The Boiling Point by Ariel

Part one: Hate

The Boiling Point by Ariel

He thinks he killed her to save her.

Part one: Hate

Dried autumn leaves shatter beneath his boots with a swift, crisp cry that echoes within the night space, and then he stops, unblinkingly watching the remains become stained with blood that drips from his claws.

'Serves her right,' he thinks nonchalantly, and continues into the silent shade of the unending foliage.

The sun rises meekly in the distance, and the air suddenly becomes less dry, less depressing, less menacing, and the cheerful morning birds starts to awake and ready their wings for the new day ahead. A little bit like her, they are: becoming happy at the sign of a fair-weathered day, and always, always playing the giver. No one sees into her heart, but he knows how she feels.

He knows of the turmoil inside of her.

The final battle has been fought and won, but none of her shard-hunting companions can be found.

They are probably all dead.

He wasn't sure why she sought him out, or if she had even meant to seek him out in the first place, and he still isn't very sure now. All he knows is that she was no longer who everyone saw her as. She had gone insane.

"Hi," she had first said to him with an empty trace of a smile, and at that time, he had been contemplating seriously whether or not to simply slit her throat then continue on his way, undisturbed.

"Where's Rin?" she then questioned. "That human girl who always follows you around?"

He hadn't given her an answer, so she continued to talk.

"You know," she started, "it's a really nice day today. I like it a lot when the sun is out. The forest grounds aren't too wet to walk in and if you listen carefully, you could hear every little thing."

She closed her eyes, and he felt irritation pool at the bottom of his stomach, his claws twitching.

He started walking again in a brisk pace, and she followed. He can't find a reason as to why he had let her without ending her life then and there. Maybe it was because she had caught a bit of his attention; maybe it was what she had said next.

"I really, really hate them."

Days went by, then weeks. He wasn't sure how long he allowed her to follow him. She was almost always talking, and sometimes, she cried.

"He was never there," she once said, "I'm so tired of being obligated to him. If only I didn't hold Kikyou's feelings of fondness for him. I think I hate the feeling of being in love with him. It makes me sick and tired."

She sighed without emotion and said, "I think it's disgusting."

He rarely replied to her thoughts.

"I hate him so much," she began to laugh, with tears trailing down her cheeks, "I'm pretty glad that he's dead."

On another day, she brought up the whereabouts of Rin again.

"She left you, didn't she?"

His silence answered her, and she stayed tranquil for the day, knowing better than to pry further.

He doesn't know when it was that he got tired of her.

It is an autumn night.

She cried uncontrollably.

"Why did they do this to me? How could they?" she sobbed loudly, "I wanted every one of them to disappear from the world, but now that they have, I'm hating them even more! How can I stop my feelings of hatred for them? How?"

He regarded her with honey-colored eyes as she knelt harshly, grazing her knees and pushing the skin against the dirt so hard it tore apart and bled. She was shutting her eyes with such strength that her tears fought to spill from her lids, her dirty nails clawing at her own face, and strangled screams releasing themselves from her throat. "I hate them! I hate them!"

She was perfectly mad. Days and weeks and months and years of abuse and memories and love suffocating her with rough ropes continuously tightening around every inch of her.

Then he saved her.

He does not know why he saved her. Maybe because he really was too tired of her; maybe because he loves her.

But he decides that it does not matter, and her blood is drying on his hand, and perhaps only the trees know that he is crying.

A/N: I wrote this fic in January 2009 but never posted it at Dokuga. I re-read it recently and thought that it should be decent enough for a re-post here. Please review. :-)