Broken
Jade fought to keep her eyelids open, but it felt like they were determined to shut and seal themselves shut for eternity to spite her. She was so focused on keeping her eyes open that she stabbed herself in and around her mouth multiple times with her fork while she tried to eat dinner. One of those times hurt enough to give her a lovely burst of adrenaline, which lasted five seconds and wore off once her brain realized no injuries were sustained.
'I have no one to blame but myself.' she told herself. 'And Naraku.' Though, he wasn't the one forcing her to stay awake for as long as she could. She was the one doing that, so she wouldn't put that blame on him.
"Ow." Jade murmured after her head suddenly rocked forward. Had she lost consciousness? She rubbed the back of her neck gingerly. The first person she looked at was Lucy, whose eyebrows were knitted together with concern. Her gaze found Lily and she had the same expression as her sister, which made Jade blink several times to make sure she wasn't hallucinating.
"Jade, why don't you go lie down?" Mama suggested. "Before you stab your eyes out."
"No. I'm hungry." Jade replied with more stubbornness than honesty. Her body shut down the hunger pains a while ago because those signals were taking up the energy she needed to torture herself. The only reason she was eating was because she knew she needed to and because she needed an excuse to stay awake just a bit longer.
"Well, you'll be blind too if you keep doing this."
"Good. One less thing to worry about."
"Jade," Rosa began sharply. Her tone alone made Jade cringe and hang her head with weary defeat. "Listen to Mama; go to bed. We'll still have food in the morning."
Jade inhaled deeply. "Five more minutes."
"Ai, I wish your tiredness would take your attitude instead of fueling it." Rosa replied, but she tamed her tone noticeably. Jade wondered if her aunt remembered the last time she argued with her when she was tired and didn't want history to repeat itself.
"Lucy, Lily, in five minutes, help Jade to her room." Mama ordered in a soft voice. The look on her face was restrained pain and suddenly, Jade felt even worse. Whispering an apology, she placed her fork down and stood up, hearing her two cousins join her in awkward silence.
With the urge to sleep scratching at the back of her eyes, Jade closed her bedroom door after waving off Lucy and Lily. First, she checked her camera on her desk. She made sure it was active, recording, and the infrared was working before crawling into her bed. She turned the lamp off and placed her phone face down on the nightstand. Instead of laying down, though, she sat upright with her back against her headboard. Every time her head nodded forward and her eyes eased shut, Jade would shake her head to wake herself up. It didn't take long for the physical exhaustion to set in. Her limbs trembled, her head pounded, her eyes burned, and her breathing was labored and shallow.
'This sucks. I'm never doing this again.` Even thinking hurt at that point.
The first night of her sleep deprivation experiment was definitely the easiest for her to handle. She had lost count of how many times she lost a night of sleep because of a video game, a test to study for, a paper to write, or having fun with friends. The second night wasn't difficult until the early hours of the morning and she avoided her aunt that day as much as possible to preserve her dwindling energy. This night, though, was magnitudes worse and every passing minute multiplied it.
The next thing she knew, her body jerked involuntarily. She inhaled sharply and glanced around her dark room, wondering how long she had dozed off. Jade began to slowly rock herself side-to-side, hoping the movement would wake her, but it only seemed to increase the urge to sleep for a day. She tried not to think about how she truly had no idea what she was doing and she definitely tried not to think about how this wasn't a guaranteed method to activate any of the weird, "juice dreams."
'Every time I had issues sleeping, they happened. Every time.' Jade told herself, shoving her doubts from her mind. 'Every. Time. Every. Time. Every. Time.' Without meaning to, Jade's side-to-side rocking slowed to single-second intervals. 'Every. Time. Every. Time. Every. Time.' Like a pendulum she swayed, only closing her eyes when tears fell due to the pain of the burn from staring too long.
Soon, her fatigue began to disappear, almost like it left her body with every exhale she gave. Her eyes could stay open without constant blinking. Jade felt completely fine, which meant one of three things; she was hallucinating so hard that she thought she felt better, she died, or her, "experiment," possibly succeeded.
Jade reached for her phone and tried to unlock it, but it wouldn't turn on. Sighing with relief, she crawled out of bed. As expected, her ceiling light wouldn't turn on, nor was the floodlight outside the house on.
'Okay, so before, I just walked until weird shit happened.' Jade knew that if it had been a movie or book, she would have called the character a dumb-ass for the walk-around-aimlessly plan, but she was desperate; desperate for answers, for ideas, and for closure of some sort. Naraku's half-answers fueled a fire within her and until she received an answer or idea of what to do or where to go from there, she was stuck in limbo with her entire life.
Her door didn't lead to her home's hallway; it led to a craggy beach. She squinted as her eyes adjusted to the light of her new destination. The water was still and dark...and familiar. The dreams of Naraku shoving her into the water came rushing back to her and suddenly, she was stiff as a board, looking around, expecting to see him.
No one was nearby. Slowing her breathing down, Jade took in more of the scenery. The surrounding trees and grass were green and beautiful, reminding her of summer, but the silence bothered her. Even the water's stillness seemed strange to her. Jade had seen many lakes and ponds in her life, but this one wasn't one she had visited before. As her eyes slowly scanned the lake once more, noting every contour, it finally hit her - it was the lake Naraku was researching! The past two weeks of her life had been dedicated to reading his notes, studying his maps, and looking at his pictures, so she knew she was right.
'Why did that take me so long to piece together? Do dreams make me stupid?' She couldn't help but to face-palm herself and groan audibly.
To help shake off the embarrassment and to continue her mission, Jade marched forward, paralleling the lake's boundary. With every step she took, the sky began to darken as clouds gathered above. There was no sun in the sky to cover, though. Jade shook her head, trying to literally toss the thoughts of logic from her mind. Logic wasn't going to help her now.
Jade froze when she spotted a person standing on the cliff boundary of the lake. Immediately, her mind screamed, "Naraku," even though she could tell it wasn't him. This person was shorter and had straight hair...and wore very vivid red pants and a white robe. The small frame told her it was likely a woman.
'Should I let her know I'm here?' she wondered, still slowly walking up the incline.
She didn't have to because the woman turned and stared at her. Jade froze again. The woman raised her hand, slightly bending her fingers to wave cautiously. She seemed concerned, not scared or angered. Jade, not wanting to be rude, raised her hand and returned the awkward wave as she approached.
"Uh, hi." Jade said once she stood a few strides from the woman. The woman's attire struck Jade as odd, even for a dream. She had seen it before in various anime - a uniform a miko would wear. The woman was clearly of Japanese descent, too. She looked to be around Jade's age, but something about her made her feel much older, if that was possible.
The woman spoke, and though Jade recognized the language she spoke as Japanese, she wasn't anywhere near fluent to understand. When the woman finished speaking, Jade sighed.
"I'm sorry; I don't understand." Jade said in a low voice. The woman's head tilted and she frowned, but she beckoned Jade closer with a wave of her hand.
'It's a dream, it's a dream, it's a dream,' Jade chanted internally, fighting off the anxiety rising in her chest. She walked to the edge, but stayed away enough from it that she wouldn't be easily pushed over.
Once again, the woman spoke, but this time, she pointed at the lake. Jade reluctantly peeled her eyes from the woman and looked at the lake. With the building darkness, a faint purple glow emanated from its depths. She looked back at the woman, who spoke a phrase twice, slowly, as if she wanted Jade to know what she said despite not understanding. Jade repeated it, knowing her accent was atrocious, but the woman nodded, approving her effort.
"Okay, so the glow-y shit came from this lake; I kind of guessed that." Jade murmured. "Though, it looks like it came from a much larger source of bullshit."
Repeating the phrase a third time, the woman pressed one hand to her chest, waiting for Jade's eyes to meet hers before steadily reaching out and pressing her hand to the same spot on Jade's chest.
'I'm going to make Sango, Kagome, Naraku - everyone who knows Japanese - teach me Japanese.' she thought with annoyance. The last time she heard a phrase in her dream and repeated it, she still forgot it upon waking up. Still, though, Jade mouthed the words, hoping they would possibly stick.
Mimicking her frown, the woman gestured at Jade, then to herself. Then, the woman's expression lightened, and she even gave a closed-lipped smile. Jade shook her head, her frown staying in place as she looked back at the lake.
"Naraku, what did you get into?" Jade whined. She heard a gasp and looked back at the woman.
"Naraku?" the woman stated questioningly, though with different inflections on the syllables. Jade was taken aback for a second, stunned that the woman said it, but after a moment of thought, it made sense. Naraku was a Japanese name. What did it mean? She had no idea.
"Yeah, Naraku."
The woman pointed at the lake urgently. "Naraku?"
"Sure?" Jade shrugged dramatically, feeling extremely stupid for having never asked Naraku what his name meant or looked it up herself. Knowing her recent luck, it was the worst possible insult to call someone.
"Naraku," the woman paused, shaking her head in disapproval. Her finger went from the lake to the sky. She spoke another phrase and Jade repeated it quickly several times.
'Something about the sky? The lake and the sky?' Jade was ready to throw herself head first into the water. The step-by-step process her mind was operating with was driving her nuts! It was as if she could only think so much at a time! 'Do I have a low RAM brain in my dreams?'
"Did the shit-" she began slowly, pointing at the glowing portion of the lake. "-fall-" She balled her hand into a fist and brought it downward into her other palm. "-from the sky?" Then she pointed up.
The woman nodded and smiled, speaking more words. As she tried to say the words, a tremor knocked Jade off balance. She dropped to her knees on purpose to stabilize her position. She heard the screams of the woman and the next thing Jade knew, she was being lifted into the air by her midsection. Only then did she notice the pressure of something wrapped around her. The woman's hands latched onto hers, but whatever had Jade was strong enough to pull both of them off the cliff and into the water.
Black and cold; those were the two words that came to Jade's mind. When she asked herself why she wasn't scared, flashes of her previous dreams appeared in her mind again; this had happened before. This was the point where she would wake up.
Except, this time, she was still being pulled into the depths. Her hands grasped around, searching for the woman, but she was no longer with her. The sound of thunder seemed to be coming from below, except this thunder was slow, rhythmic - like a heartbeat! She sank to the source of the sound and the purple glow and found herself staring at a large crystalline structure. It was asymmetrical and had root-like extensions spreading from its base. With each beat, the purple color would change shades throughout the entire crystal. There were countless specks of darkness, each of varying sizes, sprinkled throughout like black stars across a purple sky.
Whatever had its grip around her began to pull her towards the structure instead of aimlessly dragging her downward. The black specks began to take on familiar shapes; fish, frogs, deer, rabbits...humans! All were frozen within the giant crystal! It was then that Jade began to kick and struggle, attempting to escape. She couldn't breathe, but she couldn't lose consciousness, either!
From the center, an enormous shadow appeared, and it moved inside the crystal fluidly. Tentacle-like limbs stretched from its serpentine body, exploring the space around it. Something resembling a snout opened and Jade's ears rang as a mind-numbing, body-aching animalistic screech emitted from the shadow. It almost felt like she was being torn apart from the sound alone!
"AHHHHH! NO!" Jade screamed, grasping and pushing herself back instinctively. She grunted when her back slammed against something hard. Her body froze up, still trying to figure out if it was in danger or not.
"Jade? Jade!" a familiar voice called out. The sound of a door opening and a light turning on had never filled Jade with such relief before in her life. She was awake in her room!
"Lily," Jade said, her voice shaking.
"Did you have a nightmare?" Lily asked, crawling on the bed.
"Hit my back, head,"
"Let me look," Lily's hands pulled Jade's shirt up and her fingers lightly pressed along her shoulders. "Yeah, there's some marks right he-holy shit!"
"What?" Jade sat up and stared at Lily, who was staring wide-eyed at something behind her. Turning, she froze when she saw what Lily was looking at - her headboard was cracked where she had collided with it! Jade's jaw dropped and slowly, she reached behind her head, rubbing it and her neck, almost expecting to feel a broken bone.
"Jade," Lily's breathing was almost as labored as hers. She shook her head, in complete disbelief. "What happened? How did you-"
"If I tell you, swear to me on whatever you pray to that you won't tell anyone."
"I won't, but why don't you want anyone to know? You know my mom is going to want to know what the fuck happened to your headboard!"
"I'm still," Jade's eyes shifted and she found herself staring at her camera. "I'll show you."
"Okay?" Lily sounded as confused as she looked. Jade crawled off her bed and looked out into the dark hallway.
"Is Lucy okay? How is she still asleep?" Jade asked in a low voice.
"She snuck out." Lily replied. "I...don't think we should keep this from her."
"I agree, but she's...overprotective."
"Jade," Lily began warningly.
"We can tell her later."
Sitting at her computer, Jade brought up a window so that she and Lily could view what the camera had recorded. She began clicking at different time stamps, trying to find the moment she had lost consciousness. After explaining her plan to Lily, her cousin grumbled curses under her breath while massaging her temples with both hands.
"Is that why you've been tired? So you could do this to yourself?" Lily asked accusingly.
"I wasn't trying to do it to hurt myself; I was testing something." Jade argued.
Jade in the video began swaying side to side and she knew that was around the time she fell asleep. She tried to ignore Lily's obvious discomfort, but she felt like she needed to say something before her cousin broke her own hands from squeezing them together too hard.
"This was me trying to relax." she pointed out.
Lily cast her a cold glare. "This looks like a goddamn demonic possession video."
"Yeah." Jade reluctantly agreed.
Both women held their breaths when Jade in the video stopped moving and slumped forward. For several minutes, she remained still and silent. Soon, her breathing quickened and, to Jade's surprise and relief, she spoke!
'The woman in my dreams! The phrases I repeated!'
"Oh my- you're speaking in tongues!" Lily said exasperatedly, ripping all excitement from her cousin.
"Japanese."
"Since when can you speak Japanese?"
"I can't. The lady in my dreams was speaking it and I was repeating her."
Lily's mouth dropped open, her face twisting with confusion and frustration as she struggled to reply. Finally, she held up a finger. "For the lady in your dreams to know Japanese, since that's your dream, it means you need to know Japanese for it to happen in your dream,"
"That's the thing; I call them dreams, but I'm not sure if they really are dreams."
"The fuck are they then?"
"I don't know!" The full force of Jade's frustration was being held back by a tiny thread of her legendary patience. "There's quite a few stories where people who woke up from comas could speak languages they had never heard in their lives!"
"I- Good point." Lily backed off entirely. Whether she truly agreed or not, Jade barely cared. She was just relieved that she could have a moment to think without being antagonized.
Turning back to the video, Jade strained to listen to herself, messing with the volume. Once she could hear clearly, she sighed. Catching herself on camera while, "dreaming," was the best idea she had concerning the entire situation. All she had to do was ask someone to translate, which made her frown. The only person she knew who would translate the video with no questions asked was Naraku and she wasn't feeling particularly fond of him or the idea of giving him more material to obsess over; especially material involving her. Two weeks of no contact with or from him was making it easier for her to be angry with him. A small part of her wondered if that was his intention.
"Whoa," Lily leaned forward when Jade's body in the video sat straight up and tensed up. She was writhing and grunting, trying to struggle free from something that wasn't there.
'That's when I was being pulled under.' Her stomach churned as she watched herself. It was a pathetic sight. She never saw herself as strong or as a fighter, but she never really saw herself as weak nor as a victim.
An ear-piercing screech blasted through her speakers, causing her and Lily to gasp and curse and jump in their chairs. In the video, Jade was released and through the momentum caused by her own strength, she vaulted backwards and smashed her headboard. Neither cousin said anything to the other for several minutes that seemed to crawl slower than normal. Finally, they looked at one another.
Lily pointed a finger. "Are you fucking with me right now?"
"No. Why would I do that?"
"I just had to ask." her cousin insisted, her tone calm despite her obviously holding back her emotions.
"So, you didn't hear that screech earlier?"
"No. Is that...from your not-a-dream?"
"Yeah." Jade turned back to her computer, muted the video, and dragged it back a few seconds. She played it again and blinked when she thought her vision blurred. Lily tapped her arm.
"Hey, take it back again, slow it down,"
She did just that and realized that her vision didn't blur - it was the camera! It blurred right when she was released from her bound sleep! Jade watched it again, even slower than before, and paused right at the moment.
"It doesn't take up the entire screen, though." she pointed out. After clicking a couple of times, she found the tool option that allowed her to draw or write on her screen. "It's here, here, here, a little here," The red marks encased her abdomen and snaked from the opposite end of her camera.
"It almost looks like tentacles." Lily said.
'Fuck.' Dread filled her head and then began draining into the rest of her body. Almost instinctively, she curled up in her chair and hid her face in her hands. What else could she do? The thing she thought was a mental illness and a sleep disorder turned into a fucked-up experiment conducted by Naraku, and just seconds ago, it turned into a...what? A monster? Some kind of creature that could infiltrate someone's body and mind via the crystalline substance formed in the lake that Naraku just happened to be studying? And now she could make contact with it through a sleep-deprived, hypnotic state and see its presence through her infrared camera?
"Jade, I love you, and I know you," Lily placed her hands on Jade's shoulders. "You can't ignore this! You need to tell someone, everyone, and we can help you!"
"Help?" Jade blurted out, feeling a frustrated grimace stretch onto her face. "Help with what?"
"I- I don't know! But we can figure it out!" Lily pulled her hands back to herself when a loud giggle erupted from Jade.
Jade jerked around in her chair when a fit of laughter was caught in her throat. She slapped her legs, silently begging for release, and when the laughter finally poured from her, she slowly moved from her chair to her floor. She coughed when the first stream of laughter tapered off, but once her lungs were filled with air, the cackling commenced.
"Jaaaaaade," Lily whimpered, cupping her hands over her mouth as tears fell from her eyes.
Her cousin didn't respond; she only clapped as she continued howling with laughter.
000000
Naraku lifted his head and saw his phone an arm's length away from him on the floor, but this time, he didn't try to grab it. Instead, he placed his head back down and closed his eyes. What else could he do? Whenever he did try to call or text anyone for any reason, the orb would seize control over him and do as it pleased. For the most part, it tortured him out of anger for his choice to keep Jade in his life.
It loathed her. Why? Naraku could only guess and he knew he was only half right; it couldn't control Jade, therefore she was an obstacle. There was more to it than that, though.
'She isn't compatible.' the orb said with his voice when he asked it why it disliked Jade. Naraku was unable to ask a follow-up question because it made him grab a knife and pierce his left hand.
That happened days ago, though. Weeks, perhaps. He lost track of time after the third or fourth day of stabbing himself. The wounds healed quickly - even faster than before - which took away any hope of accidentally ending it all by killing himself.
When he felt his blood turning cold, Naraku cringed. The orb was awake now.
'I'm sorry, Jade.' His arms pushed him up and his legs lifted him the rest of the way until he was on his feet. Not one of those movements was by his command. 'I promised you I would try,'
"An empty promise and you knew that the second you made it," he said aloud with his lips pulled upwards into a smirk.
'I'm too tired, Jade.'
"You're tired? You have nothing clever left to say?"
'What do you want from me?' Naraku asked with frustration.
"Oh," A sigh escaped Naraku's lungs as he lightly performed a short set of curls with his arms. "Everything." Then, his eyes closed and he could feel just how near death he was. The orb's influence was the only reason his body operated at that point.
Naraku fell backwards and he tried to reach out to grab anything he could to stop himself, but his body wouldn't respond. The fall came to a sudden stop, but he didn't feel an impact from landing on something. When he opened his eyes, he saw grass. Quickly, he raised up and looked around, recognizing where he was instantly.
Naraku grit his teeth. "Why do you keep bringing me here? Do you think it will break me?"
"You broke yourself." His voice came from behind him, so he turned and saw himself. This Naraku, however, had red eyes.
"You have me. What else do I have that you want?"
"When did I say I wanted something else?" the other Naraku asked slyly. "You misunderstand me entirely. As irritated as I am with you, I don't hate you. I owe you quite a lot, if we're being honest with one another."
"Are we?"
"I am and I don't wish to torture you forever. I need you to be happy eventually. I want you to be happy."
"You're joking, right?"
"I built this-" the other Naraku, with a sweeping motion of his hand, showcased Naraku's favorite place to hang out when he was a child. The wide-open field on the edge of the forest; close to home, but far enough away to give him a separate world to play in. "-with your memories. Unfortunately, to access your memories, I had to dig them out of your mind, which affected you, but I am finished."
Naraku wasn't amused. "I doubt-"
"Shh! You see, that is your problem; you're skeptical about everything that crosses your path. Considering what you grew up with, though, it is understandable."
Naraku's entire body tightened. "What would you know about that?"
The other Naraku looked mildly bewildered by his question. He smirked and shrugged. "Plenty. I've been sifting through everything you remember, remember? I've even found things you've forgotten."
"Forgotten?"
"Oh, yes, there are a few things."
"Such as?"
"Ah, it won't be that easy." A shark-like smile appeared on his face. "Actually, it can be that easy. All you have to do is stay and all of this is yours."
Glancing around, Naraku tried to summon every reason to distrust his doppelganger. He knew there were many reasons not to, but he couldn't clearly think of one. Whenever a reason was within his grasp, it slipped out like an agile fish. Everything in his mind was lost in a weary fog and it was a fog he wasn't prepared to overcome. Truth be told, he wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to.
"Stay?" he finally repeated.
"Yes. You can stay here and literally live your dreams. Everything you despised or that made you uncomfortable doesn't exist here. I made sure of that." the other Naraku said as he began slowly circling Naraku. "Your mother, your sister, Bruce, Sesshomaru, pain, sadness - none of it can take root here. You can be free of everything that holds you down; all you have to do is cut the tethers."
"Kikyou?"
"She's alive and well," He stopped in front of Naraku and leaned forward slightly. "And she loves you just the same as she did. Your experiment, the fire, her death, your scar - none of it happened."
The elation in Naraku's chest was enough to choke on, but he bit his tongue to help keep himself in check. "And Jade?"
A flicker of annoyance appeared on the other Naraku's face, but he pushed it away and stared at him unblinkingly. "She isn't here. She can't be."
"Why not? I thought this was supposed to be my personal paradise."
"Perhaps you should ask yourself why she isn't a part of your personal paradise." The other Naraku's eyes narrowed slightly. "You keep telling yourself that you like her, yet you do nothing but criticize her. You even think she's foolish to want to be your friend. Her presence doesn't bring you joy or peace; it brings you misery and turmoil."
"Because of what I did to her,"
"Why did you do it?"
"I...just wanted-"
"You despised her; she was expendable." He pressed a hand to his chest. "I was there when you did it."
"You're wrong." Naraku insisted, but his tone was soft, as if his own body disagreed with him.
"You couldn't stand her or the fact that she dismissed everything you said and did to her. She forced her manipulative kindness on you."
"Jade isn't-"
"I've been in her head; you haven't." He raised his hand, harshly poking Naraku in the chest. "Even now, in paradise, the mere subject of her upsets you."
The cold realization began to seep through Naraku's skin. 'He's right. I don't think I've ever been comfortable around her. Not sober, at least.'
"You don't like her, Naraku. You never have. She played you; you were just another game to her."
'She did have a counter to everything I did. She forced herself to be kind to me to confuse me.' He pressed his hand against his chest to answer the swelling pressure within. Just moments before, he felt fine, but now he felt like he was going to explode!
"That pain in your chest,"
'I fought to keep her in my life and for what? What did I accomplish besides making everything worse?'
"You can make it stop."
Raising his head, he looked at his clone.
'No.' he told himself. 'It's me; the real me.' He looked confident, unbothered, powerful; he looked the way he should always look - perfection in human form. His red eyes spoke silently of the malice within; it was all Naraku inside, too. He made all of this possible with his blood, so how could it not be him?
"All you have to do is stay here." the perfect Naraku said again. He nodded to something behind Naraku. "I'm certain Kikyou would enjoy your company."
The sound of footsteps stopped behind him. He turned and saw Kikyou. She looked as happy and healthy as she had the day before the accident. Naraku hesitated, waiting for her flesh to begin melting off her bones, for her to start shrieking, begging him to help her, but none of it happened. He must have had a terrible look on his face, because Kikyou stopped smiling and immediately stepped forward.
"What's wrong? You look sick." she said. Then, she arched an eyebrow. "Have you been experimenting on yourself again?"
All strength left him and he sank to his knees. When he forced himself to look up at her, tears began streaming down his face.
"Yes," he replied, his voice barely louder than a whisper. "I'm sorry."
"Let's get you home. You need some rest." she said, wiping away his tears before offering him her hand. Instead of taking her hand, Naraku leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her waist, keeping his hold tight enough to prevent her from leaving, but not tight enough to harm her. "What has gotten into you, Naraku?"
"I…had a terrible dream."
