KS. Revenge is all about hitting where it hurts the most. With that thought in mind, Sesshô abducts Kagome and does the unforgivable to her. She returns with mind and body shattered and almost no memory of the encounter, yet strangely enough...she now can't stop thinking about him.
Disclaimer: Nope. I no own Inuyasha.
Notes: LENGTHENED CHAPTER. The last part was originally going in the eighth chapter, but it felt disjointed so I put it together...mwah. I recommend you read this chapter (especially the middle sections) while listening to Ayumi Hamasaki's "Still Alone". It adds something. :9
Rating: PG-13
BittersweetBy Pam t3h Spam
Chapter Seven
She was here.
Sesshômaru's unwavering gaze lay intently on the still form before him. The claustrophobic tower room was empty but for the girl, sprawled on a woven mat, and he himself, seated across from her. With no one around to see, the taiyôkai's normally cold face had softened ever-so-slightly. His expression could never be called gentle, exactly, but a pensive air about him molded the icy features into a somewhat more approachable shape.
She was here.
Her arms stirred, and he tensed, suddenly alert. But all she did was turn over in her sleep. Her lips puckered, and she murmured indiscernible words. A brief smile lit her still-sleeping features, and a small sigh of contentment rose like a soft cloud to fill the expectant hush of the quiet room.
He didn't have to guess at what dreams ran through the girl's mind. He knew every word, every action, every fleeting thought that passed through her subconscious as she slept. Her dreams were not just dreams—they were works of art. They had been painstakingly crafted, woven into a seamless silvery net that caught her mind easily in its grasp. And when she awoke, they stayed with her, gossamer threads that strangled her judgment, ensnared her emotions, and warped her actions. Like the web of some deadly spider, insidiously beautiful, they ate away at her psyche and left behind an alluring trail of suggestions buried deep, so deep. Half-formed ideas stirred a little stronger and burrowed a little deeper into her mind with the passing of each dream-filled night...slowly but steadily, bit by bit, day by day, until her own thoughts were not just caught in his net: they were a part of it.
And when that happened, she would be his completely, mind and body. Long months he had waited for his plan to come into fruition, and it was close. It was so close.
She was here.
A quick shiver of delicious anticipation stole over his body and caught him unawares. Deftly, he tossed a round orange fruit into his mouth and bit deep into the heart, into the pungent sweetness of its hidden flesh. The unripe fruit was flung back into the bowl with a rumbling snarl of frustration that was cut off suddenly as the girl stirred again, eyelids fluttering. Quelling his impatience, he watched her fall back into deep slumber. As the afternoon wore on, his own eyes began to close. He could wait; it was very close indeed.
She was here at last.
-------
Gray sky. Black clouds. The smell of rain in the air. A rumble and crackle of thunder echoing far off. I need to get inside. If I don't get inside—I know something will happen.
(I know it's a dream; it's just a dream.)
I know it without having to think about it: something indescribably terrible is coming with the thunderstorm. Fear makes me clumsy. I stumble over a branch because suddenly I'm in a forest filled with
trees. Here a tree, there a tree. All across the horizon, as far as I can see: tree. Tree. Treetreetreetreetree! So many trees and nowhere in them to hide. I need to find somewhere fast, because if I don't, something will happen.
(Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream...)
A trickle of wetness down my cheek. Am I crying? No, it's just a raindrop. I need to hurry. I run faster and faster, and it's like magic: no branches whip across my face, no long roots reach up to trip me. I don't tire, I don't slow, and the forest blurs around me as I go faster and faster and faster
but it leads me nowhere. Where does this forest end?
More rain. It's coming down faster now. Slow, heavy plip-plops on the leaves turn into a rapid pattering of raindrops that sound eerily like pursuing footsteps. I hear thunder rumbling closer now. Lightning won't be far behind.
Oh great. A forest, some lightning, and me in a sailor fuku. Water runs down my face in torrents, and it's just like I'm crying. I'm sobbing and I can't stop. The raindrop-footsteps scurry faster, faster, faster, and my feet pick up the tempo. Just me and my feet and the green blur of trees, running a race against the rain and the something that comes with it.
(A dream, a dream, a dream, a dream.)
Thunder booms loud right over me. I drop to the ground and cover my head. Stupid: that won't stop lightning from hitting me. But it feels safer that way, in the dark cradle of my arms, breathing the earthy-wet smell of rain.
I know: it's no use running anymore. The rain is coming down in silvery sheets that crash into fountains of warm mist as they reach the ground. I lay, and breathe, and peer into the darkness.
White light fills my vision. I can see it through my arms; they are no more substantial than the rainy mists. Is this the something I was running from? It's so beautiful. I'm no longer afraid, though I'm suddenly very tired. My muscles ache with weariness and I couldn't get up even if I wanted to. Which I don't particularly for some reason. The something—coming closer now—is beautiful but I feel that one look at that beauty will blind me or kill me.
It's bending down. Oh no, I really don't want to look at it...it touches my arm and the rain running down is suddenly hot, hot, burning hot. It's not rain but molten lava pouring over me in wide red rivers. I open my mouth to say something—to ask it to stop, maybe—and the hot liquid runs over my tongue with a familiar coppery sting.
(adreamdreamdreamdreamdreamdreamdream...)
And it's not rain, not even lava. It's blood.
My blood.
-------
She has stopped running. She lays there like a dead thing, barely moving, barely breathing. Rain plasters her clothes and her hair to her slender frame, and the resemblance to a corpse increases tenfold.
Is she dead? Panic rises in me; I push it down. She can't die now, that wench, and ruin it all.
I step forward for a closer inspection. Once I leave the protective canopy of trees, raindrops plummet down toward me. They evaporate inches from my skin, forming a fine white veil of misty gases that hover around me. Seen from inside my translucent envelope, the forest has become a shimmering, ghostly otherworld.
She still lives. Her body moves slightly, and a cloud of mist rises with every expulsion of breath. To my wonderment, her arms have taken on a shining, iridescent quality. They glow so brightly I can see straight through them to her staring brown eyes. Not asleep then, either. She appears to be watching me.
As if hearing my thoughts, her eyes suddenly snap shut.
No matter. Her arms intrigue me much more. The glow, the gentle pulse of some force unknown to me...I draw Tenseiga and touch its tip against her skin. The blade rings out, a high, sweet note that lasts for only a second. When it dies away, the wench is screaming something about blood, blood, too much blood, she's covered with blood and bleeding to death.
I see no blood. Only the steady rain drumming out its insistent beat.
Her screaming gradually fades into nothing. She heaves dry sobs, then soft, pathetic whimperings like a young pup. Silence, then. All is silent but for the few broken, disjointed words that rasp from the girl's throat: she is covered with blood, blood, blood.
Curious, I lift her hand to my mouth and run a fang across it, breaking the skin. A thin red line appears on the pale flesh, and a single drop of ruby-red blood oozes out. I taste it, and instead of the coppery warmth I expect, a full-bodied, fruity flavor fills my mouth.
Curious indeed. I drop her hand and will myself awake.
-------
Sesshômaru woke with a start in a room full of the dusky hues of twilight. For a moment, he simply sat and breathed, slowly bringing his senses back to this realm. Tenseiga tingled at his side, and he laid a hand on it.
A slight frown creased his brow. Why had the course of the dream changed? He hadn't made an error; it was impossible. That intricate weave of that particular dream had been as perfect as all the others, but was undeniably true that something had gone wrong. But what? What had changed it? If not him, then who?
Darkness had fallen as he pondered the question, but the lack of light didn't bother him unduly. Even in the gloom, his eyes fell clearly on the girl across the room, still sleeping peacefully. He remembered the glowing light emitted by her bare arms, the cries of blood and more blood, the inexplicable ringing of Tenseiga's blade...and the question answered itself.
If not him, then her.
"Girl..." With the faintest whisper of cloth, he stood and moved to her bedside. Her face was smooth and innocent as she slept. It was a face that could hold no secrets, no mysteries.
And yet...was it just his imagination or did the dullest gleam of white light emanate from her arms?
He blinked, and it was gone—if it had even been there at all.
His plans were moving ahead perfectly. This was no time to second-guess them. His growing sense of disquiet as he stood there and Tenseiga's soft, insistent humming were hardly reason enough to believe that something had gone horribly wrong, that he had overlooked an infinitely crucial fact. But it was hard for him to hold onto that idea as, without warning, the girl's brown eyes snapped open. The suddenness of it unbalanced him, and he struggled to maintain his composure.
She spoke to him in a whisper. The sound was hardly human, a ghost of a voice worn ragged with pain and despair.
"Please...get it off me...the blood...!"
He was frozen. This was impossible, impossible...
And then it began again: the sound from the dream-web they had shared. The dry, tearing sobs that rose with a great wrench from her throat, escaped from her lips, and rasped out to his ears. They reverberated through the tiny room, echoing, bouncing, repeating, unceasing and unbearably painful to his canine hearing. They drummed his emotions to a fever pitch, dull and insistent, until he was willing to do anything to make them stop.
He caught her chin in a viselike grip and jerked, hard, lifting her whole body into the air. She was so light, she felt like a bird in his hands, all hollow air and no substance. But still she continued to sob weakly, and that fragile, bird-like body shook so hard that the trembling ran up his own arms. Now it was his body quivering uncontrollably, his body shaken by sobs that seemed to come from the very depths of the soul.
And now the sound didn't simply enter his ears—it seemed to pierce his very heart. A sudden light-headedness stole over him, leaving him gasping for breath and deprived of any strength. His failing senses never registered the fact that he had sunk to his knees, nor that his strained breathing now matched the rhythm of those rending sobs. He closed his eyes to a room that was suddenly as insubstantial as spring mist, swirling and changing and birthing shadowy shapes before his vision.
As he sank heavily into the encroaching darkness that billowed up softly and sweetly around him, he was aware of only one thing. Even as the shadows stretched longer and the dark became more absolute, the form of the girl lying by him remained unwaveringly solid. There was a slight jarring bump, and he felt himself touch down gently in this realm, wherever it might be. He could do nothing but look at her, her chest still heaving with the effort of her sobs, her face contorted into a state beyond describing. The sound was still rattling his mind, but for the moment he was distracted by something else.
She had started to glow. It was as if some divine artist had dipped his brush in pure sunlight and outlined her sleeping form. Light, clean and white, radiated from her face, her arms, her legs. It pierced through every inch of flesh, and her transparent form etched itself indelibly upon his closed lids.
He was blinded by her light, deafened by her sobs. He felt his mind begin to rip away, and struggled weakly to hold on to it. As if from far away, he felt the smooth curve of skin under his fingers: his grip on her jaw had never weakened.
Spring mists, swirling in deadly pearl-gray wisps around him. Hollow sobs, shaking him at every turn to destroy him from the inside out. He knew that, no matter what, he had to stop that sound. The quivering face under his fingers was the only thing that he had held onto, and the only thing he could think of.
The sounds throbbing in his ears, he jerked her face up again and kissed her.
His lips covered hers, and he felt one last painful cry die in her throat. What came out instead was a small sigh, a single breath of joyous relief that moved into him, a soft gift from her lips. It seemed to fill him, restore him, and as he released her to fall away, the world slipped back into reality.
End Chapter Seven
A/N: I tried not to use names for this chapter. This one was supposed to set a sort of ethereal, dreamy mood for...well, you'll see. Are you satisfied with the semi-explanation at the beginning:3 That's all I'll you for a good long time...haha. And how do you like the amended end...?