Disclaimer: After reading this, you’ll probably be glad I don’t own Inuyasha...
WARNINGS: This is a darkfic, not a romance. Sesshoumaru is not ever going to be a good guy in this. Anything that looks like affection on Kagome’s part is Stockholm Syndrome, nothing more. May contain disturbing imagery, non-explicit non-con interactions, violence, death, suicidal angst, etc.
Author’s note: With this I wanted to see if I could write a convincing dark/horror story featuring Sess and Kags. Updates may be a little random since I’ve got other projects to contend with, but comments/concrit/encouragement certainly help feed the muse. ;)
EDIT 1/20/14: In light of the aforementioned warnings and reader concerns, I have increased the rating to from M to MA (actually done on 1/19/14). I have also modified the warnings a bit as of today.
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S t a s i s
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– 1 –
.winner take all.
It is easy, she thinks, to forget one enemy in the presence of another.
Easy to remember again, once that enemy is gone.
Naraku lies in scattered pieces over the wreckage of Edo village. The air is foul with his poison. The ground is awash with his blood. But he is dead. The battle is over.
In vain, she waits for some sense of victory to find her. But it, too, lies scattered, lost amid the glassy stares of her fallen friends and allies.
In the end, only three remain. She, and Inuyasha, and him.
She is kneeling in the blood-churned earth, too weak even to stand. Her bow rests useless at her side, its string snapped clean in the final killing blow.
Before her, Inuyasha leans heavily against his sword, likewise exhausted.
Sesshoumaru alone stands fully upright. His armor is cracked. His pale hair and clothes are stained and torn, yet he more than any of the others looks the part of conquering warrior.
Stoic and regal, he strides forward into the heart of the carnage, where the completed Jewel looms dark and sinister in Naraku’s severed hand.
The moment he takes it in his claws, she remembers.
"The prized trinket of half-bloods and lesser beings," he says to himself, though to her the sneer in his voice is louder than anything she’s ever heard. "But perhaps I have a use for it yet."
"Hey…what the hell do you think you’re doing?" Inuyasha is calling out as he straightens.
Sesshoumaru glances back, the gilded surface of his gaze cool and reflective.
"Well done, little brother," he replies, his voice dripping condescension as he unsheathes his sword. "Perhaps now, at last, you have proven yourself worthy of my full attention."
No, she thinks, no.
The second time it leaves her as a scream.
They lock swords, but the battle is short and one-sided. Bakusaiga is the superior weapon, its master the superior swordsman. He cleaves a gaping hole in his younger brother’s chest, one which even his hanyou defenses cannot hope to mend.
Inuyasha slumps to the ground, broken, and she shatters with him.
Inside her, a roaring din of pain and sadness eclipses even her own keening cries.
No, no, no…oh gods, no…please no…
Sobbing, she crawls toward him through the muck and her despair. Her hands and knees slip through Sango’s blood, slice open against one of Kirara’s busted fangs.
She reaches for him as he reaches for her.
Sesshoumaru drags her to her feet by her hair, tilts her chin up with the flat of his vile sword. In his iron grip she struggles and whimpers, her scalp a mass of blinding agony.
Inuyasha stares up at her in dim horror, fingers twitching toward Tessaiga even as the corruption spreads.
"Don’t worry, half-breed," Sesshoumaru consoles him mockingly as he sheathes his blade, "I’m not going to kill her."
The heel of his boot comes down hard on Inuyasha’s searching fingers.
"Tessaiga belongs to me now," he continues calmly as his brother chokes in pain, "and I’ll need a human at hand when I choose to wield it.
"Mine is lost, it seems." His free hand smoothes up over her chest. Roughly, he squeezes her through the ruin of her shirt. "But yours, I think, will do nicely."
"You monster!" she seethes, trying to pry loose his hold. But it is hopeless. She is hopeless.
He releases her to retrieve something from inside his haori. It is the Shikon no Tama. When she reaches for it, his other arm bands hers tightly against her sides.
In his palm, the bruised light of the Jewel deepens to black.
"Unlike you, Inuyasha, I will not be giving up what I have won this day." His voice lowers as the orb begins to pulse and flare. "Not ever."
As the last light fades from his brother’s eyes, as the dark magic of his wish engulfs her body and soul, he turns her and crushes his mouth to hers.
And she screams.