Title: Left-handed
Author: tallymark
Genre: Romance/General
Word count: 250
Rating: G
Warnings: Um. Kinda trippy?
AU/Canon: Canon
Summary: If he was losing it, then she was lost with him, so it was okay.
Author's note: This was written for week nine of the ebonysilks challenge, for the theme "Break." It was intended as a complete, self-contained piece, and I still consider it to be so. However, the idea wouldn't quite leave me alone, and I finally caved: there will be a few more drabble-sized chunks to this. But it also still reads as a stand-alone.
The title of this story is Left-handed; Phantoms is just the name of the collection.
He didn't miss his arm because it was still there.
He knew it was there because he could still use it.
Every night he slipped into their camp to touch her—only while she slept, and only with his phantom arm. So she wouldn't know.
Marveling, he would hold his palm above her lips and feel her breath puff over it. He would twist ghost fingers in her hair. Drag imaginary claws across skin.
When he pressed the back of his phantom hand to her, she warmed him. When he cradled her head in the arm that didn't exist, she mumbled and clutched his sleeve. And when he splayed his hand across her ribcage, he could feel her heart beating. Fluttering under his fingertips, making his heart race.
He didn't understand how it worked. For anything else, even Rin, the arm was empty air. He could touch only her. Feel only her.
But it was real. Because on some nights, when he softly grazed her cheek with his knuckles, she'd wake up.
From the trees he'd watch as Kagome sat up in her sleeping bag. Touching her cheek, she'd shiver and look around. "I think I'm going crazy," she whispers, tracing the path his fingers took.
Yes, he'd muse, the arm was there. It was his mind he had lost.
But he didn't miss that either. Because if he was breaking from reality, then so was she, and they were stranded on the same jagged little piece of it.
Together.