Because I have to write some more MK now. And I've written lots and lots of one shots so another one shouldn't matter. And because I'm afraid of commitment (another long story would ruin me).
Also, because I love experimenting with point of view and tenses and I haven't tried this one yet.
Your almost weekly MK one shot. Coming right up.
Heaven
By Rurouni Star
Kagome watches.
She watches as the battle turns against them, this strangely meaningless war with clearly drawn sides that should have been over. Because the good guys always won, and because the world was too unfair already to let them all die like this.
She watches as the demon lord is struck down, amazement on his face even as he loses consciousness (is he dead?) and she watches as Inuyasha moves in front of him. Not because of brotherly love. Because he was a key point in their attack strategy and he has to take up his slack.
She watches as the clay woman falls to her knees, her soul stealers destroyed, her hands shaking, her bow broken. And she sees despair in her eyes. Because she will not die yet – not yet – but even if they defeat Naraku, she will cease to exist. And in the mean time, she will linger in pain because she cannot let herself die.
She watches as the taijiya gives up hope against her brother, his unseeing eyes boring into her own, leeching the last light from them. She doesn't die. She can't. She has to decide to kill him instead, and it breaks her.
She watches all of this, unable to act, because she has no weapons and no value anymore. Because after her arrows are gone, she is a liability, and she must retreat to watch them die over and over again, though none have lost their lives yet.
Her attention strays, moves vaguely to each of them, able to watch, to recognize danger, but to do nothing.
And she sees him as he closes his eyes in despair. Because he knows he will die, one way or another. But she knows he wanted to see the demon die first.
He walks calmly back, ignoring the shouts, ignoring the screams and the hurt and the end of everything he knows. Because it won't matter in a moment.
And suddenly, he collapses at her feet, and she no longer watches.
"Poison," she whispers to him. "You had to do it, didn't you?"
He trembles and smiles up at her as though it isn't of consequence. "Would you do differently?" he asks in a hoarse voice.
She smiles but she's breaking like the taijiya, and she helps him up against her shoulder while she searches for an antidote. It's of no matter. Because even if she does make him better, all better like she always does, he will only risk it again and again and they're losing anyway, so it may not make a difference.
But she pulls the last of it out and asks him to take it, knowing as she does that he might refuse and that there may not be enough left and it may not be in time.
And he takes it. Because he knows she wants to do more than watch.
"Kagome-sama," he whispers to her, his body leaning weakly against her. "Do you believe in heaven?"
Her heart constricts, and the tears she never wanted to shed are coming dangerously close to doing so. "Why?" she asks.
"I want to know before I die. Curiosity, maybe. Or desperation." He smiles wearily and she tries not to break completely. She thinks perhaps she'll answer him.
But she doesn't know the answer.
"Maybe," she tells him, with the first few tears winning their way free, to drip unheeded down her face. She refuses to look at him, for fear of seeing pity. "Do you?"
His hand - the gloved one, the beaded one, the cursed one - takes hers and squeezes reassuringly. "I'm a monk, Kagome."
He hasn't used the suffix, the part that keeps him from caring, the part that stops him from sounding too close. She laughs, but the tears still come.
He is silent now. Maybe he can't talk. She readies herself to say goodbye in that tiny instant that might be an eternity.
"No," he answers unexpectedly. "I don't."
She would normally wonder how it could be when he's a priest, but right now it doesn't matter. It's of so little consequence in the end.
"But there has to be something later," she tells him tiredly, and her eyes follow a red figure as it leaps and falls and doesn't get back up. But she's already been broken – it happened already, when she wasn't looking, and the fear can't break her more now.
He's getting weaker, and he knows she can feel it. "Why is that?" he whispers.
She smiles, and it holds all of her brokenness inside of it. "Because I came back. Isn't that supposed to reassure me?"
But his gaze travels to the trembling dead woman, sitting far away from them, unable to care enough to move. "No," he tells her. "It shouldn't. It should make you terrified."
And now she's comforting him because her hand moves to slip around his chest and hug him tightly to her because she knows that he's the frightened one.
"We could be in heaven now," she tells him, the tears still falling, hitting his face as he tires. "It probably won't matter in a moment."
His fingers move up to run gently across her face, and he manages to smile this time.
"No. It probably won't." And he pulls himself to her, to press his lips to hers in a pious act that puts her back together even though she doesn't want to be whole again. His eyes have gone cloudy as he draws away.
"I think I can see heaven from here, though," he tells her with a reassuring grin. "Just now, I caught a glimpse." Even now, he tries to reassure her, to make her hope again – he's being cruel in his way.
And even though he relaxes in her arms, his eyes closing for what could be the last time, she knows that something must be done.
Because she does believe in heaven.
But she doesn't want to go there.
So she lets him gently to the ground, unconscious or dead or dying, and she rises to her feet to walk to the dead woman that is mourning her second death that hasn't come yet. And she picks up the arrows that she had, ignoring the loss and the pain before her. She pulls an arrow from the quiver, knowing she has to win, but not knowing why.
I could change it, she thinks. I could make it better.
If it hits.
She takes aim.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Forgive me, for I have sinned.
I gave it a hopeful ending. I wasn't supposed to do that. Erk.