Kagome could not stop seeing Atsuki knelt over the sword in his gut. Every time her eyes slid shut, even just for that millisecond it took to blink, she saw him. Dunking her hair under the water to rinse it clean, she saw him. A wince and eyes clenched, she saw him. Cloth falling over her face and eyes closed, she saw him. Every time, a painted scroll with more and more detail each brush of her lashes against her cheeks.
So she focused on Izayoi, on the way her friend flinched when touched and kept distance between herself and the rest. She focused on ways to soothe the other girl, even if all she could do was hold her hand. And maybe holding Izayoi's hand was as much a comfort to herself as it was to the other girl.
The night passed on and Kagome hardly noticed the public mark of Sesshoumaru's dishonor, or the display of his father's. In fact, she only jerked to attention when Fuiasu placed a dagger in her hands and knelt in front of her as Tōga had done to Sesshoumaru.
Tōga must have already said something, or Sesshoumaru, or maybe Fuiasu had said it herself but there was an expectant hush across the crowd as Fuiasu waited with her back to Kagome. The dagger weighed in her hands, a burden she was not sure she could carry or wield. Fuiasu had such stunning, lovely hair and she had so many memories she shared with Sesshoumaru of running combs and brushes through those lustrous strands…but a glance at Sesshoumaru gave her nothing but an impassive mask looking back at her.
Licking her lips, she took a step forward and then another and automatically picked up chunks of hair. She was not sure how short to cut, where to start, but there were hundreds of eyes on every move of her hands and the dagger she held so she gathered a section and found the blade sliced through as easy as a lily floated through water and brilliant silver strands fluttered to the floor.
There was so much to cut, and each chunk that drifted to the floor seemed to alleviate some of the tension in the throne room.
Finally, when it was finished and the Lady's hair hung to just below her ears, not even long enough to touch her shoulders, Kagome stepped back. There was a buzzing in her ears as she stared down at all those silver and white strands of hair littered across the dais and she felt faint, but the moment she stepped back next to Izayoi and felt a hand take hers, she was anchored again.
It wasn't until Izayoi had led her almost all the way back to their private quarters that Kagome realized the public act was finished. She stopped dead in the hallway, Izayoi's hand still held tight in hers. "Atsuki," she murmured, and his name felt like ash on her tongue.
What would they do with his body she wondered. She knew he had no mate and a family so large and wide spread he'd lost contact a long, long time ago. As far as she knew, the court was all he had. Frowning, she let go of Izayoi's hand and strode back to the public gardens, to the bloody grounds of what had happened to them. She would not force Izayoi to come, but she could not leave or rest without knowing what would be done with his body, without knowing how or when or where he would be put to rest.
When there was only one door between her and the gardens, she hesitated. There had been so much blood and he, who had always been a larger than life presence to her, had seemed so very small. And she had loved him in her own childish way—had known he had simply tolerated her affections as one might a younger sibling—but had loved him anyway.
A soft hand took hers again and Kagome looked back at Izayoi. Neither could muster a smile, but that tight grip, that anchor of friendship and understanding and knowledge, was enough to propel them forward through the shoji screen doors and into the garden of massacre.
Most of the guard's bodies had already been removed from the pikes they'd been lanced upon and they'd been laid with the utmost care in a cart at the entrance to the garden. The servants doing the grisly work had not yet reached their teacher.
There was a small part of Kagome that had hoped, as children are wont to do, that he might have somehow healed in the hour that had passed since they had left his body here—that he might miraculously have recovered from all his wounds and simply been waiting on them to come find him…but that was not the case.
He was exactly as they had left him and Kagome did not even realize she was crying until she felt a tear tear down her neck and disappear into the stifling heat of the formal kimono. Furious, she swiped her arms across her face to wipe away the sorrow and stepped down into the garden. "Go pick some flowers for him," she told Izayoi, and then focused entirely on him.
He looked so, so small now when he'd always been a giant of a male to her—towering over even Tōga. Gritting her teeth, she strode forward and yanked the sword impaling him free and tossed it to the side. A sluggish gurgle of blood dripped out of the wound as his body finally slumped to the ground. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, and used her meager strength to roll him onto his back and position him so at least he looked like he was only sleeping. "I'll get stronger and be better and smarter, I promise….I promise I'll get stronger so please come back. Please…"
The tears came free and hard then, her young heart a quivering, tumultuous thing beneath her breast as she buried her face in his already cold chest. She sobbed and sobbed there in the bloody, ruined gardens as the servants continued their grim task and it wasn't until Izayoi knelt beside her to lay a bundle of flowers across his chest that Kagome found it within herself to stop.
For a long moment, both girls were quiet as they stared down at their dead teacher and friend and then, "More flowers," from Kagome. They worked quietly in the gardens, the flowers the only thing that had survived the death and storms and aftermath of that horrible night. They surrounded Atsuki's body in piles and piles of bright flowers, a contrast to the drab pallor his skin had begun to take on.
"What prayers do youkai say for their dead?" Izayoi asked, her words so quiet but so loud in the garden now that the servants had finished and left the two girls alone with the dead hare.
A question Kagome did not have the answer to—she had never attended a funeral before, could not fathom a reason why she ever would. Their pack was so powerful and already so long lived…it had never occurred to her that anyone in the pack would face death in such a way as this.
So Kagome said the only thing she could think of as she stared at Atsuki, her own mortality now a gold thread of understanding seared inside her soul, and purified his body to ashes as the first rays of sunlight began to drift into the garden sodden with blood and rain. "Goodbye."
o.O.o
Word Count - 1274