InuYasha Fan Fiction / Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Stronger Than Yesterday ❯ Chp 11 Life is an Old Man's Plaything ( Chapter 11 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

A/N: Short chapter, but I wanted to update and you would have never gotten one if I ended this chapter where I wanted to. Considering re-writing the earlier chapters, nothing drastic should change but if it does…I might or might not tell you.
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She was cold.

She knew that in the back of her mind. Considering that she was now naked and had just traveled through knee deep snow. But she couldn’t make herself comprehend the fact. Not when she was too busy staring at her bizarre reflection in the ice, and having it stare back.

After being shot into the air by the trap surrounding the relic, Kagome had landed on the snowy cap of a nearby mountain. But that wasn’t the good part. No the good part happened when she had finally gotten her bearings and starting walking, intent on climbing down to the browner, and warmer, part of the mountain. And after roving only a few feet, she had been lucky enough to find the hole underneath the snow. The hole that lead to the equally cold cave, which held the impossibly dark and foreboding pool.

The shock of falling into the pool had made her mistake the painstakingly cold water for scorching heat. She gasped aloud as she plunged under, the icy water invading her mouth and nose as she did so. The water gave her an unpleasant rush, seeming to fill her head up to her brain. Her foot got caught in a current and she was almost pulled under, but at the last minute her hand caught the edge of the pool and she forcefully pulled herself free of the current, and within a few minutes she was free of the pool and coughing up the accursed water.

“Lucky you got out when you did. Or else that beast would have eaten more than just your clothing.”

The next few things went on in such a rush that Kagome wasn’t really sure which had happened first. The man was just suddenly there, squatting not even a foot away from her, prodding a stick into the water. She screamed at his appearance, she looked down and screamed at her disintegrating clothing, and hopped up and out of the man’s sight.

But the man paid her no mind as he continued to swirl the water, he hadn’t even looked at her once. But as he pulled the stick from the water, he turned towards her and smiled, but his smile was anything but comforting, yet there was no malice or perversion in it.

The man was old. She’d put him in his late sixties. His white, shaggy hair contrasted greatly with his copper colored skin. He was broad-shouldered and if he stood, she’d guess
he’d stand about over six feet. His face, besides holding great, big, bushy sideburns, was wrinkled, and she could see his laugh lines from where she stood. He didn’t look threatening, she didn’t sense anything demonic about him, but his sudden appearance and nonchalant stance told her that he wasn’t human either.

“See,” the man said, as he stood and took a step towards her.

Kagome struggled with trying to ward off the man’s advances and keeping herself covered. In the end all she did was do a little dance and shiver uncontrollably.
But the man ignored her aggression and her nakedness as he showed her the stick…or what was left of it. She watched as the stick shriveled up and disintegrated before her eyes.

“It’s cursed water.” the man continued with a shrug and a smile, as he tossed the stick over his head. “It’s not a good idea to go swimming in it. Or drink it for that matter, yet you did both.”

He had bright eyes, she saw, and his teeth were slightly crooked, but his bright eyes were what got her attention. Dangerously bright eyes.

“Well I wasn’t swimming.” Kagome managed to snap through her chattering teeth. “I fell in.”

“Be that as it may,” he smiled as he shucked off his coat and threw it to her. “You go in that water, you are bound to get messed up, make it out or not.”

“Tell me about it.” Kagome muttered as she hastily fastened the large coat around her. It seemed to work magic on her freezing body. Although her hands and feet were still bare,
and she was wet, the coat seemed to warm her to the bone.

The man chuckled to himself.

“Who are you?” Kagome found herself asking once feeling came back to her limbs.

The man, who had begun wandering around the cavern as she was dressing, now turned to her, his smile forever in place, and bowed.

“The name’s Uncle Cyrus.”

“Uncle Cyrus?” she asked skeptically.

“Yes, Uncle Cyrus.”

“Well, Uncle Cyrus, do you know how to get out of here?”

“Why, of course.” he answered with a flourish as he came to stand by her, brandishing his arm out for her. He stood stock still and didn’t budge until she had accepted it. He paid
her reluctance no mind.

“That’s why I’m here.” He continued as he began to lead her around.

“What?” she asked with some confusion, his words sending chills down her spine. She tried to stop walking and let go of his arm, but found she couldn’t. He seemed to have control over her legs, and his grip, though not painful, was iron hard. He led her through a tunnel she hadn’t noticed. The walls were nothing but ice, she looked ahead but all she
saw was darkness.

“I’m here to show you the way out.” Uncle Cyrus continued, seemingly oblivious to her distress.

“Why? How‘d you know I would be here?”

“Because you would have died without my help, and you are far too precious to lose now.”

“What do you mean I’m precious?” Kagome asked him, her nerves getting frazzled as a feeling of dread and panic started to creep up on her. “What do you mean by that? Who are you?”

“I’m Uncle Cyrus.” he countered with a smile as he stopped to look down at her with his discomforting smile.

Kagome felt that bright eyed stare of his put an ease to her worries, and that was even worse. She saw now, up-close, that one pupil was bigger than the other and that they were iridescent.

“What are you?” she asked quietly.

Uncle Cyrus laughed at this as he resumed their walk. “Now that’s the question.”

Kagome flinched at his laughter, as if it was a physical entity.

“Now let’s see; what am I? I’m…a being.” he answered slowly, considering his words before speaking them. “I’m old…very old. I’m an artist. I like to think so. I’m also a storyteller. I’m a conductor of events. I’m…the harbinger of happenings. The begetter of great things.”

“What kind of ‘great’ things?”

But Uncle Cyrus only laughed.

Oh she didn’t like this. She had a bad feeling about this man. She turned her head and cast a look around, trying to find something that might help her. By now the tunnel behind them held the same ambiguous darkness as did the front, she didn’t know how they were able to see at all. But wherever they walked, they were able to see, if only just part of the tunnel in their vicinity.

As she looked around, her eye caught sight of a smooth section in the wall, and as they passed in front of it, her breath caught in her throat when she saw her reflection. Or what should have been her reflection. She was a monster.

Her skin was pallid; her eyes looked sunken and held dark rings around them. Her hair, filthy and unkempt, fell into strings over her face. She seemed to manage to stand erect and slumped at the same time. Her clothes, also filthy, were in tatters. But like Uncle Cyrus, her eyes were really the most striking thing about her. They were maddened, insane, deprived of a right mind. Yet she could also see loneliness, despair, anguish, and a void. So many emotions in just one glance, for that was all she could manage. The sight of the eyes would have driven her mad with fear if she had looked any longer. Contact with those eyes was like a physical blow to the soul. They seared you with just a look.

As she stared in horror and fear at her reflection, Kagome took a step back and almost behind Uncle Cyrus, as her reflection smiled, a smile full of malice and psychosis.

“What are you staring at?” the reflection asked in her voice as her face turned ugly with rage. “Don’t you look at me! DON’T LOOK AT ME!”

The Kagome in the reflection raged and rampaged, beating against the glass in a fury and with no regard for her own safety as her hands, and sometimes her head, began to leave bloody marks on the glass.

“What…what is that?”

“I thought that was obvious.” Uncle Cyrus answered cheerfully. “That’s you.”

“No…that, no….no, how can that be me? I…I’m not like that. I’m not evil.”

The Kagome in the mirror burst into ghastly laughter. “Evil?” she laughed. “Silly, silly, stupid reflection! Evil is beyond me! I’m not evil…and evil could never be me!”
Kagome flinched as Uncle Cyrus joined in with the laughter.

“If you’re not evil, then what are you?” Kagome asked forcefully, trying to be heard over the distorted laughter.

Uncle Cyrus stopped laughing and a second later, so did her reflection. “I’m unjustly punished.”

“Punished? What for? What’s going to happen? What did you do?”

“It’s already happened, and I tried to undo it…that’s why I’m punished.” The reflection’s face seemed to darken in pain as she recalled painful memories.

“What going to happen to me?” Kagome cried in sudden panic as she gripped Uncle Cyrus by his shirt.

“We were stupid!” the Kagome in the mirror spat out with a bitter laugh. “But everything had happened so quickly and we were irrational.” she fell into abrupt laughter as her
maddened eyes swirled around in her head and she seemed to sway. “If he had only let me DIE!”

Kagome released her hold on Uncle Cyrus, who, with a wide grin watched as she approached the glass. “What the hell are you talking about? Who should have let us die?”

But the reflection barely seemed to hear her as she drowned in her dark memories. “Should have known better.” She muttered with a twisted smile void of humor. “You knew Inuyasha would never hurt us.”

“But I heard him! Heard them both! He was going to…kill me…for her.”

“You know, Inuyasha would never hurt us!” she screamed before quieting again. “Too rash…should have confronted him.”

“He would have killed us!” Kagome insisted, now speaking like her reflection.

“Killed him. Killed him with my bare hands…I killed them all! They’re all dead, and I did it!”

“No! Hiei killed Inuyasha! We were going to, but we didn’t get the chance! Is this is what would have happened? I would have been punished? By who? Koenma?”

“I didn’t know! I DIDN’T KNOW! It was just…my baby!” the reflection threw her arms around herself and seemed to sag to the floor.

“Baby?” Kagome asked in confusion as she knelt down to be eye to eye with her reflection.

“My baby! I thought he took my baby from me! So I killed him! He took my family and I took his life! Should have known better! Inuyasha would never hurt me!”

“What are you talking about?”

“But I hurt him. I hurt Inuyasha, our friends, Kikyo…I killed them. Because I was stupid! Because I reacted too fast.”

“What happened?” Kagome asked, getting caught up in her reflection’s grief.

“Made a wish on the jewel. Stupid. Didn’t purify it. Now I’m punished. Punished to go through it all again. Because I was stupid. And now…now I can’t even mourn.” Her
reflection looked her in the eye and Kagome found she couldn’t tear herself away from the frightening sight.

“I can’t mourn, and sometimes I don’t even care. Do you know what that's like? I have to kill them all over again…I never mourned my child…my friends…my mate….and now I’m all alone with memories that don’t mean shit to me!”

Without warning, her reflection’s hand came through the mirror and caught her wrist. Kagome tried to pull away but the grip was too strong.

“Listen to me.” the reflection said desperately. “Don’t be stupid. Think things through. Fix my life. Don’t be hasty.”

“Get off me!” Kagome screamed as she tried to pry the hand from her wrist. And in her panic she felt her miko blaring.

As the tunnel was blinded by her power, a connection between her and the reflection melded together and she was bombarded with visions and emotions.

“Can you see?”

“Oh…” Kagome wailed at the memories that were hers and yet not.

She felt grief, pity, welcoming, love, and happiness. Then anguish, sorrow, and rage. She was overcome by betrayal, remorse, guilt. Hatred. Then despair and loneliness came.
Finally…she knew what true madness was.

“You do see, don’t you?” she heard her reflection whisper. “Just because we made a foolish mistake.”

Kagome silently nodded as she tried to control her sobs.

“That’s nice.” the reflection breathed. “You're mourning. Mourning for me…how does it feel? Is it comforting? Fulfilling? Do I even care?”

“That’s enough of that.” she heard Uncle Cyrus say good naturedly as he bent and, seemingly, effortlessly released her from her reflection’s hold.

“Don't be stupid and look before you leap!” her reflection called out as Uncle Cyrus passed through the mirror and began guiding her away.

“Where are you taking her?” Kagome sobbed out after finding out the glass was solid and wouldn’t allow her to pass.

“She’s not finished with her work.” He said as he smiled back at her. “Just like you aren’t.”

“But what about me? Am I going to do something to end up like that? What am I going to do?”

Uncle Cyrus stopped and turned to face her, but her reflection had gone. “What’s the point of letting you know what’s going to happen? There’s no fun in knowing the unknown.

Then it wouldn’t be the unknown would it? It would be the known. And if people knew the known unknown, then they would avoid it and I’ll have no fun left in the unknown known, which is what I know.”

A migraine erupted into Kagome head and she clinched her eyes closed as she tried to void it out.

She found it hard to open her eyes, and when she did, she felt and heard the ice crack.

“What’s going on?” she wondered as she sat up, knocking off a thick layer of snow as she did so.

She was freezing, and had no clue as to why she was buried in the snow at the top of a mountain, or why there were frozen tears on her face.

“I don’t know why, but I feel as if this is Hiei’s fault.” she said aloud as she shakily climbed to her feet.

~_____~

“What the hell is that?” Yusuke asked his companions as a bubble floated pass screaming in Kagome’s voice.

“Where the hell are you guys? Come find me!” the bubble screamed as it popped.

“She’s asking where we are?" Kuwabara asked, annoyed at the screaming bubble. “We’re not the ones who were thrown through the air.”

“HELP ME!” another bubble screamed as it floated by over the treetops.

Kurama sighed. “Which way did they come from?”

“Find me you assholes!” a bubble screamed as it came up behind them.

“I guess from over there?” Yusuke offered as he took the lead and began to follow in the direction the bubble came from.

As they followed Yusuke, and were turned around more than once, the group found they were going in the right direction by the frequency in encounters of screaming bubbles.

“I’m sorry!” the bubble sobbed. “If you find me I won’t try to poison you guys anymore. I swear.”

“Find me, damn it!”

“By ‘find me’ I mean the guys I was with, not just anybody. If any demons come looking for me, just to let you know….I’ll kick your ass.”

“Where are you guys? Are you dead? You should have found me by now. You better be dead.”

“I’m so bored!”

“BORED!”

“WRYTH!”
“You guys suck!”

“Kurama! I’m hungry and I need you tell me if these mushrooms are good to eat or not.”

“I don’t feel good.”

“Have you seen the gerbil? I think I smell it.”

They figured they were going in the right direction because the bubbles became more frequent.

Yet it wasn’t until they came across a sullen Kagome that they figured they had been going in the right direction. They came upon her idly blowing her illusory bubbles and muttering to herself.

“I don’t like this.” they heard her saying. “I really don’t like this. It’s too quiet, too lonely. I might actually miss them….something must be wrong with me.”

Yusuke cleared his throat and she jumped. As she leaped into the air and spun on her heel, she crouched in a defensive stance with a small dagger in hand. Seeing who it was, she tossed the dagger into the woods and leaped happily at the boys. Yet before she could land on anyone and hug them to near death, Lui was suddenly there to develop her into a caring embrace.

“Now that’s a hug.” she commented from the folds of his arms as they hugged each other in happiness.

“What about when I hugged you?” Yusuke asked as she sighed contently.

“Your hug made me feel empty and alone.” they heard her say as she rolled her eyes and broke off the hug.

“What the hell took you guys so long?” she asked casting a glance around at them, but they didn’t answer and Hiei only raised an eyebrow.

“Such riveting conversations, guys.”

“Did you manage to keep a hold onto the relic?” Kuwabara asked, ignoring her statement.

“What does it look like?” she said as she briefly flashed them the relic before placing it back in her sub pocket. “Now can we get out of here?”

“Were you hurt when the trap was sprung?” Kurama asked.

Kagome blinked in surprise at the question then smiled genuinely at him. “Why, thank you for asking, Kurama.” the last was directed toward the other boys, who ignored while Hiei stared openly at her with narrowed eyes.

“Well to answer your question. No, I wasn’t hurt; I just landed in some nice soft…”

“Well aren’t you going to answer the man?” Yusuke interrupted.

“I did!” she snapped before adding ‘asshole’ in her head just as Hiei said, “She did.”

“What?” Lui voiced in confusion.

“No she didn’t." Yusuke snapped back. "All she did was stare at us and call me an asshole.”

“That’s because you are.” she muttered halfheartedly as she looked down in confusion. ‘Did I say that out loud?’

“Yeah, you did.” Kuwabara spoke up into the quiet that followed.

“Kagome?” Hiei asked. “Where’d you get your new coat?”

Kagome went cold as she looked down at herself. She didn’t know why, but the sight of the coat filled her with a cold fear that had nothing to do with the strangeness of its
appearance. It seemed to bring up a memory; an old memory of something horrible. She could feel in coming closer; bright eyes.

“Kagome!”

“I don’t want it.” she muttered as she hastily, and clumsily, tried to rid herself of the coat. “Get it off me.”

“Kagome! What’s wrong?” Lui cried desperately as Kagome struggled out of the strange coat.

“I don’t know…I don’t know, something happened to me.”

“Kagome?” Lui demanded as he shook her. “Answer me, say something!”

“I did!” she cried out, but he continued to shake her. Continued to not hear her. “Can’t you hear me? Can’t anyone hear me?”

‘I can.’ a voice answered quietly in her head.

‘What the hell is going on?’ she thought to herself as she stared wide eyed at the fire demon.

“That’s what we want to know. Why weren’t you saying anything?” Yusuke asked her with an irritated huff.

“Her thoughts and speech have been reversed.” Hiei told them what she feared.

“Oh no!” they heard her breathe out in horror as she began to hyperventilate.

“Oh no, oh no!” she repeated as she ignored the comfort Lui was trying to coax into her as he rubbed his back.

“So…let me get this straight.” Yusuke began. “Everything she thinks she says out loud, and everything she says she actually thinks in her head.”

“Is that correct?” Kurama asked.

“I’m surprised the detective caught on so quickly.” Hiei told him.

“What? You guys think I’m stupid or something?”

The boys said nothing and only exchanged looks with each other, while an involuntary “Duh” escaped Kagome’s lips.

“How did this happen?” Kurama asked her concernedly. “Can you recall anything?”

Kagome was silent a moment but after visibly shaking herself and remembering her condition, she began to speak so that they could hear her.

“No, I just remember waking up in the snow from my fall. But something must have happened; how else did I get that coat?” Then her eyes widened. “The coat! Maybe the coat
did this to me!”

“It’s possible.” Kurama offered unconfidently, as they turned back to face the coat only to find it gone.

“Well damn.” Kuwabara stated at the discovery.

“It didn’t have a scent.” Hiei spoke up.

“Well that’s good.” Lui muttered.

“Are you sure you don’t remember anything?” Hiei questioned her again.

‘No.’ is what Kagome meant to say but what came out was, “I said no you bastard!”

“Wow!” Kuwabara commented as Yusuke whistled.

“This is going to be entertaining!” the head detective said with a smile before he was dodging the blow Kagome had thrown his way.

“No it’s not!” she yelled from the restraining embrace Lui had thrown her into. “These are my private thoughts and I don’t need you…”

She broke off there as she was overcome by savage crying. “Why does everything happen to me?” she cried, her subconscious being broadcast for all to hear.