Blood-Stained
A/N: 'www. livejournal. com/ users/ mintflavor' (minus the spaces and quotation marks) gives you updates on whatever I'm writing. And once again- be prepared to be dazzled by the length of the fiction! (Read: short as hell, about 200 words shorter than last time. But hey, faster updates!)
Chapter 9: One Step Forward…
Nghi
Shoving through crowds of people pressed up against each other for a glimpse of a Hollywood-esque horror movie scene wasn't easy; she was nearly propelled back to the damn store entrance again, where a few splatters of blood remained on the plastic six-foot logo, unclean. It was sickening how even the red managed to appear in unthinkable places, like a proud mark on territory. Then again, he thought the whole world was his; no one knew it yet, except those who received a bullet in the brain.
She dove between the tightly-packed bodies; who knows how long she was there, crying. Everything was bleeding, and she didn't want to see it, but she was too tired to walk, too tired to stand, too tired to breathe. The walls were pulsating around her, closing in and suffocating, and the man's pathetic insistence all would be fine had only the opposite effect; Kagome cried even harder. Where would she go? What did she have left for it to be unharmed? No, she thought, everything won't be all right. And it was true— as long as she was still alive, he would never leave her alone, never let her go. He took her family away; he took her home away; he took her pride away; he took away her freedom away, and she was dying inside this little, iron cage.
Her eyes began to sting again, and she inhaled sharply. With all these people pressed so closely against her, she couldn't afford to start crying again. What had happened to her cold wall? What had happened to her imperturbation? What had happened to her dignity? Her eyes welled dangerously, and she stumbled blindly into a strange woman. "Watch where you're going," she hissed, shoving Kagome.
She thought of pushing the woman down.
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"Eee, Kagome! Where have—" He halted in between the greeting and stared at her. She knew it, expected the reaction. It was the same every time he saw dry blood, and she could see his head spinning furiously. It was pitiable how the emotions played right off his face, and Kagome saw he was thinking about his parents again; it was an instant connection- blood and family.
You are a mess after all, she said to herself. There was blood in her scalp, dried and clumping. Her face was smeared with the same substance, glued to the side of her cheeks, and her blouse could never be saved with any amount of soap and water. Shippo looked at her stained cheeks and her stained hair and her stained fingers and her stained eyes. He knew what had happened, where it had happened; she had, after all, told him where Miroku worked. Opening the door, Kagome slid into the seat wordlessly and rolled up the window.
He was still staring at her, and she consciously brushed her black, matted hair into something more decent; there were too many knots and curls, and Kagome winced when one caught around her finger. "What happened?" he asked quietly, carefully- he was still petting Buyo, and it was a controlled motion. Shippo learned quickly. "There was an accident at Miroku's restaurant." She fell back onto the old excuse, the same, formulaic answer to the question. Every, single time she appeared by her battered, blue Cadillac, bloody and sore and numb, Shippo would ask again and again. For lack of better parentage, she gave the simplified answer, the one that would hurt the least, the most sugared and sweet. She knew he was smarter than that, and he would probably understand it more than she ever would. But old habits die hard.
"What now?" The minimal conversation was going down the same road again, and they both wondered if it was by conscious or not. Kagome glanced down at her fingers, where the blood and dried skin hid underneath her nails. The combination was disgusting and filthy, and she began to pick at it, trying to rid herself of the sinful debris. Shippo was waiting for an answer, and Kagome stalled for a few moments. His and her shoulders were tensed, almost like she didn't know herself. Finally—"We go to Sango's house to clean up."
Her answer made him freeze; today was different for some reason, there was something else underlying. Why was it unlike all the others towns they've been to? Why weren't they going to go somewhere else and hide? Why weren't they going to save themselves? The start of the engine stirred him out of his stupor, and as Kagome backed out of the parking space, he suddenly startled her with a shriek. It was hard to define or describe the scream- it was a cry of desperation, of mourning, of warning. It was a cry that went against her answer, her decision, her suicide. She slammed on the brakes, and they came to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. "Why?" Shippo yelled, his hands fisting. "Why?"
Why? Because Kagome was tired; she didn't want to live as her own shadow… she wanted to scream and run and jump and dance and laugh and look at everything without ever having to suspect behind its innocent face. She didn't want to see the real, gritty, dirty world; she wanted to see innocence in a child's face, the innocence in a flower, the innocence of the people… she wanted to be innocent again. She never wanted to know what the world was like- it was fine to live in ignorance, believing that the world was decent and not full of criminals and burglars and murderers. Kagome wanted to tell him all of this, and more— how she wasn't clean anymore, how he and the world had corrupted her, and she could never be the same. But Shippo would never understand- he was too young, too small, and too good at her own game to ever realize that what they both had before was gone.
He knew she wasn't going to answer. "Why would you do this?!" he demanded. "Why would you do this?! The time is right to go now!"
"But the police…" she murmured, but he cut her off midsentence. "Forget the police— we're good enough! We can go away from here! We can go away and pretend, Kagome!" His voice was cracking, and he knew those vain, cowardly words weren't getting to her, were never going to get to her. "I'm too young…."
She would give nothing to the child as he sat there, wiping his nose and petting Buyo furiously; he did nothing wrong, he was terrified, and he had no one left except her. "Don't do this to me, please," he begged, wiping his mouth. His shoulders were shaking, and Shippo valiantly tried to hold back the tears. Poor, poor boy, Kagome thought, it was only a game to him. And it was; he laughed and heartily played along until something like this happened, and he scampered away from the problem, hoping to leave the mess behind. "I'm sorry," she whispered, beginning to move the car slowly forward again- she would not, could not look at him as the car pressed forward towards Sango's apartment. Shippo pressed his face against Buyo's fur and did not say anything, but she saw the tears dribble at the edge of his chin, where the cat's fur caught the sparkling dew drops. The cat's response was to mew pathetically, and Kagome blinked with dry eyes.
Something precious was breaking apart….
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