Memory's Moon: The Exacted Price
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She didn't remember how she had gotten here- the journey seemed like barely a foggy blink away- but when the blink of her eyes revealed Kanna's emotionless countenance, she smiled.
The abyss youkai stood before her, framed by the shouki of her creator's fortress, empty hands by her sides, pale and perfect as a demented porcelain doll. Her usually neat, tamed hair had been roughly torn from its childlike pin-up, hanging in uneven wisps about her white face, hanks shorn unevenly as if it had been scissored by someone's shaking hands.
Kanna stood before Higurashi Kagome, huge black eyes dead and bleak- as if Kagura's death had broken her.
And then the girl crumpled to her knees, waiflike in her simple peasant smock, placed her hands on the ground, and bent her forehead to the dirt. Without words, without emotions, the anguish in her hunched body cried out louder than the wail of a bereaved mother.
"Get up," Kagome said shortly, drawing the blade. She was no swordsman, but a strange reflex seethed in her veins; the draw was smooth and expert as if she had swung a sword for most of her life. The blade glowed with a pale moonshine aura, the tip incandescing as it was leveled at the abased youkai.
Kanna did not move.
"Get up! I know what you're trying to do, Naraku. I won't fall for it again."
"Kagura is dead," came the earth-muffled whisper, while its owner crouched unmoving.
"Everyone I ever cared about is dead, too," the ex-miko snapped harshly, her chin describing a short, angry arc in the air. "Get up, Naraku! I won't stoop to your level."
"He is not here."
Furiously, Kagome glared at the impediment in her path. "You ARE Naraku! He made you. You tried to suck out my soul. If you followed his orders, you're with him."
Kanna did not answer, but she pressed her face closer to the ground until a dull hiss of steel signaled the lull of Kagome's suspicions; only then did she minutely shift, somehow communicating her need to be commanded. Kagome eyed the abyss-youkai sullenly for a moment, eyes narrowed, before a frustrated sigh escaped her lips. "Get up already."
Obligingly, Kanna got to her feet. She still retained the zephyr-like aura of times past, balanced lightly on small pale feet as if she would dissolve on the wind any moment, but there was something strangely… solid to her, now. "I thought Naraku made you."
"He made us," Kanna agreed in her quiet, dead voice. "And he broke us."
Memory intruded- a single feather drifting into the sky, spiraling endlessly- and faded just as suddenly, leaving the ex-miko wondering at the sudden inexplicable sensation of loss that pricked sharply at her heart.
"So you came here to find me?"
Kanna stared at the ground, as she had always done. "He already knows you approach intending to kill him. Kanna did not lead him here."
A thick, hostile silence blanketed the area.
"Kanna will join Kagura when he dies. Kanna will take you there." The white girl turned slowly, and a pale slender finger pointed to the shouki-shrouded fortress. "And then Kanna will leave."
Kagome blinked, the strange emptiness a cool black weight in her torso, like an invisible mental Kazaana. Thoughts flitted through her mind, down her throat and into the emptiness, leaving cool-headed resolve and just a tiny bit of compassion for the misborn youkai. "Leave?"
The mirror was back in Kanna's hands, and the abyss youkai was turning fully toward the fortress. "Kagura… wished to take Kanna flying."
Kagome's thoughts filtered down to the hole in her side, the pale scar where the Shikon no Tama had once slept- the hole that Oborezuki's bound hilt rested against. But there was still enough in Kagome's mind for her to realize what Kanna intended to do, and just enough for her to sorrow, in the silences of her rage-stricken mind where no light fell.
"Maybe, when all this is over, I can go flying with you," the older girl said quietly, falling into step behind the small abyss youkai.
Kanna paused in midshuffle, looked over one slender, rounded shoulder, and smiled.
Let's go flying someday.
The wind sighed around them, drew in a breath, and faded into the autumn sunset.
----
They walked together in comradely silence as the earth rolled back under their feet, the cool darkness of full dark settling around them as if even the Moon Goddess, Tsukiyomi, blessed their endeavor.
Wait. Kagome scowled as she shook her head hard, not breaking stride.
Tsukiyomi? BLESSING? Since when do I-
The suspicion grew in her mind, flared, and disappeared.
At her side, Oborezuki's saya glittered briefly.
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Kanna led them through the moon-frosted grounds in ghostly silence, the unearthy surreality of it all only exacerbated by the total lack of puppets or challenges lying around the place. On one hand, it was a relief not to have to waste energy fighting a whole lot of things that probably counted as Naraku's inexhaustible stunt doubles, but then a small niggling doubt starting in Kagome's mind started insisting that Kanna was tricking her somehow.
"That sword…" Kanna said suddenly, shuffling through a labyrithine maze of shoji screens, "why do you bear it?"
Almost instinctively, Kagome's left hand clenched on the top of the sheath, where polished wood met molded metal in the hilt. "What's it to you?"
"It feels… familiar." A tiny twitch of the white-clad shoulder approximated a fascismile of a shrug, though nothing so expressive as the Western mannerism Kagome had noted from the sword's shikigami caretaker. "Like Kanna."
Pat pat pat went their soft feet on the meticulously waxed floor. Did Naraku get his puppets to do it for him, or did he actually have servants for it, Kagome wondered idly. "It has what I need," she answered simply, the great emptiness echoing tinnily in her chest.
Kanna did not reply, but her mirror cast a soft light on their path, and that light flickered. The abyss youkai came to a halt, raising her gaze almost uncertainly to the darkness ahead. "He… waits. Kanna can lead you no further." Her head bowed, the butchered locks trailing lankly over the curves of her face. "Kanna is sorry."
Kagome hestitated, coming to stand abreast of her unlikely guide, and surprised both of them by reaching out to pat Kanna's head softly. The bottomless eyes glanced up at her, widened slightly as colorless lips formed a slight comma of surprise. "Get far away from here," the ex-miko said quietly, turning away from the uncharacteristic display of emotion. "As far away as you can. Okay?"
There was a slight hesitation, followed by a shake of Kanna's pale head. "Kanna will wait at the gates," the abyss youkai breathed with a new note of stubborn finality, and, ducking under Kagome's hand, shuffled back the way they had come.
Kagome resumed walking.
Three steps on, the sword pulsed softly in its sheath and she could no longer recall what had led her to this strange place.
----
"It's really quite sad, you know," he told her calmly as the blade shone between them. "You're making a worse exchange than Onigumo ever did."
She stared at him with fading blue eyes and made no reply, her left hand leaving its steadying grip on the saya to clasp the sword-grip in a menacing fashion.
"You probably don't even remember what you're doing here anymore."
Shouki curled around them, disappearing as it approached her body. Magenta mixed with moonshine, the ex-miko glowed like the Tama itself given human form, though the crystal in question pulsed darkly in the folds of his elaborate robes. The girl smiled hazily, the look of a kamikaze about to dive-bomb his target. "You're right, I don't remember what your name is… but you won't remember either."
He smirked at her. "You play with things you do not understand, miko."
The blade blurred in the air as she moved with a practiced grace not her own.
"That's ex-miko… and you can… go to hell."
The last thing she remembered as Oborezuki filled the air with blinding silver light, was Naraku's strangely peaceful face, a frantic crimson blur, and the hard warmth of the quickly purified Shikon no Tama as it shot into her side like an arrow loosed from a vengeful miko's bow.
She fell into darkness to the accompaniment of someone screaming for her to stop.
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A/N: I'm not good at fight scenes… and I crave reviews… and it's MONDAY. (;...;)
Next Chapter: Kagome's back. Naraku's gone. And everything's going pear-shaped…