Oh, very few people knew themselves. It wasn't anything new. You could know the surface of yourself – your favorite color, what you would eat, if you were for or against capital punishment – but when it came to certain things, everyone was rather opaque when giving an answer.

Kagome had already come to terms with not knowing herself anymore – not understanding why she felt the way she felt, if there was a name for the sickening lurch she got so often nowadays – when Inuyasha would look at her and she knew that he knew. Lying, always lying, always those terrible lies that were so foreign and so painful on her swollen tongue.

She had never been a liar; she had never cheated at Dominos or done anything that wasn't at least moderately politically correct. Sengoku Jidai had slaughtered a great deal of THAT, but she never lied. Not to the blatant extent of which she was bloody swimming in. Inuyasha knew – of course he knew – he wasn't stupid – of course he wasn't – and she was feeling bad for no reason. Except for the fact that she was a terrible person that should be put to sleep, euphemized, murdered, set on fire, something random and unpleasant in that sort of category.

Deserved it? Maybe not, maybe not /really/, but Kagome felt just bad enough to expect a bolt of lightning at any moment. Her ballad stopped its bedraggled play, the unfinished notes hanging in the air like stagnant gas. With a sigh she stood, arms crossing over her chest as she walked with the façade of one who /wanted/ to be judged and tried guilty, just so she would not feel that he was being kind.

Letting her tell him on her own time and all that. She wanted to be yelled at for once. Because she had done it all wrong, tipped over an already fragile Eiffel Tower cultivated entirely of toothpicks and Play-Doh, and smiled painfully to muddle everything over.

The trees looked almost sinister, teetering between familiarity and the unknown. She'd been in his forest countless times, known it well enough to never get lost, but still it was frightening. Don't stop walking, darling, a big scary youkai will eat your liver for breakfast.

And she saw him.

Standing in the pond as if he intended to walk all the way in and hold his breath like she used to when she was little – until dots swam in front of her brown oculars and she felt dizzy and broke for surface. But she would run in, happy, smiling, laughing, as Souta watched and her mother shook her head disapprovingly. Her hand reached out, almost in greeting, one of those childish hellos if one didn't want to utter the sentiment, but then thought better of it and returned it to its comfortable spot across her chest.

They didn't know themselves; they didn't bloody know each other.

And still the wheel turns.

But still her mind was in another place, a cushier one, with velvet lining and a little jukebox that played Unchained Melody on a loop, although all she really wanted to do was cry even with her dry eyes. Kami, he looked lovely right there, despite being so far into the water, despite the sakura blossoms floating about like in some cheap movie during the depressing love scene..

He'd catch a cold...never mind being a hanyou.

"Inuyasha?"

Reality. This evil concept everyone was so keen on wrapping their minds around. Without it, things could be different. Solidity and structure could be there or float away, like driftwood on the water. Pain and suffering could blow away like leaves in the wind, but happiness and warmth could go along too. Like Pandora's box, reality was hated, but there was that bit of good that was so needed, all the illnesses had to be dealt with.

Dealing with the reality of lies and broken dreams, however, was not part of the hope that Pandora had found at the bottom. He'd done his own share of lying, definitely, but he never imagined Kagome lying. Never. He wanted to badly to always believe her, to know that all she told him was the truth. But no one can only tell the truth. There would always be the little white lies. Like telling someone you couldn't go to their party because you had other plans, but in reality, you really didn't want to go. Like telling someone their new hat or outfit looked good, when they really didn't, but you didn't want to hurt their feelings either. Like putting up with a friend's boyfriend you aren't exactly fond of and never saying anything bad about him to her, when in actuality, you hate the guy. There was one Kagome's friends needed to grasp, though one couldn't blame them for worrying.

Just staring as the water shifted endlessly, carrying pink petals every which way and distorting images, there was a part of him that longed to dive in. To make a big splash and see just how far down he could go, if he could touch the bottom and still make it back up to the top. A horribly dangerous endeavor, depending on the depth, but that's what made it fun. The thrill of literally having the breath stolen from your chest made the gulp of air you took at the top all the more sweet. The realization that you could have died but clearly didn't. A child's game, for if a parent or adult was watching, they could be saved. Then again, if you were alone, you had only one person to count on, and that was yourself.

It took the hanyou a second or two before his normally sharp ears picked up the miko's voice and his nose her scent. Perhaps the numbness in his legs had spread, or perhaps he'd enjoyed staring at the shifting waters, so much changing and writhing as the thing people called reality, he had let all else slip away. No matter, he'd heard now.

Inuyasha turned about as one condemned, unable to erase the look in his eyes. He half ridded himself of it, to the point where he looked half there, half somewhere else. She looked no different, smelled no different, and in just saying his name, it was hard to tell if she's spoken the same as well. The bit of him that was still a child wanted him to wave and smile and greet her the way he always did when she'd been gone for what seemed like forever, but he just couldn't. For whatever reason, he just couldn't.

"Yeah?"

His tone wasn't harsh, more like what you'd expect from anyone else; simply curious.

/"Yeah?"./

That was worse. Perhaps a smile – a begrudgingly happy wave – oh, they would've been so welcome. She would've adored it. It would've been astoundingly better then just the look on his face. As if he was the one doing everything wrong. Damnit, she should've came and gave him the tama and left. She couldn't control him. Let him do what he wanted, let him BE what he wanted, let him ruin all eternity or kill everyone who she said she cared about – let him have free will and all the things that being a ningen entitled. Hah, unless becoming a youkai destroyed that privilege. Her empty eyes, pretty as ever and warm as melting chocolate but just about as complex as an expensive doll's that was given only on Christmas.

The beautiful confections you saw so seldom, made of porcelain and glass and all of those fragile sounding textiles that your juvenile hands would graze over, not caring, naming it before you knew it and loving it before the wrapping had even half come off. She envied those dolls, the empty shells, so pretty and /meaningless/. Lacking, always lacking. If one didn't have meaning – as her mother had once said in a sudden bout of dwelling in the gloom-ridden past – they were nothing at all. To be nothing must be splendid. No responsibilities, no half-demon looking at you as if you were the one to start scorning, and no sinking feeling though you are not the one in the water.

"Konnichiwa."

Oh, great. Oh, five stars. Oh, curl yourself into a ball and die. Inuyasha had never been someone she'd been uncomfortable around. He'd never really been someone she avoided. And there they were. Things changed, things convoluted, and with a mixture of shining smiles and nice posture, she could pretend that things were the same. The bickering they had nowadays was so strained ... she didn't know how far she could go, how much she could pick, how close to the surface she had to stay. And before -- !

The past was not something to be dwelled on. It is something to stick into an expensive frame and stroke lovingly in the moments that you don't find yourself swamped in work, or swamped in your /life/.

She looked at him without reservation. Every flaw was magnified in her strange muted stare, nauseating, but quite worthless in retrospect. Those flaws were what she loved, right? She liked the jagged edges. She would tell her friends that, and they would look at her as if she was an idiot. Not exactly complaints – not when she would speak to Sango about her friends – rather how she hated how they couldn't accept that she wasn't stupid. She wasn't about to go running headfirst into something made of acid and lined with sharks that had lasers attached to their foreheads and a taste for human flesh. Not that she hadn't done it before...but couldn't they trust her? To know what she wanted?

/But no one knows what they want. You don't know who you are, so how can you know what you desire?/

Which of the bold-faced lies would she use? How are you? What have you done today? Is the water cold? Are you going numb? She would like to be numb, not feeling anything except the prickle of her blood that wanted rather fiercely to gain a bit of heat. Any standards...any casual replies? Or would she be truthful. /Truthful/. Thus not lying, and thus not feeling nauseated each time her mouth opened and a serpent-like falsehood escaped. I missed you, and I'm right in front of you. I'm missing /you/. Not the porcelain doll. I like flesh and blood, I like the person who I knew for a year – has it been a year? And they're dead, or gone, or hiding, or on vacation – it hurts. And I miss them desperately, for they're the one I changed so much for in the process of getting the tama. Tell me what you want. I don't have the right to explain that /your/ desires are wrong.

Ah, if he leapt into the water now, he would not be alone. Kagome would be there to save him.

Had he been able to see his eyes from her point of view, he would have wondered who he was kidding. Trying to look happy, like everything was alright, when it so obviously wasn't. But he couldn't see his eyes; he could only see hers, all glossed over. Like a puppet, waiting for its strings to be pulled and someone to direct it on where to go and what to do. Eyes that were forced open each morning, having a neutral outlook on the world before it was even entered.

Sometimes he was like that. A lot. Usually. Waking up and dragging himself to a stand. Groaning and insulting without any true feel. He was being himself out of duty, being insulting and intolerable because if he wasn't, people would worry. For once in his life, he didn't want other people to worry. They had other things to worry about after all. All that piled with his problems would be too much. Oh, yes, that's too bad that your good friend said they hated you and meant it, and, oh yeah, did I mention I think I might be dying of a broken heart? No one would thank him for that.

Once upon the happy times, Kagome had made him smile – or want to smile – the second he saw her. He felt what she felt. He was afraid for her, felt like crying for her, would have jumped in the air and whooped if she was ecstatic. But today, he couldn't smile. He couldn't laugh. Hell, he was surprised that he could even breath. She looked like she'd lost everything, from her soul out. And maybe she had. His own heart ached for her, ached for her smile or her laughter or even the way she said, "OSUWARI!" whenever he pushed one too many buttons.

And there was nothing he could do. Not in his condition, where he could feel his heart cracking a little more as he took each watery step toward the shore. Every step brought him closer to her, every step echoing in the vast abyss that his heart had become. Perhaps it wasn't his ears and nose that had gone numb with the water, but his mind and his heart. How he wished bringing the life back into Kagome was as easy as diving in and yanking it out, like when the remote fell behind the couch and seemed stuck there until you hung upside down from the back and reached through the dusk bunnies to fish it out. But nothing was easy. Not anymore.

He stopped coming toward her a few feet away, not wanting to drip all over her like people are prone to do when they're standing too close after being in the water. The hanyou took another stab at attempting to smile as if nothing was wrong, but it just kind of flickered at the edge of his mouth before disappearing again.

"Konnichiwa, Kagome. Did you want me for something?"

Well, she'd said his name like a question, hadn't she?