Naraku/Kagome. 269 words.
He thought that if he just picked at the right one, she'd come apart at the seams, but she hasn't yet and he isn't sure if she has any seams left to pull.
"And here we are," he says. Flat on her belly, she stares up at him through bloodshot eyes, ends of her hair floating in the water runoff pooling beneath her. With fingers worn raw from her bowstring, she clings to the last of her arrows, and as he approaches her, her jaw tightens angrily.
Her breath is ragged and in time with the thud of his (Onigumo's) heart. He admires absently someone or another's—perhaps hers, but he likes to think it's one of her comrades'—lifeblood splattered scarlet on her ashen face. The cold ground fairly burns under the heat of her blood. Savagely, she heaves herself to her feet, totters, and catches herself on her hands and knees as she tumbles forward. "Yes," she says. "Here. I'm going to kill you."
"Not here," he says. His tone is almost gentle; her body goes taut with hate when he uses it.
Groaning, she shoves herself to her feet, her mouth shaping one-last-time-one-last-time wordlessly, furiously. The arrow glows, priestess-bright, and she falls into him, arm hooking around his back and hand finding the spider-scar. Her fingers trail over it almost like a lover might. "Here," she shouts against the hollow of his throat, and only then does he realizes that while her arrow just scratched over his (Onigumo's) heart, her priestess power is wriggling beneath his breastbone.
He discovers that purified miasma smells of frost.