Harshly but quickly Kagome bathed, more out of compulsion than anything else. She felt the need to purge herself of Sesshoumaru, at least in ritual. She felt the need to punish herself too, though she tried to suppress it: the maddening urge to excise herself of the shame that snaked like dark poison through her veins, smothering her from within.

Rationally, she knew spilling her blood wouldn’t accomplish anything. Rationally, she knew she wasn’t really to blame. She had been drunk, disoriented. Foolishly, she had let her guard down. But he was the one who had trespassed into her home and taken advantage of her.

Still, the fact remained that regardless of her compromised state, regardless of who was in the wrong, she had enjoyed it. She had almost come from it—she was certain that she would have come from it, if she hadn’t derailed him at the last second.

And she hated herself for this fact.

Angry tears burned in Kagome’s eyes. Ruthlessly, she blinked them away. Feeling no less tainted than before, she wrenched her robe around her raw, sand-scrubbed flesh and returned to her home.

Within, Kanako was laying out the crisp new sheets. As Kagome entered, the waif jumped to her feet, nervously attentive as Kagome dressed mechanically in her hakama and haori and began to comb out her heavy hair.

“Please, Kagome-sama, let me.”

Wordlessly, Kagome relented, her thoughts disembodied and far away. With a seriousness bordering on reverence, Kanako plucked the comb from her cool, stiff fingers and ran it smoothly through Kagome’s lightening blue-black waves.

“Your hair is so beautiful,” Kanako murmured, abandoning the comb to sift through Kagome’s tresses with her bony fingertips instead. “Like a raven’s wings.”

Drawn back by the sound, by the sensation, Kagome frowned. Judging that her hair must damn well be dry enough by now, she bound it tightly up as she rose from the floor and padded over to the looking glass—rather amazed that the mirror had managed to avoid the brunt of her earlier wrath. Only a thin scratch ran along one side of it, giving Kagome’s reflection a tear-like scar beneath the right eye. Staring past it, she straightened her collar and swept back her bangs, her features fixing in an expression of calm determination.

It wasn’t entirely an act. In her neat and dignified appearance, she saw what she expected to see—what everyone else expected to see—and drew a measure of assurance from it. Assumed an external composure which hemmed in the calamitous feelings that raged inside her.

She was the Shikon Miko, the vanquisher of calamity. The order in the chaos of these times.

And she would have her due.

Galvanized by her own burning resolve, Kagome turned toward Kanako with a smile so bright that it had the girl’s thin lips parting in helpless wonder at the sight.

“Get back to Kaede’s hut before I throw you out on your ears,” the miko said, just as brightly. “And tell Rin-chan to meet me here, with horses.”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Weekend bonus! Have a blessed Sunday, y’all

<3