Kagome floated in a sea of blackness, feeling strangely cold and isolated. Empty. There was a pervasive sense of wrongness; this wasn't the way things were supposed to be. What things? she asked herself, but found herself unable to answer. She was viewing the empty dark around her with no panic, but a strange detachment – like she wasn't really there. She tried to look at her own hands, but the blackness was complete.

Suddenly desperate for some – any – kind of anchor, she strained her eyes in all directions. Nothing. Black. Cold. Emptiness.

But not silence, she realized. The sounds were faint and far-away, but she recognized the sound of voices among peculiar hums and beeps. Closing her eyes and focusing all her energy on the sound, she tried to make out the words. The voices were fading in and out, but she caught little snatches of a conversation: "... nothing wrong with her that I can see ..."; "... can't understand ..."; "... nothing ... but wait ..."

She couldn't follow it; everything seemed so hazy. She opened her eyes in frustration, steeling herself for the nothingness around her. When she did another instinctive sweep of her surroundings, though, she found that there was a tiny spark of pink light burning faintly just before her, no bigger than the head of a pin, hovering at chest level. She lifted her hands as if to cup it in her palms and found that even its faint light was enough to illuminate her skin in the blackness. A surge of irrational relief washed over her; she was real.

She couldn't help being worried, though; the light was so faint, so weak. She knew instinctively that she had to protect it. It was important to her. She must not let it go out. But it was so weak!

A stronger voice broke through the blackness, nearer than any of the others, and a wave of warmth broke over her, starting from her right shoulder and whispering down her body. "She's empty, like a bowl." The voice was familiar. Rin? No, no – Rin was long gone. One of her daughters?

"Let me."

Suddenly, a ribbon of warm purple light encircled the little pink dot between her palms. It streaked around it in awkward, jerky circles; the little flame, in turn, flickered and leaned, trying to get closer to the new light that was dancing clumsily around it. Finally, the purple ribbon wound itself into a knot around the pink spark, gradually tightening until the pink was completely hidden inside it. Kagome felt a momentary panic at the thought that her little light was going to be overwhelmed – but the purple sank completely into the pink spark, until there was no telling it had been there at all. Suddenly, the pink spark started expanding, the purple filling it out on the inside. Kagome caught the flame – now big enough to fill one palm – between her hands. It trembled like a living thing, timid and weak, still, but getting stronger by the moment. With all her heart and all her strength, she willed it to keep growing.

For a moment the flame in her hands shuddered, then began to writhe and twist, as though it were in pain. Kagome took a deep breath, steeling herself for whatever came next. And the flame exploded.

Kagome felt herself going up like a roman candle, surrounded by a pillar of warm, pink light – a familiar warmth, a familiar light. The darkness was dispelled, the emptiness filled, the cold a dim memory. She felt whole again, and closed her eyes, throwing her head back in blissful relief.

When she opened her eyes, the glaring light reflected of a white ceiling nearly blinded her. She squeezed her eyes shut again, then blinked them open more cautiously. Dark brown eyes were staring down at her, a tanned brow creased in concern. Bashir. Julian – Doctor Julian Bashir. She was on Deep Space Nine. Memories of the last few weeks came flooding back to her, and she looked around her in sudden concern. Commander Sisko was there, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth; Miles and Keiko O'Brien were holding hands just to her right, the relief on their faces palpable. Finally, she met the dark eyes of the little girl was looking at her curiously from where she perched on the bed just by Kagome's right shoulder.

"Molly," Kagome whispered, suddenly conscious of how weak her voice was. "Thank you, princess."

"What—" Miles started, before looking to Julian for permission to continue his question. When Julian nodded, he continued, a little diffidently. "What did she do?"

"Kagome was empty," Molly answered, without waiting for Kagome to speak. "They emptied her out." She looked pleased with herself, as though that answered everything. The adults turned bemused gazes on Kagome.

"She's right," Kagome agreed, her voice still not much more than a whisper. "A miko's power comes from her soul, and it's self-sustaining – it regenerates itself. The tiny amount of spiritual energy it takes to sustain life in our bodies is enough to recharge any major expenditures of our power, given a bit of time. The Jem'Hadar were using bombs that sucked my soul out through the shield I was using to protect us from them – it was like they just pulled the stopper out from my soul, and pulled it all away. I was lucky that I was left with enough energy to keep my heart beating."

"How many bombs did you survive?" The question came from Sisko, ever the pragmatist.

Kagome thought back to the horrific moments she'd spent in the burning warehouse. "Five," she decided finally. Meeting the commander's eyes, she added quietly, "One more would have killed me."

He nodded, his face set in an impassive mask. "You told me once that you are among the strongest of your kind."

She nodded, wincing at the pain that shot through her head at the movement. "Any other miko I've ever known would have been killed by one, or two at the most."

"And you were too weakened to escape."

"Yes; and any spiritual attack or block I could have tried would have ended in more of my energy being drained." On thinking about it, she was horrified by the brutal efficacy of the weapon. Even with all the battles she'd lived through, she hadn't been so close to death in centuries.

"But—" It was Miles again, that same diffidence in his voice. He searched the faces of the people around him, and swallowed. "But what did Molly do?"

Kagome smiled at the little girl who was blinking dazedly at her hands, then turned to her father. "She ... um ... jumpstarted my battery?" At his confused grimace, she grinned. "My energy had been depleted to almost nothing, so its regeneration had all but stopped. Molly lent me some of her energy to get the process going – just enough to get my soul to start replenishing itself again."

She turned to face Molly, who was now staring into the middle distance with slightly glazed eyes. "How do you feel, princess?" she asked softly, knowing that it must have taken a lot out of her.

"A little sleepy," she confided. Kagome nodded in understanding, suddenly exhausted herself.

"You've just performed your first healing, princess," she whispered, closing her eyes. "Now you need to recharge your battery, just like I do." Opening her eyes one more time, the process far more difficult than she thought it really should have been, she smiled at the little miko by her side.

"You did great, Molly. I'm proud of you." Her smile was weak, but absolutely genuine.

"May I stay with Kagome, mama?" Molly asked, her eyelids drooping. "I want to sleep here."

Keiko looked to Kagome first, and at her smile, she turned to Julian. "It's fine by me, but Kagome needs to rest now." Keiko smiled at her daughter and settled her next to Kagome on the bed.

The homey feeling of a warm little body snuggling up next to her was Kagome's undoing. She shifted, cradling Molly's form with her own, and was asleep at once.