Title: For Whom the Bells Toll

Author: Miss Selah

Summary: There had been no warning before she amputated his toes. It was the first time he had screamed that night. It was not the last.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, nothing, tra la la.

Genre: Horror, Drama

Pairings: Onigumo Kikyo

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For Whom the Bells Toll

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It was cold and dark and gloomy that morning. But then, most morning were. The difference about this morning was not that he lay on the ground, half alive but mostly dead. The difference was not that he was shamed and defeated, nor that he was mortally burned and yet he was still cold. No, it was none of those things that made this morning so much different than any other, although they certainly played their part. What made this morning so different, what made it so extraordinary, was that this was the morning that she found him.

Technically, it hadn’t even been her that had found him. It had been her little sister, darting barefoot through the thick foliage of the forest, giving herself to the gods with her laughter rather than her pain. Kaede was surefooted and nimble, and she had been swinging on a tree branch when she caught a scent of charred, black flesh from somewhere below her. She was a wise child, and knew that there was danger. What made her wiser still was that she had gone for her older sister the moment she sensed it.

If she had come alone, he would not have hesitated to kill her. He was a fugitive, and even when she had brought her sister with her, he still almost killed them.

But there was something about this girl. . .

The girl in question was a miko – young for the status, to be sure, but her robes didn’t lie. These days, even the lowest thief wouldn’t dare anger the Gods by impersonating one of their holy children. The miko hadn’t been startled as he had expected most women – priestess or not – to be at the sight of his mangled body, damaged obviously beyond repair. The puss and gore was seeping out of his skin slow oozing fashion, and the child closed her eyes and hid her face in the thick red fabric of her sister’s hakama. But the elder sister’s eyes hadn’t even widened a fraction. She stared – perhaps she had a quiet kind of disturbed fascination with this sort of thing. But she only stared for a moment, before issuing a command to Kaede which fell deft upon his ears. What little he had left of them, anyway.

The world around him darkened for a moment, and when he came back around the miko was kneeling next to him, quietly. A the dim lighting immediately sent him on alert. When he had passed out, there had been many hours of day left. A closer inspection – even that made every nerve ending in his body scream in agony – told him that he was inside a cavern of some sort. Onigumo tried to shake his head to clear it, and released a cry of agony when he felt the soft, comforting burn of some dried herbs she must have placed under his head while he was unconscious crunch and infect his wounds.

“Oh, hush now.” She said in a startlingly strong voice, befitting of a miko such as herself. “And stop moving. You’re only going to make the pain worse.”

He didn’t answer – knew that he couldn’t if he wanted to. His mouth – along with the rest of his body – was bound in tight wrappings. He inhaled deeply through his nose and was able to barely catch the scent of healing herbs over the scent of his own wounds, still pussing and bleeding. The miko moved to replace the bandages, and he made an effort to stop her – it was pointless; he was probably going to die anyways, and if he didn’t, he would ruin all of her wrappings.

“What’s your name, stranger?” She asked quietly. He didn’t answer, but not because he couldn’t. He simply had no drive to talk to her.

She lifted him up, slowly, and worked on wrapping his body in a gauze – like material. He screamed during this process, and was in so much pain that if he had any tear ducts left, he would have cried. And she was silent through the whole procedure, business like, even. She started at his feet – she inspected the raw, useless appendages and had pulled out a white handled knife. There had been no warning before she amputated his toes.

It was the first time he had screamed that night.

It was not the last.

She worked her way up his body, peeling away the most charred chunk of skin, cutting out entire chunks of others.

“Stop!” He had tried to command when she looked at his manhood with the same glassy-eyed expression that she had his toes.

And she looked up at him with a carefully blank face. “I have to cut everything off. You’ll get infections if I don’t.”

But his ears were so damaged that he couldn’t hear her quiet voice. But as she slice off all of the things that she didn’t see as necessary to his survival, he wished for death. Even as she fought to save him, he knew that it was pointless. That he would never walk again, never taste again. He knew that if he succeeded, she would have given him life sustaining nutrients in liquid form every day until death finally managed to claim him.

She kept going.

When she cut off his fingers, stitching up the hand when it started to bleed, he stopped wishing that he would die. More than that, he wished that she would die. He wished that he was well, that he had succeeded in stealing the Shikon no Tama. Because if he was, when she had stumbled upon him, he would have killed the child and taken her body in the most brutal way imaginable. He would have done to her what she was doing to him now – but his face wouldn’t have been so carefully blank, so devoid of emotion. No, he would have been happy. He would have been insane with pleasure. The simple thought of pulling off her fingers was enough to have made him get hard – if she hadn’t cut off his cock.

She lifted his head, and wrapped that in the soft gauze with gentle, mothering hands. If he could have felt, he would have wondered at it – how a woman so blank could have a touch that was so kind.

“That’s gauze has special herbs mixed in. . . it should help your skin to shed the burnt flesh.” She told him, and worried herself with preparing a fire. Even she knew now that he couldn’t hear her – and the cut in the gauze over his mouth was just large enough for her to stick a hallowed bit of bamboo in to so that she could give him nutrients. “You’ll probably not make it through the night, but if you do, then you’ll live.”

“Kikyo!” Onigumo heard the muffled baritones of a masculine voice that called out, and when she flinched, he knew that she wasn’t nearly as unattached as she would like to appear.

“Inuyasha.” She muttered, but Onigumo couldn’t even see her enough anymore to read her lips.

And when she left him that night, alone in the dark of the cavern, he thought about what he would have done to her if only he could have. He thought about all the ways that he would have taken her, all the ways he would have mutilated her. He thought about those pretty little fingers that had wielded that little black-handled knife so well, and he thought about how if he could, he would have repaid her tenfold if he could.

He wanted to repay her more than anything he had ever wanted before in his life.

So when the demons came to him, the hordes and hordes of demons, and offered to give him life if he gave them his body, he accepted.

Because he had lived through true pain today.

And he would make it through the night.