HAPPY FREAKIN' NEW YEAR ALL.

WARNING: This is the ickiest chapter I've typed up to date: there are some descriptions of scenes some people may not be able to handle, and since they are littered throughout the chapter, I decided against signaling where they were, so read at your own risk. Consequently, this is also the most depressing chapter I've typed up to date—really, I depressed myself as I was writing it. Just a heads up. But it's a really short chapter, so I won't be bombarding you with misery for pages and pages—it's only eleven pages. Like I said, I depressed myself, and by the eleventh page I had to end either the chapter or my life, and decided ending the chapter was a better idea. I'd say "enjoy," but considering the content of this one, I think that may come off a bit ghoulish, so I'll refrain.


Disclaimer: see One through Nine
Words To Know:

hokora: small shrine

(h'm…perhaps "Word To Know" would have been more correct…oh well, who gives a flying damn—on with the show)


Chapter Twelve: Jagged Little Pill

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As I walk through this wicked world,

Searching for light in the darkness of insanity,

I ask myself, Is all hope lost?

Is there only pain, and hatred, and misery?

"(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?"/ A Perfect Circle

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He smelled death.

Sesshoumaru stopped and tested the air. Yes, he smelled death: smoke and blood and decaying flesh. They would be coming upon it in another few miles.

"Something wrong?" Kagome asked timidly.

He did not answer, merely began walking again.

Kagome watched him, unsure if she should ask the question again. They hadn't spoken since last night. Not that she was eager to. He had been frightening in his rage. Kagome still felt responsible, even though she wasn't sure she was to blame. She didn't even know why she had been able to see his memories, feel his memories. She'd have to ask Miroku later tonight.

As they continued, Kagome began smelling smoke. At first, she thought it was wood-smoke from the cook fires of a nearby village. But something slid down her back, a tight coldness that made her uneasy. And with every step they took, the smell got more potent. Too potent to simply be cooking fires.

She saw dark plumes of smoke, and caught the faint, insidious hint of copper in the air. And when they stepped out of the woods, she saw what she had been dreading: where once there had been a village, there was now nothing more than smoking piles of blackened wood.

Kagome stopped and looked at the devastation, eyes watering. It seemed like every time she forgot where she was, Fate decided to remind her.

They got to the first body just ten feet from the tree line. It was a young woman, her head with its horrible glassy-eyed, terror-frozen stare laying in the grass next to her. Beside her, a small child lay disemboweled, the guts spilling over the grass in hideous imitation of streamers. Kagome felt the bile rise in her throat, but forced herself to swallow it down. She looked up at the sky, feeling her heart thud painfully against her ribs. Unfortunately, she was further sickened by the blue firmament and white clouds and sunshine. How could the sun shine so brightly over such a hideous sight?

Kagome forced herself to walk toward the village—or what was left of it—trying to ignore the corpses strewn about, trying to ignore the smell of old blood and already rotting tissue, and the more sinister scent of burning skin that clogged her nose. These people had been brutally slaughtered. Blood drenched the earth. It was…she didn't even know how to describe it. Only that she was horrified and furious.

"What did this?" she managed to ask Sesshoumaru. She refused to think that someone could have done such a thing—it had to be a thing, a monstrosity, an abomination against Nature and the gods. It had to be. Because she didn't think she'd be able to live with herself if this had been the work of another human, one of her own kind.

"A small army," he replied, the first words he'd spoken to her.

"Human?" she forced herself to ask.

"A few. Mostly youkai. This was the work of that bastard youkai."

Kagome closed her eyes and bowed her head. She'd gotten a taste of the unknown demon's power last night—now, she was seeing, first hand, the desolation it could bring.

"Wasteful, mindless slaughter," Sesshoumaru muttered. He glanced around, disgusted with such a shameful show of excess, then began walking again, obviously intent on continuing on. He stopped when he didn't hear her tread behind him.

"Miko," he said, looking over his shoulder.

She was standing there, gripping her bow so tightly he thought it might snap in two. Her head was bowed, her body held rigid. She did not reply.

"Start walking or I'll make you," he threatened.

She raised her head and looked at him. Her eyes were watering—he could smell the scent of salt water—but she held her chin taut. She was white-faced, obviously shaken.

"These people need to be buried," she said, and managed to keep her voice from shaking.

He raised an eyebrow.

"We don't have time for that," he replied, and began walking.

"Maybe you don't…but I do."

He stopped and turned, nostrils flaring in bad temper. He was still not over the affront of her invasion of his private thoughts and memories. He had avoided talking to her all morning, sure that if he so much as looked at her, he'd rip her apart without a second thought. He was so furious he wanted to slaughter her like some kind of mindless beast. But more than that, he wanted to insult her, wanted to demean her in any and every way possible. His youkai blood was hungry for satisfaction, the darkness was welling up, threatening to take over. It was a frightening sensation for him. He had always been able to control the darker aspects of his soul, the facets that lusted for blood and pain. But last night…last night, he'd almost snapped, and he'd come within bare inches of digging his claws into her soft flesh and ripping her open and bathing in her blood. That slip, brief though it had been, had scared him badly, which had only served to infuriate him more. Attacking the forest had been a desperate effort to satisfy the need to hurt something. But his youkai blood had wanted to hear suffering, and trees didn't scream in terror and agony when one cut them down or melted them into nothing. Miko, on the other hand, did….

"Woman," he snapped hoarsely, "you will not be happy if you persist in this stubbornness."

"I'm going to bury them, Sesshoumaru!" she shouted, furious. She began glowing. It would have been an impressive sight, if red hadn't begun filtering into his vision. "Maybe you can leave them here like this, but I can't!"

He did the only thing he could do: he left her there, in the center of the destruction. It was walk away, or kill her like an animal.

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Kagome cried while she dug the graves.

She had never truly buried the dead that the shard hunters had occasionally come upon. That had been Miroku and Inuyasha's job. She had laid flowers over the freshly turned dirt and felt sad for whoever had died. But there was no Inuyasha or Miroku around to do the dirty work. There was no Sesshoumaru either. There wasn't a single soul to give a damn but her. And even as she hated it, even as she cried, even as she threw up when the horror of it all overwhelmed her, she kept on digging grave after grave after grave and dragging body after body after body to their final, earthly resting places.

She cleaned the bodies as best she could. Those who had been beheaded were reunited with their lost skulls in their graves. Those who had been relieved of their entrails were left without them, as she couldn't bring herself to scoop up the intestines and return them to their owners. It was bad enough she had picked up disembodied heads, almost all of them with the eyes still wide open, looking ahead at nothing with the same awful glassy-eyed, terror-frozen stare the first woman she'd seen had been wearing. She forced herself to shut the eyes, an action which triggered her gag reflex every time without fail, until her stomach began to ache.

In the end, she was as exhausted by the work of burying seventy-odd people as she was by the work of mourning each and every one of them. Especially since she did both simultaneously.

There had been no sign of Sesshoumaru, for which Kagome was glad. She wanted to be alone, away from him. She almost wished he'd forget she was here, forget she existed. She was tired of him. She was tired of death. She wanted to go home, or better yet, she wanted this to be a nightmare. She wanted to awaken and be at home, in her bed, safe and far away from all this unspeakable suffering. Once upon a time, she had wanted to live out her life in this place, with Inuyasha. Now, she bitterly cursed herself for such blind foolishness. This era was about hunger and deprivation. Misery and pain. But above all, it was about blood and death—here, Death was a king. And he feasted on the blood of innocents.

She sat, back bowed, before the graves she'd dug and filled. She hated them suddenly. She hated them for reminding her. She wasn't fifteen and innocent anymore. She was twenty-seven, nearly twenty-eight. And she could no longer dismiss the more unpleasant aspects of life, because they were happening to her, in front of her.

"How could you stand being brought into such a dismal place?" she asked the new rows of mounds of dirt.

There was no answer, of course. Just the wind stirring the long grass as the sun went down.

She blessed the graves and said prayers for the souls, as Miroku had been teaching her in her dreams. He had been supplementing her spiritual education in addition to helping her learn to control her ki. She supposed she ought to be thankful that he'd provided her with the ability to send these unfortunate people on to the next world. But all she could do was sit there and wish they had never been born. Wish that she had never fallen through the well for a second time.

"It's my own fucking fault," she whispered hollowly. "If I'd just stayed out of that fucking hokora in the first place, I never would have come back here. I hate this place. I hate the suffering and the death and the misery. I hate it."

She looked down at her hands. They were badly blistered from the rough wooden handle of the shovel she'd used all day, lined with dirt and caked with blood. Her robes were equally soiled: the white haori was smudged with dirt…and the red hakama were stained dark from walking through blood all day long. She stared down at her dirty, bleeding hands as if she'd never seen them before in her life. She felt herself retreating, felt herself mentally retiring from the immediate situation. It was easier to deal with it if she pretended she was an outsider observing. If only for a little while. Because sooner or later, reality would intrude again, and she'd have to get up.

Just before she retreated completely, she threw back her head and yelled, voice anguished,

"It wasn't supposed to be like this!"

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He hadn't forgotten.

Kagome lifted her head when she heard the barest whisper of a tread behind her. She felt his youki, knew who it was, and sighed in resignation. He was back for her.

Sesshoumaru watched her stir. He had thought she had fallen asleep in front of the graves. That, or been meditating. And yet, he knew the second one couldn't be a possibility, because he had heard her tortured cry earlier, and someone so full of despair wouldn't be meditating any time soon. And, surprisingly or perhaps not so surprisingly, he had been able to relate to both the turmoil of feeling in the voice and the sentiment of the words:

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Well then…how was it supposed to be? He didn't know. But he was certain it wasn't supposed to be this.

"Miko," he said quietly.

"Sesshoumaru," she returned tiredly, voice barely audible.

"Get up."

For once, she didn't argue: she slowly got to her feet and turned around. And walked away from the graves without a backward glance. He fell into step beside her, and they walked in silence from the ruin. Neither one said anything about stopping. In truth, neither one wished to stop. They only wanted to get away, wanted to outdistance the village and what it represented: a bitter loss of innocence and a grim testament of things to come.

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They walked all through the next day, silent. The mood was heavy, oppressive, but for once, Kagome couldn't find it in her to give a damn.

They came across another slaughtered village. This time, Sesshoumaru didn't say a word when Kagome found and picked up a broken shovel and walked toward the small cemetery. He didn't help her. He wanted no part of this. He dealt death—he did not stay around to pick up the pieces. That wasn't his job, his place. Instead, he watched her, leaving the village and standing in the mid-day gloom of the forest. She worked with an economy of movement he hadn't thought her possible of, efficient, if a little—all right, more than a little—world-weary. She looked worn down.

He watched her silently clean a mangled body, drag it to a grave, roll it in, pick up the shovel and cover the corpse, then go back to another and do it all over again. This village was smaller than the other one; there were only fifty-eight people to attend to here.

When she had buried the last body, she stood in front of the fresh mounds and performed whatever burial rituals humans did, then picked up her pack and bow and walked toward the wood where he stood. And again, as before, he fell into step beside her and they silently walked away from the gruesome scene.

Idly, he noted that the sun was shining through the tree tops.

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They camped that night.

Each went through the familiar motions: he picked a tree to settle down under and proceeded to do just that. She prepared a sparse dinner, cleaned up and spread her blankets, then went to the river to bathe. She returned and combed out her hair.

They sat in silence for almost an hour. Then:

"Where did you go the other day, after leaving the first village?" she asked quietly, voice soft and tired.

"Hunting," he said finally, after a long pause.

She was quiet for a beat.

"Successful?"

He paused again.

"Hai."

She nodded, put her comb away and tied back her hair. Then she went to the blankets she had spread out next to him, and lay down and covered herself up. Sesshoumaru watched the fire, not really seeing anything. Kagome reached out and took hold of his kimono sleeve.

"I hate this place." she said quietly.

He didn't reply, and they didn't speak anymore that night.

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Miroku was waiting for her when she appeared on the dreamscape.

"Kagome-sama," he said, his voice heavy with feeling.

"Why am I seeing Sesshoumaru's memories?" she asked bluntly.

Miroku watched her, then extended a hand toward her. She accepted it, and he turned and gave her a hand a tug before letting go.

"Keep up," he said. She had a feeling he didn't just mean walking.

He waited until they had walked several feet before answering:

"It has something to do with your ki, Kagome-sama. While you sleep, your ki is attempting to heal you."

"What?" she asked, startled. Of all the possible explanations she'd come up with, she had not been expecting this one.

Miroku nodded, hands folded behind his back.

"Your soul has been dealt a heavy blow, Kagome-sama. It is in your ki's nature to do two things: heal and destroy. Sometimes separately, sometimes simultaneously. In this case, only healing is needed. For your ki to heal you, it seeks the assistance of another, equally potent energy. In this case, Sesshoumaru-sama."

"I don't understand," Kagome said.

"To be truthful, I don't either, but that's what's going on." Miroku returned with a shrug. "The two energies seem to work well with each other. So well, that you are able to establish a sort of mental connection. You have the ability to see into his mind, and he has the ability to see into yours. However, from the looks of things, he hasn't."

Kagome sent him a wary but curious stare.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked suspiciously.

Miroku sighed.

"He was rather upset, wasn't he?"

"You saw that?"

"I felt it," Miroku corrected. "Every soul in the next world did. Kagome, you aren't the only one in pain. We can feel it, in the next world, how you suffer. But your pain isn't nearly as profound as Sesshoumaru-sama's. His has had fifty years to fester, like disease, inside of him. His is the kind of pain that makes souls hurt."

Kagome reflected on that, and decided that Miroku was right. She remembered the pain he'd felt, the bitter rage and regret and grief. He hadn't quite loved his brother, but he had felt something for Inuyasha. Something forceful enough to move him to want to destroy the well that had been his brother's downfall. In a way, she had been surprised by the amount of emotion that had accompanied Inuyasha's death, given that Sesshoumaru had never given an inkling of his feelings for his younger brother outside of scorn. Then again, she shouldn't have been so amazed: still waters ran deep, after all.

A thought occurred to her:

"Is my ki contacting his youki right now?" she asked, suddenly very nervous.

Miroku nodded, and smiled faintly at the expression on her face.

"Don't worry, you won't be delving into his memories tonight. Tonight, your ki is offering his soul a little comfort. Why do you think you sleep so heavily? The opposite energies fit together very well. Complementary pieces to a puzzle, if you will."

"How come?"

"Because the nature of the energies is so different, for one. For another, they are energies of equal power. If you were a youkai, Kagome-sama, you'd be a taiyoukai." Miroku grinned, struck by a rather amusing thought suddenly. "I wonder, what would your arguments with Sesshoumaru-sama be like then?"

"Bloody," Kagome absently supplied. "Life-or-death, take-no-prisoners, last-one-left-breathing-wins kind of deals."

Miroku raised an eyebrow. "Good thing you aren't one then, eh?"

"M'm-h'm."

They walked a bit farther.

"Anything else?" Miroku asked, voice friendly.

"No, no other questions."

"In that case, I'd like to compliment you on the fine job you did with the burials."

Kagome flinched ever so slightly, but didn't stop walking.

"Arigatou," she said, voice hollow.

"Kagome-sama, it's a fact of life."

"I know. It was just never a fact of my life. Not that vividly, anyway."

Miroku nodded.

"If it's any consolation, all the souls are at peace now."

Kagome shrugged. Miroku sighed.

"It doesn't get any easier, Kagome-sama," he said wearily. "An inextricable part of living is dying."

"I know," she said, voice hushed. "But I still hate it."

"I know. You hate it because of who you are, Kagome-sama. If you don't mind my saying it, you were always a tender-hearted person. People like you find it difficult to accept death. It's simply the nature of your personality."

"Yeah, well it sucks," Kagome retorted succinctly.

Miroku smiled gently.

"Be that as it may…it changes nothing."

Kagome sighed. "I know," she said with quiet bitterness. Then, something that had been floating around in the back of her mind suddenly pushed its way to the front of her consciousness.

"Miroku-sama?" Kagome said slowly.

"H'm?"

"The other night, when I met that youkai, more or less, for the first time, it said something about Inuyasha and Kikyou being in hell together."

"Uh-huh."

"But that's impossible—I have Kikyou's soul." Kagome protested. "I mean, I'm her reincarnation."

Miroku smiled at her and stopped to settle down on the path in lotus pose. He gestured to the "ground" next to him.

"You'd better sit down for this, Kagome-sama."

It sounded ominous to her, and she sat down, mimicking him, warily.

"What?" she asked.

"It's not impossible at all."

"Bullshit it isn't!"

Miroku held up a hand. "Kagome-sama, let me finish. Agreed?"

She grumbled under her breath, but jerked her head yes. Miroku nodded.

"It's true: you are Kikyou-sama's reincarnation. However, your proper time period—that is, the year of your birth—is several centuries in the future at this point. And while souls are waiting to be reincarnated, they receive their judgment and serve penance in hell. Once they have performed their penance, they are reborn. Still with me so far?"

Kagome nodded.

"In Kikyou-sama's case, she was supposed to die, serve penance in hell, be reborn, die again, serve penance again, and then be reborn as you, Kagome-sama."

"Wait a minute," Kagome blurted. "You mean Kikyou came back as someone else before me?"

"Hai, that is correct."

"Who?"

Miroku smiled.

"Rin."

The air left Kagome's lungs and she stared at the houshi in shock. It took her several minutes of gaping before she was able to say:

"Rin?"

"Hai."

"Rin-chan? The little girl Sesshoumaru adopted—that Rin?"

"Hai."

"Holy crap."

Miroku threw back his head and laughed.

"But how—I don't—Miroku—" Kagome sputtered, not sure what she wanted to say. Not even sure what to think.

Miroku wiped his eyes and smiled at her sadly.

"Kagome-sama, originally, Kikyou-sama and Inuyasha were supposed to live out their lives together. Inuyasha was supposed to use the Shikon no Tama to become human, and he and Kikyou-sama were to marry. Upon their deaths, they would go to hell, receive their respective judgments and punishments, and then be reborn. Kikyou-sama would then come back as Rin, and Inuyasha…well, we aren't sure who he was supposed to be—"

"Because it never happened," Kagome finished.

Miroku nodded, all levity gone from his expression.

"Onigumo was not supposed to become Naraku. He was supposed to die. Unfortunately, he offered himself to the lesser youkai in order to defile the Shikon no Tama, and Kikyou-sama in the process. The powers that be never dreamed that Onigumo's soul was so twisted. Kikyou-sama died before her time, and Inuyasha never did. When she went to hell, she received her judgment, but did not serve her penance, because what was supposed to happen never did. She was reborn as Rin, who was supposed to fulfill the destiny that had been interrupted by Naraku."

"That didn't happen either, did it?" Kagome said, aching for Kikyou. She had never particularly liked her incarnation, but that didn't mean she couldn't feel bad that the other woman had been thwarted not once but twice. Three times, even, if one counted Kagome.

Miroku shook his head.

"You came through the well before it could happen."

Kagome looked startled. Miroku nodded.

"Originally, the plan was for Rin to be born with the Shikon no Tama in her body, not you. But—to simplify things for the purposes of clarity—the orders were confused, and the Shikon was mistakenly implanted in you. To fix the mistake, you were brought through the well. Unfortunately, Inuyasha fell in love with you, not Rin, and he never wished on the Shikon—you did. In order to try, once again, to fix the mistake, the powers that be decided you were to go back to your proper era. Only, the damage had already been done: events had already been set into motion that would ensure that Rin did not end up with Inuyasha."

"She married someone else," Kagome murmured, and Miroku nodded.

"Fate got it right this time, however: they died around the same time, and their souls descended to hell, where they underwent their respective judgments and received their respective penances. They dwelt there together until Kikyou-sama's soul was once again reborn—in you, Kagome-sama."

"And…Inuyasha?"

Miroku scratched his chin thoughtfully.

"Inuyasha's soul is mystery. I'm sorry, Kagome-sama."

Kagome sighed and closed her eyes.

"This is…incredible," she said, opening her eyes to look at her old friend. A thought occurred:

"Miroku? Was Rin-chan supposed to be adopted by Sesshoumaru?"

"Hai. Rin was supposed to die and be brought back to life by the Tenseiga. She was supposed to become Sesshoumaru-sama's ward. She was supposed to soften the youkai lord's heart for humans. And once she had done that, Inuyasha would have shown up, reborn as whoever it was he was supposed to be, and fallen in love with her." Miroku looked at Kagome. "That's the reason you fell in love with Inuyasha, Kagome-sama. The destiny of the souls was never allowed to come to fruition. Your soul, first Kikyou's, then Rin's, had found its long-lost partner, and wished to carry out the fate that had been written."

Kagome swallowed dryly.

"What are you saying?" she asked. "I was never supposed to be with Inuyasha?"

Miroku shrugged. "I can't say for certain what was intended for you in the beginning, Kagome. I can't say for certain what is intended for you now."

Kagome watched him.

"Then I'm in the same place I've always been," she said bitterly. "It sucks having the tools and not the blueprints."

Miroku sent her a blank look that made her chuckle, though there was no humor in it.

"Never you mind me, Miroku-sama," she said with a negligent wave of her hand. "I'm just spouting crap." She paused. "Question."

"Ask it," Miroku replied.

"If Rin-chan was Kikyou's reincarnation, like me, why wasn't she affected when Urasue used me to bring Kikyou back?"

Miroku grinned.

"Because Rin was exactly where she belonged."

"Huh?" Kagome brilliantly returned.

Miroku's grin widened.

"Kagome-sama, you were from the future. Technically, you didn't belong here in the first place. Kikyou-sama had died fifty years prior. Her soul had already been reborn into Rin. Kikyou-sama had no business being here either. The two of you were the interlopers, not her. You and Kikyou-sama were able to coexist because you were sharing a soul from the future. When Kikyou-sama died, the rest of your soul returned to you, and everything was as it should have been."

"I wouldn't have been able to stay," Kagome said.

There was a long pause.

"No," Miroku agreed quietly at long last. "You couldn't. You were sent back to the future the second the Shikon was wished on. It was the way it had been planned from the start. No one took into account that Kikyou-sama's soul would recognize Inuyasha and you would fall in love with him, or vice versa."

Kagome didn't reply. Instead, she sat in silence, staring at the path underneath her blankly.

"I still love him," she said quietly, with feeling.

"You always will," Miroku said. "Destiny was interfered with, the souls were denied their earthly happiness. It's cold comfort indeed that they were only able to find peace together in hell, but that's the way it turned out."

"Will I ever be happy without him?" Kagome asked softly.

"I don't know, Kagome-sama," Miroku replied honestly. "We will simply have to wait and see what Fate brings."

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Kagome awakened the next morning at the same time Sesshoumaru did. And the first thing out of her mouth was:

"I know why I could see your memories."

Sesshoumaru froze, staring straight ahead. It had taken him a long time to "forget" that episode.

"Miko—" he began, voice menacing.

"It's my ki's fault, Sesshoumaru," she said quietly. "It's trying to help me heal, and it was just looking for some help from an equally powerful energy. Yours happens to be a match." She shifted her head, looked up at him. "I'm sorry. I didn't know I was doing it, or I would have stopped sooner. I never meant to invade your privacy like that."

He was quiet for a long time.

"I knew it was your ki," he said finally. "And I'm aware that you weren't conscious of what you were doing." His gaze flickered down to her. "You are pardoned."

She smiled at him. "Arigatou," she returned. Then she sat up and yawned. "I'm starving." she announced as she threw the blankets back and got up to stir up the fire.

"Good for you," he returned, closing his eyes again and leaning his head back against the tree. It was going to take her a good twenty minutes to get ready. And if he was going to be made to wait, he was going to be comfortable.

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They were following Death.

Sesshoumaru and Kagome came upon yet another destroyed village. Once again, Kagome attended to the dead. Once again, Sesshoumaru watched impassively from the trees.

He didn't share what he knew with her, that these people had been tortured to death—he knew because their fear and tears still hung heavy in the air, as did the smell of blood and sweat and semen. She knew some of that already from the bodies she found. She saw men who'd been mutilated and woman who'd been raped. Children had faired no better. He watched her go through the motions, smelled her tears joining those of the dead. She threw up again, and stayed there on her hands and knees for a long time, shaking violently and gagging painfully every so often. She stayed like that for so long, he thought she wasn't going to do this duty she forced onto herself, made herself complete…tortured herself with.

But she slowly got to her feet, wiped her mouth on her sleeve and continued on, cleaning bodies and digging graves and burying the slaughtered. She continued on doggedly, and when she was done and had said her prayers over them and joined him in the wood, she was still crying. He merely turned and began walking ever westward.

"It's not supposed to be like this," she whispered from behind him.

He paused, glanced at her over his shoulder. She was standing where he'd left her, tightly gripping her bow in white-knuckled hands. She looked thin and fragile and human, so horribly, achingly human….

"But it is," he said coolly and faced forward once more.

Kagome watched him, tears falling from her eyes.

"But it is," she whispered bitterly as she followed after him.

High above the tree tops, the sun shone brighter than it had since her arrival.


A/N: Don't you just want to kill yourself? Also, on an entirely unrelated note, I just realized that in my note in Chapter Ten, the website where I got the lyrics and translation from didn't come out, so here it is again, for anyone who was wondering: www ear-tweak com. See you guys next time.