"Just love me the best you can and I think we'll get along alright."
"Is this what love looks like?"
"It was a ruby that she wore…
In a chain around her neck…
In the shape of a heart…"
She weaved her fingers into his shirt.
"Give me a masquerade, dammit." Her breath, heavy with the sickening tang of alcohol blew over his face.
"A masquerade?" Jim echoed dumbly, taking hold of her shoulders when she slumped against him. "Fredrick? Do you know…"
The tall man beside him shrugged, picking up the crumpled girl easily and bearing her away inside the house.
She was of a high school age with smoky black locks that blew past her shoulders in waves and a slim build. A yellow school bag was clutched in her grasp, cradled to her chest, and a dangerous, jaggedly-cut stone lay in the nook of her shoulder from a thong on her neck. Her uniform lay in tatters upon her form and numerous cuts criss-crossed over her features and delicate skin.
"Hentai…" She muttered and he leaned down to hear her, depositing her upon an embroidered bed-spread and then tucking her in with a light blanket. He had found that summer nights were warm in Japan.
She occasionally shuddered, blinked, ran her tongue across her lips and wept. Each movement brought the men to her side; Fredrick rocking her and singing hymns repetitively while Jim smoothed her hair and brought water to cool her skin. They did not know how to care for her, having had little experience with womenfolk in their small, old-fashioned town; they were missionaries, seeking to bring new life to their small way. Yet they cared for as they could, as best they could.
Her eyes remained firmly closed throughout the night as the men awaited for the awakening of their decidedly off guest.
She awoke later that evening, but passed out as soon as she had deposited her stomach's contents onto Jim's shirt, yet Fredrick patiently wiped her with soft, butterfly-light touches. Over night, with her apparent beauty and sleepy innocence, she had become an idol.
Kagome knew not how long she hovered in that state of half-consciousness, that state of starless infinity, of butterfly-soft touches upon her wan cheeks, songs with breaths of life that blew through her and through her mind, catches of repetitive snatches, and haunting spirit eyes that spoke volumes of a haunted soul.
Memories swirled before her, visions of old friends and older occurrences tumbling, ripping, screaming through her head, tearing and past her lips and out. Somehow it didn't matter now who the spirit eyes belonged to, she didn't…couldn't…and the masquerade still danced and sang; they still swirled in their coats and frills of sunny smiles and lacey frowns, their eyes always glowing like red-hot coals.
"And the masquerade still danced? Still sang? Still loved me as well as I loved you?"
"It is her, no? Do you not see it, my brother?" Jim asked gently; Fredrick's hand traced the milk carton picture, his face etched with an unintelligible emotion.
"She is beautiful. A dusk rose."
His eyes turned to the figure in the bed, and walking to it, he permitted his fingers such a luxury as they had always yearned, traveling over her sculpted features. "She's bound back?"
"''Fraid so." Jim did nothing to stop Fredrick's pursuit, only watched in grim understanding.
"Then we shall let her." Said Fredrick with such an unaccustomed heaviness that Jim stared at him long and hard before, nodding, patted his brother's shoulder and dialed the phone.
"I will." Fredrick gestured to the phone and passed it between both hands before putting his mouth to the receiver.
"Hello? Yes, this is Missing Persons? I have something to report…"
((())) Two days later…
Kagome could not stand their stares, these people who were her family. Family, it was a funny word as she could not remember one of them.
The old man muttered and had bad breath. The boy cried and looked at her a bit too hopefully; she was not the one he remembered, only one who looked like her. Mother smiled even through her crumpled mask; Kagome believed she liked her, even if the Masquerade was the only thing they had in common. There was no Father and it was something Kagome knew not to ask of.
They piled into the car, the small minivan sagging under their weight, and Kagome suffered through a brief, tense car ride "home."
"Kagome, hun?" She took off up stairs; racing instinctively to what she knew was her room.
"See you've found your room." Her mother remark almost dryly, coming in and shutting the door behind her. "All I want to do is talk." She said, holding up her hands before her in a quelling gesture.
"There seems to be nothing to talk about." Mother nodded solemnly.
"Oh Kagome," She sighed, and it was if a dam had been let loose inside her, but she spoke more to the open window then to the stranger, her daughter, beside her.
Cherry blossoms littered the desk underneath the window and Mother lifted herself to sit upon it, scooping up the pale petals and flowers into her lap and picking them apart.
"You were gone so long. Your friends, Hojo…and the others, they came every day but most…most lost hope eventually. I don't suppose you know how long you were gone? No, but six months. You'll have to go on independent study…" She stared out at an abandoned well and Kagome stared at her. "We gave up. You don't know it is to see you here…and then again, you shouldn't. It so beautiful, so terrifying, and so… please," Kagome looked away. "You understand don't you? That loss."
She stood suddenly, brushing the crumpled, broken bodies of the sukura from her kimono and sweeping out of the room. Kagome could only stare after her, not quite comprehending what had passed between them, or perhaps between the wall and her mother, having the feeling that perhaps this woman had come up here to talk before. Her hands rested on her lap and her expression morphed into one of thoughtfulness.
She pulled the sukura into her laps and could almost hear a voice in her ear: "…Loves me will….loves me not….and we'll dance round and round in the candle light…"
"How is she?" The demand came from a shadowy corner of the room, one in which the shadows seem in a fight with an invisible entity to lay right, rippling in a shadowy pool of twilight.
"I don't know, all I had to go on that she was alive was a mother's intuition. It's a stranger in there now; a terrible thing to say now that I have so much, her, back, but I can't help it. When I look in her eyes, it's not Kagome I see." She seemed to waver for a moment, her mask quivering. She sank against the wall, her voice now almost muffled, "I just don't know. Those men were kind enough to her, but, oh kami…how did she get to this state? What was so terrible…?" She let the question hang, hoping for an answer. "Masquerade: that's what they said she kept repeating…"
She felt a hand upon her shoulder and she clung to it, her mask disintegrating into wracking sobs that seemed to bite into the whole of her being.
The shadow did not know what to say, something that had never occurred in life, and could only hold her hand and pray.
"Kagome, please."