Memory's Moon: Dreams and Illusions
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If this was a dream, Kagome thought blearily, she wanted to wake up now.
This dream sucked.
This dream had Inuyasha and Shippou's dead bodies in it, Sango's twisted corpse, and a dome-shaped hole gouged in the earth that could only be the site of Miroku's last stand. It had the stench of despair, the bitterness of tears, and the raw smell of uncooked steak- amongst other things.
This dream had Naraku in it, the heavy sweetness of his shouki lingering in the air as he stared impassively at her, bloodied but clearly alive.
This dream had splinters in her hands from a bow snapped in half, scrapes across her exposed knuckles, slashes bleeding a distant warmth down her sides in half a dozen different places.
This dream had Kikyou's stunned face, frozen in its last moments of epiphany as her clay body turned to stone and crumbled away, her tortured soul escaping into the next world in a white mist that only another miko could have seen.
This dream had herself, alone, afraid, and exhausted.
She pinched herself hard.
The dream wouldn't disappear.
It wasn't… a dream.
Higurashi Kagome turned tail and started running, hard.
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What had brought her here?
Why did you come here?
"They're all dead," she replied dully, too weary to stop the moisture from dripping down her dirt-smudged cheeks. She'd run and run and run, mind blank to everything but the pounding despair in her skull, away from the slaughtering field and what it represented.
The end of her innocence.
The end of hope.
The end of the childish belief that she, the lucky one who had once carried the Shikon no Tama, would always have a happy ending, just like all fairytales.
She'd been such a fool, and it had taken her friends' corpses to strip her blindfold away.
Why did you come here, then?
To be honest, she didn't really understand how her feet had brought her here. Possibly, this place lay in a straight line from the battlefield… but she didn't know the way back… didn't know the way anywhere anymore.
The one thing she knew for certain was that it was her fault because she could have protected their happy ending, if only she had had the courage to make that one last sacrifice.
But she hadn't had the courage.
The glowing weapon, driven deep into the beaten earth before her, waited for her reply, and she had the uncanny sense that it, as much as the ghostly form of a human male standing beyond it, was examining her soul, looking for- something.
The soul of someone prepared to give up everything for a greater good?
Huh.
She lowered her gaze, blinking away gritty moisture. "I… have to end this."
The transparent shape gazed at her, almost thoughtfully, while she awaited judgment in what must have been a village, at some point. The houses still stood, their damage more a result of time and animals, than of one of the frequent petty wars the Sengoku Jidai was named for.
Had the blade… done this? In this era, if a thing of power came into a village, it usually ended up in a shrine, given the respect and fear that it deserved. But this one had been thrust deep into the ground of what had once been the village square, slightly skewed to one side, and giving off a pulsing glow through its sheath as if it possessed an incandescent heart.
Sort of like the Shikon no Tama?
Her chest clenched painfully, but it was a distant pain. After a few days of nothing but depression and brittle resolve to sustain her, she was feeling wonderfully distant from everything. It wouldn't last, though. She had read enough books on trauma to know that eventually- probably at the most inopportune time, like her final battle with the real Naraku- the distance would fade and she would dissolve into a hysterical wreck then and there.
Way to go, Kagome.
The ghostly male raised his head, and she suddenly became aware of the outline of strange symbols- like the Sanskrit that Miroku had tried to teach her while they made ofuda by flickering firelight- circling restlessly in his see-through body in an unhurried spiral dance.
This is the Sword of Memory's Moon, Oborezuki.
Take up this blade if you are prepared to sacrifice the reason for your pain.
Something about his emotionless words set off warning signals in her tired head, and she found that she didn't quite trust this shikigami in the way she used to trust strangers before.
Hell, she didn't trust anything the way she used to, before. Before… everything.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, eyes narrowing. Despite the listless weight that dragged on her bones, she was still Kagome and Kagome had been innocent, not retarded or suicidal. She'd had enough of vaguely-worded sacrifices for seven hundred lifetimes; those usually ended up asking more and more, and paying out less and less as one realized their true import.
The shikigami shrugged briefly, a surprisingly 'modern' gesture from this apparition dressed in the billowing robes of an ancient onmyouji. She hadn't seen anyone else in this era make such a movement naturally; her companions had picked it up from her in the course of their hunt.
What was this sword anyway?
It will eliminate the enemy who caused your pain, but in return it will demand the memory of the reason for your pain.
No power is without sacrifice.
She smiled bitterly as the words died softly on the wind.
If she had to forget Shippou, Inuyasha, Sango, Miroku, and everything else she had fought so hard to protect…
If that was to be her sacrifice…
Her hands closed over leather and glowing smooth wood with the finality of a suicide bomber gripping his self-detonate remote, and she felt a crazy sort of grimace curl the corners of her mouth upwards in a grief-twisted parody of the carefree smile she had once sported.
"I knew that long ago, shikigami-san," she told him, and pulled the sword from its crevice with all the painful determination that was all she had to fight with now.
He bowed his head, fading away like cigarette smoke on the wind, and she was left in the ruins of a village that had died in a dream of forgetting, holding a sword that would excise the past three years of her life from her living memory, in exchange for a future that had no need for such memories.
The sword's pulsing glow dimmed as she gathered her energies for the last stand she would ever take, vanishing altogether as she stuck it through the waistband of her borrowed hakama.
Everything was going to turn out… okay. Maybe not for her, but at least it would change something.
Higurashi Kagome began to run.
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A/N: Second chapter. Huh. That was pretty fast for me… and I'm aiming to finish it in under ten chapters… so this is pretty good, too. Reviews appreciated greatly, as always; thanks to that one reviewer who was the only one of 52 hits (as of 12 noon this morning) who actually reviewed… sigh. Feed the author, please.