A/N: Surprise surprise~ I'm actually updating this story! :D I had originally thought of leaving it as a simple oneshot as a profile of Kikyo's life but due to my sudden realization that Final Act existed as well as a less-than-eventful Spring Break, I decided to revisit this story and try my hand at Kikyo's and InuYasha's messed up love life once again. So please enjoy this second (of three) part to Kikyo's tragic story~
To not see you again...
To live without you...
Don't make me face it alone.
To live another day without you would be unacceptable. To exist without you... would be unacceptable.
Your face, your voice, your heart, our dreams; I want more than anything to be with you again.
That is why, this must not be the end. This cannot be the end. I will not let it end here.
My greatest wish...
Coldness washes over me, swirls around me like an endless watery mist and settles against my body, welcoming me to this new part of life that I can only assume is death.
Death.
What an odd feeling it is to feel with your mind and hurt with your soul.
Before me is inescapable darkness, fleeting blackness against a backdrop of greys and blues that disappear and fade in dusky swirls beyond my half-lidded eyes.
I see without seeing, with closed eyes. Because there is no escaping this. Shutting my eyes can do nothing to shut out my cruel fate.
Idle thoughts swim complacently in the back of my mind, surfacing every few moments to poke fun at my last moments of life.
Love. Lust. Dreams. Hope...
All words that could describe anyone's life but never mine. These are only words that could describe my inevitable death. As she who guards the jewel, my life began and ended with that accursed pearly lavender drop from heaven's hell. Born from ill will and a never ending battle, only in death do I feel its true evil.
Kikyo...
Hm. None of the others ever called me by name. Something, though I cannot tell what at first, is different about this encounter.
Slowly, I grasp in the darkness for my senses. I feel for my limbs and a strange feeling of completeness strikes me when I feel their familiar weight and sensation return to me. I am standing and the ground is uneven and hollow, cool to the touch of my bare feet. My arms dangle almost limply at my sides and my hands are empty. Apparently neither bow nor arrows were granted to me in my afterlife.
With my bodily perceptions, I feel the coldness and heat mesh into one strange burning sensation. Could these be what the fires of hell feel like against heavenly pure skin? I scoff at my own description.
Purity... what a strangely unattainable trait to want, to need and to possess in life...
I feel a faint wind playing across my face, brushing against my eyelashes as if asking them to open and recognize death for what it is. With nothing but a deep silence pushed against my ears and knowledge of a forgotten wish humming through my mind, I let the wing's light touch lift my eyelids and show me my new life. My death.
My eyes widen far too quickly as it hits me hard.
All peace and tranquility fades as my death slams into me, knocking the wind from my chest. In mock pain, I fall to my knees and grasp my chest, breathing shallowly.
The shock of death... Kikyo...
My head immediately snaps to face the poised speaker though it is no man nor demon nor anything in between that has chosen to wake me from y peaceful slumber-like state. My eyes zero in on the strange being that chooses to call me by name as it floats almost mystically a few feet before my pained figure.
It seems our fates are sealed and entwined, Kikyo. Welcome to death.
My eyes narrow as I slowly struggle to my feet.
"Shikon Jewel," I address it properly, "You haunt me even in hell."
Haunt? It questions my usage of the oh-so-perfect word as though it were purely innocent. As though it were not responsible for my deathly sentence that I am now serving on the corpses of millions, human and demon alike who have suffered at its hands. And have died and been purged due to mine stained with blood. I do not haunt, Kikyo.
I scoff. It's a trait I learned from my murderer and lover all rolled into one.
I exist. It is what the living choose to do with my power that decides my role in your pitiful life.
I clench my teeth. I can't remember the last time I felt pure anger or allowed myself to embrace such an emotion. I suppose death is good for some things. "You are a wicked thing," I nearly spit.
Nothing you were not warned of, Kikyo.
Because there is nothing left to say, nor reason to say it, I let my gaze wander from the Jewel to my surroundings. For as far as the eye can see, nothing but mountains of bones and skulls. "Death..." I murmur. Even this word sounds strange on my tongue.
Yes. As a normal woman, you chose death. It would have been wise to make a wish, to use my power selfishly and live again.
A dark smirk plays out on my face as I continue to survey my surroundings. A normal woman indeed. I finally lived the life I wanted to through my death.
Why are you dead, Kikyo?
"I was killed," I answer almost bored because though the feeling is new, the truth is old. Cynicism has arisen in me, bred from claws that crawled along my naïve flesh.
The Shikon Jewel pries at my heart.
You allowed yourself to die.
I do not deny its words for they are true. I had already given up on life long before that moment when I bled so freely in a clearing blessed and cursed by my simple-minded love.
You died chasing...what? Love? Dreams? Happiness?
I had no interest in living a life alone. I had no interest in existing in a world...alone...
You died chasing a man who had killed you!
A bitter taste forms in my mouth as its cruel words rip through our twisted death. "And I took you with me..." I breath shortly, "I did not make a selfish wish. I died for my sins and I will not wish to live again as you want me to, Shikon Jewel. I will atone for my sins and stupidity in this hell until the end of time and you will stay here with me forever more. You will not cause others to suffer any longer." The words carry my bitterness with them as they roll of my tongue though they do not seem characteristic of me in the least bit. The living Kikyo would not have spoken such words. The living Kikyo would not have acted so righteously while her mind and heart screamed different words.
The Jewel merely laughs in response.
No selfish wish? Foolish wench. Dying for your sins, as you call it, was the most selfish thing you could have done. You died to appease your own sick and twisted wants. You died because you wanted it. You ran away from me in life and you will continue to run in death.
"Lies." I want it to stop talking. I want it to stop preaching my darkest sins to the world though it is only it and I in this twisted hell. "You can't fool me," I say the words with such confidence that even I believe them for a fleeting second, but the belief is gone when its words began to echo through the expanse once again. How weak I have become. Or is it honest?
You claim to have taken me to the grave but I will not be defeated so easily, Kikyo. I will turn your selfish wants, your bitter needs and your melancholy hatred into my second life. And you will be thankful Kikyo for I, the Shikon Jewel, will grant your greatest wish.
I look on with hollow disgust painted plainly on my face. "You don't grant the askers true wish."
Perhaps not... but I will grant your desires.
Without another word, I turn on my heel and head off in a direction leading far away from the Jewel. Its echoing voice follows me as I walk on continuously searching for the dark slumber that had once been so unfeeling and yet had felt so right. Such bitter loneliness, yes, but one that could allow me to keep waiting... for him...
He will not come, Kikyo. You know that better than even I.
I do not turn to look at the Jewel nor even recognize its very presence in my own personal hell.
You know he will not come because you didn't have the heart or the strength to carry out what you had to do.
Just once, in death, I wish to be free of its truth. Of it.
You did not even possess the strength to keep yourself from making a wish.
A wish.
And I have been waiting so long to grant a wish, Kikyo. To feel blood and hatred caress my being. Being purified by you was a living hell, Kikyo. I intend to repay the favor.
I. Am. Dead.
I will grant your wish. I will grant your final wish, Kikyo.
I see a distant light from beyond a mound of bones and began walking towards it. Anything to drown out its next words.
And you and I, shall live again.
Light...
I am but a normal human Inuyasha and so, you mustn't think ill of me when I tell you that I followed my heart to the place where you are.
You mustn't be surprised when I tell you that I too had a wish, had a dream. Had hopes and wants and desires that could transcend even death. And you mustn't be saddened when you learn that despite my wishes and my dreams, despite the long battle I'd fought these seventeen years that I lived, they did not come true.
I wanted only to be with you- was that just a blasphemous thought? Was that wish our true undoing?
But I believed in that love, whether it was under the pretense of manipulation or born from a desperate want to be needed. I believed in us. I believed in you.
To go to my grave hating you would be the greatest sin I could ever commit. And so Inuyasha, I'll share with you my greatest wish of all.
Let us meet in a place that is neither here nor there. A place and a time when I will have forgotten what happened the day I died.
Let you look at me differently, not as the woman you chose to use for means of obtaining the Shikon Jewel but rather as a woman you could come to love. True love. Love that you would not turn your back on for anything. Not even our past.
Let us meet again, Inuyasha, because I cannot bear the thought of never seeing you again.
To live without you wouldn't be living.
To die without you would hold no meaning.
My savior, my lover, my murderer...
Hear my wish.
Grant me my happy ending, Shikon Jewel.
Grant me the chance to love and be loved again.
Don't let it end here.
A/N: When I originally had the thought for Kikyo to wish make this wish (2 years ago when I started this story... oh wow, it seems as though April is InuYasha-obsession month for me... ^^;;) I didn't think it would end up being canon(...ish?). Oops. So please bear with me and this seemingly cliche idea. The first chapter dealt with her life, the second with her death so yup, you guessed it, the third will deal with her resurrection (and make me question whether or not I should change the pairing this story is listed under... xD;). So please look forward to that and offer comments/reviews if you have time! :) Have a great day.