Damned

It is dark and stuffy and she searches for breath but can't find it. Hands struggle for movement but grip only at grainy softness as her brain struggles for some sense of reality.

Sango is buried alive.

The thought occurs to her and she fights, clawing and pushing towards what she thinks is up and trying to ignore the splintering pain of what happened that shivers from her spine. A bolt of fear winds itself through her and binds it to her desperation, sticking like the dirt that clings to the back of her throat.

Her fingers suddenly grasp at air and Sango heaves herself from the grave with a cough and a curse. She can't die, not yet, and that is what she tells herself, but death lingers in the peripheral and waits for its chance to ambush.

Damnation finds her first.

-

Naraku loves his toys. They are his puppets, and his to manipulate.

To perfect.

It was he who took nihility, nothing, and made it something. He caught the wind and made it dance for his pleasure. It was his hands that took the tree sap, soft and pliant, and reformed it 'til it was hard and flawless and so smooth it slipped from his fingers and fell away before he noticed.

Naraku does not care much to dwell on his failures. Insubordination is expected, imperfections foreseeable, and puppets replaceable.

But Sango is different. She is the mistake he cannot forget.

Sometimes, he something-like-regrets imagining the way her blood will shine on his fingers as she dies beneath him, but then he remembers how fun it was to play with her and it goes away.

He isn't finished using her yet.

-

Sometimes, Sango lies awake in the middle of the night and reflects on the way things are. The stars overhead burn and remind her that life goes on, but she thinks that the black stain on her heart forgiveness couldn't take away might open up at any moment and swallow that starlight if she let it.

The part of her that whispers with his voice caresses her mind and whispers hate and death and words that leave her shuddering with something-like-want into her ear, and the stain spreads through her blood like a tantalizing poison. Yet, there's still a fragment of the Sango-that-was and the Sango-that-could-still-be that fights from beneath the darkness he brought, clawing for the air that remains somewhere called 'up', and if she finds it, it will all be okay.

In the morning, Sango rises and pretends and laughs because she knows she's damned either way.