L-O-V-E me, my enemy

CAUTION: coarse language and sexual insinuations

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PHASE o1: prelude to the aftermath

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Kagome fought the urge to sob.

Her legs started to buckle, making her clench her fist as tightly as she could. Despite, the savage sight in front of her eyes failed her strength and she dropped on both knees, breathing as if she just ran a three mile non-stop.

The puddle of blood she perched on splattered around her bare legs, staining her one-piece white dress. The impact of her descend was rough enough to shower large drizzles of thick scarlet liquid from the red ooze underneath her.

She ignored it.

The sight would sicken her.

But it was not as nauseating as the other sight beyond her.

There were more than three hundred of her people fighting this war but only several men and even women came back home when it was over, all bloody and slashed.

She refused to just believe that those who didn’t came home were all right by themselves so she had sneaked out to see the outcome of their earlier battle.

Cracked bones, crushed skulls, scattered horns, broken arrows, and multicolored blood scattered all over the battlefield. Many demon tendons and limbs hung loosely at the branches of the trees nearby... sheltered with their own stippled blood.

Her head spun when she caught sights of torn human bodies hanging on branches, as well as bodies deposited very loosely on large bloodied boulders and on the many chasms created. She didn’t even need to peer over the scattered craters to see how much blood had spilled over it to make a very large pool.

She choked the tears that demanded to come out of the corners of her eyes, and squeezed the ball of shriek that wanted to scream out of her lungs.

Pursing her lips tightly to swallow back the bile, Kagome clutched her stomach and scanned the area with widened eyes. Golden afternoon only made everything with blood shine, but she didn’t like the glistening view.

“N... no...” she stifled. “N... no...!”

She groaned with squeamish as her head lolled forward so that she could only meet her pale bare lap more willingly than the bloody earth around her. Unfortunately, her lap now, too, was soaked blood.

She trembled and took a hand out of her sides, slouching her back a little before propping her palm gently on a spot on the ground in front of her so that her head did not completely droop onto the wet ground.

A big mistake.

The bile that had gone down her throat floated back up when her fist settled unto the mud of blood. The elevation of the puddle was so high it reached up to her wrist... and felt something soft and fractured.

“N... no—” she strangled to get her hand out of the mud, to unwind her fisted hand underneath the pool of blood.

But it did not move.

It had no strength to let go whatever it was it had just held and so was her bravery to lift her hand out of the fluid to see what it was. She was too stupefy and overwhelm to move her entire frozen body. The legs that sunk unto the small lake of blood immediately felt something else... hard and soft, cracked and elastic.

It would be a right time to shriek. A great time to sob and weep her heart out considering she had just realized she was sitting on a severed human body, hidden beneath its own lake of blood.

It wasn’t her first time to be in an aftermath.

It was just her first time to ever have her body touch a dismembered bleeding flesh of her race.

Undoubtedly, it was sickening.

When she uplifted her hand, she gave an outcry as she instantly threw away the disjointed piece of blood-soaked hand far away from her. Its tendons flew off its muscles... and more blood splattered her face.

She gasped and turned her head away from the light rainfall.

“N—no...” she groaned, tears unseen.

She trembled intensely but she didn’t cry.

No.

Kagome Higurashi does not cry too easily...

She wasn’t allowed to leave the huge shrine built far beside the city, adjoining faraway a settling huge forest where the action she wasn’t permitted to see again took place. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t really allowed to ever step in this place of battleground considering how often times she frequently broke that promise and sneak off to see what was going on.

Because far beyond those forest—this forest— near her habitat, a battle had taken its place. Another battle. For what seemed to be the...

Truly, who would wanna count how many times this war went on?

A war was something she wasn’t suppose to witness, considering that she wasn’t chosen to dwell in one. But she was still granted to fight in it seeing as she already knew how to fend and fight for herself. Only that... SHE was not allowed to fight or, hell, be hurt.

She was one of them now but she wasn’t allowed to fight. After all... it was what all her people were taught to do in the past generations. Why couldn't they let her be in one then even if she wanted or didn't want to?

Because I'll die like the First through Forty-Ninth had.

A war was something she was not allowed to be in anymore; not that she wanted to be in one. When she was nine or twelve they told her it was not a sport she had thought it had been.

They told her it was more than that of a frolic but more of something... extreme. They told her that in that extreme sport, the winners lived to tell their tale and come back to his or her loved ones for contentment. They told her that the losers are the one who doesn’t get to tell their own story of the battle.

That the losers doesn’t come back to their home.

She hadn’t understood then. But as she matured, she promptly realized what they had meant, at the early age of seven.

At her twelfth years, curiosity overtook the kitten and she set foot towards the forest distant beyond the Great Reliquary up on a tall tower known as the Steeple Keep she was confined in when a war broke.

In her three years living in the city of Tokyo, she knew that sports were games played by people so competitive against each other, doing whatever it took to win. Of course, her mother had volunteered her to do whatever sports a three or four-year-old child could do...

They say that when you really wanted to know about something so badly, you kill your patience and go for it, whatever it may bring.

And to that, she followed her dull-witted guts.

At the age of twelve, she was able to walk across the earth they had called a battlefield.

At the age of twelve, she understood why losers didn't come home.

By the time she was clever to sneak off to see the aftermath of her first encounter with a war, all five senses inside her began its turmoil.

She heard... the silence of both defeat and success.

She smelt... the awful stench of something foul and acrid.

She tasted... something... whatever it was, it tasted pungent and bitter in the air.

She thought... and she was confused.

But she saw.

She saw it, and she saw the blackish red that nearly painted the soil, the world, she wandered on, mixing with the peculiar color of green, white, black, and purple liquid.

She saw bodies. And she saw the losers.

She saw red. Everywhere and anywhere she could imagine.

Heavily stench atmosphere and corpse grounds, she understood why her nation was decreasing.

Years grew and all she could see was bloodshed. They didn’t stop their wars. They just kept on fighting and fighting. She didn’t know why until her previous sixteenth birthday last year.

This war had been going on continuously. That it went far too long which her people and the enemies were ever so slowly forgetting why they still do it.

As if wars and hatred were a habit now... a hobby they often did when one of the opposing people do something wrong to violate one another.

She didn’t like it.

The moment she saw the dead, vomit crawled up her throat and it often did when she constantly wandered the aftermath of the battles. She was a fighter in her own body but she refused to fight in butchery as useless as these wars.

She prohibited letting herself be locked in a place so peaceful while others were out there in a place more dangerous that of her mind. There was no use fighting and creating more bloodshed.

She wanted peace.

Would they accept her opinion?

Even if they could, what was the use? The enemies will still attack them. And it would be a matter of time before her race was completely decayed as it was already endangered.

She was supposed to be a subordinate heir after her fraudulent older Sister, to take over the power of being a so-called miko. She was supposed to... but the previous heir had died years ago when she was supposed to be the inheritor at the age of twenty. War waged among them again and seized the first Sister’s life, leaving just her as the only heir.

That had been the third war she saw long ago.

She wasn’t ready to take a place at the seat of power yet. She wasn’t prepared to be culminated as the Sovereign of her priestess people. Not when this war was still going on.

As she had laid upon her soft bedding, thinking of an escape, she had forgotten how dreadful an aftereffect was.

Here she was, sitting quietly on a large muddle of blood, caring not anymore whatever—whomever it was she sat on, just trembling as if the night had quickly arrive to blanket her with frigid coldness.

For now, she grieved.

She grieved for everyone who had died.

She grieved for her humans... her blood... her kin... her friends... her families.

But she did not cry.

No... not yet.

Kagome closed her eyes and exhaled shakily, bringing both her hands, clean and unclean, together. Her fingers entwined and they felt slippery, thick, disgusting. She brought her entangled fingers up to her chest and silently prayed for the dead humans’ peace.

For the dead demons’ peace.

It would probably take her a much longer time to heal her grieving heart again. But it didn’t matter. She had previously grieved many times; she was so used to the feeling of pain and heartbroken.

As Kagome humbly beseeched, a small cracked voice of someone quietly howled far behind. Kagome whipped her head around and trailed her right hand up her right thigh reflexively, clasping the hidden dagger wrapped around that thigh beneath her skirt.

Fear was abruptly replaced by alert, as she instantly stood on her feet, cautious.

“Wh... who’s there?”

She tentatively turned around and faced the faint groans.

“Who’s there?” she asked more loudly.

The soft howling continued. When Kagome followed the sound, she came upon an area where demon corpses inhabited almost all over the blackened soil.

Fear came back when she realized there might still be demons alive and ready to kill at the human sight of her. Nevertheless, the sound of desperate lament clawed a feeling of guilt in the back of her mind so she slowly set out to search the utterance.

“Where are you?” she whispered, frightened.

When she turned to her left, the wail grew louder.

“H—Help... h—h—help—me...p—please...”

Kagome bit her bottom lip when she saw the many sights of dead monstrosity in front of her. It was hard searching around for bodies when they all look the same but slowly, her eyes trailed down the source of the voice.

It was a demon.

Kagome spotted two beings lying together. The tallest one appeared to be a man, in strangely fancy clothing, lying on his back. The pointed ears, long fangs that stuck out of the corners of its mouth and the sharp claws of his hands rested loosely to his side made it clear he wasn’t human.

A woman lay nearly sprawled over his chest, on her sides, her head buried underneath the demon man’s chin. She, too, wore the pointed ears, claws, and fangs as the man. But that didn’t cause Kagome to step back.

The movements of the woman’s shoulder hinted that she was still alive. Her chest rose quickly and high, stopping there for a dead second, then quickly falling down as if she were hyperventilating in desperate ways. Kagome ran dropping her knees beside the demon woman and touched her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” she asked frantically, looking over the woman’s bloodied face. She was struck, Kagome could tell. The many holes pounded on her back... roughly twenty arrows had shot her, from shoulders to waist. The tails of the arrows had broken in halves while their points still dub into the woman’s flesh.

Each desperate breath, blood seeped out of the gaps of the marks. Kagome shakily brought her hand to try and take the arrows off but she froze.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t touch another dead flesh. She had touched too many already...

The woman’s eyes opened, revealing green slits. Kagome only frowned when the woman recoiled from her touch, realizing what she was.

“Pl—please don’t kill me!” she begged softly, “I—I have a family! I was—I was only t—trying to—check on—on my hus—husband...! I—I was only... t—trying—”

The demon woman shut her eyes tightly, waiting to for Kagome to grab a knife and slit her throat down to her demon chest. Few moments when Kagome didn’t, she relaxed her muscles and gently closed her eyes. For that, she began to cry.

“Ssh...” Kagome whispered. “It’s all right. I’m here to help, not to kill.”

The woman opened her slit verdant eyes once more and looked at her. She opened her mouth, only to have vital juices flow out like vomit. It made Kagome’s stomach stagger but she didn’t move away.

“M—m—my... b—b—“

She didn’t have time to continue as her throat wheezed and she began choking. Kagome’s lips trembled, watching as more than blood trickle out of the woman’s mouth.

Kagome’s heart lurched when she realized the demon woman had no less than two minutes to last her breathe. The way she spoke only wasted more of her remaining life.

Kagome couldn’t have that.

Gradually, she lifted a hand to carefully cover the woman’s mouth with two fingers.

“Please, don’t talk... don’t waste your life over something not worth saying...”

The demon woman shook her head a little robotic-like and shut her eyes tightly, suddenly moving her arms tighter on her chest. Kagome bent down lower when she saw something wrapped in cloth within the demon woman’s grasp.

She let go of her hand to the woman’s mouth and trailed it down to touch the bloodied bundle of cloth. It was soft... and that was when Kagome took a loud intake of breath.

Her eyes widened and she looked at the dying woman’s painful face.

“T—that’s...!”

She lagged her voice when the demon woman began to sob, much loudly and gurgling this time. Her blood-coated shoulders shook so hard Kagome was scared she would cry her heart out... literally. The sound made her own ache and all she could do was delicately stroke the woman’s back.

“Ssh, please,” she soothed, “there’s no reason to cry, demon-friend. There’s... there’s no reason to shed tears so desperately wanting your lives get over with. Everything’s over. Everything’s going to be fine because you don’t have to worry anymore.”

Relieve flooded Kagome’s chest when the woman’s cries subsided a little bit.

“I—I—shou—should—s—s—stayed... a—away...” the woman whispered in gurgle, tears sweeping a clean trail down her cheeks, brushing the blood away for its way. “I—I—I... should—should—have...”

Her larynx died as her throat started hyperventilating, her chest stopping every sudden moment until she gasped for oxygen. Kagome knew her time was quickly ending but she couldn’t let a yearning woman die with suffering.

That would be unfair.

“He—he—he—h... told—told me—me t—to stay.... He—he—told—m—me t—that...that... he...” the woman sighed airily and hiccuped, “that—that... he’ll—he’ll come... back...”

Kagome gave a melancholy gasp and eased her tense muscles until she felt more comfortable around her surrounding, only directing her attention to the two pair. She ignored her disgusting body, soaked with blood. She did not take her hands off the demon woman’s shoulder. Instead, she gripped the woman’s clothing, as if it would help her erase such painful feelings.

“I—I was...was so sc—scared!” the woman whimpered frantically, “I—I—sensed some—something bad so—so I f—followed him with—without—him... know—knowing—it.”

Kagome observed as the woman attempted to move her head again, desperately rubbing her cheek against the man’s chest and her forehead against the man’s neck.

When she found it impossible, she merely moved her head a little so that half of her lips touched the man’s chest. Tediously, the demon woman pressed the corner of her lips against the man’s torso.

Kagome narrowed her eyes to stop the stinging on them.

The prickle in her eyes started to crawl out of the corners but she suppressed them.

In her human race, miko only shed tears to those who are human and mortal. Miko do not shed tears for the enemies... they do not grieve for the demons.

That they are enemies. They are not miko.

The demon woman cracked open her eyes halfway and looked at Kagome with pleading olive gaze. She opened her mouth to speak but could only whisper a soundless murmur.

“End it,” she breathed, “end it... please.”

Kagome choked and quietly took one hand out of their grip of the woman’s clothing and held it tightly on her chest. That hand moved to feel the outline of the dagger on her thigh. She studied the demons in front of her.

End it now? Do I dare end a mourning woman’s life and feel the pain in my heart for who knows how long until it disappears? Like... like last time?Like those times before?

The woman waited for her to kill her quickly. However, her eyes widened a little when Kagome shook her head. The woman narrowed her eyes to keep from crying.

“W—why?” she mouthed.

With little hesitations, Kagome brushed some the blooded strands of the woman’s hair behind her pointed ears.

“Because you deserve to have that one minute left of your life to know that it’s over... for you and your husband,” Kagome smiled gently. “Because you deserve that little time left to realize how much little time you have left to see the world you’re now in. Because you can’t just pass away without cherishing your last memory... with your husband.”

Kagome heaved a sigh and closed her eyes painfully.

It’s what I should have told them long ago, she thought, I should have told them these same words before it was late. I should have.

The woman moved her green slits to scan the area her eyes could only see from the strands of pale green hair that obscured her view. She looked at Kagome.

“M—maybe—you—you’re—r—r—right,” she murmured, “I—I—I had...f—fun... w—w—while—it—it...lasted. I—I had—e—enough—ge—generations to... to live... I—I hope that’s—that’s enough.”

Kagome smiled in return and watched as the demon woman blink a couple of times, still looking at her.

“You can... you can be with your husband. You don’t have to worry about him leaving you, demon-friend. You can go with him...” Kagome whispered kindly. “And... rest in peace... please.”

The demon woman gave one last inhale, gradually whispering ‘thank you’ before closing her eyes permanently, and Kagome could only trust she would rest in peace.

The muscles loosened and the woman’s head rolled in relax. The woman’s arms released of her tight grasp and let the bundle of clothe swivel freely a bit.

Kagome gave a soft cry out of her pale lips when a very tiny hand unveiled loosely from the gaps of the parcel of cloth.

Kagome exhaled whatever air she had held into her nose and began sobbing. Memories flooded her head but she suppressed them so she concentrated on the pair in front of her. She cried.

For the man, the woman, and their child.

Tears often came out when it’s had too much. Her heart hurt too much when it kept emotions inside for far too long. It always felt like as if it was going to fissure. She was foreign to that feeling although she strangely felt it everyday.

Kagome did not cry easily.

But for this man and wife and child... she would shed a million tears of sorrow until every last drop drenched the anguish she felt inside.

Without hesitating to think, Kagome delicately motioned her arms out and wrapped it around the demon woman’s shoulder, reclining her torso on top of the woman. Her head rested on the crest of the woman’s shoulder and felt her body shake. She closed her eyes and cried, unnoticed of a mysterious presence that streaked somewhere above the trees.

She laid there for a long while, until she waited for her people to find her. They would drag her back to the shrine and would scorned to her like every other time she went off unknown.

They would perhaps lecture her of demons attacking from anywhere behind her while she did something so ‘reckless’ at that moment. They would shun her about the wrongs of demon and that she should not have shed tears over silly things.

They reminded her of slaughter. Her people reminded her of war and anger and hatred against those who also have feelings. When she looked at them, she only saw them for what they are outside.

Killers and Peacemakers.

The opposites were hard to understand.

They would perchance tell her that she shouldn’t always have to want to see wars. However, the only thing Kagome would want in her entire life was pacification.

She was still uneasy about demons, yet she knew the war should end, whether her people liked it or not.

It was all she could ever have to be free of her hurting heart and move on.

It was all she needed for amends...

But what could she do to accomplish such impossible request?

These thoughts reverberated inside her head as she instantly drifted off to a quiet slumber... undiscovered to the mysterious being that had blanketed her shivering body with a strange piece of red garment.

When Kagome gave a sure sign of smile on her pale lips and nuzzled in the warmth of the crimson blanket, the unfamiliar being she had never saw vaulted out of sight.


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A/N: if you were expecting lemon or lime that's possibly in further chapters. for now, it's all gory and bloodshed.... sorry.