A/N: Let's consider this an early Thanksgiving treat/gift/appeasement, shall we?

Disclaimer: Yes, yes, I created Inuyasha in 1997... when I was seven years old.

Reflection

Nghi

Sometimes she liked to watch him.

It wasn't a cold stare, or even the steely gaze she often wore that made him squirm uncomfortably. It was more of an observation, looking in through the window and seeing how he was doing. She didn't consider it a weakness, since she had wanted – still wanted to drag him down to hell all this time. It was a small indulgence, watching him against the base of a tree, his eyes closed and his hands folded across his chest and his feelings withdrawn from everyone around him. Times like these, when she was hidden behind a black cloak of darkness, the shadows of the forest swallowing her into its depth... it was calming, and it made her feel less bitter, less angry, less empty. She was herself again, fifty years ago and still alive and having just laid her eyes on the lonely hanyou who had no one but himself. And although she was now a hollow, clay mold filled with dead souls, whatever semblance of warmth and fondness and rekindled affections she could manage, she tried to feel. She really did try, try to rekindle the romance and the flutters and the small flicker of relief he had always given her before.

But it was hard to feel love when you rose from the deceased with a broken heart and a scathing hurt burning inside your stomach, coiling and uncoiling and making you constantly sick.

Her black eyes, melted into the background, gazed at his long, silver hair and his little ears, drinking in all the details and flaws. He had been an outcast for being half of two worlds, and she had understood, empathized for his plight. She had come from a half of two worlds, too- the powerful miko humans and youkai had both feared, and the young, loveless girl humans and youkai had both never seen. They were so much alike, and they fitted together so perfectly, sympathized so wonderfully, comforted each other so naturally. She could faintly remember how the two had sat on the outskirts of the village on some nights, gazing at the sky and discovering the so, so cold layers of their embittered, callous emotions... two isolated hearts that had accidentally stumbled into something so new and foreign, inexperienced. She could still remember, if she tried hard enough to swallow past the suffocating bitterness and anger; it was all she felt nowadays, and it was the foundation, the very basis she was built upon, born from the hellish emotions of revenge and vengeance. No matter how much she wanted to die, to be slain in peace, or to feel anything besides complete hatred for the hanyou she had loved, her feelings couldn't change, the circumstances couldn't change, and she couldn't change. Especially her.

So she tried to pretend they never existed whenever she watched him from afar, pretend that she didn't want to shoot an arrow through his heart and watch him bleed, pretend that fifty years had never passed with the dust in the wind, and that she was still alive and breathing and sitting contentedly besides him and watching the stars twinkle lovingly above them. And she tried to extract the lingering feelings from the souls she had sinfully taken, trying to bend them, mold them, shape them into substitutes of affection and happiness and love.

It never worked.

She gazed neutrally – she wished she could gaze softly – at him still, wanting to touch – she wished she could feel – his calloused hands and remembering the small thumping in her heart – she wished she still had one – as he would let her fingers curl slightly around his own, his golden eyes smoldering in the dark. What would it feel like if she grasped his hand one more time? Would she experience the quickened heartbeat again? Would she ever see those eyes glitter secretly, only for her, underneath the half-moon?

A soul-stealer hummed in the silence, a lonely tune only she could hear. It was calling her back, sweet and lost and wicked, and she resisted its pull, curling backwards slightly and wishing, not for the first time that day, for the soul-stealer to leave her alone. It disappeared after a moment into the black night, its body faded and ephemeral, and for a few seconds her head, her conscience, was deceptively calm and quiet, and she started to stupidly hope that maybe, just maybe, she could finally be free again.

Then the bitterness began to seep in, slipping in-between the cracks of the weak barrier she had tried to put up around herself, and she struggled to keep it out, just a little longer because it was so nice not to burn of venom once in a while—

A voice worked its way into the air, and she watched with half a mind – the other trying to push back at the emptiness lapping at her legs – as the hanyou reacted, opening his eyes to look. She watched, losing, as his face contorted into a variety of expressions, from shock to confusion to anger, and then settled for embarrassment, and she saw, not for the first time, that he had changed, no longer lonely. He wasn't afraid of emotion and feeling anymore, and he looked so much happier with his… his friends, she realized, again not for the first time. He was so much happier now than when he had been with her, and even though the revelations and realizations and truths were all the same, all identical every time, she still couldn't stop the coldness from rising higher, like a stream that couldn't and wouldn't stop. With each laugh from the group and an elicited response from him, she felt the barrier straining from the pressure, the holes carving themselves everywhere and allowing the watery hurt and grudges to pour into the haven. It was up to her neck now, and she struggled to keep her head above the turbulent waves, her hands splashing wildly, trying to find anything to hold.

She found a dangling rope from the ceiling and grabbed onto the ends of it desperately, as if it would keep herself from being washed away like nothing.

The humor died out in the group eventually, and she saw the youngest member, a little kitsune, begin to engage the monk and exterminator in a lively conversation. It fell deaf on three pairs of ears, one of which was hiding behind a large tree. The water was at her nose, and she took in one, last savoring breath of no feelings, of no anger, of no pain, before it rose again, submerging her and devouring her completely. She was slipping just like all the other times, and she didn't know when she would be able to pretend like this again, pretend that everything was the past, pretend that nothing had changed, and it was so hard to cling weakly on such a small sliver of hope that she felt she might let go after the next second, and when she didn't, she felt she might let go after the next one, and when she didn't, at the next one, and the next one.

But.

Her hand was still holding on, stubbornly refusing to let go of the rope while the rest of her drowned. Not yet, not yet – it was too soon and too good to become enraged and resentful again, and she was fast losing her breath under all the water. But she wouldn't let go... not yet—

Her eyes flickered over to him calmly, and she found him gazing at the sky, just like he had done once upon a time ago. She found herself looking at the girl with an eerily familiar face that was wild and different, yet tame and accepting. It was a rougher image of her, of what she could resemble, of what she could have been, if she had been outward and spirited instead of solemn and isolated. And as she watched the two sitting side by side, their eyes cast heavenward almost as if they had been doing this for so long, she saw her reflection's hand creep forward until it barely lay atop his. (But it wasn't right – she hadn't even moved at all.) It was an action she had done many times in the past, accepting a lack of response as his response. And then she saw, still gazing at the hands that were so much like hers, his fingers move and wriggle gently until they covered the mirror's fingertips.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew who the reflection was, and that the girl who had done this, changed him so tremendously, stitched back his heart so beautifully… wasn't really her, and it wasn't her image, and it wasn't her, and it wasn't her reflection, and it wasn't her, and it wasn't her love, and it wouldn't be her—

She let go of the rope.

Her body plummeted into a water hell, her eyes blinking slowly, hardly trying to struggle for the thread from above, and her throat burned itself away, the last of her neutral bliss escaping from her mouth. The water was just as suffocating as she had imagined (Or was it remembered?), and it enveloped her with a welcoming embrace. And then—

She moved to her feet and turned around quietly to leave, almost floating away. Little soul-stealer, she whispered into the moonless night, come get him for me. She continued walking silently, the noise of the twigs muffled from underneath her feet, and then there was a small rustle in the wind, dancing past her face for a quick moment, and its tail brushed her cheeks consolingly, almost sadly.

It was strangely cold again.

-

finis