A/n: Thanks for all the reviews. They mean a lot and they always give me inspiration to continue on.

Watanuki looks over at me, a distressed expression that has all the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. He still places his palm over his right eye, the pale skin on the back of his hand glowing dully in the moonlight.

We're still looking at each other, trying to figure out if this is a dream we're both trapped in, and if that illusion of the dream will disappear if we keep eye contact.

"Shizuka." He calls my name and I think I'll fall to pieces if he says it again, exactly like he just did, with not an ounce of held back emotion. "The water's not white. Does that mean the…?"

He has a desperate look on his face and he furrows between his eyebrows, like understanding will come to him with that gesture.

I suddenly grab his hand and it startles him.

"We're getting your eye back," I say resolutely, firmly. It's the only thing I can do. It's the only thing I can say and I don't want to see that somber expression on his face anymore. It's my fault. It's all my fault because he'd gotten his hopes up and now…he was being crushed by it.

"The spider can't be dead." I say to myself more than him. I want to desperately believe what I'm saying.

Watanuki removes the hand covering his eye and places it over mine. I take a deep breath. The palm of that hand is cold, not at all warm like the other and I wonder why, when its been in contact with the flesh of his face for all this time.

I raise my head, trying to catch his eyes and I stop, my breath catches in my throat and it's not because Watanuki looks like an angel in moonlight.

"Your…eye."

"What?" He asks and then his hand is reaching back to press against the sightless eye.

There's a…

I reach out with my fingers, my fingertips grazing the soft eyelid as it closes under my touch and I can see exactly what it is.

It's a butterfly. A black, swallowtail butterfly, the mark of it tattooed over his eye, like the pattern on many of Yuko's dresses.

He's suddenly pressing his palm to his other eye. "Dammit, what's going on?" He drops to his knees and I reach out for him, steadying his weight against my own. "My eye…it hurts."

"That's what you get for disturbing the curse."

A voice breaks the night, shatters it around us and I flinch up from Watanuki and wildly look around.

"I'll take the other eye for this disgraceful affront done onto me."

I can't tell where the voice is coming from and Watanuki's trembling in my arms. The hand that isn't covering his eye is gripping onto my sleeve and it flexes tightly, bunching up the material. I feel his tenseness through the gesture.

"You humans. Why can't you suffer your punishment quietly? Why must you seek out trouble?"

I throw my arm over Watanuki's shoulders. I don't care about finding where the voice is coming from; all I know is that I have to keep Watanuki here, safe with me.

"It's not equal for the crime you've committed here. Slaying one of my own and then expecting to have all forgiven. I shouldn't just take another eye."

My heart starts to beat faster and Watanuki makes a horrible, sobbing sound.

Everything suddenly goes black around us. Blacker than the night, the sounds of the cicada no longer chirping in the background, there's no rustling of trees and grass as the wind touches it. I can't smell the moss at my feet, or the wetness in the air.

It's pitch black.

Watanuki lifts his head and looks straight at me, but I know he's not seeing me, because his other eye, the good eye has now been changed to that icy, white color.

I swallow the lump in my throat.

It's not fair.

It's not fair.

Why does it keep taking from Watanuki? Why can't it take something from me?

I stand up, my hand still fastened around Watanuki's wrist and I call out. "You can hear me? If you can, come out."

No one answers.

I feel desperate, and angry and afraid. "I was the one who killed...him. I was the one who shot your friend."

The darkness around a certain spot in front of me suddenly shivers, like a pathway is opening and I see someone walk out.

It's a woman, dressed in a black kimono, a web pattern flowing through her clothing and over the lower portion of her face and neck, her black, thick hair touching the ground and winding a path behind her.

"So you are the fool." It says bitterly.

"You were the first to taste my grudge and now you demand seconds."

I keep silent. The bitterness in its voice is plenty and choking. She looks down at Watanuki who's still bent over the waist, kneeling at my side, like in prayer.

"You want to make amends. Well, it's too late to try and renounce any of this, so all you can to do is take your punishment and not run from it."

I squeeze Watanuki's hand.

"What do I have to give you?" I ask and Watanuki seems to be coming back from his daze. He can't see anything, but he stares directly at me, in the direction of my voice and I don't want those eyes on me right now, reminding me of my sin.

"You would give me anything human?" She says sounding suddenly amused. She looks down at Watanuki, who is lost and afraid and doesn't understand exactly what's going on. "All for this one?" She points a long, black fingernail at him. She lingers on the eye covered with the black butterfly and then shakes her head at me. "I'm sorry, but I can't do that. Not when that woman is involved."

Woman?

"And not when I have finally found myself a butterfly."

What was she talking about?

"He will have to pay the price, because he is the only one that can. You have purity of soul, my child, but it is not enough, not in comparison to what this child holds. You may leave."

"What?" I ask stupidly because I don't understand what she's saying. She wants me to leave? I…don't understand. Where would she have me go? My place is here…next to him. Where would I go?

I feel something crack. It hurts and I don't want to feel this way anymore. "Is it a soul? Do you need a soul?" Does she need a soul? I'll…

I feel the hand in my grasp tighten, but I ignore it and continue on.

"If you need one, I'll give it to you, but you…must promise to give back the things you've taken from him. Give Watanuki his eyes back."

I see Watanuki's eyes flash in terror and then he's clutching at my arm.

"No! Don't!" He can't see me, but he's clutching onto my arm, trying to seek out my face, trying to seek out my eyes and stare into them, even if blinded and even if he's putting up a semblance of control over his senses.

I feel something clench and shudder in my chest. It's gripping painfully, like I swallowed jagged ice and it's making its way down my throat and into my lungs and icing over the veins in my heart.

"I'm sorry." She says again, and it's an uncomprehending statement that makes no sense to me at all.

She's sorry. She's sorry for what?

"If you would just tell me what you wanted…" Make a deal, flashes through my head. Promise her something that she couldn't say no to. Find something that you could give her.

Watanuki's not content to stand there, he grabs me by the arm again, harder and he screams at me. "You idiot! Stop this! What don't you understand by give up and go?" His voice is shaking and it sounds like he's about to cry and the only thing that's going through my head is that I'm about to make him cry.

"Anything. I'll give you anything." I say and the spider looks at me with something akin to...pity. There has to be something I can do? There's nothing that I can't offer.

Panic flares up in Watanuki and I want to tell him not to worry, that he'll get his eyes back. But he's shaking his head and his fingers are digging into my shoulder. "What's wrong with you? You can't make a promise like that! You can't!" He won't let go off my arm and I don't want to hear him talking like that, because this is my fault and I want to fix everything. He's still stubbornly clinging to my arm and trying to get me to answer him, and it's very distracting and I can't think about how I'm going to handle the spider with him like this. I need space to think things through and I unconsciously push him to the side. He stumbles a little and he makes such a pathetic sound that I have to violently suppress the urge to go to him.

I turn my gaze back to the woman, to the real spider, ready to offer up my life if it came to that, but she just shakes her head to the side and closes her eyes. "No." She says finally, shockingly. It stops me from speaking and this time I stare at her balefully, remorsefully because I can't leave here, not without Watanuki, not without the things he's lost.

I'm angry and Watanuki reaches out his arms. He can't see and without someone by his side, he's even blinder. I pull him by the arm, right up against my chest so I can put my hand over his shoulders, where I'm half hugging him, half holding him up.

The woman puts her hand out and I can see each graceful unfurl of black fingers as she holds her hand out to me expectantly.

I look between her and myself and the space that exists there.

She holds out her hand more insistently.

"Give him to me."

And it finally hits me that this thing doesn't care what I have to offer. It only cares about the trap it's weaved and the reasons behind those traps and the person in my arms.

Watanuki is pushing away from me a little…like he wants to go to her. I crush him against me. I can feel him flinch and whimper and I don't care if I'm hurting him, because I can't let go.

"Give him to me." It says again and as I watch this thing, this creature, this tiny god that exists in its own universe and is bound to countless laws that I do not understand or try to. As I watch it pull in the webs that link its world together, that trap all that enter into its domain, as I watch it, graceful, and poised, and deadly, and perfect my head seems to get clearer and clearer until only the sound of Watanuki's breathing sweeps into my ear.

I let go of Watanuki's shoulders.

He breathes out.

I let go of his hand altogether.

The creature favors me with a nod.

I draw my hand in the signature of my bow; my hands finally free to move of their own accord without Watanuki's presence clouding them.

And the creature stares at me like a parent would with a spoiled child, with unfettered disgust at my selfishness. I can't blame it. I know I'm being selfish and that I'm willingly ready to destroy anything and everything to get what I want, to make Watanuki happy again, because his happiness is my own.

"You…insolent!"

It's angry and I can't blame it for that because it's practically a god and I'm about to kill a god.

Watanuki can sense something amiss, but I'm glad for the moment he cannot see, that he cannot see what I'm about to do.

"You wretched thing! Shoot me and the curse will come down on you threefold. Do not think I am the only one!

Watanuki seems to get it, but he can't stop me, because he can't see me.

"Don't!" He begs and I don't hear him anymore because the sound of the spirit arrow being released and the tremendous flow of energy that goes with it deafens me for the split second needed to slaughter a god.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

There's blood, enough that I could drown in it.

It hadn't cried out. It had just bled…a lot. Watanuki can feel it washing up by his feet, he cringes and I hear him contain a sob.

He knows what I just did. I know what I just did. I have no regrets.

And to drive the point home, the mark of a black widow etches into the skin on the back of my palm, branching across my knuckles and twisting the flesh a little. I don't tell Watanuki about it, because this is my punishment for disobeying a god.

I'm going to be punished for this.

"Shizuka?" He's calling out to me and there was never a moment in my time with Watanuki that I could resist going towards him.

I wrap him up in my arms and squeeze and it's desperate and not romantic, because I'm desperate and I need to figure out if this is real. I can't think. I don't know what to think and it's the desperation and the ache of helplessness that makes me mutter the next words in the tendrils of his hair. "Tell me you love me."

He cries.

I'm stupid.

I made him cry again and it's worst than the first time I'd done it those weeks ago, when I had just confronted him.

I wasn't supposed to make him cry again.

Not like this.

I was breaking my promise.

I was breaking everything.

His heart included.

A/n: Dark and angsty. Such a turn around from my pervious chapters, but this is the last stretch, so I plan to go out with a bang. In Japan, nature is held in high regard and I thought since this spider is apart of the scheme of nature, it would make sense to make it a kami, since they have an infinite number of those. A spider god, why not? Not anything major, but in its world, it's pretty much the creator and the destroyer. I guess you'll see where I'm going with this train of thought in the next chapter.