Author Notes: Hmm... I kind of disappointed at the lack of repsonse to the last chap... what? did kill everyone off with boredom or just sheer crappy writing? -pouts- I mean, somebody please tell me! Constructive criticism is always welcome and loved. And to those who did review, I utterly LOVE you guys. Seriously, you're what kept me writing this story even when I didn't want to. And so, on a more joyous note...
Thy Soul of Sin is finally finished! YAY! That is, I've finally finished writing it. After this chapter, there is only three more chapters left before the end. So updates should be fairly quick. At the most, monthly, depending upon the repsonse I receive and whether I can get my lovely beta to look over the last chaps. Ah well. It's DONE. XD
disclaimer: Hah. Never have, never will.
warnings/notes: the usual.
And without further ado...
Thy Soul of Sin
by scelerus animus
Chapter Nine
To Devour the Pomegranate Fruit
Despite the fact that the undeniable embodiment of beauty lied ripe and divine and utterly unawares before him, no wisp of his normally insatiable, lecherous intentions dared to flicker through his mind for even a moment. In fact, as he scrutinized this exotic creature who seemed of celestial origins but unmistakably born of flesh and bones, Miroku strangely had no desire to even touch that lily-white, glowing skin which seemed so flawless and delicate in spite of the glistening array of filth, dried blood, and raw pink lacerations.
Perhaps, she wasn't as unmistakably born of flesh and bones as he had first perceived. Instead, she seemed to be made up of something far more delicate and refined, possibly glass, even fine porcelain.
If he were to touch this foreign beauty, he would surely break her. Shatter her into a thousand irreparable pieces and mindlessly watch as those invisible jagged shards of her life slice deep into his skin. He would completely destroy that haunting, unnatural beauty that seemed to uncaringly overwhelm his own aura with its beguiling, dangerous power.
Indeed, this outrageously odd notion had somehow leeched into the core of his mind, greedily wrapping around his pounding brain to suck out all coherent thought, and had absolutely refused to let go.
Kagome Higurashi. That was her name. Indisputably. But that did not mean this was same person. This creature—this priestess, a miko bred to perfection—was gracefully fragile and frighteningly dangerous at the same time.
And Miroku observed and concluded all this while she slept unconscious, beaten and bloody, weaponless but definitely not harmless.
Shifting almost anxiously, Miroku sighed.
"She…Kagome has changed," Sango had whispered to him in an abnormally pained, broken voice, as if all of her hope had washed out of her, waning as the moon does with time, except for Sango it wouldn't return like it had previously.
Miroku was hard-pressed not to follow her in a wash of despondency.
In all the situations of past where everyone else had fallen into distress or panic, Miroku had always been able to keep calm and collected, able to think logically and clearly. Not this time, however. It was affecting everyone, including him.
How cruel and twisted the world had spitefully proved it could be with one simple act, one single wish.
Briefly Miroku's keen eyes flickered over the miko's right hand, somehow small and fragile even speckled with dark splashes of dried crusted blood, lying immobile at her side. When Kaede had healed some of the minor injuries and cleaned and dressed the more serious ones, she had grimly mentioned to Miroku about the mark etched purposely into Kagome's right palm.
A scar that subtly glowed an unpromising scarlet red as if open wound that wouldn't heal, Kaede had gravely called it. A symbol that spoke of an ominous future for them.
Now Miroku discerned the edges of it in the curve of the Kagome's palm and could not help but agree with Kaede. Something not quite right superficially exuded from that bizarre scar; another quality to add to Kagome's already worryingly powerful, fluctuating aura.
The probable notion that Kagome had allowed someone (like Naraku, whispered an evil voice in Miroku's mind which he adamantly ignored) to intentionally engrave that in her palm with evident brutality disturbed Miroku too much for his liking.
Moving warily, Miroku leaned forward to inspect the inauspicious scar closer.
Abruptly Miroku frowned, brows furrowing over darkened eyes, hands clenched slightly tighter than usual around his staff.
It was kanji, the scar etched in Kagome's ashen bloodstained palm. Unfortunately Miroku was unable to distinguish all of it. In truth, he wasn't sure he wanted to know what it said (claimed, declared, revealed).
With another resigned sigh, he carefully slid nearer to the prone Kagome—could he truly call her by that name any more?—despite the persistent urge to move further away,and gently placed a damp cloth on her forehead, instinctively brushing away wild raven bangs.
In the next moment, vivid crimson blood liberally spurted from a severe slash on his face caused by the silver chopstick that he hadn't managed to dodge in time.
"Who are you?" were the first callous words that spilled from Kagome's red lips, which were twisted into a fierce snarl as she crouched defensively in the corner of Kaede's hut, blankets twined around her, raven hair askew and tumbling chaotically down her bandaged shoulders as a river of black, icy sapphire eyes flashing lethally, almost inhumanly, like an unpredictable predator that had been bothered while sleeping.
As he clutched his staff in front of him with one hand while the other hand was pressed against the deep gash on his cheek, vibrant blood of the richest ruby red sliding sickeningly down his hand and dripping distinctively onto the hard tatami mats, Miroku stared at Kagome, struck speechless, flooded with shock, even as some darker, knowing part of his mind wasn't surprised at all.
Innocent, pure Kagome had attacked him. Attacked him, viciously, mercilessly, and with skill that possibly matched his.
Even though it was safely embedded into the wooden beam beside him, Miroku could still feel the scorching vibrations of the sleek silver chopstick that nearly had pierced his left eye only a moment ago.
Now it struck him with full, ruthless force that this was not Kagome.
No, the Kagome he knew had a sunny, welcoming smile that shined for anyone and everyone. Not thin, eerily red lips that seemed stretched so unnaturally into a distrustful snarl, which further hid the fake, immaculate smile one simply knew those bloodless lips normally formed.
The Kagome he knew had starry, brilliantly sapphire eyes of unprejudiced innocence, of astoundingly pure goodness and righteousness. Not darkly glittering eyes blazing with a taunting tinge of wicked scarlet fire, eyes that held mysterious and untold secrets, the unforgiving eyes of a huntress out for blood, for revenge.
Her eyes were similar to the eyes of the miko Kikyo and different in an all too fatal way.
Gulping imperceptibly, Miroku spoke in voice he hoped was calm, reassuring: "Please calm down Kagome. I'm Miroku, remember?"
A sharp, biting, unbelieving reply, and Miroku forced himself not to flinch.
"No," Kagome retorted with a hiss, seeming to tense even more. "I don't know you."
In one smooth movement, a captivating dance of foamy silver waves and dancing sakura blossoms, Kagome swiftly removed the second chopstick entwined somehow both elegantly and frenziedly into the knots and coils of her silky hair as black as night, and deftly held it in front of her, a petite seemingly innocuous weapon that Miroku knew was all the more lethal in her slender white hands.
Again, Miroku cleared his throat and shifted, slowly standing up, carefully, as if he feared any sudden action would have a potentially destructive, adverse effect on Kagome.
With wary eyes he watched her as he hastily searched his mind for words that would perhaps pacify this raging, celestial tempest before him. Fortunately, before he could make another disastrous attempt, there was flicker of something other than bloody scarlet flames, a whisper of a ghost from the past, a phantom haunting the forgotten void behind Kagome's glassy blood sapphire eyes.
Everything stilled, as if subsiding into the eye of a storm where time paradoxically existed as a relic of the past, and Kagome murmured faintly, almost absently, more of an unsure query to herself than to Miroku: "Should I?"
Another timeless pause in which Miroku's eyes widened entirely bewildered.
More mutters. Light. Mellifluous. "Should I know you?"
Then a snort, coarse and mocking. Satirical. "Now isn't that the question. Should I know you?"
Like the crack of a whip, time resumed in a fashion similar to the whining turn of an old, overused wooden wheel, and Kagome snapped back to reality, painfully unfamiliar and indubitably unfriendly sapphire eyes full of bloody vengeance gazing unflinchingly into Miroku's soul.
Yes, that was another thing. Another thing… different about this icy temptress, this Kagome. She easily gazed into his soul and gave no indication that she truly cared about him. Except for the distant compassion that as a miko she gave to all inferior creatures, of course.
All he was to this beautiful, heartless Kagome was another meaningless fish in a fathomless, black, black sea where she unfeelingly hunted and annihilated anything that got in her way.
Her way to power.
Her way to revenge.
"But it doesn't really matter, does it?" Kagome continued in that same melodious, scornful saccharine voice, a repulsively false smile now twisting her red lips.
Abstractly, Miroku decided that he preferred the snarl. At least, he knew that snarl resembled nothing of the Kagome he knew. That smile was so enchantingly similar, nearly sweet and benevolent if it didn't contain that curve of poison to it, or if wasn't so bitterly artificial.
"Settle down, child. Ye are going to reopen ye wounds," Kaede suddenly interrupted, startling Miroku and disrupting the thickening tension in the stifling hut but no where near breaking it, unfortunately.
Now Kagome effortlessly stood without any jerking or cringing or belaying any indication of pain or injury, as if to disapprove and throw dirt upon Kaede's inane suggestion.
Indeed, she was elegance and beauty personified, Miroku distractedly mused. A wintry and cruel beauty.
"Who are you?" Kagome repeated, voice as steady and smooth as ice and just as frosty. "And why am I here?"
"We are your friends," Sango said hopefully as she too entered the hut, carrying a basket of herbs in her arms. "We went to the mountains to find… Naraku, and instead found you. So we brought you back to safety, back where you belong."
Tightening her hold on the sleek, razor-edged chopstick in her pale hand, Kagome scoffed disbelievingly.
"I remember you. You helped me destroy that horned demon," she said dispassionately to Sango, raising Sango's spirits and ripping out the optimistic foundation upon which they were based in the same disinterested breath. "However, do you think I am a fool? Who are you to take from my home without my knowledge? Who are you to decide where I belong?"
"Kagome, trust us—it's your memory, please," Sango urgently beseeched her, as if she could sense the Kagome she knew was gradually becoming completely lost to her with each moment that passed. "Please, Kagome—it's Naraku, he's done something, something with your memory… Kagome…"
"And who are you to speak of my relations with Naraku-sama?" Kagome irately interrupted, surprising even herself with her perceptible vehemence at the taijiya's words.
"Naraku… sama?" whispered Sango, features morphing into one of complete misery and despondency.
Looking at the taijiya's face normally cheery and lovely now so overcome with desolation, Kagome could not bring herself to feel anything more than a faint sympathy, possibly even a vague empathy at one point, which she felt for all things that had ill-fatedly slipped into a pathetic existence.
"Kagome… you've been… mislead," Miroku attempted to explain slowly, cautiously.
"Friends. Love." Kagome stated flippantly, dark eyes glancing at Miroku once again. "What need does a miko have for these things? Isn't that that right, miko-sama?" Kagome offhandedly added with disdainful politeness as her eyes flickered temporarily to Kaede.
"I know, Kagome, you're understandably confu—" Miroku tried again only to be cut off brusquely.
"More specifically, what need do I have for these things?" Kagome stated, her tone becoming faintly acidic like scentless, colorless venom that blisters upon touch. "Friendship. Love. Only more opportunities for me to be cruelly stabbed in the back, aren't they? Aren't they?"
"But we would never do that! And you… the Kagome I know would trust us!"" Sango cried, unthinkingly. However, it was too late to take back her words and hide them like a mouse that covets everything in its home.
With agonizing slowness, Kagome smiled and spoke in a beguiling saccharine tone. "That's the question, isn't it? Who am I?"
As she stared mutely, motionlessly at Kagome Sango's next words chocked bleakly in her throat. There was something so vilely, unexplainably wrong with this Kagome. In one moment she deceivingly echoed parts of a familiar, passionate Kagome while in the next she was once again that cold-heartedly perfected miko who emanated a powerful and not exactly malevolent but precariously warped aura.
Luckily, Miroku was able to gather his words to respond. "You are Kagome Higurashi. Our friend, our companion in our search for the Shikon no Tama. You honestly don't remember any of this?"
Smile still fixed in place, eyes still cool and eerily glass-like (as a pretty, pretty doll), Kagome merely continued to gaze at them apathetically.
Surely, they knew who she was. They knew her past.
Most likely, they could give her an identity, a life, a meaning to the name—Kagome Higurashi—that she had always used but never known why.
"Please," pleaded Sango desperately, "trust us, Kagome."
Yet could she trust them?
And, better yet, did she even want to?
"Why?" she questioned callously, while internally she absentmindedly wondered why she had trusted Naraku freely whereas she was reluctant to even consider trusting these people whom she knew held only the purest, concerned intentions for her. "Why should I trust you?"
"Child, ye need to rest," ordered Kaede. "Ye've retained some nasty injuries from your battle and it's apparent that your memory has not returned. There are also a few strange scars that should be taken care of. For example there is that mysterious cut, which appears to be a scar, on ye cheek, and on ye palm—"
With her free hand, Kagome swiftly drew one of her blue chopsticks—not quite as sharp as her unique silver pair but just as effective—from her sash and deftly threw it, promptly cutting off the old miko. It landed with a forbidding ring in the wooden frame of the doorway, precisely an inch away from the old woman's ear.
In her right palm, the hand clenching the silver chopstick, a burning sensation fiercely seared across it, a poignant sensation that should have stung unbearably but merely tickled somewhat and actually warmed her.
Resisting the sudden ridiculous urge to take her chopstick and viciously, pitilessly kill them all, Kagome also stifled a sardonic laugh. How far, far, immeasurably, infinitely far she had fallen. Especially into the fathomless, treacherously addictive world of bloody mendacity and swirling sinful scarlet that was Naraku's perverse game.
"Neither of us will ever win…" Kagome murmured idly to herself.
No. She didn't want to trust them.
Besides, she already had a purpose. A purpose in a world that was drastically different from the taijiya and the monk's. Her world was a clandestine one bathed in endless rivers of scarlet, founded upon a barbed oath of deceit and sin, and nurtured by the dying screams of all those inferior, worthless.
A world where revenge was the proverbial pomegranate fruit.
Nevertheless, that did not mean that she would not listen to them. After all, these people were obviously weary, forlorn, and in frantic need of help. And as a miko she would naturally help them in any way she could. Of course. Wasn't that her job? Her purpose? At least, according to those not a part of her enigmatic world that existed in the bloody shadows of the night.
Once again, Kagome resisted the maddening urge to laugh.
Amber gold eyes would die. A million excruciating, bloody, vengeful deaths. Certainly, by the taijiya's reaction to her careless words, these people knew where to find those loathsome amber gold eyes so she could be liberated in her revenge and obliterate those damned eyes in the most atrocious, malicious way possible.
Then… after that… she would be content, as she had told Naraku. Naturally Naraku would add some kind of cryptic new element to entertain her, and Kagome vaguely wondered what would be the next intriguing stage in Naraku's blasphemous game of the wretched world and all the inferior beings in it, but otherwise she would simply be content.
Content with Naraku beside her.
"Kagome…?" Sango hesitantly inquired, wondering what Kagome was muttering furiously to herself even as she steadily regarded them with her glassy eyes of a swirling, distorted sapphire stained with an unnatural, frightful bloody scarlet.
"Do you know of a hanyou with golden eyes?" Kagome nonchalantly asked, though the deepening fire gleaming like rapacious whirlpools of bloody scarlet that would unremittingly devour all in its path for retribution in her eyes proved otherwise.
Taking silent notice of how both the monk and the taijiya stiffened considerably at those words, Kagome inwardly smirked and continued in that same chaste tone, a fallaciously saccharine, placating smile incessantly plastered artfully on her lily-white features.
"You spoke of a Shikon no Tama, didn't you? That name… is familiar to me." Kagome cocked her head slightly, the brilliant rays of mid-morning that leaked through the doorway of the tension-filled hut accenting the striking blue highlights in her curling raven hair. "As I said, I am no fool. There are things I remember. Vivid, horrible flashes of blood and screams and amber eyes."
"Inuyasha…" breathed Sango, eyes widening further with horror with each passing moment.
"Yes, him. I loved him," Kagome confirmed impassively. Perhaps that was what frightened Miroku, Sango, and even Kaede the most: Kagome's chilling apathy when she spoke of him, of anything.
"I loved him," she continued, "and I trusted him. Don't you agree?"
Presently, she moved, taking one single step forward in what seemed to be a tauntingly slow, sinuous movement, her clothes whispering against her lithe body which merely reinforced the haunting impression of a celestially ethereal specter she conveyed. In her right palm, from which exuded a faint uncanny scarlet radiance, her chopstick was poised like a slender symbol of the power and threat she posed.
"I trusted him," Kagome stated. "With my life. With my heart. Even with my soul."
Another soundless step forward. And all Miroku, Sango, and even Kaede merely could do was stare, frozen, immobile, transfixed.
"And he betrayed me."
She was so close to them now, this inconceivable, mind-blowing force of ambiguity.
Who was she?
None of them could even begin to comprehend. This Kagome, who seemed like a lifeless puppet to her revenge at times while at others, was as vivacious as the Kagome of the past.
What was she?
"And you truly expect me to fall into that despicable trap all over again like some naive little girl, don't you?"
Then she paused and her wild raven hair obscured her pale face for a moment as she stared down with murky eyes at something none of them could detect.
"Kagome…" Sango dared to breathe though her hoarse voice was no louder than the wind.
"You want me to trust you, isn't that right?" Kagome queried calmly, voice having reverted back to its serene, disturbingly detached tone. "Then first you must do something for me."
Words unremittingly caught in her throat, Sango simply moved her mouth in unheard words of distress, but a new shine of hope sparked in her anguished brown eyes. With wrinkled suspicious eyes and a stony face, Kaede also wordlessly examined the perfidiously esoteric girl before them.
While they were all curious, albeit that curiosity was tinged with uncertainty, it was Miroku that tentatively spoke for all them.
"And what… do you wish for us to do?"
That poisoned, saccharine smile, as appalling and faux as it was to them, seemed to stretch abhorrently across Kagome's porcelain white face, causing the sparse beams of glittering sunlight to crudely accent the peculiar pallid scar that curved down her left cheek.
"You must take me to those gold eyes," Kagome replied dismissively even whilst her voice cunningly glided through the uneasy, almost opaque atmosphere like a mesmeric melody that was blithe and dulcet to the ears as it merrily corrupted you from within. "You must take me the hanyou… Inuyasha."
End Notes: So what did you think? Tell me. Comments and constructive criticims are food for the starving author. And usually a good bribe to get me to update, especially now that I've finished writing the rest of the ficcie. :D
Hope you enjoyed! Till next time...
Ja ne!
– scelerus animus o.O