Revised and Adapted 10/13/10
Chapter XLVIII: Making Peace: The Last Soul
Comfort has fallen over me,
Like a blanket my mother wove,
And as it sits, a weight upon my chest,
I feel that I can grow.
I feel that I can grow with you,
Become the man I could, can be.
But those things will never happen,
Cause you have turned from me.
Why did you leave Kagome?
Why did you walk so far away?
Without you, dear Kagome,
I have no chance to stay.
I need you as my blanket,
I need you as my shroud.
Beautiful Kagome cover me,
Protect me from my lonely howl.
Flower twenty-eight
Kagome looked at Airashii in shock as she became herself again. It seemed that only moments before she had been the same fifteen year old girl she had been nine years prior: A girl who had not fallen down a well, a girl who knew nothing of demons or Shikon Jewels, a girl who had never even heard of a Hanyou, a girl who didn't care about places called Edo, a girl who wasn't a Miko, a girl who didn't shoot purifying arrows, a girl who had just been that—a girl.
She looked into the white space and watched as she was once again surrounded by the world of the Shikon Jewel. Carefully she set up and put her hand to her heart as she studied the shifting color of white and gray. The color's monotone was only broken up by Airashii who stood some distance away in her red Hakama and white Hoari, a quiver of arrows on her back.
"Airashii," she acknowledged again as she looked at the woman. Even though there was no breeze in the void Kagome could swear she saw Airashii's hair lightly moving. "Where am I?" She questioned as she looked at Airashii with confused eyes.
"You are back in the Shikon no Toma." She answered softly, Kagome looked away from her at her surroundings. This was the same place she had been before the vision had started, she knew it well but what had that vision been, what had its purpose been?
"Back—back from where?" She asked without looking at Airashii her eyes cast backwards away from the older woman, focused on the never ending whiteness of the Shikon no Toma.
"Back from the life you would have lived, if you had not fallen down the well." Airashii supplied as she walked towards Kagome in the void of white. She moved as if she was floating, gliding down an unmarked pathway towards Kagome.
"The life I would have lived, you mean—that was the world without the Shikon no Toma?" She looked up at Airashii as she asked, her eyes filled with wonder and questions.
"Kagome," Airashii said softly. "That was a world without me as your soul. Without the original four souls."
Kagome's breath hitched. What she had just experienced was her life without Airashii as a major factor in her soul. It was a life without a Shikon, it was a life without a well. "You mean, in that existence." She motioned into nothing. "You are not a part of my soul? So the Shikon did not exist?"
"That is right." Airashii nodded her head. Kagome thought for a moment that she sounded very much like Kaede—soft and firm—wise and loving.
"Why would you show me that world?" Kagome uttered out confused, "Why show me a world I can never be a part of?"
"Because, Kagome," Airashii looked at her with determined eyes. "I am here now to give you a choice, involving that world."
"A choice?" Kagome repeated as she kept her eyes trained on her incarnation as said woman moved closer to her. Airashii drew her hand to her heart as she looked at Kagome, appearing solid and unfazed by the current conversation.
"Yes," Airashii began to explain. "The others you purified—."
"You mean Mikaren, Shokuro, Seika, and Akkanka?"
She nodded. "They have returned to their world, separated from their original soul."
"Their original soul? You mean the part of them that was part of the Original's?"
"Um, they have been separated from each other. Mikaren from Kyoudai and Sasuga, Shokuro from Sugoi, Seika from Bachigotta, and Akkanka from Meiyo."
"How can they be separated from their original soul, wouldn't it kill them?" Kagome gulped with worry for her friends and family, for her child, for her life in the Feudal Era.
"You have purified them, Kagome." Airashii responded as she took a seat on a brown worn bench that had materialized out of nowhere.
Kaede had once told Kagome that it was possible for Miko's to have 'feelings' to have 'wantings' and when they had one of those feelings or wantings they were able to make things they needed appear. Vaguely she wondered if Airashii had made that bench happen with her wanting.
Airashii set down comfortably and looked at Kagome with unnerving eyes. "You purified the original souls and allowed them to go to heaven in peace." She placed her hands in her lap beautiful, as if she was holding a blooming lily. "They are at rest now."
"So Mika is safe?" Kagome concluded. "Without the part of her soul that was Kyoudai and Sasuga, the prophecy cannot occur."
"You are right," Airashii smiled. "And although she will always be exceptional, she is now only herself, unhindered by old hate."
Kagome felt happiness enter her heart at the thought of Mika being safe and sound. "And the others?"
"Your child is safe your nephew is safe, even Akkanka is safe."
"What happened to Akkanka?" She wondered, "Is he still evil? Is he a threat?"
"No, he is no longer the Akkanka you know. He has been purified, heart and soul, thanks to you Kagome." Airashii smiled as she spoke. Kagome came to sit next to her on the brown bench and stared off into the space of white. "He and Yutara have started over as father and daughter. They will soon disappear but do not worry, they are safe and happy together."
"But—after everything he did."
"Mika has taken care of that."
Kagome knew better than to question what Airashii had just said. Something in her mind told her to simply believe the woman and that she should believe in Mikaren's uncanny power, even if she was not assisted by Kyoudai or Sasuga's souls anymore.
"So, my choice?" Kagome asked as she looked at Airashii out of the corner of her eye. "I have a choice involving the life I just lived?"
"Yes, you have a choice Kagome, between what has happened and what could be."
"What could be?" Kagome chirped back like a parrot while giving Airashii a strange look.
Kagome's look caused Airashii to pause before speaking. Something in Kagome's face made her worry and she hoped that Kagome would make the right choice. If she didn't—Airashi didn't even want to think of it. "A different you," She began with a slight gulp. "You have a choice to be a different you."
Suddenly the white world turned into a world of blazing color. It started by becoming Wagakoiki and then went outwards, creating a world that she recognized. It was her home, her house in the middle of Tokyo, her safe haven, her birthplace, her Sunset Shrine.
She stood and looked around her amazed at her surroundings. Everything was in bloom and alive, it was most diffidently spring. She turned to Wagakoiki and gasped as she saw the flowers gracing its branches, they were large and had petals paused in midair, raining down towards her, never touching the ground but instead hanging unmoving, covering her in a virginal veil. She closed her eyes as the warmth of the sun hit her face and took in a deep breath of the spring air.
Slowly she opened her eyes back up and watched as the scene began to take shape even further.
Before her was the place she had just been; a younger her leaning into a human Inuyasha. The two were frozen in place, their eyes closed and their lips just slightly parted as they were fixated on a kiss that would never happen.
She took a step forward and studied the fifteen year old her, who was wearing a black thigh length skirt that was currently held tightly in her young fingers. It was as if the girl was bracing herself for whatever was about to happen. The little white sweater was being held onto by a hand that was trying to pull her forward, it was an action the man would never complete. Kagome followed the arm that was tugging on the white sweater up to the face of a man she recognized but wished she didn't.
She studied the human Inuyasha who was dressed in a red shirt and Khaki pants. He looked so strange out of his customary clothing; it was a sight she had never thought she would ever really see. An Inuyasha who was wearing the clothing of her time and yet, this wasn't her Inuyasha. This was a different Inuyasha, one she had never met, one she oddly never wanted to meet. Her eyes drifted down to the hand on her younger self's sweater and she sighed unconsciously.
The action of holding on to her cloths was very much an action her own Inuyasha would take. He liked to feel her and he liked to do it in anyways he could. And one of his favorite ways was to tug on her cloths. It was an endearing trait that she had a hard time expressing.
"Inuyasha." She whispered towards the pair. She could almost feel those fingers on her skin. They were warm, they were delicious.
"You could live this life."
Kagome turned to see Airashii sitting on the same brown bench that rested next to Wagakoiki or Goshinbock, whatever the tree was at the moment. The older woman reached up and took a flower petal from the air. She twirled the flower around between her finger tips before flicking it away from her.
"This life Kagome, is the one you were really meant to live." Airashii looked down at her hands as she spoke, Kagome recognized this as a nervous gesture. "It is the life without the Shikon no Toma, the life without me in your soul."
"If you had not been in my soul, then the Shikon would never have been created and I would have been born—a normal girl. I would have been born only Kagome, not Kikyo, not Airashii, just me and only me." Kagome looked at her incarnation and watched as the woman nodded in agreement.
"It is the life you wished you would have had."
Kagome felt an argument willing itself into her mouth but stopped herself. Was this the life she had always wanted, a normal life with books and studying and friends and WacDonalds, and boyfriends who took you out on dates to movies and restaurants instead of running with you in the woods and kissing you in clearings with poisoned bushes?
Was this what she wanted, to have picnics with grocery store chips and sandwiches and Ramen instead of sitting around a fire while cooking stew? Did she want to go to school and learn about math and science and languages from far away? Did she want to live in the middle of Toyko surrounded by noise pollution and street cars and honking horns? Did she want a human for a boyfriend—for a fiance—for a husband—for a father to her children?
Did Kagome want this life?
Kagome walked forward and looked at the human Inuyasha. He really did look like Inuyasha did on his human night and yet, he looked like a person all his own as well. "This is Inuyasha's reincarnation, isn't it?"
"It is." Airashii confirmed as she caught another flower from its place frozen in the air and played with it in her fingers. Carefully she began to rip it to shreds as she spoke her unconscious mind crying out for help. "This is the Inuyasha you were meant to be with. The reincarnation of the one you know now."
Kagome looked at the man and wondered briefly how this was even possible. "But you have to die to be reincarnated." She looked at Airashii for confirmation.
"You do." Airashii agreed bluntly.
Kagome looked at her in shock; hanyou's could live for thousands of years so there was no way Inuyasha had died of natural causes, so what had been the unnatural cause of his death? Kagome turned to Airashii with her hands firmly on her hips. Something was not right with this situation at all and Kagome was more than ready to find out what the catch of this offer was.
"What happened to Inuyasha when I didn't come down the well?"
Airashii looked at Kagome with tired eyes. "It is not that you never came down the well, it is that you were not a reincarnation of me."
Kagome ignored the confusing words, caring more about something else, something that concerned the person she loved and not herself "Did Inuyasha die because of that?" Kagome questioned harshly, her voice dripping with anger.
Airashii took a minute to think about the best answer to give Kagome. For her task to truly work she had to be very delicate in the way she worded things but, still, was it better to tell Kagome the blunt truth or put seasoning on it, creating a delicious lie. Airashii looked at the girl in question and saw the look of pure determination. She thought it best to simply tell Kagome the truth. "Kikyo didn't seal him to the tree; she killed him when her arrow flew."
Kagome felt tears well in her eyes as she fell to her knees. She looked at the ground and felt suddenly lost; Kikyo had loved Inuyasha, perhaps not in the same way as her but at least enough that she wouldn't have killed him. "Why? Why would she kill him, she loved him?"
"She killed him because I didn't exist in her soul." Airashii looked almost guilty as she spoke—as if she was regretting a death. "Kikyo and Inuyasha betrayed each other Kagome. And when I was in her soul, the part of me that loved him changed her arrow and sealed him away so it could try to love him again as a different soul—and I did with you. But without me, Kikyo in her hatred drew her bow for death not sealing."
Kagome wasn't sure how to take this information. She looked back at the loving scene of her and Inuyasha almost kissing and felt weak. The Inuyasha she had known and loved and cared for had died because of a lack of Airashii. And now he set a few feet away Reincarnated into a normal junior high school boy. Was this what she wanted though? This was the same Inuyasha essentially but—was he really the Inuyasha she wanted.
"Say the word Kagome and I will release you into this world," Airashii brought her out of her thoughts. "You will have no memory of anything that has happened and everyone will live a normal life."
"A normal life?" Kagome stared at this human Inuyasha even harder before blinking and looking down at the ground. Was he really Inuyasha with his black hair and black eyes and his ears that were in the human place and not on top of his head? Was he the Inuyasha she loved or would she simply fall in love with him, as a different Inuyasha from a different time?
"Don't you want a normal life, Kagome, with a normal guy?" Airashii appeared to be pleading with her as she took a step towards Kagome, her hands cupped together as if praying. "Everything will stay the same, you will still have Seika years from now, you will know Miroku and Sango and their children when they are born, you will know Shippo and Kaede, even Kouga and Ayame, Rin and Sesshoumaru. Nothing will change—everything will just be normal. Everyone will be the same—just human."
Kagome looked at Airashii and nodded her understanding before she looked back at the man before her. Something that Airashii had said caused a part of Kagome's soul to call to her. 'Everything will just be normal—human.' Who had the right to decide what was normal? Kagome looked at Airashii and felt her heart grow cold at the sight of the pleading woman. How dare Airashii insinuate that you had to be human to be normal!
"This is not my Inuyasha," Kagome looked at Airashii with an undeniable fire in her eyes as she pointed at the man under the tree. "This is your own hate showing through, isn't it Airashii?"
"What?" Whispered Airashii as she took a step away from Kagome.
"Sugoi told me I had to look at the world with eyes unclouded by hate and yet here you are in front of me, looking at this version of Inuyasha like he is better just because he's human!"
The woman in question took a large step back and seemed to growl at Kagome's words in defense. "Kagome, I'm giving you a chance at a better life."
"No, you're giving me the chance to live a life with eyes that are clouded with preconceived notions of what it better and what is worse. You still hate demons don't you? You still hold a prejudice against them." Kagome took a step closer to Airashii, her hands held tight at her sides. "You want to be with a human, you think it is a normal life but it isn't!"
"You fool, do you not understand?" Airashii yelled as she stepped closer to Kagome. "You could have the perfect life. A life with a human husband, a human child, and you would choose not too?"
"Yes!" Kagome yelled back even louder. "Because unlike you I know that my life was normal, my baby was beautiful and sweet and loving, my husband was perfect and lovely and mine!" Kagome pushed herself forward to where she was nose to nose with Airashii. "You are the one who does not understand, Airashii, you are the one who is the fool."
"Kagome, you have to look at this with opened eyes, this is the life that your mother wanted for you. She wanted you to be a normal girl, don't you want to be a normal girl?"
"I am a normal girl," Kagome shot back. "Normal is impossible to designate or create constraints for. What is normal for me is not normal for everyone but I know that my life was my norm and I was happy in it."
Airashii gulped and looked at Kagome with fire in her eyes. "I'm trying to save you. The life you will live in the Feudal Era will be hard."
"I've done it for nine years." Kagome spat back as she unleashed a small bit of her power. It rolled into the scene and caused sparks as it hit each flower petal. "I don't need to be saved. I am strong, I am brave, and I love my life—just the way it was."
The two women stood still, both looking at each other with intense eyes before Airashii's eyes became gentle and backed down. She took a step away from Kagome and Kagome watched in confusion as she looked at Kagome with a smile. "So you—you would stay with the hanyou even though you could have the same life with a human?"
"I love Inuyasha." Kagome said simply, "I love him no matter who he is or what he is."
Airashii watched her confused for a moment before she poised another question on her pale lips. "So why choose the hanyou?" Airashii began to reason. "Why not have the human if you love him regardless of his physical state? You claim they are all the same so why not stay with the one that is at least your own species."
"Because I feel in love with the hanyou, my soul was meant for his. I was meant to save him, to save him from Kikyo, to save him from Naraku, to save him from his own self-hate." Kagome looked at Airashii with conviction. "I was meant to find Inuyasha the hanyou, so I could make him understand how to love himself. I was born to help the little boy who never knew his father and only knew his mother for a short time. I was born for him and he was born for me."
Airashii smiled faintly at Kagome's declaration and stepped back, her eyes downcast on the ground. "I have changed." She whispered as she looked at the concrete of the shrine.
Kagome furrowed her eyebrows and looked at the woman confused. "What are you talking about?"
Airashii looked up at Kagome and then at the image of the human Inuyasha and the younger Kagome. "Almost sixty years ago." She whispered as the image fell away and was replaced by an older image.
Inuyasha was in front of Goshinbock, his heart was pierced by an arrow and his hand was reaching out. In front of him was Kikyo, blood dripping from her shoulder as she fell to the ground, she was dying. The two appeared to be talking to each other but Kagome couldn't hear their words, she could only guess at the insults and the hate filled words they were shouting at each other in their death.
"Sixty years ago, I wished that Inuyasha would be human, I wished that the Shikon no Toma could grant such a thing."
Kagome looked back at Airashii utterly confused, her mouth hanging open. "But I thought that was Kikyo's wish for Inuyasha?"
Airashii shook her head. "No—it was me within Kikyo. I thought—that if he could be human—then we could be together—lead a normal life."
Her voice trailed off and Kagome watched as Inuyasha's eyes began to close, his hand began to drop. She felt tears come in her eyes as she saw the child Kaede cry for her sister as Kikyo fell to the ground, the Shikon Jewel tightly woven in her fingers.
"How foolish was I—I thought I could be at peace, if only I lived a life with him, a normal life with him but in my years of reincarnation after reincarnation I have learned something that only your soul finally realized Kagome, when you were forced down the well again." Airashii looked at Kagome with longing in her eyes.
"What did you realize?" Kagome questioned her curiosity on overload as the image changed in front of them. She turned and looked at the new scene, it was of her, and the first time she had ever seen Inuyasha. She watched as her fifteen year old self climbed up the roots of Goshinbock and looked at the sleeping Inuyasha. With a smile, Kagome kept her eyes trained on the girl in green as she reached up and touched his ears.
"I realized, that I was wrong." Airashii looked down at the ground in shame as the image of Kagome fondling Inuyasha's ears disappeared and was replaced by the familiar black void. "The only thing that could possible put me at peace, was to finally except the one thing I hated the most." Airashii turned her eyes to Kagome and smiled widely, "And thanks to you, that has been realized."
Kagome opened her mouth wide enough to catch flies as she finally realized what this whole charade had been about. "It was a test." She concluded as her mouth opened and closed like a fish at the realization.
"It was." Airashii said with tired eyes. "We had to know, if you really could see with unclouded eyes. And by accepting Inuyasha—the hanyou Inuyasha—without hesitation you showed that you can see closer than anyone else ever has dared."
"To look a little closer." Kagome whispered with wide eyes.
"Yes, you are the only one who really looked at Inuyasha—or any demon for that matter—and saw the truth behind their existence." Airashii moved forward in the white void and Kagome noticed she was beginning to glow. "Like humans they can be good and they can be bad." Airashii was looking at something that Kagome could not see. "I see that now, you have shown me that, Kagome."
She looked over her should and Kagome and Airashii made eye contact. Kagome felt a breeze begin to penetrate the air unnaturally as Airashii began to sing softly as she headed for a place Kagome knew she could not follow.
"I don't know what words I can say." She sang softly, "the wind has a way to talk to me." Flowers began to line the path Airashii was departing on. "Flower's sing, a silent lullaby, I pray for reply—I'm ready."
The light blinded Kagome and she felt a part of her heart grow cold—the part that had been Airashii. In Airashii's place their stood a single white Lily—dancing with no breeze.
Kagome walked forward and picked up the small flower in the white void and as she plucked it from the white ground and field formed with every color flower Kagome had ever seen in her life and even some colors Kagome's mind did not know how to even fathom. She fell to her knees in the field and looked at the red fabric on her legs—red Hakama, white Haori—the cloths of a Miko.
For some unknown reason Kagome's eyes began to water as she looked around her at the countless colors—red, blue, lavender, pink, orange, purple, lilac, green, yellow, black, cranberry, tan, peach, brown, aqua, maroon, gray, amber, cobalt, creme, coral, crimson, emerald, olive, violet, salmon, rust, sapphire, silver, teal, turquoise, vanilla, indigo—they filled the once white void.
"Airashii." Kagome said into the countless colors. "Be at peace."
With a gulp Kagome brought the single white flower to her heart and hugged it delicately as if it might break if she showed it too much love. Bringing it away from her face she looked into the air and was overcome with the overwhelming urge to sing.
"I don't know, what words I can say,
The wind has a way,
It talks to me.
Flower's sing,
A silent Lullaby,
I pray for their reply,
I'm ready.
Quiet—day—calm—me
Oh serenity,
Someone,
Do,
Tell,
What is?
What is it that they say,
Perhaps I'll know someday.
I don't know what words float on the breeze,
I hear them said,
I know not what they mean.
Flower's sing,
A pretty Lullaby,
I now can reply,
I now can sing."
Kagome looked at the flowers at her feet and smiled as the presence of Airashii left her body completely. She was now just Kagome—but that didn't mean she was a normal girl.
End of Chapter
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