It was a summer storm - lightning, thunder, obscene amounts of water pouring down from the sky… The long stretch of grassland he traversed was rapidly turning into a lake. Puddles rose everywhere from the abrupt deluge, and even the tallest vegetation was heavy-laden with a pummeling it was never meant to withstand.
But Kouga kept onward - one exhausted foot splashing down in front of the other, with his free arm shielding his eyes from the pelting droplets. Sure, he'd seen the storm coming. Sure, he could have waited it out in the higher grounds to the West. But these lands were the most direct way back to his mountain.
And the cargo he was carrying was healing itself.
Still unconscious, Kagura was slumped limply over his shoulder, her thighs bracketed to his chest. He felt her wounds knitting themselves together through her kimono, and grunted with feelings of unease. Whether it was because he felt guilty for having failed his brethren a fifth time over, or because he'd done so much damage to such a beautiful creature, he didn't know. He didn't want to know.
This close - hell, he'd never been this close to her before - it was difficult to ignore how alive she was. Warm. Breathing. Still bleeding from wounds he'd inflicted… As though these subtle signs were a testament to a life that was never meant to be snuffed out, despite the fact that she'd earned her death ten times over…
She started to slip off his shoulder again, and he routinely hoisted her back up. Then Kouga did what he'd been doing this entire trek. Ignored her. Knowing that his mind wasn't the safest place to be right now, he kept it on the setting, focusing on where his next foot would land.
Mud puddle… Over it, left. Tall grass. Leap… Cursed water. Slowing me down like that…
Suddenly, he felt her stomach muscles flex against his shoulder. Her thighs tensed. He swallowed, doubly distressed. Shit. She's conscious…
With his next jarring footstep, she gasped convulsively, and clawed her nails into his fur wrapping. Damn near punctured all the way through to his ass.
"Let go," he growled as he leapt over a rock. The impact when he landed sent his shoulder digging anew into her open wounds, and she yelped and tried desperately to push off him.
But her body was still weak, and her hands slid off his armor, flopping her weakly against his back. He continued onwards, trying to ignore her occasional reflexive whimpers, and the futile struggling to shift the weight elsewhere besides her tender abdomen.
Deal with the pain, Kagura… You've merited it.
But it was then that an abrupt memory of a similar circumstance flooded his mind - only he'd been the wounded one. And contrary to his behavior now, Kagura had carried him home on the comforts of an air born feather - not dragged him back behind it.
Sighing defeat, he flipped her off his shoulder and draped her over his arms like a wet pelt.
She startled from the move, her body stiff, her face creased in a grimace of pain… But the heavy rain had washed most the blood from her skin and hair, already making her appearance less traumatized. More like her old self, despite the disarray, he noted. After a few seconds, her expression relaxed, and when her eyelids began to flutter open, he fixed his gaze pointedly ahead.
"Kouga..." Her voice was hoarse, and there was confusion in it, as though she'd expected someone else. Or some place else. "Where are you…taking…me?"
"Back to my mountain."
She flinched, and her breath fluttered against his collar in a way that made his fingers curl and his arms tighten around her. The blood rushing to his face, he forced them to relax. Agh. Why couldn't you have stayed knocked out, Kagura?
"Your...mountain..." she repeated wearily. Then there was a deliberate pause. "Why?"
Why do you still live? Why was I unable to kill you in my demon form? He heard the unvoiced questions, and decided to stick with the one he could answer without stammering. Kouga swallowed his earlier discomfort, and donned his usual sneer out of reflex. "I reserved the privilege of killing you for the widows of my tribe," he said, giving her the answer he'd been giving himself for the last several hours. "I thought it would be more appropriate."
An uncomfortable silence followed, and he figured she was contemplating ways of how they'd take her life. By her following shudder, he assumed she'd come to some of the same conclusions as he. And they weren't pretty.
"I would have rather you'd done it, wolf boy."
"That would have been…too easy," he replied stiffly, braving a quick glance down. Her eyes were scrunched shut again, her face leaning inwards, away from the rain. A nearby lightning strike flashed them in a blitzing white-yellow glow, and its following thunder rattled Kouga's joints.
"You do realize," she managed, hooking her fingers over the top of his armor to better support herself. "The lightning is drawn to your…energy. Your movement."
"Your point?" he tossed back flippantly.
She laughed. Or rather choked-laughed. "Still think you're invincible, eh?"
He pursed his lips, not wholly comfortable with her comment. "I know that fate isn't going to take me from this life until I damn well let it."
She snorted. Silence followed, and he ran on, willing himself again to think on the rhythmic pace of his stride, or the storm's dynamic display…
"So you're saving me from one death only to drop me into the clutches of a worse one."
He said nothing.
"How noble...," her voice dripped with bitterness.
He tensed, resisting a strong urge to drop her in the mud. "You know nothing of nobility."
Three edgy seconds passed between them before she looked away and broke it. "Maybe not, but at least your comrades met a quick end," she retaliated, her voice raising. "Merciful, I'd say, considering they came to attack me anyways."
An angry intake of breath, and he shouted at her. "You lured them there!"
"I held a shikon shard in my possession. That was all."
That made him outright furious, and whether it was because she had the audacity to shift the blame, or that she'd made a point that almost seemed valid, he wasn't sure. "Stop playing the innocent!" he spat. "This world is better off without you in it."
Her bruised brow knotted in the center, and she looked away through her matted hair at some random spot on the horizon. He didn't miss the shimmering in her eyes. "I could have found my place in it."
Kouga flinched. It was time to drop the subject. He was already uncomfortable with the way that last comment had made him feel, cursing inwardly at the knot in his chest. Stupid, misplaced guilt...
The grasslands were giving way to sparse patches of foliage, here and there. It wouldn't be long until he was to the higher ground. More importantly - it wouldn't be long before he could dump this deceptively delicate burden off on his tribe, and be done with it. He could feel her chest expand with each troubled breath, and her body instinctively flex every time he leapt. His mind wandered to the way she moved in battle, so graceful. So utterly powerful, yet without a trace of masculinity in her style. She was truly one of a kind.
As his mind wandered, he felt the heat of her crimson eyes burn through his peripheral vision. Immediately uncomfortable, he looked down and snarled at her. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Her eyes traced his face, earlier conversation forgotten. "Your demon form," she mused in perplexed amazement. "It was...terrifying. Magnificent. I don't understand...why you never used it before..."
"I never needed to, before."
Her following derisive snort - funny how she could make that sound even when her ribs were still broken - showed quite clearly her skepticism.
Holding on to his lie for a few seconds longer, he finally sighed defeat. It's not like it mattered, anyhow. She was going to die soon anyways... "The Wolf..." he looked ahead, forcing the words out, "is difficult to control." A brief memory of a territorial skirmish, and his brother's corpse twisted his face before he could stop it. "And I hate losing control."
"Hmm..." He knew when she'd redirected her gaze to the landscape - could feel the absence of her stare as clearly as he felt the absence of his skins. "Yes, I imagine you would hate it," she mused quietly. "Though...it must not be too difficult to tame the beast...if you were able to stop it from killing me..."
He stumbled, cursed, and barely regained his footing before they landed outright in the mud. "Stop talking, already!" he barked down at her as she reflexively clung to his neck. "Just touching you is unbearable enough as it is!"
She chuckled at his outburst - a sign that she was feeling better. He picked up his pace. The wolf prince had to hurry home before she healed enough to put up a fight.
"So tell me--" she began.
"Be quiet."
"Exactly how many people do you plan on punishing for my past crimes?"
"No one. Just you."
"Really? Then what do you plan on doing about the villagers that we're leaving behind?"
He frowned at her. "Those humans?"
A nod. "They face a cyclic threat, you know. One that as their patron god, I was protecting them from. On the moonless nights. A horde of mindless youkai are drawn to their valley..."
He stared down at her. She seemed nonchalant on the surface, even indifferent, but there was a slight crease in her brow that led him to believe that this was more serious to her than she was letting on. "What the hell does that have to do with me?"
She made as if to shrug. "If you don't return in seven days to guard them…when the moon fades…then it'll be the same as if you had killed them yourself."
Kouga came to an abrupt stop. "Keh! What happens to them after this is none of my doing, and certainly none of my concern."
The crease in her brow deepened, and she looked away. "Funny how you're so quick to peg me as a murderer, and then you turn right around and sacrifice an entire village of innocents by taking away their protection."
He was stunned speechless, and whether it was by the point she'd made, or the fact that she'd made it at all, he couldn't tell. Who the hell are you, woman? And what have you done with my old nemesis!?
"Well," she inhaled deeply, her next words said with a little more venom, "since that's your attitude, then my only advice is that you'd better show up after the slaughter to make sure the demon horde gets them all. Otherwise, you might have a pesky, pain-in-the-ass survivor following you around for the rest of your life, trying to avenge his people."
Kouga choked. His face reddened. "I... YOU..." gasp, swallow, "OF ALL THE--" But his stammering was mercifully silenced when the impossible happened. Absolutely, undeniably unlikely on every level. Absurd in all its improbable probability…
They were struck by lightning.
The first thing Kagura was aware of as her mind hovered on the edge of consciousness, was that it was odd to not feel any pain. She reflexively tried to stretch her limbs, and startled.
And odder still not to feel anything at all…
Her mind struggling to alert itself, she drew on what she last remembered - wounded beyond escaping, being carried through a storm to her death. She remembered their conversation. And…were they at his mountain already? Beginning to panic, her other senses rushed to assimilate what they could. She inhaled.
Wet unearthed dirt, freshly cut lumber…
Listened.
The soft pitter patter of rain nearby, a faint howl of the wind… But no thunder.
She opened her eyes, and it took several seconds for her vision to adjust through the blur.
Fading daylight, bunched leafy tarp and branchy walls of a small, crudely-made lean-to…
She blinked, and rolled her eyes to the side.
And him…
He was in the shadows, sparse patches of skin and hair reflecting the dim light from outside. His elbows balanced on his knees, while his head hung low between his biceps, and that long thick ponytail blanketed his arm like black dripping oil. He must have sensed her staring, because he lifted his chin slowly until their eyes met.
His expression… Kagura thought she'd never seen anyone look so miserable. Not that she fared much better… How long had they been here? Half a day, at least, she figured by the fading light. And that's when it dawned on her that they were just on the perimeter of the grasslands. Still nowhere near his mountain. Odd...
"I was wondering how long it would take you to come around," he said hoarsely. Wearily.
"What..." the word hung in her throat, but at least her face muscles were working. "What...happened?"
"Lightning."
It took her a moment to assimilate, and then Kagura rolled her eyes. She refrained from saying, 'I told you so', as it was already obvious. That meant she had nerve damage - which was fine by her. As long as it lasted long enough to keep her from feeling the other wounds as they healed. She snorted at their luck, and her condition. "You've given me quite a beating today, wolf prince," she muttered wryly. Perhaps now, my mind will finally be purged of your face...
His demeanor changed abruptly, and he leaned back, studying her. "You...think about me?"
Kagura felt her cheeks redden. Did...did I said that last comment out loud? By his stunned expression, she figured she must have. But Kagura quickly drew the conclusion that it didn't matter. Not if he planned on killing her anyhow. Without her weapon, she had just about as much chance of escaping him as a head on a stick. With a mental shrug, she responded truthfully. "Every damn day."
She almost enjoyed his reaction then. He was so taken aback, that it seemed as though he forgot he was supposed to hate her, for a moment.
"Wh...why?"
"If I knew the answer to that, then I would have fixed it by now."
What followed was an awkward silence. Her mind wandered again to their current location, and the light rain that was now nothing more than a thick drizzle. Why hadn't he taken her back to his mountain yet? Confused, and not daring to hope, she asked, "Did the thunder and lightning last all day?"
He frowned. "It stopped hours ago."
"Then...did the bolt damage your legs?"
His expression changed, catching what she was getting at, and he pursed his lips. "No..."
"Not that I'm complaining, prince," she drawled out the honorific mockingly, "but I would have thought we'd be to your territories--"
His head snapped up. "How did you end up as that village's Protector?"
"Wha..." The question caught her completely off guard. "What?"
"You heard me."
Confused, she eyed him suspiciously. Where did this random inquiry come from? And why was it distracting him from his first and foremost objective, which was to kill her? "It's...complicated..."
"I need to know."
Oh? Well in that case, maybe she could drag the story out. With any luck, her body would be healed by the time it was over and she could at least try to escape. "The village was being attacked by…weasel demons when I flew over it. Changing territories, I assume, now that Naraku was gone…" She winced. Even now, just saying his name left a bitter taste on her tongue. "It was mindless, pointless slaughter. They weren't even feasting on the humans they'd already killed. It..." she fished for a word, "it disgusted me, so I stopped them." A brief pause followed. She wasn't sure where to go from there.
"It disgusted you."
She said nothing.
"It was more than that, Kagura," he said, his pitch rising. "Or else you would have just continued on-"
"Their village is sitting directly on top of an old battleground. A youkai battleground."
She saw him shift in her peripheral vision, his expression incredulous. Any self-aware demon knew that the hordes of brainless, lesser youkai were irrationally drawn to the residual magic of monster remains.
"Keh. What nonsense. No humans would have survived long enough to set up a village in that valley. Besides, I didn't catch the scent-"
"It's in the soil, Kouga. The battle occurred thousands of years ago. You wouldn't have caught it unless you were looking for it." She waited to see if he'd respond. When he didn't, she continued. "Its aura is subtle - which is why the lesser youkai only catch wind of it when the moonlight isn't there to distract them from it." She didn't have to add, 'or sunlight'. That was a given. Kagura closed her eyes, already weary from the effort of talking.
"And?"
"And there was a relic that had been protecting them - hiding the valley within a hidden barrier. It was probably enchanted by the first settlers centuries ago," she explained. "During the weasel demons' rampage, it was destroyed. I felt its essence depart from this world, and knew..."
"That doesn't explain why you stayed."
She sighed. "I thought it did."
"No." He sat forward, suddenly agitated. "The Kagura I know would have been wasting both human and weasel blood that day, just to decorate the valley with their bodies!"
She scowled at him. "You're confusing me with my maker."
"Is there a difference? I can barely tell your stink apart!"
She began to tremble, feeling the sensation quickly return to her limbs. He'd hit a sore point. A real sore point. "I'm not Naraku..." she said shakily.
"You delight in mayhem!"
"I delight in my freedom! And any circumstance that I find myself being worshiped….adored…given special offerings every day for a task as simple as squashing out a few bugs when the moon goes black - isn't a lifestyle I'm going to discard. Even if it means I live in the presence of lesser beings!"
He looked troubled. Unbelievably troubled. His mouth worked over unvoiced thoughts, his eyes searching her face. She couldn't tell if he wanted to scream at her or storm out.
In the strained silence, Kagura noticed that her body had started to tingle - small, smarting pinpricks that went from the base of her neck all the way down to her toes. Her earlier wounds from the Wolf's attack must have healed during the lightning-induced paralysis, as the only thing left in their stead were phantom aches.
And now that her nerves were healing-
"But..." he ran his hand through his bangs, and then made a fist. "I see it in your eyes, Kagura! When you look at them. When you talk about them..." His teeth grated, and he looked away in exasperation. "It's like you care..."
"Keh," was her automatic response. But her mind worked over the two words, drawing connections, making sense of things she didn't bother to understand. Like her irrational desire to protect the lesser creatures, or the way she looked forward to seeing the girl child when her offering was delivered... Pity the enlightenment was made bitter by her blaring ignorance. Damn you, Naraku, and the filtered knowledge you gave me. You taught me all about destroying life, but nothing about living it.
She was uneasy with the concept of 'caring'. Her mind was still too new and too fresh out of Naraku's womb to embrace sentiments that she was taught to reject. But at least she knew the difference between her instincts and her conditioning. Hell. The two had been doing battle with each other ever since she gained her freedom.
She looked over at Kouga, who was still waiting in a state of pained curiosity, as though needing to know, but afraid to hear her answer. She pursed her lips and locked stares with him.
"And what if I did?" she answered, "Care."
His face contorted. "You CAN'T care!" he leaned forward on all fours, hovering over her. "You don't have a heart!"
Her jaw dropped, and the abrupt indignance was enough to make her uncooperative limbs cooperate. Kagura sat bolt upright, pushing him back. "No heart? I betrayed my own maker just so I could obtain the damn organ!"
He hissed denial, and bowed his head in the dirt, holding it in his hands. "Dammit, Kagura. Don't do this to me," he groaned without looking up. "Don't change who you are..."
Her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, and she quickly forgot who was the stronger, here. "You fool! You actually thought I'd stay the same?? The same enslaved lackey that Naraku controlled? Going on the same killing sprees? Hunting the same people?" She swiped at the air in a furious gesture. "I'm my own person now, Kouga! Of course I'm...going to...to..." she stopped. Blinked. Stared at him. And it hit her like an avalanche. "That...that's what this is all about, isn't it?"
His shoulders tensed, and he peered up at her in an almost dread curiosity. "What..."
"You," she breathed wondering why she hadn't caught it sooner. "You can't bring yourself to kill me because I've changed…"
His face twisted with unease, and he spun his back to her, clasping his hands behind his neck. "Shut up."
"That's why you're taking me back to your mountain, isn't it? So they can do it for you-"
"I can't kill you because you won't fight me!" he hissed at the wall, nowhere near convincingly enough.
Kagura egged him on, confident now that he would spare her life. "Oh, I fought you-"
"Without murderous intent!"
"You think that would make a difference?"
He glared at her over his shoulder with enough agitation to spark a fire in wet wood. Then, in answer, he marched over, hooked his arm around her waist, and hoisted her up. Kagura struggled as he stomped out into the rain. But this time, he wasn't heading towards his mountain. "Gah. Kouga! You impulsive, self-deceiving little..." she bit off the invective. "Where are you-"
"To get that damn fan of yours and fix it so you can fight me for real," he said determinedly.
She pounded her fists against his back. "Go ahead! But it won't work, you idiot, because I don't want you to die!" the words came out before she realized she was saying them, a surprise on both their ears. She didn't even know exactly what she meant by them, only that she meant them.
He stiffened, and after a moment of stunned silence he dropped her roughly against a saturated tree. Kagura yelped as he slammed both his fists into its bark on either side of her head, caging her against it.
"You don't…understand," he choked, his teeth clenched behind quivering lips. "Their faces haunt me, Kagura..." His eyes watered, and he bowed his head over her shoulder, trying to hide it. His next words pulsed against her neck. "The way you…threw them at me…with your corpse dance…"
Kouga stopped before his vocal cords could betray him, and with the wolf boy this close, this warm, this broken… She had no defenses against it. None. Her simple concept of revenge was harshly replaced by a merciless reckoning of the whys behind it. That nagging ache that she'd tried so hard to ignore, abruptly swallowed her in a whirlwind of regret. His cursed angst penetrated through her detached exterior, all the way to her core. She gasped from the pain of it, feeling his own loss, his own trauma... The shock of losing so many people he cared about, all at once, and then the horror of fighting their lifeless bodies because she'd forced him to...
Kagura suddenly felt sick, and whatever emotions filled her at that point succeeded in constricting her throat, and stinging her eyes. A confession fell off her lips before she could stop it. "Dammit, Kouga. I tried to bring them back," she managed in a strangled whisper. "With the dog demon's sword…"
His body went rigid. Wet bangs slid diagonally across her cheek as he lifted his flushed, wet-eyed face to stare openly at hers. "You…what?"
"I tried to bring them back, but their flesh had rotted off their bones. He said it was too late…" she hissed through her teeth, this emotion far too much for her face to control.
"That's why you went and saw Sesshoumaru?" he asked shakily, those blue, blue eyes shimmering like the surface of a lake.
She hesitantly nodded, not wishing to force any more words past that ridiculous lump in her throat.
His mouth opened and closed twice, fumbling over uncollected thoughts. All that anguish…all that remorse was suddenly redirected at her. She didn't know what he was seeing, right then, but one thing was certain - it wasn't the murderous demon that had butchered his men.
She could feel his stare bore through her eyes and into her soul. He was so close, she had no trouble telling the difference between lightning burns and dirt smudges on his face. And the heat that radiated off his chest, his arms, his legs was overwhelming. Something came over him, right then. Something she didn't recognize. No one had ever looked at her like that before.
No one had ever made her feel like that before. Her body had a number of unfamiliar reactions to his proximity, all of which were confusing - none of which were unpleasant.
He leaned forward...he must have, because suddenly she felt his breath on her lips. Their noses rubbed as he tilted his head. Kagura's pulse quickened, her eyelids grew heavy. The skin of her face, her neck, her arms all became hyper sensitive.
This is madness! she wanted to scream. Either kill me, or step away. Just don't taunt me with your blasted nearness!
But what came out was an abrupt whimper…
An abrupt whimper that could have been a slap in the face for the affect it had on him. Kouga's eyes suddenly flung wide, and he shoved off her with a startled cry, holding his hand to his mouth as though she'd just bit him.
He backed away from her, seemingly terrified, his unsteady feet catching on several roots and mounds. And then, without a word, he turned and ran - straight through the trees, the tall grass and out onto the valley below. Kagura's vision blurred as she watched him go.
What... What the hell happened just now that shouldn't have? She clutched at the sudden ache behind her ribs as her knees grew weak. And why does it feel like my heart is being crushed between two stones?
Kagura collapsed back against the tree, and sank down in the dirt. She watched the wolf prince depart with emotions she had no name for, until his dark blur disappeared over the horizon. Then, with more noise between her ears than she could possibly stomach, the element demon dropped her head in her hands, curled up in a ball, and cursed her life.
Leave a Review
