...He was staring at the shakujo in his hand.
His hand gripped the staff at his side; the knuckles wrapped around the edge of the smooth wood were slowly turning white and the hearth that he lay by was crackling at his knees. The flame was different each time it licked a piece of brush, and he marveled at it to distract himself as the sickening feelings in his stomach passed through the different phrases that he'd learned to ignore. Somewhat.
"Boy-houshi."
"Hn," he whispered.
Soft hair fell over his face as someone bent gently over him, soft whispers echoing behind him as he felt soft fabric rubbing the flesh of his cheek. Sleeves were folded softly over hands that materialized around wrapped pairs of bandages which wrung themselves over his arms, blood tracing wounds and copper lining the roof of his mouth.
"You are a fool."
The world swam in light, and he swallowed a cry that threatened to erupt from his mouth at any minute. Blurry reflections stung at his eyelids and he started, hands grabbing at the sudden flash of pain along his chest. He stared up into the white and felt himself hiss with biting rage that was returned without hesitance. "You," he snarled, gripping at the bandages across his waist but feeling himself slip to the ground below, thorns of pain spearing his side."What--"
"Quiet." He felt a cool sensation across his chest and his eyelids fluttered as he opened them,aching for the feeling of rubbing his sore temples. There was thefeeling soft sort of cream along the tight bandages that coveredhis skin; her voice floated in, blurry, and he felt his head being gently lifted and his fingers pried from his shakujo at his side. "Boy-Houshi who travels with youkai and ningen, you are a fool." She whispered, e choes of screams pulsing through her voice.
"--Kanna." His voice was quiet.He knew his fate.
She shook her head and tightened the bandages along his arm, white hair flowing past her ears in the light from the haphazard mirror placed at her side. The houshi was a fool indeed. To give himself so willingly to those that he must know meant him harm; thin fingernails tapped on the edges of pure glass. She would not die down in her fight, if she were captured. The souls would never cease to overflow through the barriers of the mirror, and she would not be hungry...
His head was turning, and she sat with her toes wrapped around her body as his gaze widened in the dim light, and he saw the face of his companion at his side. She knew what he saw -- black hair flowing over bandaged shoulders and lips bruised and cut. TThe hanyou's wounds had been easy to treat; the boy was half youkai, after all. He would heal. She had no real knowledge of humans. Not from the knowledge given to her at her birth, and not in the small glances given her by the souls she was able to take from the endless armies that had tried to besiege Naraku's castle. They had all failed, of course. Kagura gave no mercy.
Kanna pressed her lips together. Kagura had not killed these two, and Kanna felt a strange pang of curiosity at it that she did not feel often. There had to be a reason.
Kagura had no heart. Neither did she -- but she did not truly care, as Kagura breathed and lived to be free. She did not have the disease that Kagura had: the itch to be free to roam about as she wanted, to move and sing and dance and claim all that she had as her own. Kagura's illness did not touch Kanna, no, but she knew her younger sister craved for it. Freedom was not something that Kanna understood, but she understood the ache that she would feel were Kagura to be killed.
It would be same the ache she had felt as she had watched her brothers die. Worse.
The houshi cried out suddenly and she stared at him as he sat up without tact, eyes fixed on the mirror at her side, horror etching his strong features. He began to pull against the ropes binding his arms to the floor, never noticing the wounds tearing open across his body or the fresh blood that had begun to flow from them. Her handiwork fell undone, bandage by bandage, as he tore at the cloth wrappings with a fierce desperation, words falling out of his mouth jumbled with worry, aimed at the hanyou at his side. She sat quietly, watching him tear at the wounds, watching the work of several hours become undone with amusement as he realized the significance of the dark sky.
There was no moon.
An animal in its pain should always be treated with mercy, she reflected, and let out a breath, dead eyes lighting with subtle curiosity. And she moved quickly; she knew the ways of humans from the souls she tasted by day and ate by night. They were never to be trusted -- and these two were worse. They journeyed far and wide to destroy Naraku. Her very presence on the plane which her feet touched was dependent on the fact that they could not succeed.
So, decision made, she stood and drew the mirror to her side. He began to shake uncontrollably as she stood with the glass on her hip, sweat pouring down pale skin, and she shook her head silently. She despised humans. Disgusting creatures; she hated them. The hanyou at the houshi's side was no better; human now, he stank like one and fared no better than a normal human would-- perhaps in this, he was worse than his companion.
The mirror called out to her, crying for the souls that were so helpless before her. She hushed it. Brushing fingers over the surface of the glass like liquid, she spread her hands with souls, and quietly reached to the boy houshi in front of her, pressing his ungloved fingers with the essence of the poor dead souls.
He made no sound as his pupils turned steadily white, and fell to the floor below.
That was unusual. They screamed, usually. She frowned slightly, disappointed. She'd wanted that scream, and she'd wanted the tears that fell like streams over the edge of waterfalls, and she'd wanted the quiet shaking that fell from the bodies, and the words that brushed themselves from their mouths. Nightmares, she reflected upon the shining surface of the mirror, had almost souls, and she could see the flitting demons flying about their heads. Fear should have been playing upon their features; but they were lax, injured, silent. She hated humans.
He only spoke one word, and it was a name. "...Kagura..."
She looked down at him and at the hanyou who bled so fretfully and bared pearl white teeth. She could smell the souls. She hungered for them; but curiosity overwhelmed the hunger, and she sat quietly by the door and waited for Naraku.
Kagura had not killed them. There had to be a reason.
Higurashi Kagome was in heaven.
Lathered soap bubbles burst over her nose with warm, comforting water swishing over her knees, and the thick, heady scent of cherries wafting gently above the steam that covered the mirrors at her sides with fog. She flexed her toes and spread her fingers wide over the white fuzz covering her body and sighed with a deep contentment.
It was only logical, she nodded to herself lazily, that taking a bath should be the first thing done when one comes home from a time where the only baths one could take were in freezing cold lakes. Now, freezing cold lakes were actually quite lovely during abnormally hot weather, but in the time she had spent so far with her friends in Sengoku Jidai, hot weather had seemed to evade them (for which they were very thankful.) Shippou had told her before of terribly hot summers that he'd had in his Pa's land in which his poor tail had drooped and his tongue had fallen out of his mouth and his fur had gotten wet and sticky with sweat. Somehow these conversations always ended up with her squeezing Shippou and giving him all the candy that she had left in her bag.
Oh, there was another thing. She had to buy more candy.
Somehow, she realized hazily as her fingers flexed over the bubbles in her hair, that time that had gone by in the past so fleetingly before had seemed more natural, lately. More lengthened. She didn't really know how this could be because from the first moment she stepped back into the world of which she had so fondly become accustomed to, she would, of course, get pulled into another bloodthirsty fight. This always ended up with her seeking out another jewel shard, and Inuyasha killing another youkai, and Miroku flirting needlessly around Sango, and Shippou tugging on her own hair, and more bickering between herself and Inuyasha.
It wasn't normal, she found herself thinking, startled; it was getting very boring. And pointless.She wasn't tired of it, exactly -- how anyone could get tired of the amount of fresh air and hunts and just the amount of incredible things that she and her friends did everyday was beyond her -- but it was constricting, somehow. It was always the same. The fights she shared with Inuyasha were nearly all about the same thing -- how she stayed at home too long, how she never did anything right, how stupid he was, how mean and rude he was. It was just a cycle she couldn't seem to break free of; they had the same fights over and over anyway, no matter how hard she tried to stay quiet.
"Souta," she called, draping over a slick wet leg over the side of a tub, shaking the unsettling thoughts away. "Bring me a towel, would you?"
"Sure." Her little brother edged into the room, a towel flung carelessly over his arm. He gripped some manga in his left hand, and, after tossing her the towel with not much ceremony, sat on the edge of a wooden stool at the end of the hall and commenced reading. She gazed at him quietly as she wrapped her hair into a twisted bun, wet strands layering softly along the edges of her neck. He was getting so big, she realized with a pang. Taller, and a little thicker too. Already she could see girls falling at his feet in the back of her imagination. Those bangs needed to grow out a bit, and his cheeks to lose some more baby fat, but he would be a true heartbreaker, the little guy.
But,her mind whispered treacherously. You won't be here for any of it.
That's not true, she thought back fiercely - and to prove her point, she stamped with exasperation on the white weaved mat beneath her feet. I only have until we finish collecting the Shikon shards, and then I can -- I can come back whenever I want!
But that wasn't really true. She walked quietly down the hall, and padded into her room, drawing the door shut, and leaned her forehead up against it, closing her eyes and touching the soft panels with soft fingertips. It wasn't fair, she admitted silently to herself. She was being selfish. She had promised herself long ago not to be angry about not being able to see her family every day. She had accustomed herself not waking up to the light aroma of coffee and fried eggs and not being able to watch her mother chop fish skillfully every night and not being able to see Jiisan talking to the old men of the neighborhood or Souta riding his bike She'd promised herself.
She kicked the legs of the wooden chair next to her feet in exasperation, and earned herself a stubbed toe. "Ouch," she whispered, and spread her fingers across her face, biting her bottom lip until it was sore.
She missed her family. But at the same time, she couldn't remember what home was anymore.
A loud rumbling noise made her jump. Looking down, she sighed softly and neatly bent down to pat her pet. "Oh, Buyo," she said quietly, scratching behind the cat's ears. "You're the one who got me into this mess, huh?" A loud purr answered her and she felt the corners of her mouth quirk upward just a little. "Yeah, that's right, purr all you want. Fat cat. Souta ought to be feeding you less. You're so big and plump. What are we going to do with you?" Scratch, scratch, scratch. "Hmm. I'm sure some villagers might want you for dinner..."
"Meeeow."
"Yeah, I wouldn't like being eaten either." Her hands traveled up to her temples and she rubbed them absentmindedly, feeling a foretelling ache behind her eyelids. Another migraine."Ehhhh," she steamed. "Maybe I really am getting sick. Maybe that would be nice, I mean not lying anymore," she told the cat at her feet, as she drew some clothes from some dresser drawers. "It would be nice to tell Hojo the truth, for once..."
She got dressed quickly and pulled some slippers onto her feet, wincing at the thick calluses that had been created from weeks of walking non-stop. Kagome padded toward the kitchen, humming a light song --
--And fell to the floor in a slump, a single hiss of pain escaping her mouth as she pressed a hand to the side of her waist. Her waist? It seemed so long ago that she'd found him, it, she, there. She whimpered, and gripped at her side, and let out a dry sob as she drew her fingers to her face, covered with thick blood, the color of the sky outside the window. Not being able to breathe. Not being able to breathe. She moved her hand to her neck in a vain effort to gasp a breath, and snapped the necklace from around her neck: the shards. The shards! The shards the shards the shards. They could not -- they were not --
A deep purple.Sunk through with the hue of violets.
Blackness enveloped her -- she could no longer feel the wall beneath her damp fingertips -- and she screamed, and hissed with pain, and saw it happen before her eyes: Shippou-chan. Sango-chan. Somewhere -- far away -- and then vines obscured her sight, and her last vision was of... Miroku-sama standing at the well and waving to her, with violet robes curling around his toes.
And then it was gone, as soon as it had come.
She rose to her feet, supporting herself along the wall, and did what she could always count on in times of instinct, which this certainly was. She was running before she could feel it; she was screaming something to Souta, who was tagging at her heels, whining and trying to clutch at her uniform, and she threw open the well doors and jumped jumped jumped-
"...Oneechan?" Came Souta's thin voice, then, and it broke through her frustrated sobs. "Are... are you OK?"
"It won't let me through." She whispered, and leaned her forehead against the dark soil walls of the well, clutching her hands at her sides. "It won't let me through."
Soft footfalls padded along shining halls, lips pursed, running words across torn throats in the rooms behind her. She wondered simply why he did not eat them; or why, for that matter, he kept humans there in the first place. He could have spared himself the trouble; mortals were nosy as hell, and frightened as fast a kitchen mouse would. It was really no wonder the place stank of corpses. She hated the smell. And she hated their torn hands that stuck on her robes, flesh eaten half away.
They really were disgusting creatures.
More pressing matters lingered at the back of her mind. He'd summoned her; she would come. She knew her fate -- to sit at his feet and let his teeth tear at her flesh, and for iron chains to wrap themselves around her wrists, and torture to come as ready as the wind. Her hands clenched at her sides, and her kimono flashed over the shining floors, stinking of human. She would find a way to leave this hellhole.
She slid open the door, and bowed, her head close to the floor, anger pulsating through her blood with each beat of a non-existent heart. She hated this; she hated this, this feeling of confinement, of tearing, of being in a tiny little cage as a small bird, ready to fly out to the world, but not being able to see close enough to really live and breathe. "You sent for me," she whispered, and hated all of it.
"Hn."She could feel his breath on her neck, ringlets of smoke covering her face in haze, the heat of burning incense reaching her nose. She resisted the urge to gag, and moved her head slowly upward, red meeting black in a flash of wills that only took a second to end. She was the one who looked away first, disgusted with herself.
"Rise, Kagura," he breathed, and looked at her with coal black hair swirling over his shoulders in hazy curls that flew over the sides of his shoulders. And gazed at her with lips pulled over teeth in what could only be described as a smile, but she shied from that definition, knowing that he could not be capable of a smile. The bastard was not capable of laughter; he was not capable of smiling; he was not capable of love; but neither was she. And she cared little for that, in all fairness. She just wished for her life, and her life alone. "Rise, Kagura," he breathed, "and see what we have created, you and I."
She was silent, and he gave out a barking crack of the not-laughter, and caressed her cheek with pale and long fingers. "You," he said, and withdrew his hand, and she could suddenly breathe again, "have done well, for once, Kagura." He gestured upwards in an arc, and the not-smile was still there. "The great Gods have granted us with a great fortune, darling. They've given us you. And with you, we can do great things. Yessss," he hissed, and ran a finger down her cheek, grinning at her anger and fear. "Yess, child, we can do great things with you."
Eyes closed, she faced him, as pieces of the flesh that she'd been torn from curled from around her body and came to rest at his sides, retreating within dark edges of dark robes. "Kagura," he said, suddenly, as she turned to face him, eyes wide and red and beautiful. "You will do it, Kagura. You have no choice in the matter. He is human." A grin. "He will suspect nothing."
She felt the pain of it burst inside her chest, and she fell to the floor, writhing in the agony that pounded in her head and chorused mockingly all around her, the Gods screaming in laughter down at what they'd created. And he laughed the not-laugh, and she screamed. And then she stood against the pain with the last glimmerings of hope left, and walked with what was left of her torn dignity out of the door, limping, oddly full of some emotion she could not place. He will suspect nothing.
"Go in peace," he whispered, and spread his fingers over the candles, throwing shadows across the room. "Daughter."
I really am evil, aren't I?