So: Random words on Kikyou. I've never even really thought much about her character before, but then I read a fic which... I dunno... seemed somehow incomplete in its depiction of her, or at least in its author's rationalization of said depiction. This'll be pretty short. A drabble, in fact. 8D (woo, my first!... Mostly because it's about 3.30 am and I'm too tired to write more, but I still want to have this up.)
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She had a lot of time to think, after her initial death and resurrection. After the blinding force of her hatred had abated, she was left with finding something to do with herself... a difficiult thing, when her old life had quite literally been ended. Almost a ridiculous one; resuming the work of a miko, when she was herself the very sort of unholy creature which she would likely have exorcised, back in the time before Naraku? Such a thing was disturbing, and she would have chosen not think about it, were she not left with so very much time on her hands.
She tried to fill it, by helping others. She knew from what her memories and training told her that it was what she ought to be doing, what her job had been, and what a sense of rightness and duty left over from her previous life told her. But at the same time, going about healing others felt... wrong. Something inside of her was missing. Not her holy powers, for those seemed as intact as ever. But the desire to use them as she was even now doing had vanished, leaving in its wake a cold, hollow disdain. She hid it carefully when she was around those she helped. It would have distressed them, for obvious reasons. It would have distrubed her, back when she had a heart to beat and an intact soul to care.
It seemed that the mere act of helping others was not enough to bring back what she had lost-- no, not lost. What that other girl had taken. She was incomplete, in more ways than one. Not simply on the physical level, the level of the living body that had long ago rotted away and left behind a husk of clay and bone. But her soul... that was the most obvious gap of all, even if not from the outside. She lacked everything that had previously made her Kikyou, elder sister of Kaede and pure miko. It had been absorbed within minutes of her revival, back into that girl who had innocently and in all good faith taken all the parts of Kikyou's life that had once been important for herself.
All she possessed now was hatred. And she felt it keenly. At first she had not cared about that... she had singlemindedly pursued vengeance against the one who had wronged her, using the hatred to fuel that venture. She took in the souls of dead girls, using their energy to fuel her existence even as they failed to offer what would make her truly complete. There was only one thing that could do that.
But she had retained enough self-control to keep herself from taking it. After all, she was a miko. Miko did not do such things, even if they were undead.
She allowed the wind to sway her hair as she lay back on the branch of the tree, though she could not feel it on her scalp. She had no more duties, no more obligations, besides the ones she created for herself, and this body had no need for sleep. When the morning came, she would cause her clay body to lift her and carry her to the nearest village, where she would heal any sick or injured there and surreptitiously watch for more souls. Until that time came, however, she was alone with her thoughts.
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...I had meant for this to be more serious, but I think my current choice of music affected that somewhat. (Make way for Prince Ali 8D) Oh well...