Dreaming

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Rumiko Takahashi.

She sees the world in a dichotomy of softest blurs and sharpest clarity. Over there, far off in the distance, a light, bright, seductive. Directly in front of her, grim faces and stiff shoulders. All around her, broken souls and gray, ashy earth are lost in translation. She is numb to the absolute destruction which surrounds her, follows her, hounds her every step.

Her heart is thundering in her chest, pounding through her rib cage. Its low vibration is all she can hear. Every other sound is muted. It is as though her ears are filled with cotton swatches. Though she answers when she's spoken to, makes the right responses when they seek her opinion, there is a distance about her now. She doesn't really hear them.

There is a single-mindedness to her that simply did not exist before. Where before she was bright, cheery, the core of the group, she's now… not. She's… different. And they all know that there is nothing they can do to bring her back, no cure to save her, no panacea to revive her. She's drowning, and when her lungs finish filling, she'll die, as sure as the sky (used to be) is blue.

No one laughs anymore. Instead, their faces are set in bleak and gloomy lines. They follow her lead, go wherever she says they need to. Occasionally, they'll make it in time to save a village, delay Naraku's advances, but nothing they have done has stymied him so far. And when they immerge from battle, instead of feeling victorious or relieved, they are bewildered. Again they survive, again there their losses are… acceptable. But they do not sleep well those nights (or any nights for that matter), because they see the dark clouds looming over their heads, and everyday they become a little more aware that they cannot win as they are. Without her, they are no longer in tact, no longer whole. They have lost their soul, their inspiration, and because of this they know. They will lose.

But to them she is lost. She floats inside her own mind and never wanders far from those cushy walls of grey non-being. She reasons to herself that she is only human after all, there is no shame in letting her standards slide. But she must not fail. Above all, she must not fail.

She is different. Where before she was anchored to reality, she now drifts free-flow through unreality. She walks in worlds the others cannot see, cannot imagine, cannot touch, taste, feel. She exists in the momentary reality of revenge.

Sometimes, late at night, she argues with herself that nothing has changed. The others are after their revenge, too. Inuyasha for the loss of a love, Miroku for an ever-present death threat, Sango to avenge her family and free her brother… She argues with herself that when it comes right down to it, she is no different herself now. In rare moments of intense introspection, she acknowledges that her motivation for hunting Naraku has drifted into the muddy waters of vengeance, but she ultimately, invariably, decides the same thing: It doesn't matter. Her end-goal is still the same, and that's what counts. Her reasoning for the actions which lead her there are inconsequential.

Very, very rarely, she notices that her intentions are different from her… companions'. They at least feel some compassion for the havoc, the savagery, wrought upon the innocents who lie in his path, who are by extension on theirs' too. She sees them as in the way. She realizes, sometimes, that their revenge is no longer personal; it has become impersonal. They fight from a benevolent desire to protect mankind. She fights because it will satisfy her when she wins. Her reasons are completely selfish. But these moments of realization are few and far between, and as time passes they become increasingly infrequent.

But for the most part she knows that she is not the same girl who first jumped through the well all those years ago. She has shed her like an old coat, no longer fit to keep out the cold.

She finds one day that she no longer knows how long it's been since she's been home. However, the thought strikes strangely across her mind, and with a slight, imperceptible shrug, she realizes that the Higurashi Shrine with its soft bed and warm, yellow lighting is no longer what she considers home. Home is the road to Naraku, the wind on her face as the boy she once considered her own lifts her onto his back and begins to run, to give chase.

At first she thinks that this lack of a sense of time should disturb her more. She, who has lived her whole life following a tightly regulated bell-schedule now no longer abides by those rules. She is outside them now. And she revels in it.

When at last they make it, when at last Inuyasha runs fast enough to carry her to Naraku, she is ready. With dry, cool hands she clutches her bow, feels the individual grains along its shaft and the sleek, biting edge of its string, and knows she is ready. She wonders vaguely if she even still has the power to purify. It wouldn't surprise her if she didn't. Her soul is so corrupted by the desire for revenge, for Naraku's blood on her hands, that she has very likely sacrificed any talent she may have once possessed. But she does not care. It is not important. Whether through spirit power or through sheer determination and aero-dynamic precision, she will see Naraku dead this time.

AN: Hey- so- this is the beginning to what I plan to make a multi-chapter fic. Any constructive-criticism is appreciated, as well as any other comments. Thank you for reading this piece. Peace out.