To Believe
Disclaimer: Rumiko Takahashi owns it… Disclaimers are so fucking boring.
It was dark whether her eyes were open or closed. She found that, over time, her ability to imagine had faded, until even her dreams were grey at best. There was no color, other than perhaps a deep, bloody red, or perhaps the glow of maggot white flesh in the dark.
She felt nothing. The room used to be cold. She was sure of it. At least, she thought so. Wanted to think so.
But now it was nothing. Neither warm, nor hot, nor anything in between. Just a blank nothingness. A distant, tiny, nearly microscopic part of what used to be Kagome Higurashi's mind told her she was just numb.
The rest of her just wondered, if in a vague way, what had happened.
As time went on, she began to question whether there had been any physical being to her existence at all.
But she could still smell, still taste… She thought.
The room smelled of something old and dank- musty, maybe? Grimy. Moldy. Yes.
And in her mouth there was the perpetual taste of bile and acid roiling around her tongue. She forgot any other taste had ever existed.
Though she generally sensed the deterioration of most of her senses, her hearing had grown more acute than ever.
She heard each creak of floor board, each fluttering of insect wings, each rasping breath He took as he gazed on her nearly catatonic form or as He sat scheming in His rooms on the other side of this Hell.
She heard His voice, and did her best to ignore it, to push it out, to get it as far away from her as possible. It never worked. She always failed.
He whispered caresses against the shell of her ear, and, little by little, she began to succumb to His seduction.
He has never cared for you…
Hadn't he?
He's not even looking for you.
Laughter-
Do you want to see him?
…
I can show him to you… Do you want that, Kagome?
Her name on His tongue sent shivers racing up and down her spine. But she did not answer him.
And then-
Inuyasha. Warm, dry, smiling, a red-robed miko wrapped in his arms, firelight making her expression almost human, almost loving. But there was no doubt about Inuyasha. With his arms about her, he was there to stay. There were no thoughts for the unfortunate girl who had fallen into the fell hands of his enemy.
A gasping sob, and it was over. There was no more hope for Kagome.
What she felt next should have startled her. But, somehow, it didn't.
A moist, rough tongue trailed across her cheeks, and, very unsettlingly, drank in her tears.
Kagome.
She listened.
I would never toss you aside. I would never let you go.
Ever so slightly, she leaned into his touch.
In her head, there was only laughter.
She wasn't sure whether it was His or her own.
ooOoo
The path was old and so worn that he wondered when was the last time anyone had come this way. Looking around, and feeling the jaki in the air, he thought that he would rather not be there himself. Except…
Kagome needed him.
Resolutely, he strode on ahead, his mind never wandering from the task ahead of him.
They had planned every aspect of their attack with an attention to detail completely alien to Inuyasha. Were the need less great, he would have snorted and let the plans roll of his shoulders like water. But he couldn't let that happen, this time.
They needed a way to scout Naraku's fortress without being detected. That was the most important, a way to get in without Naraku being prescient of their offensive.
And that was what brought him here, nearly as far away from his Kagome as it got, on his way to see a certain witch. An old memory, of a withered old woman with white, scraggly hair and wide, black eyes. Even he shuddered when he thought of those eyes, with their pupils so big they devoured the iris.
It was to this witch he must go to plead for a way to enter Naraku's domain undetected.
Clutching at Kagome's jar of shikon shards, he was glad he had a powerful bargaining piece.
ooOoo
She felt Him moving over her, against her, inside of her, and she did nothing. She did not move, did not breathe, did not blink. Instead, she just stared straight ahead, past His smothering shoulder, white and angular, and into the depthless black space beyond Him.
And it was always dark, whether her eyes were open or closed.
Feeling him against her, flushed against her skin (which she liked to imagine was almost as white as His now), she realized with a small, breathless joy that she could feel.
She felt His hands oozing poison down her body in what she imagined were supposed to be caresses. She felt Him inside her, the hard pain of Him tearing at her until she bled. She felt Him when He released, felt the convulsive shutters of corruption slash through her body when He came.
And it was this feeling which planted the seed of thought inside her once more.
Lying there, submissive beneath him, she began to dream.
She knew, at this point, that nothing was real and that everything was true.
She knew that nothing in her life was ever going to be bell-schedule precise again, and that no one or no thing would ever come to save her again. Especially not him. She just couldn't rely on him anymore. She never really could.
But she could rely on the dark. It was ever present, and after awhile she began to see it as a friend. Her only friend. Often, at night, when He had finally left her, she imagined she could talk to it.
Sometimes she wondered if, when she finally escaped (because she had to always reassure herself that she would escape), she would be unable to see anything. But when she did imagine such a world, such an unreal escape, she was hit with a pang of remorse. It would be too bright. She would miss the dark.
Sometimes she liked to pretend she was a little mole, in its little den. She was unconcerned with the Big World. All that mattered was her warm little home and her immediate surroundings.
Or sometimes, when He loomed over her in all His cruel beauty, she liked to pretend she was just asleep, dreaming a terrible, terrible dream.
ooOoo
He had hoped it would not come to this. He really had. His grip around the little shikon jar tightened.
The old witch had said very little as he related what had happened to her.
Luckily, she had listened.
"Right now, this does not concern me," she began.
He felt the bile rise in his throat. She had to help him. She had to help him. She had to help him.
"But soon it will. If not tomorrow, then the next day, or the day after."
New hope filled him. She would help him. She would help him. She would-
"From what you've said, this miko of yours is… powerful."
A quick nod.
"And now she is in the hands of this Naraku."
Another nod, more strained than before.
"I wonder what he plans to do with her…" she mused.
A low, threatening growl emanated from his chest. Even when the old witch raised an eyebrow, the growling never stopped, only quieted.
"And so… I will help you."
"At what price?" he asked her quietly.
The old woman just laughed.
ooOoo
She wasn't sure when the broken feeling began. Today? Yesterday? Tomorrow?
She really couldn't say.
All that she could say was that she was hear, now, in this room where she had been her entire life, and, somewhere, the only other one to have ever been was lurking somewhere just out of sight.
Not that she could really see anything anyway.
But somewhere, at some point, she began to feel as though there was something… missing.
No, not missing.
Gone.
And she couldn't say for the life of her what it was.
Nothing was changed. Everything was just as it had always been- the room was still dark, she could still here His incessant chattering in her ear, still feel His cold body against hers… Everything was as it was as it should be and is.
And yet…
It was as though there were something missing from her. Something she had lost along the way.
Sometimes, when He visited her (and she liked to think of them as visits, like nice, civil people with wide ribboned hats and dandy suits… that was strange- wherever had that thought come from?) she spoke to him. Not often, but enough that she still sometimes remembered how to speak and what to say.
"I think sometimes I'm like a little bird without a wing," she giggled out one day as cold hands stroked her face.
He looked down at her and, almost inattentively, asked her what she meant.
"A bird without a wing!" she laughed, then, coughing, began to wheeze. "Without the most important part…" Her sentence trailed off in almost lackadaisically.
One of those fish white fingers caught her beneath the chin and tilted her face up to peer into those red, red eyes.
His mouth moved and formed words, but she was too lost. Even His words couldn't reach her now.
And then-
He pressed a hand against her forehead and sweeping darkness overtook her.
ooOoo
Pale and withdrawn, Inuyasha returned to his companions. But in his hand he held what they so desperately needed.
They looked at him with the glassy sheen of hope in their eyes. He wouldn't spoil this for them. The price was not theirs to pay.
He looked off into the distance.
His attention snapped back to them so suddenly that it was hard to say it was ever elsewhere.
"I have it."
He looked at them- Sango, with dark bruises shadowing the skin beneath her eyes; Miroku, face slack with exhaustion... And Shippou, green eyes so lackluster they might have been grey. These were his only allies. And what was he? A tired hanyou with no scruples left, only the fervent desire to save a girl who had the bad luck to fall into a magic well.
ooOoo
Something was inside her head, inside her mind, peeling her, coring her, plucking out the pit and pushing it aside. Realization struck like lightning, sharper than it had been since before Forever started to rule her reality.
He was examining her.
"Are you there?" she stage-whispered to the Something.
When the Something didn't respond, she began to grow distraught. And still the plucking continued. Like needles pricking at her skin. Or little ants nibbling at her limbs. A smile flitted across Kagome's shadowed face. Feeling the Something sort through her, she thought that maybe most of all it felt like a spoon scooping ice cream.
Kagome.
When the Something finally spoke, Kagome felt compelled to listen. Somehow, its voice inside her head seemed familiar.
Do you know me, Kagome? the Something asked.
It was familiar… But for some reason, when she tried to place it, there was nothing. She couldn't remember anything before or after this. It was all fuzzy… like snow. Erased. Gone.
The feeling of something being probed, inspected… Taken out and put back in.
"Naraku."
She wasn't sure whether the word was a curse or a prayer.
More pushing, pressing, tugging, changing. For some reason she felt like he was warping her, remolding her. It was a bad feeling.
But soon the feeling dissipated, and when he was finished, she was like an easel waiting for him to paint.
A/N: Well, here's another fantabulous chapter added to my saga. Shout outs to hushisushi, my quasi-patient beta, and to LatinInuLuva, The Sacred Tree, and MyInuYashaObsession for reviewing. This chapter was a little bit difficult to write because it's such a bridge… and I'm pretty sure I'm going in circles at this point. Trying to write crazy is hard! Ah well. Chapter progress will be posted on my author page from now on, so if you want to see when the next chapter is coming out, just check there. See y'all next time. Peace out.