Blood-Stained

A/N: Just a note, but I'm done with school on the 24th. (Nooo….) Also, finals are next week, Christykay has nominated me for fanfiction elimination, I'm going on a cruise on the 26th, I'm going to a farewell party on the 18th, a reunion party on the 23rd, a birthday party on the 24th, and the part in the last chapter where it talked about 'Sango being killed' was figuratively. She's still alive, people… just, a little bit emotionally wounded. (cough)

Chapter 13: Sweet Dreams

Nghi


In her dream, she saw those black eyes; they were above her, staring down on top of her and watching and never blinking. She herself was always running, walking, moving somewhere, but those dark, dilated pupils followed everywhere, and slowly they began to close in on her. She tried to scream, but no voice came out—just silent air. Eventually, they cornered her in a small, sightless corner of the darkness, and suddenly the eyes became jarred, morphing into a shadow against a shadow and casting a dark, sweeping wind against her.

And then it was two feet away from her, and she could see the skewed face of him, ugly and twisted and grinning madly. He had such pointy, glaring teeth-no, fangs, and he was edging closer and closer, and his gangly, little arms were spreading wider and wider, stretching themselves to entrap her, and he was so ugly and so frightening and so scary and so threatening and—

"—nightmare."

—he was coming closer, and he held a small handgun, and she watched, her vision of him blurring slightly, as he raised his hand—

"—sure how long she's going—"

—and then Kagome squeezed her eyes shut as he leveled it at her head, and he cackled, and those black, black onyx eyes had become holes in the head as he pulled the trigger.

There was a deafening shot ringing in her dreams, and before she knew it, the bullet was embedded deep within her head, and she was bleeding on the ground, dying as the copper pellet easily slipped through the hard skull, pulling along torn, bleeding flesh—some were gray, and some were red, pulsating as the bullet exploded through the back of her head, tearing patches of hair and blood and anything else that got in its way.

In her dream, she still heard him laughing.

"No!"

Her arms were useless and unmoving, and there was a heavy weight around her stomach and pelvis. She couldn't breathe anymore, and she was scared. So this is how it feels to die….

"—hurting her."

Then something cold and icy pierced her forehead, and suddenly she felt herself (or was it spirit? Kagome was never the religious type.) being pulled away from the surrealism, away from the slipping corpse, away from the madman, away from the bullet, away from the sickening laughter, away from the darkness—

And her gray eyes snapped open. Kagome gave a loud shudder once, her back arching—where am I! Everything was too dark for her, but it didn't matter; she couldn't see in the first place anyways. Something was roaring in her ears—her blood, perhaps. She discovered there was something burdening around her pelvic area, and immediately the nightmare of him and that too-real gun was plaguing her memory again. Fear shot through her stomach, pushing away all thoughts except one: survive.

Suddenly Kagome was bucking around wildly, pulling and twisting her arms in an attempt to throw off whoever it was. She was very much unaware of how impulsive her actions were, and the thought of cool metal pushed softly against her temple, waiting and ready to explode… the awareness that anything was possible when she could not see made her even more paranoid. Those claw-like ropes were bound tight, and she began to panic at their refusal to loosen. "Help!" Kagome screamed, "Someone!"

"Calm down—" Whoever it was, he was the one sitting on top of her, and suddenly the image of the deranged man came to her, his mouth but never his eyes smiling wickedly. She had never heard him speak at all; every sighting of him was from a speckled distance, like a silent movie gone horribly wrong. And even now, she thought his voice was too different… too rich and vivid for such a hollow and malicious person. But I have no way of really knowing that.

Something stung on her shoulder- she couldn't tell which was left and right with her nerves all numb and dead- and everything that had passed through her mind went away, and any small doubt that he wasn't within the proximity of her was pushed away, erased and gone. Kagome thrashed harder, kicking and screeching, her eyes screwed shut. All she could envision was a sharp butcher knife leaning over hungrily at the edge of her shoulder bone, and his face leering so closely, just like in her nightmare. "Don't touch me!" she shrieked, "Don't touch me!"

"No—"

"Don't kill me, please!" She begged like a dog, and all those past intentions of standing up for herself, putting him down, and being strong were forgotten, like all those sane thoughts and doubts—

Gone.

"Dammit, stop—"

"I didn't do anything!" she yelled, tears leaking out. "I didn't see anything, I swear! I didn't see anything… I won't see anything if you don't want me to! Just don't hurt me!" When she found her breath was actually becoming slightly ragged, all her fears came tumbling into her conscience, branding images of blood and decapitation and missing fingers and legs and bullets and a ruined family; her heartbeat was smashing against her ribcage, the blood now more than a whistle of a scream in her ears, and perspiration mixing with frightened tears as she lost all control. "I didn't see anything I didn't see anything I didn't see anything! It was a dream, and I wasn't there. You didn't kill the girl and I didn't see you with the gun. I didn't see anything I swear I didn't just don't. hurt. me." Something struck the back of her head, and then there was a painful throbbing—where the bullet should have been. Oh, oh, I don't think he listened to me—

"Thank God…."

Something cool dabbed at her shoulder, and she squirmed a bit. Kagome was reduced to crying softly, and she thought numbly –I think he just killed me already.

Someone murmured quietly above her, but her dim hearing couldn't make anything out of it. Then a calloused finger touched a spot at her neck, and she was plunging back into the strange, dark world, back where he was waiting for her….

Inuyasha exhaled in relief as the girl fell unconscious- Sango had ordered him to put her to sleep not when she had raked several big scratch welts across his arm, not when he had to hold her down to prevent her from landing any uppercuts to either one of them, not when she had managed to drag both him and her two feet from the makeshift bed in the struggle, but after Kagome had accidentally collided headfirst against the sharp edge of the coffee table. He silently moved her back onto the cot, trying hard not to leave behind a trail of blood. Sango blanched at the stained carpets and excused herself quietly into her room- Inuyasha didn't stop her as the doors to the bedroom closed, and he tried to ignore the silent shudders and weeps that followed. Instead, he looked down at the bloodstained girl, her breathing becoming irregular; she was having a nightmare, he realized.

"What is she thinking?" Inuyasha wondered aloud.

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