AN: Taking a short break from Sliding Sideways today to bring you Part One of Two Halves, I think this will probably be a three part story as long as I don't get carried away. Please keep in mind the light I have cast on her character is more of her own internal thoughts on herself, and the way she interprets the people around her. In cannon Kikyou was hailed as some kind of prodigy according to Inuyasha, but his opinions were clouded by his feelings for her. I hope y'all enjoy, please review and let me know what you think!
Part One: All My Life I Have Been a Failure
"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." - W. M. Lewis
The first time she realized it would never be enough, was during the hottest summer she had experienced in her life. The cicadas were singing, and the people of the small village were fruitlessly attempting rake at the dusty earth in the rice fields to convince some kind of yield. Young children sat in the shade cast by their parent's huts lethargically. Kikyou didn't blame them, the heat made her tired too.
Her miko garb felt scratchy against her sweat slicked skin, the sun's heat felt scorching on the back of her neck. This was the least of her worries though as she gazed out over the barren fields. If they couldn't grow rice no one would eat when the cold started to set in, if the crops were as bad as they looked there might not even be anything to eat by the end of the summer.
Their village was not a wealthy one, and she knew they wouldn't be able to buy enough to feed everyone in the coming months. With the ongoing war, and the daimyo's demands for more and more young men to serve as soldiers their work force was severely diminished. The woman and children old enough and strong enough to hold a tool worked endlessly to provide trade for the merchant caravans, but efforts were slow and the merchants few.
When the crops began to dry, and trade became less, and the rains wouldn't come the village began to look to her for solutions. She was after all the messenger of the Kami, and in their eyes she should be able to beg the deities for mercy and bring the rains back to the village. It was the first time she doubted herself, the first time she wondered if their trust in her was rightly placed. They looked upon her with hopeful eyes, and respectful words, like she had come to life with the purpose of taking all their sorrows away, healing their sick, staving off the death of their loved ones. It was a heavy burden to bear, and it was beginning to feel like a lie. Kikyou had always stood tall and proud for her village with an air of dignity that her teacher had always said was her right. But in the face of drought, which she truly could do nothing about... she crumbled on the inside.
She prayed endlessly. She meditated like she had been taught; she brought her miko ki forth to glow across her skin during the endless days and nights of sweltering heat. At first the villagers felt hope that she could bring prosperity back to their lives, but slowly as things did not improve many began to feel trepidation. Was she a false miko? Why, if she truly was a messenger of the Kami sent to earth in human form could she not convince the rains to come? Perhaps she was a weak miko, or perhaps she had become tainted with impure thoughts. As the whispers grew in numbers, so did her doubts with herself.
Resentment was the only thing that bloomed.
She sat helplessly as people she had grown with, ate with and slept by turned their backs on her.
"Child, it is not becoming for one so young to bare the eyes of one so old." Kikyou looked up from her meditation atop the shrine steps to see the gnarled old form of the village elder.
"Yahiko-sama." She greeted quietly. The old man sat beside her slowly, bones creaking and joints popping. She winced in sympathy. He placed a weathered hand over her much smaller, smoother one and gave her a knowing look. His eyes were sunken and bruised, his cheekbones prominent and his teeth nearly gone- but he was a kind old man. He had lived a long life, nearly forty-two winters and he was not ignorant in the ways of the world.
"You are doing the best you can child, if the Kami do not wish the rain then there is nothing you can do." He was the first person to tell her it was not her fault in many turns of the moon. She bowed her head, feeling helpless, angry at herself. Angry at her village.
She was tired, so very tired. She worked hard; she did everything her training had taught her to do in an event like this. But no one had prepared her for her friends and families scorn at her failure. Kikyou clenched her fist beneath the elder's hand.
She was so weak. Her shoulders shook with tears of frustration, and she promised herself this would be the last time. She wouldn't cry anymore, she would work harder and become stronger and she would bring the rain like she was supposed to.
It never did rain that year, and many died when the leaves began to change colors. Yahiko was the first of many. The old began to fall first, staving off their hunger and giving what little food there was to their families. They had had their chance at life after all and the desire to see their children and grandchildren survive was more important than their own hunger.
The babies were next, too small and too weak in the heat, their mother's milk just as dry as the land beneath them.
Kikyou dug many graves, large and small alike. Her hands were calloused and bled often, her lips were cracked and dry and her ribs became more prominent. Hunger was her only companion. Her medicines failed, her powers did nothing and the village looked at her with scorn thinly veiled under a guise of shallow respect.
It was Kikyou's ninth summer.
The second time she realized it would never be enough, solidified her place in the world in her mind's eye.
Her mother, her sweet, beautiful, delicate mother who worked so hard to build a life for Kikyou and her little sister lay dying. Her long black hair fanned around her, her eyes were closed and her breath came in shallow gasps of pain. It took all her mother's effort just to keep breathing. Her skin was as pale as the linen that she lay underneath, shallow, sickly looking skin.
The hut smelled of stale air and sharp pungent herbs. It stung her nose and made her eyes water. Kaede's soft cries filled her ears drowning out the even softer murmurs of the villagers beyond their doorway. She kneeled with her sister at her mother's side, but she didn't cry with her. She felt empty, hollow.
Her mother's belly was swollen with the child their late father had given her before he'd left them from infection. A simple accident with a farming tool, that no one realized would be his demise until after he fell ill. It hadn't even been a deep cut, it barely bled and Kikyou herself had seen to the minor wound.
Another failure to add to the list.
Her mother gasped in pain, and her eyes flew open to stare at the ceiling. Her pupils were large and dark, her back arching off the dirt floor of their hut.
Kikyou wiped a cool cloth across her mother's forehead, and the woman turned to look at her with sad, deep eyes that couldn't seem to focus. Her mother's hand came up to weakly grasp at hers, and she pleaded with her daughter.
"Kikyou, my brave girl, please." Her voice was so weak, cracking with the effort. "Please, save this baby, your old mother is trying so hard, but I fear it is not enough." The words fell heavy into the air, and even Kaede gave her a hopeful look, too young to understand.
Kikyou's throat tightened, her chest constricting around her heart. Her eyes burned but she refused to let the tears fall. She knew down to the deepest part of her that there was nothing she could do; the baby had been a breach- turned the wrong direction and trapped within her mother's belly. It had already been many days, and the likelihood that the baby was even still alive was slim. She couldn't save her sibling or her mother's life- but maybe she could give the woman some peace in her final hours. She loved her mother fiercely, and this was all she had left to give her.
"I will do everything I can." The empty promise was sour on her tongue, and she hated herself for this new failure.
Her mother lived for two more days before the afterlife took her. Kikyou would never forget the solemn look of hopelessness her mother gave her when she took the new life she had worked so hard for into death with her. Kikyou stayed by her side through the whole thing. Plying her with teas and massaging the woman's belly, having her turn this way and that in an attempt to expel that child that was killing her slowly.
It was not an uncommon occurrence in her village, and many others all around the world. Childbirth was the great hurdle of all women, their duty to bear and many did not survive it. For the first time the villager's lips were silent in this, such a common thing was to be pitied and to lay blame would be to disrespect the woman's efforts to bring new life to their village.
Somehow, Kikyou thought their silence was worse than their blame.
It was Kikyou's thirteenth winter.
Kaede never looked at her the same afterwards.
Kikyou held the glowing pink marble between delicate fingers. Her new responsibility in this life lay there innocuously, glowing in the dawn's early light. This new burden had changed the way people looked at her. Instead of scorn in their eyes, there was now fear.
Fear at what it meant for her to hold such a thing among them.
"Demons will come." They whispered. She knew they were right, and the doubt lay heavy in her heart. Kikyou had grown into herself over the years of toil, heartbreak and death. She was not powerful, but she had control. This was how she saw herself in her sixteenth spring. A calling bird sung a high lit to its lover in a tree behind her. She heard the shuffle of cloth beside her and the brush of long silver hair.
"Inuyasha." She greeted the boy, she didn't trust him- she didn't like him, he was a demon after all. But… Inuyasha treated her differently. He looked at her and spoke with her as if she did not hold the burden of every life within the village on her shoulders. He looked at her with golden eyes as lost and hopeless as her own. She got the feeling he didn't trust her either, maybe didn't like her either. Theirs was a new comradery and neither one of them was sure what to think of it yet.
Was she really so desperate in her loneliness to turn to this for company? She truly was a failure as a miko through and through. She never spoke these words of course; just another secret to keep- another reason to despise herself.
"Keh. What'r you doin' out here by yourself Kikyou? It's not safe you know." She laughed at that. Like anywhere was truly safe, but she appreciated his concern. She looped the bauble around her neck to rest atop her miko robes and stood, brushing bits of grass off.
"Inuyasha, what do you think of this life?" He looked up at her from his cross legged position in the grass with a strange light in his eyes. His lips turned down and he fiddled with his claws, considering her words.
He scowled then, tired of thinking. "It's not a very good one- but it is what it is and you learn to make the best of it." She gave him an empty smile. This was one thing she did like about the dog eared boy. In his mind, everything was only an obstacle to overcome. Everything would fall into its right place if you only worked enough- trained hard enough. She wished she could see the world through eyes like his.
"Aa." She responded absently, giving him a vague good bye and made her way back down the shrine steps into the village.
It was some weeks later that she found herself once again idly considering the pink bauble around her neck. Her dim thoughts slowly turned darker and twisted into anger the more she thought of the events that had transpired that morning.
She squeezed the marble in a fierce grip willing it to shatter into dust. It didn't, unfortunately.
Demons had come to their village seeking the very thing she held. Demons. It was not the first time their lives were ravaged by the beasts. They came on occasion to eat their cattle, their children, to burn their crops and plague their river. This time though- they had come because of her.
Six lives. Their village had lost six lives today, because of this stupid Shikon No Tama. Himiko the new mother and her twins who had just yesterday offered her rice at their table. Jidanbo, the strange old scraggly man that wandered about from village to village and always returned with tall tales to tell to the children that adored him. Saki and Hideki, the brother and sister that were attached at the hip that loved to offer to wash laundry for an excuse to play in the river. Four children, and two adults, gone from this world.
If it hadn't been for Inuyasha… he had taken down ten in the time it took her to shoot down three.
"Tch." She grit her teeth.
In her private corner atop the shine steps beneath her favorite tree, she hissed at the thing around her neck. Her bow felt heavy on her back some sick metaphor for her failures, her burdens.
She didn't ask for this life. She didn't ask to be a miko, she didn't want the Shikon. She didn't want anything anymore, except maybe to die a dignified death.
Her anger burned, it made her stomach twist and bile rise in her throat.
And suddenly, she couldn't take it anymore, she was done. No more pain- no more death- everything was so-
She tore the Shikon from her neck, the cord and beaded teeth digging into her flesh with a snap.
Her power flared with her anger and she squeezed the marble again before she whirled around that threw that damn thing as hard as she could with a feral scream born from bitterness.
It hit a tree with a resounding crack.
She stood there for another moment, arm outstretched, panting. Her mouth tasted sour and her skin crawled in a dissatisfied way.
It was silent for a moment and then-
tink
A soft sound of chipping glass.
She watched in rapt horror as a crack appeared down the middle of the Shikon, and it neatly split into two halves. Her anger left her suddenly, leaving her feeling cold and empty.
The two halves lay in the grass tucked into the roots of the old tree, reflecting the light of day back at her like she hadn't just shattered her only purpose in life.
She sagged, dropping her arm to her side. The long white sleeves of her miko hamaka that was the mark of her station brushed across her hands, reminding her. Kikyou stepped forward, feet pressing into the soft earth before her as she approached the thing.
She crouched and reached down, fingertips brushing the cool surface of a single half.
'I wish my life had some other purpose.' The wistful thought crossed her mind, like it had many times before, and like ink spilling into water, the broken half of the Shikon darkened.
Kikyou gasped, "What have I done?" She mournfully said to no one. She felt sick, she reached for the second half but before she could snatch it up, the earth tilted underneath her.
Was she falling? She didn't think she was, but her world was very distinctly and suddenly on its side.
There was the echoing sound of another crack- only harsher this time and Kikyou found the light of the sun wasn't bright enough to see by anymore. The ground was flat and solid but not and she was falling this time, straight up- or was it down- into the dark blue of the sky. It swallowed her and a single tainted half the Shikon No Tama, leaving the other half glinting merrily on the ground in silence.