Grey Eyes And Golden Nightmares

Chapter 7

Kagome stared numbly down at her chest.

Or rather… the tentacle that had just rammed through it.

This is new… Kagome's hand lifted, the last of the color around her bleeding away until her vision was left stark grey. Her body lurched when she felt the pulse inside her, drawing in a startled breath as her pupils contracted and she felt the necklace holding her shards break and slide towards her heart. Once they reached their destination, the pieces let out a surge of dizzying energy as they reformed with the corrupted whole that Naraku had just forcefully shoved into her chest. This was the first time, and probably the only time, she would ever feel the jewel fuse back together from inside her body.

She barely noticed the way she shook as her confused gaze lifted up along the motionless tentacle to Naraku's arrogant smile, This… this is… all wrong… None of the other nightmares have been like this.

Kagome didn't see her friends, the battle frozen in disbelief all around them as she and Naraku stared silently at each other. She had known what he wanted, seen it in his eyes as he threw his other youkai into the fight against Inuyasha and the others to break her away from them, leave her vulnerable to him alone. But something deep inside had stopped her from fighting against it… she had felt almost compelled to allow it.

She's been ready, had every intention of shooting her purifying magic through him when he appeared so suddenly in front of her. Yet the Shikon-no-Tama itself had stopped her before she could let the arrow fly.

He'd produced the nearly completed orb, the only missing pieces resting in the vial against her heart and letting off a warm pulse the moment it had come into view. Her bow had lowered, arms going heavy against her will as the darkened jewel hovering just above his open palm held her gaze perfectly transfixed.

"Can you see its beauty, Kagome?" Naraku's voice forced her own gaze away from the jewel and onto his face, to his eyes burning so intensely into her own. "Can you feel it calling to you? Even now I can hear its whispers, its desire to be a part of the miko it was spawned from once more. A part of you…"

She shouldn't have responded, should have followed through with her original plan and attacked to bring an end to everything, but the words were past her lips before she could stop them, "Then return it to me."

"With pleasure."

Naraku had rushed forward, turning his palm as he did so to slam his portion of the jewel against her shards. That hand had shifted in an instant into one of the bizarre, tentacle-like spikes he was capable of creating, piercing through the scar and taking both shards and jewel straight into her heart.

And here they stood now; Naraku less than a foot from her with that cold smirk on his face while she tried process the unbelievable feelings pouring it her from the healed Shikon-no-Tama, as every beat of heart pulled the corruption from its core.

"How powerful are you to cleanse the jewel even through your own blood?" Naraku murmured in appreciation, twisting that spike inside her. "Even with your body dying, you are still so pure..."

Kagome showed no reaction to the violent twist, her body yet again as numb as it had been that first time she had fought with him one on one. Her attention wasn't even on the self-made hanyou in front of her anymore, instead turned inwards as the whispering started in her mind. The quiet voices were overlapping, tumbling together over and over, making it impossible to distinguish real words. All she knew was that whatever was in her mind, it was all coming from the Shikon-no-Tama.

Naraku ripped the tentacle from her chest, his hand reforming coated in her blood, and the gleaming, completed jewel glowing bright with purified energy back in his palm. The blood and the jewel hissed against the corruption permeating his skin, bringing a dark edge to his unwavering smile and piercing eyes, "It will be my to my utmost satisfaction to take you into me when you die, Kagome… With such power, I may even allow you to serve at my side."

Without the tentacle in her chest, Kagome slumped to her knees, her eyes still wide in her pale face and fading completely grey under the steady pump of her lifeblood from the gaping wound. Her hand shook as she lifted it to press against the hole, not acknowledging that she'd heard him while her gaze finally dropped to stare at what he'd done to her. She opened her hand slowly, drawing it out into her line of sight and staring at the thick, grey liquid with a sense of surreal disbelief.

'Everything fades to grey, little miko, when the life dies…'

Kagome was distantly aware of Inuyasha's violent, desperate scream of enraged denial, her friends' voices raised to call her name, and Shippou's shattered cry… but it all seemed so far away from her now.

She felt Naraku moving away from her, felt the heat rise inside her even as she disturbingly, unexpectly 'felt' the Shikon jewel scream inside her head under the filthy, dark energy that was slowly seeping back into it. It was crying out to her, just like he'd said, reaching out in an effort to hold on to her soul and free itself from his hands.

Am I dead then? she wondered with disconnected confusion, staring blankly at the grey tones on her bloody hand.

'Were you ever really alive?' the whispers were beginning to clear, repeating the words that had echoed in her mind time and time again in her nightmares. 'You know what happens next, Kagome…'

Kagome lifted her gaze to the battle in front of her, eyes cold and lifeless as she watched Naraku re-enter the fray to keep her friends away from her and prevent them from stopping the mortal blood loss. It was just like in her dreams… practically feeling as their energy echo all the way to her bones as they were steadily weakened under the relentless assault of Naraku and his youkai.

'There will be death, Kagome.'

Inuyasha was slammed violently into the sheer mountain face at his back, Naraku's laughter filling the air as he toyed with the failing group.

You are the heart of all this…

'Do you even know what your purpose is yet, Kagome?' the whispers had changed, four voices now clearly speaking but still overlapping and oddly out of synch with the others.

Kagome looked back down at her hand, whispering the single thought that entered her mind with a sense of confusion, "The heart…"

The Shikon-no-Tama reappeared with you.

'Will you stop time? Alter destiny?'

Kagome heard a pulse inside her head, a heavy throb over her own heartbeat as her eyes lifted again to her companions. The grey of her eyes slowly rimmed with pale, pale pink as she first found Shippou, struggling valiantly to hold his own with the weaker youkai. She didn't even realize she was the one speaking until she felt her lips move, heard the unfamiliar words tumble from her lips as though they'd been waiting there to be spoken all her life, "Nigi… the spirit of Shin…"

'Do you truly think you are powerful enough for that?'

The rim of color spread faintly, the pulse in her head growing stronger, drowning out the sounds around her as she turned to look at Sango with the same slow precision. Her eyes started to gleam with inner fire as she watched her long-time friend throw the Hiraikotsu with a desperate, wordless yell. That same odd flare of knowledge skated through her mind, the words speaking through her from something that had long laid dormant in her soul, "Saki… of Ai…"

'Do you know?'

The chill, numbing feeling that had permeated her body warmed slightly as her gaze turned to Miroku next, his expression strained from the poison he'd taken in, but determined as he was finally forced to seal his hand and stop to rely on his staff. She was barely aware of her voice growing stronger, that wakening power changing from a vague burn into a bright flame in her chest as she murmured, "Koshi… of Chi…"

'Will you live after your purpose has been served?'

The consuming heat inside her flared abruptly to life, the sound of that pulse inside finally blocking out everything else as her gaze fell on Inuyasha.

The hanyou she had freed… fallen in love with…

Inuyasha was fighting more violently than the rest, the landscape already ripped to pieces from the Tetsusaiga and his attacks. He was tearing through Naraku's youkai left and right, dodging the tentacles and stubbornly struggling to take the impossible victory as his focus shot to where she knelt every other moment, watching her kimono soak through with her own blood. She could see his eyes.

Bright, vibrant gold in her world gone grey; filled with fear, concern, relief that she was still looking at him, still alive.

But she could see his pain, and underneath that the spark of love that she had failed to see for so very long. The look she had been willing to die for.

"Ara… the spirit of Yuu," Kagome's expression changed, filling suddenly with fierce determination as her eyes left her companions and returned to Naraku.

Back to the Shikon-no-Tama.

Kagome gritted her teeth and forced her numbed body to obey the command her mind gave it to rise as she glared at the nearly black jewel, "And a heart… a core…"

She felt her magic spark, rising visibly in slow arcs from her feet and steadily climbing higher to roil about with leashed wildness at her waist. Each new flash of energy gave rise to a puff of wind that rippled her filthy kimono and tossed her hair up high with gaining force as her hand fisted over her punctured chest. Maybe you had it right after all, Izumo-san…

Kagome flung out both hands, her magic exploding in streaks to race along the ground, blasting her companions out of the way as Naraku shot out his tentacles to put an end to their lives. She saw him turn, saw the surprise chase across his face as he darted away from that fiery energy, even as it snaked around him in a wide circle to single out his youkai and melt them to nothing.

At the same moment she was trapping Naraku in place, however, traces of her magic separated from the main force to lance out and wrap around her companions. The streams of crackling energy poured through them in heavy, debilitating waves, absorbing and collecting the essence of their very beings before arrowing back to where Kagome stood, unmoving except for the way her hair and clothes whipped about in the unnatural wind.

Kagome's head snapped back when the first wave of that magic slammed into her, saturated by Shippou's spirit and moving through her rapidly to find every tiny hole in her aura and fill it in. Her throat worked to swallow the instinctive scream of pain, her face tightening in the only other physical manifestation of that stinging agony.

When Sango and Miroku's spirit energy blasted through her, she stumbled backwards, both hands coming up to clench over her heart as she felt her soul melding with theirs smoothly, making her feel whole while her magic swelled beyond anything she'd ever thought possible. But it was Inuyasha's spirit that made her feel like her soul was being ripped apart…

Kagome lost her hold on the control that kept her silent, dropping to her knees again and letting out a violent scream as her hands moved from her heart to grip the sides of her head. The magic that had been dancing around her body exploded upwards in a wild vortex, lashing out to melt the ground around her with vivid iridescent rainbows of color lacing through the overall shimmering pink… the same shade as the purified Shikon-no-Tama.

It seemed like an eternity before the scream wound down, leaving behind a stunned, tense silence broken only by the hum and crackle of magic whipping the winds around Kagome into a fury.

The tautness left her limbs, letting her body roll forward as her aura swelled and pulsed heavily, the missing pieces of her soul completed by everything her energy had pulled out of her friends. She felt whole... for the first time she could remember, every corner of her being felt full, and she simply sat back to soak in that feeling for a moment before her eyes opened to reveal the same dramatic color as her magic.

'Now do you understand?'

Kagome panted softly, her palms flat on the scorched earth as a calm understanding flooded through her, "Yes…"

'Then you know what must be done.'

Kagome slowly pushed herself to her feet again, her eyes lifting to Naraku with single-minded purpose. She could feel her friends from the parts of their souls she now held inside her, knew they were trying desperately to move through the magic that held them frozen, her magic, but she needed them out of her way.

She already knew they wouldn't understand.

They would try to stop her.

Naraku was watching her with wary curiosity, trapped just as absolutely within the circle of magic as her friends. But while they had been restrained and forced to do nothing but silently watch the scene unfolding in front of them, he was free to move inside the circle. Yet he remained motionless, holding the corrupted jewel to his heart, eyes narrowed and cold while the air between them turned hot, painful in its strength.

Kagome pressed her hand to her ruined chest, the blood still grey to her eyes, but ignored as she quietly murmured, "You are holding something that does not belong to you, Naraku."

His brows drew low, "The jewel is mine, miko. It has always been mine."

She actually laughed at him, the sound quiet and falling flat as she shook her head, "I knew you were a bastard, hanyou, I just hadn't realized you were a fool as well."

Naraku's eyes filled with dark anger as he demanded sharply, "Who is the fool here, miko? I have already won and you," he gestured to the blood still pouring freely down her chest with every heartbeat, "you will not live out the hour."

Kagome began to walk closer, each step carefully measured as the grass under her feet melted into black ash, "You've won nothing. You said it to me yourself, Naraku, don't you remember? It was in front of me the whole time and I was too blind to see it."

She could feel the confusion sweep through her friends at her softly spoken words, everything about her behavior rising questions in them; their feelings nearly equal to the looks chasing across Naraku's borrowed face before he hissed out, "Explain yourself."

She finally stopped, less than five feet from the man who'd caused so much destruction, so much pain, "The Shikon-no-Tama was reborn in me… In me, Naraku. But I never thought to really ask why."

The look in Naraku's eyes changed, filling with a faint stirring of unease while his brows drew together and he scowled at the diminutive miko sparking in front of him.

Kagome leaned closer, her eyes narrowing with dark rage as she held her hands in front of her, gathering a gleaming ball of magic, "I want my souls back."

She heard the roaring in her head, the shock and even fear that swept through her friends as she shot forward and forced that collection of pure magic through him. One hand snapped up to close around the corrupted jewel and continue on, returning the attack he had performed against her a disturbingly short amount of time ago. Kagome felt the shattering of flesh and bone, her magic behind her in a solid rush forward as her aura clashed viciously with Naraku's powers through the jewel.

Naraku's hand was around her throat in an instant, lashing out over and over in a tangle of spikes and magic that left long, deep furrows along the exposed skin of the two combatants. Kagome ignored it, her body still unfeeling as she forced her hand deeper, fisting it even more tightly as she used the borrowed souls mixed with her own aura to increase her strength until it was more than enough to combat the complete blackness permeating the jewel.

She had known… it was strange, but even as she had sent out her magic to collect the energy from her companions and restore the balance of her soul, fill in the holes left by its removal, she had known she would need this. Naraku's filth, his impurity, could only be met and overpowered by the Shikon-no-Tama. The pure Shikon-no-Tama.

By her.

She could feel the thick, almost oily aura around the jewel starting to shudder under the onslaught, unable to hold its taint with her hand around it, her aura pouring everything she had into its very heart. And each pulse sent an echoing ache straight to her core.

'Were you ever really alive?'

The whisper repeated in her head as her eyes closed, blind to look of hate and rage on Naraku's face, blind even to the feeling of pain and screaming denial from her friends as she felt the magic ripple along her skin, as they watched her fight alone.

The Shikon-no-Tama beat strongly in her hand, warming to the familiar feeling of her soul and letting its power be drawn back into her body. With each new beat, Naraku's hold slipped away from it, and the borrowed auras of her friends began to seep out of her, streaking across the ruined ground in rivers of molten light as their usefulness expired.

Four souls too many…

Kagome jammed her fist even deeper, feeling the jewel purify in her hand as her knuckles brushed against the flesh of his heart. She didn't turn, didn't even flinch when the tentacles tore from Naraku again, spearing her through her already broken chest, her stomach… multiple wounds that were each more brutal and mortal than the last.

Her lip curled in a sneer as she felt the fluctuation in the souls around her at the assault, Inuyasha's voice raised loudest as he roared out in horrified fury, "KAGOME!!!"

Her eyes opened, locked on Naraku's, but her voice clearly directed to the hanyou as she murmured, "You know what to do, Inuyasha…"

She didn't have to see him to know what expression took over his face when she spoke. She could practically taste the pain, the indecision that filled the hanyou's being at her flat order, the disbelief and violent desire to rebel against every rational thought going through his head. He did know…

Naraku smirked at her coldly, "He won't do it, Kagome."

'Will you live once your purpose has been served?'

Kagome's smile was just as cruel as she responded, "I'm already dead."

"He's had one lover die," Naraku reminded her in a mocking tone, leaning down to whisper it inches from her mouth, almost as though he were about to kiss her. "He will not be the one to kill the other."

Kagome's eyes closed briefly as a faint trickle of blood escaped her lips, but there wasn't a hint of hesitation or weakness in her own voice when she finally answered that challenge, "Then I'll kill us for him."

Inuyasha felt the Tetsusaiga shake in his grasp, humming with energy as a bolt of searing magic flared around the hilt. The familiar, yet foreign magic hovered in a throbbing spiral before it shot downward to pierce his forearm, connecting him with the sword as completely as if it was an extension of his own body. He didn't have the time to be shocked by that, his alarm caught and held wholly by the way the sword drew his arm back as though preparing for a swing.

"NO!"

Kagome's lips curled in a dangerous, confident smile when she saw Naraku's head jerk up, eyes wide where they locked onto Inuyasha, "Look at it, Naraku."

His head snapped down to hers in disbelief at her manipulation, attempting to retract his tentacles and make his escape, only to find them stuck fast within her, "You fucking bitch!"

Inuyasha felt the rush of power, the swirls of youki roiling together as the sword began to vibrate no matter how hard he fought against it. He didn't know how he knew -probably something left behind from the early immobility, the draining rush and then odd connection she had caused before, but he knew she was the one holding the sword, "Kagome, stop it!"

"Destruction, pain, fear…" she repeated the words that had filled her head in her nightmares over an over since the attack on her home, words that had changed her entire world. His own words…

"I'll rip your body into so many pieces not even your hanyou will be able to find a scent from your remains," Naraku's eyes burned hatefully as he tried to do just that, yet her magic, and the power of the Shikon-no-Tama still prevented that motion.

"Four souls around a core, Naraku," she whispered as she felt the winds increase, Inuyasha screaming at her even as the Tetsusaiga swung around in a powerful arc, releasing the Cutting Winds. "There's no room for you in my existence… and you are not the soul I chose to give my power to."

Naraku's own roar of desperate fury was lost as the glowing tracks of power rushed closer, straining ferociously against the miko holding him in that deadly path.

"Can't you see how beautiful it is? How pure? There is nothing in all the world that is more honest than this," her other hand lifted to slam through the hole she'd created in his chest, reaching in to clench around his heart and squeeze. "You thought nothing of the lives you destroyed… Felt nothing. It's your turn to feel the purity you admire so greatly, Naraku."

Inuyasha felt frozen inside, cold and helpless as he watched the energy race towards the miko holding Naraku in harm's way, but his heart clenched when Kagome turned her face back to look at him, her eyes emotionless… like a jewel… His soul turned to ice when he heard her whisper, "Bakuryuuha."

"Kagome! Kagome, NO!" Inuyasha would have shot forward, but the feeling left his legs and sent him crashing face first to the ground, as though he'd been subdued without the damning word. He was snarling with feral, frantic rage, his head snapping up just in time to catch her eyes and to see her mouth two words:

"I'm sorry."

Kagome turned back to Naraku, leaning against his chest as though she was embracing a lover. Her voice whisper soft as the first wave of magic reached them, "This time it's you who breaks…"

The Bakuryuuha wrapped around Naraku and Kagome's magic, imploding for one brief moment in time as it clashed and consumed the full force of the energy in its path before igniting outwards with earth-shattering force. The remainder of their group flung back with brutal strength amongst the whipcords of blinding light and scorching heat.

Inuyasha's eyes were open, locked on the black silhouette in the heart of the blast until he felt his head crash into something hard and unyielding, turning his entire world black.