Puppet by ƒ å ł ł - ç н å η
Puppet
Kagome stumbles out of the well, bloody and battered; the pain is there, but she is numb. The weight of the completed jewel is heavy around her neck and she takes one step, stumbles, and falls to the ground. Finished. It has all been finished, everything has gone full circle, but she is still alive, an outsider in a world that has passed her by - and she only waved goodbye as everything she knew disappeared in flashes of bright colour and loud voices.
She had not stopped them. She had not followed. She had not done anything.
---
Naraku was dead. It was almost anti-climatic, the final battle. One arrow. That was all it had taken to rid the Feudal Era of his presence. One measly little arrow to repay a creature that was neither demon nor human for all the suffering and death.
Inuyasha was still alive, battered but breathtakingly alive and her breath caught in her throat when he turned to her, a genuine smile on his face - but he wasn't looking at her, he never was, because it was Kikyo behind her he saw.
Sango and Miroku were standing next to each other now, Kirara making her way over the corpses of a thousand and one remains. Shippo was with them, eyes bright as he chattered about what he had done. Even as she watched, numb, the taijiya buried her face in Miroku's shoulder, silent sobs shaking her form. Kohaku was dead.
Sesshoumaru was across the field from them, sheathing Tokijin. His part in the battle was over - but he had not killed Naraku, some part of her protested as she watched this. Had that not been his desire?
Naraku's detachments were all dead now. They had simply collapsed, master-less marionettes whose strings had been cut. Naraku had been their marionettenspieler, but he was dead now. So were they.
No one had noticed her, wrapped up in their own little worlds of happiness and grief and indifference. Not even Inuyasha. She was overlooked in favor of Kikyo - and was that not always the way things would be? They never noticed her wish.
She could hear Sango's overjoyed cry when Kohaku stirred again, Inuyasha's exclamation of surprise when he smelt Kikyo instead of grave dirt and clay. She heard Shippo cry out to his father, materializing in a bright swirl of familiar blue fire.
She didn't turn back.
It was too painful, knowing that everything was finally right in the Feudal Era. Naraku was dead. The Shikon no Tama had been made whole. She had no purpose in that world anymore, the world that had been more her home than her own era for the last few years. She slipped over the rim of the well and told herself that she had no regrets. Saying goodbye would be too painful.
So was leaving.
---
She is a ghost in this world, the era that she was born into. She speaks, talks, walks, eats - everything that a human would do - but she is not completely there. Her friends notice this and begin to drift away from her, one by one. She lets them leave. It is not her prerogative to demand they stay.
Everyone walks away, one by one. They have no time to spare for the little girl, longing for a happily ever after for herself.
---
"Kagome?"
She looked down at Shippo, the kitsune sucking on a lollipop.
"Will you come visit after we kill Naraku?"
It was an innocent question. It was her worst nightmare. No matter how she tried to deny it, tried to convince herself that she could create another purpose for herself, the truth of the matter was that there was none. It was the Shikon no Tama that had started her journey in this era. The Shikon no Tama would end it as well... And wasn't that fitting?
For a moment, she was tempted to lie. Put a smile on her face, pretend that all was well in the world, and tell Shippo that of course she would come visit everyone. She could not.
Instead, Kagome gave Shippo a strained smile and shrugged, hardening her heart against the way his face fell and the way he dejectedly trudged away.
It had to be done. Goodbyes were never easy
---
It has been more than a year now. More than a year since she stumbled out the well house into her era for the last time, rejoined a world that was supposed to be hers.
"I'm going home now, Inuyasha!"
Home. It is not her home. Not anymore. Her mother still smiles and cooks and cleans, her grandfather has not changed, her brother is still rambunctious - no, it is her that has changed. Her house is no longer her home. It has not been for quite some time, but she was just realizing this now.
Kagome Higurashi has always been a bit slow when it comes to realizing the obvious. This time, it is no different.
"They say home is where the heart is. Where is the home when there is no heart left?"
---
"It's all Naraku's fault" Kagome grumbled one night, uncomfortably sitting on the rocky terrain. "If he had never existed to begin with there wouldn't be any problem right now."
Sango and Miroku exchanged looks. She was past 16 now, had seen more than most humans could claim to have seen in a lifetime - and yet she was still so naïve.
"It's not that easy" Miroku tried to explain, his hand twitching as he tried to refrain from groping Sango at that moment. "In a way, Naraku is just a puppet. As long as the Shikon no Tama exists, there will always be a demon like Naraku."
Whatever else he was going to say was cut off when Sango slapped him again. Kagome listened with one ear and promptly buried the houshi's words.
If she listened, her fairy tale would fall to pieces. She wanted to keep it alive, even if only for a few more seconds. It was hers.
---
One day, Kagome looks into the mirror and sees a stranger. It is not Kikyo she sees. It is not herself.
Instead, she sees -Naraku, a conglomeration of weaker demons, tentacles and claws and fangs and talons and redred eyes - a creature with palepale skin and eyes more red than blue. For a moment, she forgets where she is and lashes out with untrained miko powers, shattering the mirror.
She doesn't realize what she has done until her mother comes running and gasps. There is blood on her face, her hands, her arms. The glass has cut her and left wounds.
She does not feel them.
Kagome imagines that she can hear Naraku's laugh in the distance and shudders. She knows she killed him in reality.
It is a cold comfort for her.
"No, death is not the worst fate that can befall someone. As long as they are remembered, no-one is ever truly dead."
---
She cursed Naraku under her breath, cursed his greed and his lust and above all, she cursed his obvious skill. No matter what they did, they were always a step behind him, picking up the pieces left behind by his detachments - his puppets. Sometimes she wondered if they, too, were puppets, for all the progress (or lack thereof) that they made.
"Keh! Hurry up already, wench!"
Kagome's hands clenched into fists for a moment before she stomped away from the edge of the cliff, angrily 'sitting' Inuyasha as she passed by Sango. It was the first time she had ever done so without some over-the-top provocation. It would not be the last.
Kagome Higurashi was a walking time bomb and they did not know it.
Somewhere far away from them, Naraku laughed and re-absorbed a failed detachment, moving a piece on the Go board. He fancied that the board looked rather like the current situation in the feudal era - black clearly overwhelming white and just waiting, waiting to devour the other.
---
Kagome discovers that she has a morbid interest with mirrors now. She sees fanciful images in them - demons and priestesses and battles and death. Sometimes it is her with a bow, firing into the teeming horde of claws and fangs, that she sees. Sometimes it is another lady, one dressed as a priestess with dead eyes.
Sometimes it is the hanyou with red red eyes that bore into her. Kagome decides that perhaps she likes this reflection best. It does not look like her and she can pretend that she is still whole, still the little girl peering into the book of fairytales without a care in the world. The hanyou smiles at her when she does this.
Kagome sits in front of the mirror and pretends that this is her world, the world that she has always wished for. She is good at pretending now. She does it with every breath she takes.
---
"What would the world have been like if Shikon no Tama hadn't existed?"
Sango and Miroku exchanged glances again. Kagome had asked them many "what ifs" lately. She had never done that before, preferring to live in reality over living in fanciful worlds of make-believe.
She was changing now, they knew. Privately, neither of them thought these changes were doing her any good.
Kagome pretended that she didn't see the secretive, pitying looks. She pretended that she didn't hear them whispering behind her back when she leaves.
She was no longer the innocent miko who was the light of the group. She was Pestilence now, bringing disease and famine and death with her.
They watched her slip away from them, bit by bit. They let her go - there was nothing they could have done to keep her afloat.
---
Once, Kagome reaches for the mirror, tries to touch the images that she sees because they are so real to her. Her fingers meet cold glass and she snaps.
It is not real, what she sees. Perhaps it never was.
It is her mother who finds her again, standing in the middle of a destroyed corner of the room, a whirlwind of items around her. She kneels in front of the mirror, alternating between angrily scrubbing at the smears of eyeliner and lipstick and tremulously touching the glass.
"I'm sorry, so sorry, didn't mean to, please don't leave me, pleasepleaseplease..."
Her mother approaches her and folds her arms around her, longing to comfort this lost angry child that lives in her Kagome's body.
Kagome screams and her power reacts, crackling around her (but it is no longer a comforting pink, but a rolling wave of corruption and decay and poison). Her mother gives a frightened gasp and faints. Kagome leaves her there, lying on the floor surrounded by the broken and shattered and dirty items of her past. She can not bring herself to touch this woman again.
It is the last time that her mother ever touches her.
---
As the years go by, Kagome withdraws. She is a recluse, living in the shadows of society. Her grandfather curses her now, tries to exorcise her every time he sees her. Souta likes to pretend that the woman-doll is a stranger. He doesn't know this Kagome, with empty eyes that are more red than blue. To him, his sister died long ago, back in the Feudal Era with the hanyou he worshipped. Her mother pretends too, now. Her mother pretends that she never gave birth to a daughter.
Kagome sits in front of her mirrors, one last gift from those whom she had called 'family' once upon a time, in a faraway land. She sits and watches the images go by, half-recalled memories of earlier times when the sun was still warm on her skin and she still belonged somewhere, anywhere.
She sees the hanyou everywhere now, the one with the red eyes. He follows her silently and she lets him touch her.
"You belong with me," he tells her, voice harsh and commanding. She believes him.
When there is nothing else that she recognizes, she clings to the one constant in her life.
---
Time passes and Kagome goes out to the well house once more, ignoring the stares from Souta and her grandfather and her mother. For a moment, they see something of the old Kagome in her - "I'll be back soon!" she called over her shoulder as she hopped over the rim of the ancient dry well - but that moment is brief and ends all too soon.
She climbs out of the well and emerges in a world that is both familiar and not. Half-forgotten memories stir to life and she remembers the red-clad hanyou who shouted, the lecherous monk, the fiery taijiya, and the exuberant kit.
She blinks, opens her eyes again, and the memories are gone. There is no one to welcome her to this world again. In this era, she is nothing more than a story, a legend told to children to lull them to sleep.
"Come into my lair," said the spider to the fly.
---
One day, Kagome looks at her surroundings and sees the decaying ruins of a fortress, the scent of miasma still lingering in the air after decades. She aimlessly wanders the ruins, touching an overgrown wall and seeing memories that are not hers flashing by her eyes. Her feet wander, picking a path that only they seem to recognize, and she soon finds herself underground, the room dark and reeking of death, decay, and pure evil.
"Home," the red-eyed hanyou tells her. She does not protest.
---
Kagome eats and sleeps in the ruins now. She calls it her home. The lesser youkai that have begun to gather around the ruined fortress ignore her, move aside to let her pass when she is in their way. They still remember the old stories. They can feel Naraku's power around her now.
There are large blanks in Kagome's memory now. She doesn't care. She eats and sleeps, going where the hanyou's voice tells her without a sound of protest.
Once upon a time, she may have killed Naraku. Once upon a time, she may have purified the Shikon no Tama. It does not matter anymore.
---
Inuyasha hears the rumors of another youkai like Naraku and re-gathers what remains of the old group. Sesshomaru hears the rumors as well, and determines that they are worth investigating. Neither of them are prepared for what they see.
They had been expecting a youkai. A hanyou, perhaps. Even a human, though Sesshomaru would be loath to admit a human could have this power. Instead, they see Kagome sitting in the middle of the youkai. Inuyasha reacts first, calling out her name with surprise. He is taken aback when she simply looks over at him with empty eyes. So is Sesshomaru.
They have both seen eyes like that before. They are the eyes of Naraku's detachments, his loyal puppets. Inuyasha has never, in his worst nightmares, dreamed that he would see them on Kagome. He backs away from the scene, turning tail and running away. He has never done so before.
Sesshomaru's hands wraps around Tokijin. It is instinct that makes him do this, he insists to himself. A human in no threat to him.
When Naraku's aura rises up around the girl and her empty eyes bleed to the same red as the deceased hanyou, he draws the sword forged from an oni's fang.
---
Somewhere, Naraku laughs and places another piece on a Go board. He twitches his fingers and the lesser youkai move as he wishes. So does Kagome.
He may have been killed, but he has not lost his skill. His new puppet is so much more amusing than any of his previous ones.