She broke him.

Koga stared at the floor of his bathroom, at his hand that should of trembled. But didn't. Why? How had she done it? When had she done it?

Like the frailty of a stick, she had snapped him in half. So easily. He hadn't even seen it coming.

How?

Kogu shut his eyes and ran damp fingers through his hair, feeling a stickiness trail behind. Oh well. He could clean up tomorrow. Today he could be dirty.

Tomorrow.

Would there be a tomorrow? What was today? What was any day?

Time.

Now what was that? Was time important?

Is that how she broke him? With time? So time was her weapon. Fucking time. He'll kill it. He'll kill time if he has to.

But how? How could time be killed?

Doesn't matter. It wasn't important. Everything died the same. Just had to find the heart.

Like how he found hers.

Koga squeezed his eyes shut, a cold shudder washing through him. His hand was heavy. Why was his hand heavy? What was he holding? What -

A soft cough. Somewhere in the bedroom.

His eyes flew open and his heartbeat tripled. Slowly, carefully, he stood from the cold floor and noticed his limbs felt light. Odd. Should they feel like that? He rotated his wrists and rolled his shoulders, testing.

Ah. All the weight was in his hand.

His fingers tightened over the cold metal of the gun and he walked into the bedroom.

. . .

"Marry me."

Kagome looked at the man sitting across the table from her. "I don't want to," she said calmly. Her voice was cool, and her face was collected.

"Doesn't matter. A deal is a deal," he said.

"Since when did blackmail become a fair deal?" she asked. She lifted her cup of tea to her mouth and sipped, staring at him over the rim.

Koga scoffed and leaned back against the chair. He told himself it wasn't because he wanted to distance himself from her eyes. He told himself he wasn't shrinking back."I'd say a secure future for your brother is a damn fair deal."

"I marry you or my brother's future will never see the light of day?" She tapped her chin thoughtfully, then turned a hard gaze at him. "That's called blackmailing, according to the twenty-first century."

"Call it what you want, darling. I think you're smart enough to realize the political power money holds in the twenty-first century."

Her hard gaze never faltered on him. But she didn't say anything, just stared at him with her gaze that could cut through steel and kill a man.

A greasy smile slid over his face and he shifted, tightening his hands into a ball to stifle the odd, involuntary tremor. "Not so clever now, are you Miss I-Can-Do-Everything-Myself?"

She didn't respond for a long moment. He tapped his foot against the marble floors.

"When?" she said abruptly.

"When what?"

"When will the wedding be?"

"Two weeks," he responded. When she looked away, his greasy smile returned. "Don't worry, sweetcakes. I'll take good care of you."

Then her cold eyes were on him again. "It isn't me you need to worry about."

. . .

He had always been obsessed with her, had always secretly feared her. That fear grew to a blinding hate. Sometimes he thought it was love. But no, it was never that. There was always a fine line between love and hate. He realized that now.

He stared at her body on the bed, the slow, broken rise and fall of her chest. She didn't fight it. She never fought pain. He never understood why, so he had beat her to see if she bled. That was the only time she smiled or laughed. He couldn't stand it.

. . .

"You're cheating on me," he said. It wasn't a question.

Kagome glanced up at Koga. He stood in the doorway of their bathroom, dressed in his work suit. His arms hung limp at his side, eyes wide and wild with fury.

She pulled her bathrobe tighter around her, tossing her soaking hair over her shoulder. Instead of saying anything to him, she resumed the application of her powder, camouflaging the marks and bruises on her face and neck.

In two quick strides, he was beside her, tearing the brush and compact from her hands and hurling it to the bathroom floor. The loud clatter made her flinch. His brute hands gripped her arms, nails digging crescents into her skin, and tore the bathrobe from her body. He stood in silent fury and stared at the marks on her naked body. Some of it was his doing; the others weren't. He knew the difference between the mark of a fist and the mark of a lover's teeth, playful lips, passionate hands. On her breasts, her stomach, the flesh of her buttocks, the inside of her thighs.

His lips curled against his teeth. "Fucking whore!" he raged and threw her against the sink.

She fell against the sharp corner of the granite, the breath knocked from her. She didn't try to get back up, just slid to the cold tiles of the floor, eyes shut in fierce acceptance.

"No one! No one else!" he screamed.

Koga dragged her up from the floor and into their bedroom, shoved her onto the bed. His hand gripped her chin, shaking it in a violent motion.

"You're mine!" he screamed at her, unbuckling his pants with his other hand.

Her eyes merely stared back at him, in the same merciless manner she always did when he struggled to drag her down to him – it made him strike her face with his fist. She made no move to stop him as he yanked her beneath him, restrained her wrists behind her back, and thrust into her with a force that made her vision swim with black spots.

But she didn't scream at him, didn't beg him to stop, simply closed her eyes and balled her lips, body tensed in unflinching defiance. And thrust after thrust grew frantic and desperate, his heavy gasps growing heavier. When she opened her eyes, it mocked him, pointed and smiled at the wild, savage fear in his eyes.

Then suddenly his hands were around her throat, squeezing. And she coughed and gagged and laughed.

She laughed.

He didn't stop raping her until she was halfway dead.

. . .

He couldn't stand it. Never.

"Why did you marry me?" he asked her. In his own ears, his tremulous voice seemed far, far away, as if his mind were separate from his body and the link had long since fell away through the fissures.

Her head rolled to the side, and her eyes reflected all that he was and everything that had summed up to this moment. Her lungs shuddered with the effort to speak. "You...wanted...me to."

His head slowly shook, back and forth, eyes wide and unseeing. What was there that needed seeing?

. . .

With the sweeping flick of her arm, Kagome tossed a manilla folder onto the kitchen counter. It slid across the black granite, knocking aside his glass of rum and roll of marijuana nearly onto the floor. Koga caught the joint, shoved it into his pocket, and snapped a glare at her.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he snapped, taking hold of his glass. He gestured to the folder. "And what is that?"

"Divorce papers," she said evenly. Her purse was clutched under arm and her small suitcase hung from her other hand.

His glass froze halfway to his lips. Slowly, he placed it back on the counter and stared at her for a long moment."You're divorcing me," he said noncommittally. His laugh was sharp and without humor. "What makes you think I'll sign it?"

Faintly she sighed. "You'll sign them if you have no desire to spend time in jail."

"What for?" he scoffed.

"Rape. Domestic battery. Possession of illegal substances." She shrugged impatiently. "Pick one."

He didn't move or speak, just stared at the folder for a long, long time. Then, downing the rest of his rum, he made his way towards her, swaying lightly on his feet."I don't think," he drawled, picking the folder up, "that that's going to happen." He held it out to her.

She didn't take it. "I can assure you it will. But keep the folder anyway, in case you change your mind."

She started for the door. Koga flung his empty glass against the floor where it exploded into a dozen crystalline pieces and made an angry advance towards her, catching her forearm, and whirling her around to him.

Her eyes look at him expectantly.

He would've slapped her face by now, beat her into unconsciousness even, had something in him not fell away. And he knew. He felt something shift in his gut. Suddenly, he was retreating, stumbling back from her. His foot stepped on a shard of glass, but he didn't seem to notice.

Her eyes flickered to his foot. "You should clean up," she said. "You're bleeding."

. . .

Koga looked at what he'd done to her, the bullet that he'd lodged deep into her shoulder. The blood was seeping into the sheets.

"It's over, Koga." Her voice was even and faint. But there was no pain or fear.

Kill time, he thought. Where the fuck was it?

"Do you regret marrying me?" she asked him. "Do you want to know what I've done to you?"

He pointed the gun at her face. Was it her?

"I've brought you to your basest instinct," she continued, as if he didn't have a gun pointed at her, preparing to end her life. "Not by money or political power or violent threats. Do you want me to tell you?"

"Shut up."

For the first time, he acknowledged a deep, sweltering fear lurching and screaming and coiling deep in his gut.

"By allowing you to see, to witness - "

"Shut your fuckin mouth."

" - to prove that I could not be broken by you."

What moves time?

"Pain is your weapon against your victim. But I rendered you weaponless when pain was irrelevant to me. I never broke you. You were broken the day you lived in the name of fear. You ignored your fear, masked it, pretended it wasn't there. I made you conscious of it. It was only a matter of time."

Kill time.

His wild eyes snapped to her face.

Kill consciousness.

Kagome's eyes watched the trembling hands that gripped the gun. "I told you..."

Koga brought the muzzle of the gun to the belly of his chin.

"...it wasn't me you should have been worried about."

The gunshot reverberated throughout the empty house and into the quiet streets.