered
By Lalieth
Many times she found herself lost in thought as she let the cool metal glide across the thin, delicate skin of her wrist. When this happened she would lift the thin blade to her cheek, relishing in the sensation of the cold metal, and think: was I wrong, am I wrong?
Use and old age had led her to accept her cowardice. Trapped in a world of her own making, consumed by the chill of her martyred youth and wasted fertility, Kagome aged in a yellowed dust of memories and solitude. She laughed sometimes, a cold and hollow sound, when she remembered her old passions, those ridiculous dramas and consuming affairs with demons, half-demons, little boys.
Yes, the despicable coward was dead, that was true, wiped from the face of the earth forever. She was sure he would not get a second chance. But somehow that seemed to matter little. For no others now lived who even recalled his malice. Well, that was not exactly true—there were two others who perhaps could remember. But Sango had been driven insensible by the burden of her conscience and in the end had reached old age in a state of total innocence. Kagome inwardly cursed her cowardice that she could not pick up the knife and end it for good for Sango whom, every evening, prepared a fine supper and waited in the yard for hours for her family and friends to arrive. She was exhausted from the constant vigilance required to keep her old friend in peaceful habits and from wandering into the wild looking for a ten-year-old boy.
And then there was the other. Most had forgotten about the undead miko, so completely buried alive in a hut on the extreme edge of the village. But right up to the day that the woman's second funeral procession passed by her door Kagome had not failed to recall her old rival rotting in her wormhole for a single moment. When she looked at the pyre she thought Kikyou must have finally sent the soul-collectors away, that Kikyou had done what she could not. She wondered why the miko had waited so long. When she saw Inuyasha standing under The Tree looking much older than when he'd died, she understood he was waiting for Kikyou. Then the last rose-colored spot in her heart, that by now was no bigger than a thumbprint, turned to ash. She wished she had her own soul-collectors to send away. She was sure she would have enough courage to do that. Perhaps not the knife, but she could do that.