Seeing Eye
I
Blind
.
Disclaimer
I do not own any of the publicly recognized figures in this Fanfiction. Inuyasha is owned by Rumiko Takahashi and Sunrise TV.
Content Warning
This fanfiction is filled with the fuckery of my mind. This fanfiction is explicit and M rated.
Chapter Warning
Injury to the eyes
If bad things were to happen, they always happened on a cliffside. On the edge of a gorge, to be more precise.
Somewhere dangerous.
And Kagome felt as if she was in danger. It was a pit in her stomach as she held Shippo closer to her, his face nuzzled into her shoulder as he took a nap, having come down with a sickness a few days prior.
No one else seemed to feel in danger- Even Inuyasha walked at a languid- albeit still rather fast- stride. His hands turned into his sleeves, his ears not even perked. Of course, he would always be viciously hungry for battle and the journey for the jewel shards hadn't been all that kind lately…
Well, she was glad that he wasn't bickering. Commanding her to try harder, especially when Shippo had been under for so many days.
It was late fall and the sweetness of leaves and the burgeoning smell of wet earth lingered in the air. The harvest season was in full swing when the left Edo and the air had turned bitter, leaving the inu-tachi far from the footpaths. Exactly a week's worth of traveling, to be absolutely clear.
And Kagome was starting to feel the strain of slowly chipped away resources, just exaggerated with the lacking foraging as the forest growth began to diminish.
At least she was warm; hidden beneath a heavy, cable-knit sweater and long pants instead of the illustrious 13th school uniform layering tattered on the dining room table.
Her mother had seen the blood on this one.
Perhaps that's why she felt off? The fact that everything was anxiety-inducing and she had to hide the fact she was fighting tooth and nail in the past to get around some days. And her mother, though not unintelligent, had caught on.
The strained eyes, the mouth set in a line. ' Kagome… this is blood ."
She'd been injured before. Of course, she had-
But she'd also been smart enough to bleach her white top before.
Taking a hand from Shippo's back, Kagome rubbed under one eye. It was going to be a long year.
At least she wasn't a dropout, right?
Wrong. Seventeen and a statistic.
This time they had said she was in the States receiving treatment from a lead facility that just happened to want to know exactly what was wrong.
She was crazy. That's what it was.
Kagome was mad. That had to explain this growing paranoia. This feeling.
Her eyes strayed again, staring at the overcast sky as she tucked her hand back against Shippo, who muttered something in his sleep. Strange maternal instincts screaming at her to hide him despite not seeing anything off.
Well- nothing Jewel related.
"Ey K'gome! Sense anything yet?"
Speak of the devil. Speak of the hanyou.
Inuyasha cast an eye back at her, his narrow pupil slitting against the white sky while his mouth fixed itself into a line. Oh, how she would have yearned for him to not look at her like she was deserving him.
"Eh? Something wrong?"
Just everything.
"N-no. At least, I don't think so." Kagome started out, the edge of her lip caught in her teeth. "I can't sense any Jewel Shards if that's what you're asking. But-"
"Gah!" His ears flattened and she could see his muscles tense in his back. "I'm gonna look ahead. Somethings gotta be around here."
No. No no no!
"Inuya-"
But he was gone, his feet moving against the ground to break physics once again to leap ahead at impossible heights and impossible speeds. Leaving them, increasing Kagome's anxiety.
"Don't worry Lady Kagome." Miroku's swaggering footsteps fell in beside her as one hand came to rest on her shoulder. "Activity has been down all week."
Yes, but it's gotta break sometime. Don't you see?
"Yeah. It's just…" Kagome trailed off as she looked behind her, past the monk, and on the trail behind them. "I have this bad feeling."
"Like a-"
"No." Kagome cut Sango off as she readjusted Shippo against her hip. "I didn't lie to Inuyasha. There are no jewel shards. I just- I feel like we are being watched."
"Hmm." Sango, at least, didn't look offended at Kagome's snapping attitude, but simply looked back as well. Her own brow knitting slightly. "Maybe it's the birds- they haven't been chirping with the new chill setting in."
Kagome's mouth twisted slightly, only nodding after a moment's consideration. "Sure."
Noncommittal. She could feel something dancing on her skin, telling her to move. And she found distinctly strange that neither of her companions, more intuned than her, wouldn't also feel it.
But Miroku's hand drifted down the curve of her spine and Kagome lost her words as she smacked him away, her paranoia drifting into irritation. It was somewhat welcome, the distraction, but it only lasted for a second. And when Kagome turned away from Miroku, who was left to the berating words of Sango, she felt her skin crawl again.
No. Something was wrong.
Squinting down the path, Kagome was hit with a strange sense of deja vu -well, if she wasn't completely certain that the tree at the edge of the path had the same exact imprinting on it as one a mile back.
She wasn't one for 'spot the difference', but she was certain. Sickeningly so.
Kagome bit her tongue and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, her eyes trailing the area as she tried to pick out more things that could possibly be the same.
A rock that looked strangely like a toad, a leaf that was so blazingly yellow, a runoff that split halfway down. An imprint that looked strangely like a face on an old gnarled cherry tree.
It blinked at her.
Kagome's reaction was instantaneous: her jaw locking and her muscles tensed. A scream lodging in her throat as the face of the tree went sour, its wooden teeth bared in an oni's snarl.
Somewhere above them, it shook its barren limbs.
Kagome's gut churned and something within her was happy the limbs were autumn-struck. Who knew what it's pollen would have done?
How long had they been trapped here?
Both Miroku and Sango had followed her gaze to the demon tree, their lax faces snapping to attention as if coming out of a delirious fog. They, seemingly, recognized the beast just as the roots below them shifted and twisted. It reminded her of Menōmaru's Forest of No Return.
Something stabbed out at Kagome from under the soil, the soft earth curling as she fumbled away- her hands full with Shippo.
Sango was already wielding hiraikotsu, slamming the sharp-edged boomerang into the tree line. The face, still snarling, faded from the bark.
Where was it, where was it?! If something were to resemble the beast, it had to be the face. It wasn't the best, but it was the only determining factor. It probably wasn't even really in the slightest…
The roots, or what Kagome assumed to be the roots, shifted beneath her feet again as she tried to maneuver Shippo to her shoulders, her hands fumbling for the bow strapped to her back.
The ground cracked and the moist soil frothed up, the unfurling branches of a tree pushing out before her- cornering her on the edge of gorge with its immensity- an oni's face snarling at her from the center of peeled bark.
Fresh in the making, Kagome could see the wrappings of dodder flowers over the gnarled branch, parasitic and engorged on the choking wood. The petals, withering in front of her, were blood red.
One of the branches lashed out, its horrible twisted architecture lashing at her in an arch- spraying pollen upwards and into the air. Without even touching it, Kagome could feel the caustic-nature of it- the evil in a floating speck. The youkai lancing through the air with every sway of those branches.
Kagome's hands fumbled as she dropped her bow and curled in upon Shippo, shoving his limp body under her heavy sweater to hide him from the raining youkai, that of which sizzled and burned against her skin as he reiki came to flush it out.
What a mess.
The branches still quaked above her head, shaking and bending until the tines themselves were slapping against the skin of her back and hunched shoulders. It hurt, like getting hit with switches, and one of her hands came fumbling to catch some of the branches.
It was as her hand enclosed the bough of one of the trees that another struck her horizontally across the eyes in a spray of pollen.
It didn't even hurt, initially.
Just blank darkness and a warm feeling that built and built, like an eyelash caught under the lid that she couldn't blink out. It stung- and then it burned. And Kagome could feel the slick heat of something slip down her cheeks and the smell of copper fill the air.
The world was dark.
The world was dark.
The world was-
She couldn't see- every time she blinked, there was no clearage- no blurry image of a horrible oni's face and no dodder flowers. In a panic, her reiki sparked into her fingertips- thankfully not in the hand holding poor Shippo- and coursed into the bark and the dodder parasite.
In her absolution of panic, her reiki had come to answer. Spanning down the lengths of the branch and tracing ropes of dodder, the energy went deep into the core of the tree- bubbling up and burning.
Despite being thrummed with adrenaline and sheer panic, she could feel it. Like a map or a hive mind, she was briskly allowed into- her mind bringing up intensive images of the trees. Well- no, not the trees; but the dodder. She could feel it- the grip of the root deep into the rings of the wood.
Feeding itself with the trees, which had been a demon or spirit, own life force and spanning for miles. It was a strike to her senses, something so utterly massive and intricate playing out in her head like a strike of lightning over a dark sky. Her hand spasmed once as she let go, cutting the connection in fear.
The air filled with smoke: the striking reaction of dry timber, reiki, and aggressive youkai.
Already waylaid and insane by proxy, Kagome thrashed in her spot before tearing away with Shippo gripped tightly to her stomach. She couldn't see, she couldn't fight- and she needed to get out of there.
As fast as possible, the madness of her state setting in so she could not hear the screams of either Miroku or Sango, Kagome lurched in a random direction- just keeping the demon dodder, the tree, and sheer drop of the gorge at her back.
Viscous fluid and blood seeped from her closed eyes, whipping ribbons into the air and streaking her face. The pain had truly begun to set in at that point. The feeling of wrongness and horrid edges- edges where the branch had bisected her eyes.
No. Gods no.
The path in which Kagome ran suddenly dipped as she broke through the previous, and dying, repetitive loop and into new territory. Her feet tripped upon themselves on the downhill, the edge of one caught under the toe of the other- sending Kagome into a head-over-ass roll.
Kagome and Shippo, who was held in the cusp of her folded legs and locked arms, tumbled down the hill. Her shoulder slammed into a tree, her hip grazed a rock, and one pant leg was torn clean from her body from just below the knee.
The rest of her would be very bruised, she could feel the warmth spread under her skin as she finally lay at a dead stop at the bottom of the incline. Gasping for air behind her clenched teeth, choking on her own sobs.
Her hands fumbled blindly and she pulled Shippo from her sweater, her hands exceedingly gentle as she smoothed a hand over his forehead and cheeks.
"Sh-shippo… Shippo!" If her muscle could, she would have writhed in agony. The thought of him being injured- dead! It was unbelievable to her. It was soul-crushing.
But there, just where his mouth and nose would have been, if she could fucking see , puffed over her searching fingertips. One of his hands, as if he was unconsciously calming her, pawed at her hand until his feverish forehead pressed against her palm.
Achingly, with the knowledge the Shippo was at least alive , she sat up and pulled him to sit in the crooks of her folded, aching legs. She could smell the burning in the air, still, and the heat of the oncoming flame.
But, almost selfishly, she reached up and touched her face. Fingers right in front of her eyes as she felt the swollen skin. Gods, she could feel the youkai in her eyes. It burned and her reiki was trying to score it away.
The outer edge of her left eye was split open and there was a very clear slice over her nose ridge that was absolutely spitting blood.
Her hands shook and a million and one questions spun through her mind. What was she going to do?
Blind.
She was blind.
Kagome wanted to fall back into a screaming fit- the sheerness of the situation settling on her shoulders, but not dragging her down.
She needed to get Shippo and herself out of the path of the oncoming fire and then she needed to wait. Wait until Inuyasha or Kirara to sniff her out when the dust and smoke settle. She needed to bind her eyes.
One hand fumbled behind her, a rising tension through her pushed her in a mad dash for the roll of bandages in the water bottle sleeve at her hip. It was dense and rough in her hand, often being used on Inuyasha's numerous injuries, but it was something and it would keep things out of the wound.
And hopefully, when she went back to her era, they would be able fix this. Stitch her cornea back together- something. But even her futuristic medicine didn't lull her shrieking panic as she wrapped the thick material around her head over and over until she ran out of it.
The heat was closer now. Kagome could hear the snapping of branches and dry leaves in the air. The dead trees- and they were certainly dead - were lighting up. No frozen moisture, the fallen leaves tinder.
Cramming Shippo under her shirt again and pulling the neck of it over her own nose, Kagome turned and stumbled in the other direction- one hand feeling for the trees as she stumbled over roots and uneven ground. Blackness upon blackness, she did not know where she was going- it was simply that she needed to get away. She, at least, needed to save Shippo.