Chapter 8: And things get worse and worse.

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."

- William Congreve (1670 - 1729)

"You are back..." The child let out a light giggle.

Kagome opened her eyes, but she could not see anything. She was standing, on something that felt solid and yet not, and there was no light. The place was so dark, the blackness seemed to eat into her eye sockets and for a while, she wondered whether she still had her eyes. Fingers reaching up to her face, she could feel the concave surface of her eyeballs, yet she was as blind as she could ever imagine.

"You can't see?" The child's tone sounded disappointed.

Kagome nodded; she did not feel so afraid this time round.

"What a pity..." The child let out a soft sigh.

"Why?" She asked while she rubbed her arms; it still felt as cold as before, although the child seemed rather normal today.

"Is it cold here? Would you like to see?" The child answered with a question.

Kagome thought for a while; she was no longer with Sesshoumaru and the dreams should have ended. She did not understand why the child reappeared and pushing back that smidgen of fear; she nodded because she was curious to know who the child was.

Before she could say anything, a pair of small hands held hers and her lips parted at the contact; the grip was gentle and soft, but icy-cold.

"Don't be scared, ne?" The child smiled, and Kagome could feel the illogical warmth of it despite the cold hands, which was odd yet reassuring in a nice way.

"Can you see me now?"

Kagome blinked, and the darkness melted away instantaneously, as if someone had lifted up the veil over her head and grayness flooded her field of sight along with a child's face. At first, it looked a bit blurry but as she blinked again, the features began to define further and then she gasped.

"Rin!"

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Despite the scorching overhead sun, Sesshoumaru did not stop walking.

He walked, and walked and walked. The muscles in his legs and back were aching and burning, his whole body was covered in a never-drying film of perspiration, and the sound of insects was buzzing so loud in his ears; yet he refuse to stop.

On and on his feet carried him forward to his destination, to the place where he had been turned into a human. Perhaps he could find some clues to how the curse had been laid on him and the people who had done it. He tried to occupy his mind with such things, tried to focus on the goal that he might be able to reverse or lift the curse and if that happened, he would restore his clan and kingdom and do many, many things that he had not done before.

He veered off his course to a nearby stream and squatted as he refreshed himself and quenched his thirst. The water was cooling to his parched throat, yet there was this feverish sensation at the back of his eyes that would not subside. He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut; willing the vexing, pathetic emotion to go away.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was his own reflection; clear and sharp in the bluish stream.

His eyes were large and slanted, his nose was sharp and high, his cheekbones were prominent and defined, his lips were thin and tight, and his jaws were firmly set against his oval face. There was no crescent moon on his forehead, no maroon stripes that slashed across his cheeks nor rimmed his eyes. His once beautiful silver mane was now stubbornly dark brown, and very messy and clumpy.

And he thought, she loves me, this 'me'.

Sesshoumaru slapped away his reflection and fumed. He would not think about that bitch; he would not, he would not-

"Tell me a secret," her voice rung melodiously in his ears, as if it was only yesterday that she asked him this question.

Secrets, so many secrets they had exchanged. Yet they are still as far from each other as they were in the beginning.

He never knew that a human heart was this useless; it was twisting and thrashing, hankering and hungering for the one person that he wanted to hate. For the woman he once thought he could spend the rest of his human years with, if he was unable to reverse the curse. He had also once thought himself fortunate in a way, to be able to meet her, to gain her faith and her love-

I should have killed her, the image of that man caressing her breast came to his mind and his reflection glared back at him.

Sesshoumaru clenched his fists and decided that the one good thing that came out from this overflow of abundant human emotions was anger. It gave him an extra burst of energy to continue on with a re-focused mind on what he would and would not do in the future. He rose to his feet and combed his fingers through the long lock of thick hair that hung at the end of Tenseiga's hilt while adrenalin pumped through his veins like fire and ice on earth.

Her life is mine, eventually.

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The little girl nodded her head and flashed another of her sunshine smiles, although it was tainted with something else that Kagome couldn't quite recognize. Rin looked exactly as before, with her short messy hair and large watery eyes while she continued to hold her hands. Kagome wanted to ask Rin why and what she was doing in her dreams when something happened.

Right before her very eyes, Rin's face started to change; her face became sharper, her hair longer and neater, her ruddy complexion became smooth and porcelain-like, and her body taller and more filled out.

"Rin..."

"This is the grown up me," Rin smiled shyly at the pregnant miko whose eyes briefly lingered on her belly.

"Grown up...?" Kagome repeated her words, not sure why little Rin was going through the transformation and stared at her open-mouthed as her kimono changed into a prettier one.

Rin nodded, "This is my world... I go through this everyday..."

A shudder ran down Kagome's spine; something was not right, "Rin, why? Why are you here? Why am I here?"

"Why?" Rin giggled, but it sounded so heavy and sad that Kagome no longer found it cheerful or genial. She wanted to pull her hands away, but Rin was still clutching hers, not too tightly but firmly.

"Because I hate you."

The hairs on the back of Kagome's neck stood on end, and she swallowed as Rin's face started to transform again, "Hate... hate me?"

Rin gave her long hair a wild shake, and revealed her teeth while the corners of her mouth twisted upwards, "Jealous, I am very jealous!"

Kagome struggled hard, but her hands were in a death-grip and it seemed that the more she tried, the tighter the grip became. Her heart was thumping so hard that she found it a little hard to breathe. "Rin! Let me go!"

Horrible gashes started to appear on her face, blood stained her pearly white teeth and her kimono was getting torn by invisible hands and Kagome could hear dreadful, ghastly animalistic growls while her hands sweated and trembled.

"Why! Why does he love you, not me! Why did he chase me away? Why? After I gave myself to him! Why! WHY!"

Kagome squeezed her eyes shut, yet she still could see Rin shouting into her face while teeth marks appeared on her bloodied face and chunks of flesh disappeared down the throats of unseen beasts. She quickly covered her face, for Rin's severed hands had fallen onto the floor and her floating decapitated head glared at her, her eyeless sockets filled with burning hatred and vengeance and jealousy.

"No, Sesshoumaru-sama is mine! Mine, mine, MINE! He shan't have you! No, no, NO!"

Kagome screamed as loud as she could.

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His head jerked forward with his mouth gaping open for breath while beads of perspiration dotted his forehead.

Someone had screamed, so loudly that he could feel the sound-waves bouncing off and against the inner walls of his skull. It gave him a splitting headache, and he thought the scream sounded familiar. A fat droplet of rain splashed onto the end of his nose and that broke his train of thoughts.

Sesshoumaru looked around and realized that he had fallen asleep against the tree while waiting for the rain to stop. It was a weird rain, one without thunders or lightnings but it was heavy, so heavy and thick that it was still raining by the time he woke up. His kimono clung onto him in crumpled patches and his human hair was sticky, matted and clumpy too. With childlike amazement, he stretched out a hand and watched how the rainwater collected in his palm, trickled down his hands and fell off the crevices in between his fingers.

Somehow, the rainwater didn't seem to dribble off her chin the same way it did to his hand. It was rather different, he clearly remembered. While he was thrusting into her like a man half-gone in his head under the pitter-patter of the rain on his back, the image of raindrops sliding off from her chin, down her throat and in between her fair, gleaming breasts, was mesmerizing and vivid.

It was so enchanting, so captivating, so hypnotizing that he had paused for a while, and she took that chance to flip their bodies over while he was still deep inside her. And while she rested her forehead against his, with her wet hair framing her oval face, he thought she looked like a goddess. A glowing, golden goddess who was humping him madly like there were no tomorrows, and while his eyes were fixed on the curves of her glorious bouncing breasts, he wondered how life would be like if they had a child.

A child like Rin, perhaps.

But.

Sesshoumaru shook the damned thoughts out of his mind and resumed his walk, even though the remorseless torrential rains continued like knives perniciously scraping down his back.

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Her eyes flipped open like switches and she gasped as she tried to breathe and cry at the same time.

Was it true? Her dreams and what Rin had told her? It seemed so surreal that she was not sure whether it was just a figment of her imagination even though some part of her told her that it wasn't. She couldn't believe it; Sesshoumaru had fucked Rin, the girl who adored him like god and had chosen to leave her human life behind to pursue him. Did he force himself on her? Or was it consensual? What had exactly happened?

Questions bombarded her mind like ruthless, unstoppable bullets and she struggled to ward them off. On the other hand, the knowledge that they had sex disgusted and disconcerted her badly. He didn't tell her that he had deflowered his ward, and the reason why he had withheld that information from her was like a dagger that lodged itself permanently in her heart. Why couldn't he be honest with her? Why did he even do that in the first place? But he was so remorseful, so in pain when he recounted his guilt and regrets towards Rin to her, that Kagome was no longer sure what was what anymore.

So many loopholes, so little details, and so much, so much hurt hung between her and him.

It was then, that Kagome realized that she did not understand the youkai-Sesshoumaru at all. Her comprehension of his character was limited to his human side, and it saddened her very much because an important part of him was forever lost to her, which was probably the barrier that separated her from him. Like two people trapped in two different yet adjacent worlds, filled with dusty mirrors at all angles, and both desperately trying to look for each other through their reflections, wondering which one would be the real person.

And he would not break his mirrors, because Sesshoumaru wanted to remain in his world, after all. Just like Inuyasha and his desire to become a full-blooded youkai, and Kagome couldn't understand why.

She wanted to cry, because she was also trapped in her own world and no matter how many mirrors she was willing to smash for him, she knew that she would never reach him unless he wished for it. And she was no longer sure of anything anymore now that he had left her with nothing but their child in her womb. Kagome was so afraid too, because she was so very alone with no pillars of mental nor emotional support.

I shouldn't have jumped into the well, the words repeated themselves in her head when she heard a soft sigh. Her eyes flitted around, wanting to make sure that the dead Rin had not followed her, when she realized that she was in a room with only one expiring candlelight on the table.

And her hands were tied to the back of a wooden chair that she was sitting on.

Defense and survival instincts rose up so quickly that it threw her off tangent momentarily as she struggled to recall what had happened before she was brought here. Her mind and mouth seemed to be swathed in cotton and as she strove to speak, a person stepped into view.

"Thinking about old times, Kagome-sama?"

She drew in a sharp breath of air, and could recognize the handsome looking man who had given her his handkerchief under the wane yellow candlelight.

"Who- who are you?" Her voice trembled.

He smiled again, and she wanted to tear his mouth for that, "Don't you recognize me... at all?"

She stared hard at him, and for the longest while as her brain neurons worked doubly hard, she gasped out loud as that imaginary light bulb lit up in her head.

The smile, that unnerving smile.

"You- you are the monk, and... and that young man who got lost... Who, who are you!" Kagome wrestled hard with the binding rope and tried not to show her fear, unsuccessfully though.

He grinned a little and pliantly continued, "Ah you have noticed, not too stupid my dear Kagome-sama."

She flinched at the way he called her name; his voice was like oil and water together.

"But, we have business here. No more dilly-dallying, no, no more of that. I have waited long enough, and even though I hadn't expected you to come back, but its good news for me. Bonus, if you get what I mean," the man tossed his long hair back and let out another lazy smile.

Kagome frowned and narrowed her eyes, "What are you talking about! You cursed Sesshoumaru, didn't you! Who the hell are you!" The chair stomped angrily, but her wrists were still tightly bound.

The man stepped forward, turned around and disrobed. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, for fear that he might rape her but when he swept his hair forwards over his shoulders, something caught her eye.

It was small, and even though the light in the room was not bright, there was no doubt about it.

There was a small spider-like scar on his spine, and all coherent thoughts flew out from her mind instantaneously.

"Naraku", she mouthed hoarsely, and all of her energy seem sapped out with that utterance.

Did I break your brain?

I am not twisted, it just seems to me that this will happen if Rin grows up beside the ever-unchanging Sesshoumaru. And yes, Naraku is one big fucking bastard here. I mean, there must be a big villain in every fic right?

Early update because I feel like it. :)