Praying For Peace

Prompt: False advertising

Universe: AU (The Warring States Period reimagined)

Genre: Drama

1,000 Words

The village was a smoking ruin, demon corpses littering the ground. The sight made her feel sick to her stomach and she resolutely averted her gaze.

Demons were inherently dark and evil, everyone knew that. They thought humans were vermin, they would slaughter humans in thousands in their uncontrolled bloodlusts; they would rape innocent maidens and devour helpless infants.

Yet, the demons of this village hadn't been soldiers. Still their homes had been burned, their mangled bodies left to rot in the midst of ash and destruction. All this by human hands.

Kagome knew it hadn't always been like this. Once, the whole of Japan had been united and the demons had ruled over the humans. Once, the monks and the mikos had been respected both by youkai and humans alike.

Kagome knew these things, but all she could remember was the war. She had grown up in the Eastern lands that belonged to the humans. Mikos and Monks now made up the army that defended the East, along with the demon exterminators that had been created when humans took up arms.

She was a miko herself. She had been trained at a shrine, she had been lectured how all demons were abominations. They had wanted her to become a soldier. And now she was finally in the battlefield.

The smell of smoke and blood still lingered in the air, but something else had caught Kagome's attention. There were demons, somewhere ahead. She could feel them. She reached over her shoulder and grasped her bow. She notched an arrow, and began to creep towards the dark presence, her senses on full alert.

She heard them before she could see them. Laboured breathing accompanied by a stream of curse words.

She stopped, when they noticed her.

"Do not come any closer," a deep voice growled in a cool command.

Kagome finally saw them. There were three of them, two lying on the ground, the third propped up against the trunk of a tree. His face was impassive and his eyes cold and clear, yet she could tell he was suffering. They were all injured, she realised immediately. A fox demon, barely older than Kagome herself, was unconscious. The wolf who was spewing profanities was bleeding profusely from several wounds. Poison, Kagome reckoned. Taijiya weapons were often coated with poisons so the youkai could not heal their wounds. But the demon who had spoken, the one who had no apparent injury, was the one who worried Kagome the most. His youki was laced with slight strands of reiki.

He was being purified; the holy powers were eating him alive before her very eyes, slowly but surely.

Kagome locked her gaze with his and keeping her movements slow, crouched down and laid her bow and arrow on the ground. She straightened.

"May I approach now? I want to help."

They were demons. They were evil. They were the enemy.

But right now, they were living, and Kagome would not let them die. Not on her watch.

"Why?" the demon spat. "You are a miko."

"In Shinto, nature, harmony and balance are valued above all else. I'm not a soldier, I'm a healer."

His golden eyes bore into her, as if he was trying to see into her soul.

"Fine." he said tersely. "You may approach."

In a rush she was by his side. Two of the fingers had been cut off from his left hand, but the blade had only served as the instrument through which the attacker had channelled their holy powers.

She took a hold of his hand. He didn't react to her touch in any way, which told her his whole hand had already been purified. The purification was creeping up, eating his nerves, rendering his hand into a useless lump of meat.

"You will heal my men first," he told her, still calm, cool and commanding.

"What? If I don't stop this purification, you could lose your whole arm – "

"I can fight the purification," he growled. "And an arm is just an arm, my men are fighting for their lives."

Her lips pressing into a grim line, Kagome nodded. She moved over to the wolf. He stopped swearing, and stared at her, his blue eyes wide. Kagome placed her hands over his wounds to apply pressure and tapped into her powers, starting to carefully purify the poison in his blood.

"Rest now," she told him when she was done. "And let your body do the healing."

The wolf nodded mutely, but she had already moved onto the fox.

He wasn't in as bad a shape as she had thought at first. Gently, she removed the arrow that had pierced his lung and dressed the wound on his head. He would likely be able to heal himself as he slept.

Now, she turned back to the demon propped against the tree, fighting his purification. She blinked, as if seeing him for the first time. Her stomach grew taut, her jaw clenched.

"You are Sesshōmaru," she spoke slowly. "The Killing Perfection. The Western General's son."

He didn't reply, just looked at her.

For a moment, Kagome felt giddy. The only son of the Youkai army's commander.

She should kill him.

It would be a huge blow the enemy, hurt their morale, maybe even help to bring this war to an end.

Her feet were moving on their own accord. She was kneeling in front of him, reaching at him with her both hands. He was fighting a losing battle. The purification had already passed his elbow.

He was the enemy, and he was already dying. Yet he had wanted her to heal his men first.

Closing her eyes, Kagome focused her reiki. Her aura burned, bright and brilliant.

It had only taken seconds, but it had felt like an eternity. She let out the breath she hadn't even realised she was holding.

Her eyes fluttered open.

His eyes were the first thing she saw, molten gold and full of wonder.

Chie: The inspiration for this one shot came from an old story idea I got when a long while ago I read a manga called Zettai Heiwa Daisakusen. In it, the prince and princess of two warring countries declare their love for each other in order to stop the war, and pretend to be a happy couple in public for the sake of maintaining the peace, even though in truth they barely get along.

Inspired by that, I scribbled the following bit down three years ago and promptly left it to collect dust on my hard disk:

For several centuries, the demons reigned in Japan. They lived in peace alongside with the humans – more or less. Some of the demon nobles ignored their human subjects completely. Others granted them autonomy. Some treated their subjects little better than slaves. In the midst of this, were the Buddhist monks and the Shinto priests and priestesses, who were revered by both humans and demons. The humans loved them for their wisdom, the demons respected them out of fear – as creatures of power, few beings could be viewed as threats, but those that possessed holy powers wielded a lethal weapon against the demon kind.

Then, twelve years ago, the humans sent delegations to the largest temples and shrines to plead with the priests and monks to come to their aid, to help set the humans free of the demon reign.

The twelve long years of war divided the once united island into two kingdoms – the West, the demon kingdom, ruled by the esteemed Great Dog General himself, and East, the human lands governed by the beloved warrior miko Midoriko.