No Going Back

"AYUMI!!!!!!!"

Eri cried frantically over the roar of the falling stone around her. She could hear her friend's scream, horrible and piercing in the depths of this stone prison; but her way back had been cut off, the massive sections of stone shaken loose by the cave-in barring the way.

She sobbed brokenly, her hands tearing at the sections of stone, frantically trying to move them aside even though she knew she could never hope to lift their massive weight. This couldn't be happening, was the thought that kept playing over and over in her mind. If only she had stayed with her, if only she hadn't left her alone in this terrible crypt, if only…

"Ayumi…" The name was chocked out on another heavy sob, and Eri's legs gave way beneath the impossible weight settled upon her by her own failure. She sagged down onto the rocks beneath her, her whole body overtaken by wrenching sobs and pulsing shivers of dread. Ayumi's scream had faded into the deathly silence of the crypt, leaving Eri with only the sound of her own suffering to echo back at her through the suffocating darkness.

"No…" She couldn't believe what was happening, couldn't stand the thought of being trapped alone in this place of darkness and despair. She couldn't…she just couldn't. She was breaking against the surface of the unforgiving stone, her courage slipping away into the shadows like on of the phantoms that prowled through these dark caverns, fear and hopelessness taking over in its place. She would die here, the though came unbidden, but insistent in the darkness that had taken over in her mind. Trapped like the sprits, sealed away like those unfortunates whose bones were the only reminder of the lives they had once lived; the crypt would have her as well.

"NO!!!" Her voice lifted up around her, a blade that cut through the entrapments of darkness and despair. It was something primal, something within her that had broken and surged up with wild determination, that refused to give in to this madness, refused to lie down and die in this unforgiving place.

Her breathing was sharp and labored, draughts of air coming in on panting gasps to fill her lungs and spread strength through her body on surging pulses of adrenaline. She pushed herself to her feet roughly, her hand clutching tightly to her only source of light in this dark place. Her eyes were hard as they peered ahead into the shadows of the unknown, anger and fury driving her as never before. She would not give in to this. She would not simply let this place have her.

She took one step forward, and then another. She was alone now, leaving behind the last of her friends. But she would move forward, and she would not look back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

The sounds of voices were muffled and indistinct as they reached her ears, and Kagome paused for a moment in uncertainty. Had she made the right choice in leaving them behind? She wondered. Were they still safe here, alone and trapped in this dark passage? All around her, she could hear the trembling of the earth, the loud groans of ancient protest coming from the stones. Had she been wrong to follow the voice of this spirit? Had she made a terrible mistake?

It was the silence that brought Kagome back from her thoughts to focus once again on her surroundings, a silence so deep it was chilling. Not even the haunting echo of the child's voice carried to her in this deep silence. It was as though everything around her had suddenly stilled, caught in a moment of anticipation, waiting for something to happen.

Kagome swallowed thickly, her translucent limbs still feeling very real as they trembled with the cold shiver that spread through her body. There was something ahead, a light that called to her in the darkness, that beaconed her to come and discover the secrets that had been buried here for far too long. Taking in a deep breath to steady herself and still the trembling in her limbs, she stepped forward to meet it.

Around her, the walls opened to form a cavern in the stone passageway. And within, in the light cast off by the flickering flames that dispelled the darkness of the cavern's depth, She stood waiting. A ghost of the present looking down upon her past, the spirit-child stood above the image of what once was her, what once was the body that held her now restless spirit.

Her back was turned, her identity still concealed from Kagome's eyes; but she could hear her voice, so clear in this place of sprits and lost memories.

"I have been waiting for a long time. So long…"

The girl trailed off, her voice so sad that Kagome couldn't stop the urge to go to her, to offer her some kind of comfort in this cold world she had been left to. "Let me help you," she told the spirit gently. "Let me help you find your rest."

The girl shook her head, the dark hair spilling over her shoulders shimmering faintly as it caught the light. "You do not understand. I can not rest, not so long as She lives."

"Kikyo…"

There is power in speaking the names of the dead, and as Kikyo's name spilled from her lips, Kagome could see the air in the tomb shifting, rising up from the ground like waves of heat in the midday sun. The rippling waves began drawing together, building upon each other until they began to take shape and form. And when the distortions finally cleared, it was Kikyo's face that she saw.

"Yes," the spirit child replied. "She thought she could use me, thought that in my death she could gain life."

Seeing the image of Kikyo standing over the form of the broken girl laid out on the ground of the crypt, the beginnings of understanding began to form in Kagome's mind. "She wanted to feed on your soul."

But again the spirit child shook her head. "Not mine," she replied, lifting her hand, glimmering in spectral translucence in the light cast by the fire, to point a slender finger towards the other side of the room. "His."

In response to her words, another shift in the spirit plane began to take on form. Kagome watched in restless anticipation, knowing that this was the missing piece to the story, that it was here she would find the answers she needed. But when the image pulled from the memories of the sprit child finally cleared away from the rippling distortions that called it into this plane, Kagome gasped in horror.

"It can't be…" Her words trembled so fiercely they were barely distinguishable, but no matter how much she wished she could deny what she was seeing, she could not. There, in the light of the spirit's memory, stood the demon that had reaped vengeance for the loss of his child, for the loss of his light and his heart. And even in the pale glimmer of a memory, she could see the crimson fury that burned around him and reflected in the harden gold of his eyes.

"Sesshomaru…"

But Kagome knew then, knew that there could be no other that He would have gone to such lengths to atone for not being there in her moment of need. There were tears in her eyes when she turned back to the spirit child; and as the girl turned to face her, even before she had seen her face, Kagome knew who it was that had met such a terrible fate in this dark pit.

"Rin…"

The girl smiled in recognition of her name, but not one filled with her radian joy that Kagome had so often seen in her life. Her smile was brittle, cold with the pain of her solitude and her haunting memories.

"I have waited for so long," the girl told her in a voice wrapped in pain. "I am tired."

"I understand," Kagome whispered softly in response to the girl's pain. She took a small step forward, reaching out her hand to the spirit child. "Let me help you." She was pleading. She couldn't bare the thought of the horrors this child had endured, this child she had known, had laughed and smiled with, had held in her arms. "Let me take you to your rest."

"NO!!" The air around the spirit child suddenly whipped up in a fury of commotion. It tore through the cavern, ripping against the walls in a howl of anguish. "You don't understand!" The spirit accused her angrily. "It is happening again! She will not rest until she is free of her prison! You will see! You must!"

"Rin, please…!" Kagome was crouched low against the torrent of the winds. They were ripping against her senses like blades of fire, tearing into her to leave in their wake a numbing cold like clammy hands grasping and pulling against her. She was trembling, even when her powers surged around her in a brilliant barrier of defense, still she could hear the howling anguish carried upon those winds and feel the cold dread of their deathly caress.

But the spirit would not be stopped. She had waited for far too long for the eyes which could see, which could finally understand. And now that she was here, there was no going back. The past would live again in the eyes of this miko. Only then could she ever truly understand, and only then could she ever hope to save any of the lost souls trapped in this pit of despair.

The winds continued to howl, but not winds, not really. They were voices, memories, emotions; all that had made her in her life. She would use that last of her waning strength to relive the past once more. All her hope now rested in the hands of the miko who had come from her past and fallen in to the curse of her present. She could hear the pleas of the living one, and she understood her pain. But pain was nothing to her anymore, not anymore.

"You will see," the spirit child said again. "You will see, and you will understand."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Tricky….You know, overlapping three planes of existence in one room at the same time is not something I recommend trying to do. It is extremely frustrating. But I think I've figured out the trick to it…well, I hope I have, or else writing the next chapter is going to get messy. Still, I'm going to try.

So, till then.

Shadow