Partially

Summary: This archive is dedicated to all the little snippets and pieces I wrote to story ideas that I probably won't come back to, but I finished enough of them that I felt they deserved some form of love as they finally bask in the light of day. [Various Kagome pieces / pairings / might have been stories]

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters featured within this archive. All characters depicted belong to their respective owners.

Genre: Varies

Rating: M (to cover the bases of what might be featured)

Note: If any of these ideas interest you and you would like to write something similar, I really don't mind so long as you mention it to me. -Kiba

The Dark Abyss

Circa 2012

Thoughts of using a similar fashioned world / concept as an original story

Summary: In a dying world, where evil rules all, you can only hope. Hope that someday the Great Warriors, who long ago fought to save you, return. These warriors have vanished, though, and now you must do anything to survive.

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

Genre: Drama / Angst / Dark Adventure / Alternate Universe / Sort of Fairy Tale-ish

Rating: T

A life unlived is like a book without words

Old Proverb

Prelude:

A Withering World

For many centuries the land has been dying, the very Earth we walk upon rotting from within. This is because buried deep inside the world, in a place that only demons and warlords are allowed to travel, darkness pulses its great evil power from the center of the Earth. This evil pushes itself deep into the soils until the foliage dies and the animals fall victim to its power. They say the one controlling the darkness was created and sent from the pits of Hell, but only the creature that lives deep within the darkness knows. Only that creature can stop the darkness from coming forth, but why would it wish to do that? It has everything now that our world is dying –

- The world is dying, and along with it we are as well. Most of us die within the great expanse, most traveling to find another source of food, while others are sold to the Demon Warlords in order to save the rest of their caravan. It is not strange that we die, since everything and everyone dies sooner or later. Humans die of many things, age, disease, war, or famine; demons die when killed; Gods' and Goddess' die when we stop believing in them, praying that one-day the Great Light might return and the darkness will all but vanish. Yes, even the Gods' can die, which is why they make us pray each and everyday, but that is why I don't pray to those Gods'. No, for I know and have accepted that everything and everyone dies someday…

They made us pray when they allowed the Great Evil to fly from the pits of Hell, destroy the Goddess who took away the darkness and fed the land, before residing deep within the world we now walk upon. It was then the war began, the Great Warriors who fought trying to save us from the Great Evil, while the Demon Warlords rose from the center of the Earth, each one of them causing one of our Great Warriors to vanish without a trace. This was when the land began to wither away, each step we took causing our hearts to weaken until we were prisoners to the darkness, never being able to escape it.

Not even I can escape my Fate, nor can I escape the darkness that floods the land. It causes so many to lose their minds, while others merely give up sitting in the sand as the caravan moves on without them. It is natural, I guess, for one to give up when there is no more hope to be found, but we must continue. We must, for that is our human nature. I continue, though my heart is weaker than others. As a miko I am the land, I am a daughter of nature itself, but the land is dying, therefore I am dying as well. Once the darkness has completely destroyed everything that holds me to this world I shall fade, never to be remembered for so many of us are trying to forget what has happened, searching for a better place. There is no better place, though; I have accepted this, for the darkness controls all.

I am miko, a creature who feeds off the land, continuing to live as it does. What does one miko do, though, when the land is beginning to die? What have all the other mikos' done before me? I do not know, for I fear I am the last true miko. I fear that perhaps those who are like me have given up, all of them falling to nothingness in the barren wasteland we call a world. With this fear I wondered if I were the last miko, if there were others like me or if I had been born out of the kindness of a higher beings heart? There were always more questions than answers, however, and that has how it has always been.

In a land where you must continue to search for nourishment, many types of animals have been taken over by the darkness, and the Demon Warlords are searching for more things to play with, however, all you can do is think. Think about why the Gods' have left you, about why they are no longer beside you when you call. Think about when the next Demon Warlord is going to cross your path, or if they'll ever meet you at all. Think about when the Great Light might once more fall from the Heavens to save not only you, but also the Earth. These things we think about, however, are meaningless for only Fate can tell us why or how or when they are going to happen, or if they shall happen at all. I've always thought that perhaps these things will happen, but most likely not in my lifetime, so why should I worry about such things. I should not, but my nature causes me to worry about these things for the sake of others, if not myself.

Of course, there are other things you can do in a withering world, like try to cause an uprising, but no one is strong enough to fight against the darkness now. No, for if they tried they'd probably just become another one of its victims, taken away from the sun, the only source of light they truly still had. They would be forced into a Demon Warlords bed, probably producing hanyou, which were very rare, yet very strong. Should hanyou be produced, the Warlord becomes stronger and we become weaker.

We hope for there is nothing else we can hope for. We hope that everything will be all right in the end, but we know that it will not. I can look out over the land before us and see the darkness rising from the land below it. This is why I know that the world is crumbling, why I know that nothing can be done. The world is far to corrupt; yet I continue to try and concentrate on one person, one Goddess, and one only. The others can rot within the Heavens forever, hoping that one-day someone might pray to them. She might be the last miko on Earth and she would not waste her time praying to some God that might not even have lived. The stories, though, they told her that one Goddess had been real, for she'd lived upon the Earth in a castle said to have once been filled with tremendous amounts of light. Now, she could only bet that that light was gone, extinguished, burnt out because the darkness had come.

For centuries our world has been dying, but truly there is nothing we can do about it. No, we must move on, only remembering that the darkness is biting at our heels wherever we go or there is nothing more we can do. All we have is each other in this barren world, all of us trying to survive but truly dying on the inside. That was what the darkness did to you; it tore at your insides until you were nothing but an empty shell without a soul. It tore you apart so badly that you were no longer even human. Yet this is why I am stronger then the others, for I still have faith in the land. I still have faith toward the destroyed Goddess, for a Goddess cannot die unless you stop believing in her.

Perhaps she would return to our withering world and defeat the darkness, even if it were only I that prayed to her? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps… maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe –

But that's all we can ever hope for, isn't it? All we can ever pray to the Gods for? All we do is continue to live, while our world crumbles around us. We continued to survive; yet, our world continues to try and restore itself. With the Great Evil our world continues to do what it can to help us survive, but truly it is not helping at all. The Great Evil continues to destroy us from the inside out, and there's nothing we, or anyone else, can do about it. That's the way it's been since I was born and I'm positive now that that's the way it's always going to be. We can try to do what we can, but all we can truly do is continue to do as we've always done.

Survive.

Chapter One

Kagome sighed, glancing around the small wagons that they stored the little items they had with them. Her eyes were distant as she remembered what these people had done for her since they'd found her, walking through the barren wasteland they called a world, their home, after her own caravan had been destroyed by one of the Warlords demon pets. As her eyes passed over them, though, she knew that should they be threatened for having a miko within their small band that she'd be dropped like a diseased animal that had no place within them. It wouldn't be like she'd be able to blame them should they do such a thing, no, for all anyone did in this barren land was try and make things easier. To survive the only way they knew how.

She could still remember it like it was happening before her eyes, though. The way the large boar looking creature suddenly came crashing into the caravan she'd lived with since she was born, its tusks swinging around wildly, as the people she'd known all her life began to run in order to save themselves. She remembered the first drop of blood that was spilled, the poor boy named Shippo far too slow on his limp to get away from the beast. His body was torn in two while she merely stood there in shock, his blood covering her loose haori and hakama as the boar moved on after sucking down some of the organs that had slipped out of the boy's body. She'd been so sickened she'd vomited and ran, turning tail instead of even trying to produce a bit of her miko powers in order to help her friends and family. She remembered the screaming, the yells, the shouts; the people calling for her help while others hollered that she was nothing but a coward. They were right, though, for she'd returned once there was nothing but silence over the land, and when she'd returned the boar was gone but there's bodies were everywhere. Some of them were torn in two, others were pierced with their own weapons, while there were others that had their heads stepped on and crushed after the boar had obviously knocked them down. Most of them, though, were covered in so much blood and gore that was not their own that they no longer resembled the people they once were, and she'd cried. She'd cried for them all, her sorrow causing the desert-like land around her to turn black until she got control over her emotions once more.

They had been right, though: she was a coward.

She'd walked on wobbly legs afterward, toward the West, in fact. She'd merely walked, never knowing where she'd end up or if she'd be able to find enough food or water for herself since that stupid Warlord's pet had destroyed everything. The stupid creature had not only killed everyone but had made sure that anyone who came across them couldn't use the things they had carried with them in order to survive. So, she'd merely walked out into the sun, waiting for her body to shut down underneath her and die somewhere.

She'd walked nearly two days, only the moon giving her any type of sanctuary as her strength began to diminish, almost as if the world around her had sucked it right out from underneath her. Not that the moon helped much, since it was hot, humid, and awful anytime during the year. That was their curse, after all. But she'd continued forward until she could barely walk when she'd came across a prize that she hadn't expected to find because of her sin. She'd come across a small pool of water, the liquid inside it pure instead of tainted like most of which you found during these times. She'd been lucky, but she knew that water was not the only thing she needed in order to keep her body up and going. She needed sleep and she'd need food after a while. Even though she knew she needed these things, though, she'd got up, after filling the small water container she carried with her, and began walking once again. At the time she hadn't cared what happened to her. She hadn't cared if those ugly brutes called vultures, another pet of one of the Warlords, came down and picked away at her body as she lay in the sun on the dry, cracked Earth.

She'd been hallucinating after two more days of constant travel. Her mind was trying to determine which way she should travel while her body began dying from within. She'd sat down just outside a small forest, probably one of the last on the Earth, and laughed her head off when they'd found her. Well, their caravan's leader, Ryuji, had found her. He'd been riding on the back of a lizard looking creature when she'd mistaken him for one of the lost Warriors. He'd taken her in and told one of his underlings to take care of her. She'd fallen asleep inside one of the wagons' and she'd been like that until three days later when she'd awoke to find a woman named Kaede taking much needed care of her.

It'd been six, nearly seven, days since then. Kaede had taken care of her most of the time, but the slightly older woman had felt that after two days of getting used to eating and drinking at least twice a day again that it was time for her to go out and meet the rest of the caravan she was now apart of. Not that it mattered, she could still feel the dread she felt when she'd moved away from her own slaughtered caravan and she knew that she'd do it again if these people were attacked.

She was such a terrible miko.

Tears came to her eyes as another person came to her side. His name was Hakudoushi, he was a smaller boy who wore mostly white in the hot sun, while his albino white hair gleamed against the sunlight. For some reason he'd became attached to her almost instantly when she'd finally left the wagon Kaede occupied most of the time. Apparently a pet had attacked his mother while she was getting water one day and ever since the boy had been distant and quiet. Kaede, the caravan's healer, had been surprised to see the boy attach himself to her so quickly, but she did not mind for he was such a sweet lad. He reminded her of Shippo in a way, and it almost brought tears to her eyes every time she saw him.

"Kagome?" the boy asked, his voice soft with innocence. It was amazing, since many children usually grew up much faster having to fight to live within the cruel world they lived within. However, his innocence stayed intact and for that she was happy for him. Perhaps he might go through life with only a few small set backs whenever a Warlord's pet attacked, since they seemed to love doing that. Still, even though the world was cruel, she'd hate to see the innocence fade from his eyes, his soul being overcome with the darkness.

Smiling down at him, she asked, "Yes? What is it, Hakudoushi?"

"Why are you so sad, Kagome?" he asked, his hand tugging at her sleeve. Her haori was completely white, something that many others wore in order to reflect the sun's heat from their bodies. However, during the night it attracted many things, mostly pets, which ended your life fairly quickly.

Shaking her head, she giggled, "Why do you think I'm sad, Hakudoushi?" She was sad, though. She missed the people she'd grown up with. She missed their smiles, their laughs, and their happiness from surviving another day. She missed them all, though some of them could be a little more than she'd wanted to deal with, but she'd loved them all. She was sad because they were gone, forever, never coming back, never to smile again. Never. She wasn't going to make Hakudoushi sad, though, for Kaede had told her the boy seemed to be feeding off her emotions for some reason, as if he were holding onto her for strength. Why? She didn't know; she really didn't care as long as he was there beside her.

Hakudoushi's own eyes glittered in the sunlight as he gazed up at her. He frowned, knowing full well from something deep inside him that she was not happy. Not truly. She obviously didn't want to show it, and he wanted to know why. "Your eyes tell me of your sadness, Kagome. Why are you sad?"

"You read me like a book, Hakudoushi!" Kagome laughed, swinging the boy's hand in her own. She laughed again, this time with happiness, her voice full of merriment and joy as she continued to trek forward.

The young boy scowled, "Books are forbidden, Kagome."

"No," Kagome said. "Books are not forbidden, they are rare. You know that."

He shot her a confused look, "But books are forbidden, Kagome. The Demon Warlord's burned them because they were. You've heard that story, haven't you?"

Frowning a little, she stopped, her hand pulling the boy to a stop as well. She knew the others wouldn't wait for them, but she knelt down next to him, trying to tell him what her mother had once told her. Her frowned became deeper, as she said, "They might say they're forbidden, Hakudoushi, but they weren't. The Warlord's burned the books, the libraries, and everything else that could teach us more than we already knew because they don't want us to know anymore than we do now." Her hand reached out, gripping the loose soil, before letting it fall through her fingers, "That is why we must pass down our knowledge each generation, that way we can continue with life. If we didn't then the Warlord's would win and the world would become theirs completely. But without us what else would they have?"

"They would have the land," the boy said, wishing nothing more than for Kagome to continue. He loved when his mother taught him things. He loved now that Kagome was telling such things, and he'd make sure to remember them always, as well as the happy miko's face, because… she might not be there forever. She could die someday.

Kagome nodded, before continuing, "Tell me, Hakudoushi, would you wish to be the ruler of this land, and have no else around?"

The albino frowned, glancing in all directions. Kagome knew deep down that he saw what she saw, the darkness seeping out through the ground, and she saw him shake his head 'no', before turning his eyes back toward her. It didn't surprise her; she wouldn't want to be the ruler of such a place without anyone to keep her company. True, they'd have the other Warlords', but what use were they when they merely wanted to hurt people, control their lives; completely destroy different caravans' for their pleasure. They would have nothing if they were no longer there.

"Kagome," came another voice. It was that of a woman, with ebony hair as she came rushing back toward her. She stopped, her deep brown eyes washing over the boy as she motioned with her hand. "Come now, you two, you'll be left behind if you don't hurry. You know the rules. If you're left behind you'll have to find your way back—no one will come looking for you."

Kagome stood, gripping the boy's hand firmly in her own before nodding. "Please forgive us, Kagura. I merely wanted to teach something to dear Hakudoushi." She began moving forward, the other woman dropping in beside her and the boy, smiling. Kagura had always been a free spirit, and she was sure the woman would go insane should she ever truly be chained down. It was so nice to find such a person even though the world was in its current state. She'd never thought she'd find such a person, well, not unless she heard stories of one long ago, but that was before the world had begun to wither and die.

Kagura looked toward the sky, her hand coming up to block out the light of the sun, before looking back toward Kagome. Her feet moved almost as if she were flying in her happiness. She'd never tell, but she'd once been tortured and humiliated by a Demon Warlord, and she felt so good now that she was out in the open, living the way she should have. Though that felt good, she almost wished she could get her hands around that demon's neck, the one by the name of Hoshi. She'd give anything to be able to kill him on her own.

Glancing back toward Kagome once more, she noticed that the girl was talking with the smaller boy at her side once more. She was telling him of a story past down through most of the family lines, one that said the world had once been bright, green, fulfilling and so full of life. She almost wished herself that the world was that way now, but she knew it could not be, thus she merely smiled when Kagome finally reached her other hand up to pat the boy's head, before they both watched as he raced off ahead of them. How he found such energy in this type of weather was beyond them both. Smiling brighter, she said, "You're almost too good to that boy, Kagome."

Kagome blinked in surprise, asking her, "Why do you say that?"

Kagura merely shook her head, deciding that it wasn't a good enough question to answer. Should she ask a better question then she might receive an answer, but until then she was going to simply ignore the girl the best she could. Kagome soon began tugging at her sleeve, snapping at her to answer, which merely got a coy smile from her. She'd never been one to follow the demand of others after she'd escaped her prison.

"You've been through so much already, Kagome, yet you continue to try and teach a boy, who still hasn't completely come to understand the fact that his mother has left this world. I envy your courage, your strength, and your willpower to continue, since I know I probably would have simply given up." Kagura sighed; her eyes softened a little for she knew it was true. She wasn't as strong as the others; she would have simply given up when she could have. The girl might not have understood it, but she was broken on the inside, but made sure that others couldn't see it.

"Don't say that, Kagura," Kagome insisted. "I might not have known you long, now, but I couldn't see you giving up on anything!"

Kagura shot her a very sad glance, shaking her head, "No, Kagome. You're wrong, I'm afraid. I almost gave up once, but Ryuji had found me before I did. I'd been wondering across the land, looking behind my shoulder as if I expected something to suddenly jump out at me. I'm nothing but a coward."

Shaking her head once more, Kagome said, "I am a coward, Kagura. Do not think of yourself as one." Her hand rested on the other woman's shoulder, her eyes raging with regret as she decided to continue. "I ran away from my own caravan when it was under attack. I allowed the boy I protected to be killed by the hands of a beast I'd only seen once in my dreams. I've broken promise after promise by doing so, and now it's all gone… its all gone…" her voice came out as a whisper in the end.

"Kagome," broke through her thoughts. "Kagome, don't think that way. There's only one thing you can truly ever do within this world. Only one. You did that, Kagome, and because you have you can continue to live, and pass on what you know. Don't forget that."

The sound of pounding caught their attention as a large reptile-like creature lumbered toward them. Its snout was muzzled, while the rider on its back pulled the reins until it shifted to the side, its head rocking back and forth on instinct. The rider was a tall man, his light brown hair pulled high so that it stayed off his neck on hot days, his clothing loose for the same reasons. His eyes stared down at them for a long moment, before he shook his head, "Come on you two. You'll be left behind at this rate. You need to keep up."

"Yes, Ryuji," Kagura bowed, her feet moving forward. She looked back, noticing how Kagome was still standing there. Frowning, her feet shifted until she was facing her, the reptile's head being placed upon her shoulder. She gazed at the young miko, wondering if her words had merely cut Kagome deeper, or if the miko had come to understand what she was saying. She looked up at her lover, saw him give a small nod, and turn his mount away from them for a moment.

"Kagome, there's only one thing someone like you can do," Kagura said again. She knew her voice reached the mind of the miko when she lifted her head, expecting her to answer her own trickery. "Kagome, the only thing you can do is this: survive. That's all. You've done that, Kagome. Don't be ashamed of the way you did, but be proud that you are still alive and moving on, instead of letting this world to completely destroy you." Smiling, she added, "What a good reason to stay alive—to survive."

Kagura's words hit home, though. Kagome began walking once more, her feet used to the constant moving of a caravan. However, Kagura's words continued to echo inside her head even as she came to Kaede's wagon, watching as the older woman came to sit upon the back of the wagon, staring at her.

Perhaps, though, Kagura was right. Maybe that's all one could do within this world. Maybe that's all she needed to do in order to prove that she could live within it. Maybe that was the way she would see anything of importance. Yes, she would. She would, even though her heart clenched once again at the thought of her cowardly ways, her instincts to run away from the Demon Warlord's pet. But she'd done the right thing, hadn't she? She'd done it.

She'd survived thus far.