Warnings: None

Daughters of Destiny

Chapter 15:

"Dear Sister"

After my world basically came to a crashing halt, Keiko insisted that I take a bath.

She wasn't, like, wrong to suggest a bath. I was cold from apparently floating comatose in the river and whatnot, plus I had a whole lot of mud caked to my feet, not to mention in my hair—so, yeah, a bath was a good idea, even if it was kind of weird for her to suggest it when I was in the middle of crying into her neck and stuff. As soon as I nodded that yes, a bath would be nice, she scooped me up and carried me back to the village without a word, Kaede leading the way to the exact same bath house where our night had begun. Keiko hadn't seemed at all bothered by hauling my weight around. She had barely even grunted when she picked me up, and she deposited me beside the steaming bathing pool after at mile's walk with equal ease.

As I scrubbed my skin and got warmed up (not to mention composed), I reminded myself to ask what Keiko bench-pressed these days. Girl had guns.

The aforementioned gun-toting girl was currently waiting on the other side of the curtain separating the onsen's bathing pool from a changing area. We hadn't had much chance to talk yet, and it was actually sort of strange that Keiko wasn't beside me in the bath, asking questions and trying to nail down exactly what had happened to me (us, my sister) that night. I half expected her to come barging into the baths and start yakking at me, but she didn't. Was she respecting my space or something? Probably, knowing her.

Or maybe she was just lurking on the other side of the curtain with her ear pressed to it, listening for if I tried to drown myself.

The thought of drowning made a chill go down my back even though I was up to my eyeballs in hot spring water. I scrambled out of the bath like I'd been set on fire, and because I didn't want to think about why water had suddenly become much creepier than usual, I told myself that I was getting out not due to fear, but because I wanted to. I had been delaying the inevitable chat with Keiko, and it'd be much better to rip of the damn band aid than waste away into a prune in some stupid bathwater. Not daring to look at the shimmering pool, I grabbed one of the rough-spun towels beside the spring and wrapped it around my body, and then I shrugged through the curtain and into the changing area beyond.

The onsen's changing room wasn't anything special. It had a few benches and some small, shallow stone basins here and there, with channels dug near their edges and under the walls so water could flow out of the room. Keiko sat on a bench, and for a second I wasn't sure what the hell she was doing. She sat bent at the waist, hands fiddling with her toes, top of her head bowed toward me. A pile of long, skinny white cloths sat beside her, along with an earthenware jar and some rags stained pink with—

The scent of copper and salt made my stomach churn.

…were those cloths stained with blood?

They were, in fact, stained with blood. Oh lord, they were bloodier than a carving board at Thanksgiving. Keiko was binding her feet in the skinny rags, but one of them was still undressed enough to show a crisscrossing network of scrapes lining the sole of her foot. My chest went a bit cold, and before I could stop myself, I spoke.

"Jesus," I said. "What the hell happened to you?"

She looked up with a start, then pasted on a hasty smile. "Lot of running around barefoot, mostly," she said—and the smile promptly broke, replaced with a look of desperate pity. "Tigger, I am so, so sorry." She tried to hide the look, though she did a really shitty-ass job. "Do you remember…?"

I averted my eyes. "I… I remember a few things. Flying, then seeing…"

"Abbot?" Keiko whispered.

"Yes." The name sent a bolt of pain through my chest, but I just stared at the floor and tried my hardest not to turn back into a wailing mess. "And I remember what she said to me. But I don't know what happened after."

Keiko explained. She smeared a paste of some kind on her cuts while she spoke, telling me in halting terms what had happened with Abbot—and with Sesshomaru, it turns out. I sure as fuck didn't remember him showing up; just my luck to have missed the action, right?

But that wasn't all I'd missed. When Keiko got to the part where Sesshomaru scattered Abbot's likeness into golden mist, and the part where Keiko sent her packing to the afterworld thanks to a little origami boat-lantern-whatchamacallit courtesy of Kaede's o-bon ritual, I wondered if being basically unconscious had been a good thing.

Keiko got really quiet after she got to the part about me waking up again. She had finished binding her feet at that point, but she very pointedly didn't look at me, instead spooling up all the unused cloths and folding the blood-soaked rags into a neat pile. I got the sense that no matter how awkward the silence got, she was determined not to break it, waiting instead for me to say something.

Lucky me, I guess.

Eventually—because I didn't know what else to do—I decided to start at the beginning.

"My sister had no time for anime." I didn't meet Keiko's eyes as I sat on a bench across from her, instead studying the support beams keeping the ceiling aloft above our heads (they were, predictably, boring as fuck, but I kept staring anyway). "She watched a few shows with me here and there, but when we got older and started to drift…" That was too painful to talk about; I squinted at the thatched roof, trying to read the future in the lines of crisscrossed twigs. "I honestly can't say if she ever saw any Inuyasha. And do you understand what that means?"

When Keiko drew in a sharp breath, I knew that she did understand—but I explained, anyway. Because I needed to hear it? Probably. Or maybe I'm just a masochist like that.

Abbot would certainly say so. But she wasn't there.

"She had no idea what she was doing here." My nails dug into the bench, splinters pressing sharp into my palms. "She had no idea where she was or what happened to her. I knew I had become Kagome. You knew you had become Keiko. But Abbot just thought she'd… she thought she'd died and become a stranger." I swallowed, because my throat had started to ache. "No purpose. No direction. She lived the life of Kikyo and died all alone as a strange person in a strange world, confused and lonely and afraid."

"But she seemed to know about Hiruko," Keiko said, sounding a little green around the gills. "That he was the one who set this all in motion. That he's the one who picked us."

"Right. She did." Finally I looked at her. "What does that mean?"

But Keiko only shook her head, big brain failing her for once. "I don't know. Only that he's clearly the one who sent her to this world and this time." Trouble clouded her eyes like steam clouds a mirror. "Do you think he wanted us to come here today? Is that how the well opened up? Was all of this his doing?"

"No." The word came out sharper than I intended; I took a deep breath. Softly, for the sake of Keiko's shocked expression, I added: "No, I don't think it had anything to do with him."

Keiko knew better than to push right then. She waited in silence for me to breathe deep, and when I shrugged put of my towel and back into my clothes—which she'd folded neatly on the bench for me—she didn't interfere. She just waited in silence while I found the courage to admit to her what I had been holding back since the day I called and asked her to come by for a sleepover. Since the day I jumped down the Well and forced her to follow me into the past, not to mention the great unknown.

Since the day I heard that all-too-familiar voice calling my name from somewhere in space and time.

"I have a confession to make," I said, knee jiggling in agitation. "Remember when you asked me why I was so dead-set on coming here?"

"Yeah?"

"Before I asked you to come with me… I heard a voice." Admitting that felt great and ghastly at the exact same time, like a deep-tissue massage with a hot stone, although Keiko just looked kind of freaked and confused. "I felt this… this pull to visit the Bone-Eater's Well, and that's when I learned I could travel through it. All of this happened because I listened to that voice."

(I had to wonder if I'd known exactly whose voice it was when I first heard it—if I'd known to whom it had belonged, but just hadn't wanted to admit why its sound put such a sweet, sad ache in my chest. Had I followed it to feel more of that ache? Or maybe it didn't matter now.)

"At the time, the voice felt so familiar, so comforting… and listening to it just felt right." My hands fisted, knee jiggling harder now. "I know now that it was her. I know it was her. I know it was Abbot, reaching out to me." And then I admitted the hardest part of all: "Because she said my real name."

Keiko's eyes widened. "You remember your name?"

"No. It was too faint to hear. But I recognized the way it felt, and then I couldn't resist. I just couldn't." I looked directly at her, begging her to believe me. "Hearing the sound of home after so long away from it, it was…"

The words died. Tears beaded on my lashes, stinging and smelling of salt. Keiko sat beside me in an instant, rubbing my back with her palm while I tried to calm down. It was slow going, though, and eventually Keiko decided to talk. Not that I was complaining. Last thing I wanted to do just then was say anything, because I knew I'd probably start crying all over again.

"When we went after the paper and ran into the tsuchinokos, and I fell into that ravine, you kind of abandoned me." Her voice held no accusation; she wasn't blaming me, which only made me feel worse, somehow. "Then, during the incident with Sesshomaru and Youko Kurama, a light came out of your hands. You used it to fend off Youko Kurama's plants. And then you spoke in a voice that was not your own." She hesitated before she said, voice soft as spun cotton, "You said you had been feeling feelings that weren't your own, too."

She didn't even know the half of it. Feelings of nostalgia. Feelings of familiarity. Urges to attack demons and protect a certain village. Yes. Ever since I'd heard that voice, I'd felt so many feelings that had not been mine, but the feelings had been too real to deny for even a single moment.

And to my astonishment, Keiko understood. Leaning her mouth against my hair, still rubbing my back in soothing circles, Keiko murmured, "Those feelings are why you went after the paper so hard, and why you left me in that ravine. Because you felt compelled. Your actions were not your own. We didn't have a chance to talk about it, but at the time, I thought that voice in your head and in your mouth might've been Kikyo. You agreed when I said it. But now…"

"Abbot. It was Abbot," I said, words forced from my mouth by the strength of the shudder ripping through me. "That was Kikyo's power, channeled through Abbot and into me. It was her voice, coming from my mouth. It was her feelings urging me to aid the village she called home for years." Voice thickening with every word, eyes pricking, lips trembling, I said, "We're connected, after all. I was in need, and she helped me. Her village was in need, so she made me help it. And then, just as someone I loved was in peril, she lent me her power." I twisted, wriggling away from Keiko so I could look at her—look at her in desperation, because I needed her to agree with me. I needed her to understand. I needed her to tell me I was right when I said, "She's still in there, Keiko. She wasn't acting like herself at the end, but I know that deep down, she's still there. She was so desperate for us to be together, and it's all because of how alone she was. All she wants is to not be alone anymore, and so she sang out through 500 years of time to—to—"

I cried, then. I'm not proud of it, but it's what happened. I cried and I sobbed like a little goddamn baby and Keiko just held me, stroking my hair in almost (almost) the same way Abbot had done the night she saved me from that jerk at that frat house, and that only made me cry harder. Keiko didn't complain, though. She let me cry until I couldn't possibly cry anymore, and then she turned her face away so I could mop my face with the hem of my robe and try not to look like I'd just had the most epic meltdown of this (or any) century.

Sniffling like I'd caught a cold, I said, "I wonder what her life was like." When Keiko's brows knit, I clarified. "Her life as Kikyo, I mean."

Her eyes screwed up in concentration. "In canon, she was a beloved guardian of her village, right?"

"Right." I fiddled with my robe. "I wouldn't think that'd be lonely, but…"

"Maybe her life didn't go according to canon," Keiko suggested as gently as she could.

"Yeah. Maybe." My smile tasted like a glass of bitter beer, only without a fun buzz to make the taste worth it. "It's not like she had a roadmap to follow. Not like we do."

"One thing from canon wasn't changed, though." Keiko had adopted an optimistic look; I didn't buy it, though. "The connection between Kikyo and Kagome remains intact. One soul, two people. Kaede even said that twins share a soul."

"You cut her, I bleed," I murmured, staring off into space.

"Yeah. That," said Keiko. "That's gotta be how Hiruko handled the whole reincarnation business."

It made sense, in a twisted, this-is-totally-insane kind of way—but then again, this was Hiruko we were talking about. He was twisted. He was insane. He was the kind of person who'd do something so completely bonkers, and that meant—

What else was he capable of?

Ice dropped into the pit of my stomach. Curling my knee to my chest, I wrapped my arms around it and held on tight, because all of a sudden it felt like I might fly into a million little pieces of broken glass if somebody so much as looked too hard in my direction.

"He picked us because we were twins, and he put us in the bodies of Kikyo and Kagome, who needed to be connected for canon to work," I said, unable to keep the quaver from my voice. "But something about this doesn't add up."

Keiko's head tilted to one side. "What do you mean?"

"To come here, to become who we are, we first had to die," I said. "You remember how you died, right? Car wreck? And I remember that I drowned." The nearby sound of lapping water sent another chill up my back. "And we both remember dying around the same time of year in 2016?"

"Yeah," said Keiko, uneasy. "What about it?"

"What're the odds of my sister and I both dying before our time," I said, "and how much do you wanna bet she also died in 2016? And what are the odds of that?"

By the flare of recognition in her eyes, I could tell she understood what I was getting at—what awful, stomachache-inducing fuckery I was trying to suggest—but she covered pretty damn well. Smoothing her expression, she said, "To be fair, Abbot might not have died when we did. There's some wibbly-wobbley, timey-wimey bullshit going on, to borrow a certain Doctor's phrasing. It's entirely possible she died long after we did."

"Possible. But is it probable?" I said, putting on my most logical Not-Quite-Keiko hat—but then the confidence in my voice dropped to jagged splinters. "Because you remember what she said about Hiruko, don't you?"

Tense silence fell like a redwood under a corporate axe bent on irreversible climate destruction. Keiko was a good actress, but she wasn't good enough to cover the horror in her eyes as she, too, recalled exactly what my sister had said about Hiruko. She'd had a front row seat while Abbot clutched my throat and tried to strangle the power from my soul. She'd seen the manic shine in her eyes and the agony in her voice. And she'd heard every last word Abbot sang and screamed as she tried to dominate my soul.

"DON'T SAY THAT NAME!" Abbot had wailed. "He killed me to play that role, that damned role, but I won't be a puppet on his string any longer!"

He. His.

He'd killed me, she had said.

There was little doubt in my mind, or in Keiko's as far as I could tell, that 'he' could only mean Hiruko—and that Abbot thought she had died by his hand.

Not that I was going to take Abbot's words entirely at face value. She wasn't herself when she ranted and raved and tried to kill me—but Abbot had never been one for lies, nor even exaggeration, even in the worst of times. She'd always told the truth growing up; it's why I was the troublemaker and she wasn't. It's why she went to law school and I made a living telling stories to antsy kindergarteners. Abbot had been sick with rage and fear, but even so, it wasn't in her nature to lie about something like that.

Which meant that Abbot truly believed, whether it was true or not, that Hiruko had killed her so she would share my fate in the world of Inuyasha.

"You don't think Hiruko killed us all, do you?" The words flew out of my mouth unchecked, like wasps loosed from a broken nest. "Did he kill us to get what he wanted?"

Keiko looked stricken at the thought, white showing all around her dark irises, and I regretted my big mouth immediately. Keiko would not doubt take this and run with it like a QB catching a touchdown pass, and while I'd largely gotten used to her paranoia and overthinking, this was one mental spiral I did not have the energy to weather, thank you oh so very much. Not today, anyway. Not after I'd already been through so damn much.

For once in my goddamn life, however, the universe was on my side—because just then, the bathhouse's wooden door swung open, and Kaede strode into the room with a flutter of her red and white robes. I gaped at her for a second before remembering that we were undercover (shit job we'd done, though; 007 I am not) but Kaede just chuckled.

"Tis no use," she said. Through my hair I saw her gazing in my direction, face alight with… fondness? "I have stared at your face long enough to recognize it."

I blinked, scraping hair out of my eyes. "What?"

"I know who ye are, girl." Her thin lips curled into a warm, sad smile. "And more to the point, I know who ye were."

Keiko watched in slack jawed amazement as Kaede marched across the room and enfolded me in the biggest, warmest hug in the history of hugs. Too bad I didn't really know what to do in return; too busy trying to process what she'd just said and make my brain catch up to the speed of reality, which had moved along without me like a school bus passing a too-late kid on a snowy morning. It helped that Kaede soon began to murmur in my ear, one gnarled hand petting my hair in small, calming strokes.

"Souls are a tricky thing," Kaede said, arms around me still. "They are pure power. Pure essence. But who ye are is not defined entirely by your soul. Your aspect is your own, no matter whose reincarnation ye may be. But even so." She pulled away, still grasping me by the shoulders as she asked with undisguised longing in her voice, "Oh, my dear sister. Is it really you?"

I had no freakin' clue how to answer that one, so I just said, "How long have you known?"

"Since I first laid eyes on ye. But fear not, child, for I am not angry. I am overjoyed." She cupped my face with one of her hands, tears pricking at her dark eyes. "And yet, sadness mars what should be an otherwise happy moment. My dear sister, dead so many years, must feel her business unfinished. Her aspect returned, sensing the presence of her own soul, seeking to take it back and return to this world once more." She chuckled, blotting her tears on the back of her sleeve. "The great priestess Kikyo takes few prisoners. Her reincarnation ye may be, but ye are lucky to come out of your ordeal unscathed."

Keiko (who still hadn't quite managed to scrape her jaw off the ground) shook her head as if waking from an unexpected nap. "I'm sorry I lied," she blurted. "I said it was my friend's sister who stole her soul away, but—"

She didn't have to lie and cover for us any further; Kaede lifted her hand, waving away the excuses as she said, "It matters not. The sight of this face mends all wounds." She stroked my cheek with her thumb, absolutely beaming, smiling a radiant, loving smile I did not deserve. I'm not sure if I felt relieved or sad when that smile faded. "But then again, I am but an old woman in your eyes. I was but a child when ye—" She stopped, swallowing as she prepared a euphemism. "When Kikyo was laid to rest."

"I think you're beautiful," I said, wanting with all my heart just to make her feel better.

To my surprise, it worked, and Kaede laughed. "From the mouths of babes! Now tell me your name, girl. It would bring an old woman much joy."

"It's Kagome." I could see Keiko having an aneurism in the corner over the fact that I'd just name-dropped myself, but I ignored her, because she's too dramatic for her own good. To Kaede I said, "Can I ask you something about her? About Kikyo?"

"Yes, child. Of course ye may."

"What happened to her?" I couldn't not ask this question, even though I knew it could lead to pain. Some things are worth knowing even when they're painful. "She was so angry. So lost. She wanted my body, to unite us again, and it seems that she must have gone through something horrible to be so wounded."

For a time, Kaede did not answer. She regarded me with level dispassion, like a teacher sizing up a kid's request for a change to their grade—but soon her eyes fell shut. "From greatest love springs greatest hate," she murmured, hands on my shoulders gently squeezing. "She fell in love with that from which she protected the village—a demon, by the name of Inuyasha, whose motives were quite impure."

(Behind her, Keiko froze, staring with wide eyes at the back of Kaede's head. I made sure not to react to this. 007, here I come.)

"I was but a child, but even I could see doom looming." Thunder rumbled in Kaede's words, eyes as dark and troubled as a storm cloud. "And indeed, the demon betrayed her in the end, thieving a sacred relic that Kikyo protected with her life. She sought him out after he had wounded her, and in her final moments, she shot a blessed arrow and vanquished the beast at last."

(A familiar story, even if Kaede didn't know it had been Naraku disguised as Inuyasha, and not the dog-demon himself. But I didn't say that out loud).

"And now, ye are here." Kaede pulled me to her yet again, arms warm and kind. "And ye will always be welcome here, Kagome."

Gently, as if she feared I might break or run screaming for the hills, Kaede pulled me to her yet again. This time I embraced her in return, my tiny, child-sized arms wrapping around her back and tangling with her long, swinging sleeves. It felt… good, to hug her. Nice and warm and soft. Familiar, even. I'd never hugged her before, but something in the woodsmoke perfume of her scent spoke to me on a level I couldn't quite name, putting me at ease.

Or maybe it wasn't me who recognized the feeling of Kaede at all. Maybe it was her, channeling through me even now.

But I wasn't meant to find an answer to that question that night. All too soon, Keiko stepped in, clearing her throat to get our attention. She stood politely with hands folded in front of her stomach, face pinched with apology and worry. I almost whished that she wouldn't interrupt us, but deep down, I knew she was right to do it.

Clinging any longer to Kaede would make leaving this place and time even more difficult than I already knew it would be.

"I'm sorry, but… we're going to be missed, if we haven't been missed already," Keiko said, unable to keep from wringing her hands. "Our people are waiting for us to come home."

Kaede let me go, though her hand stayed put upon my shoulder. "Of course," she said, offering me another of her warm, soft smiles. "This may have been your home once, and perhaps it will be as such someday again… but it is not your home now." She cupped my cheek with a sigh. "You are so young, after all."

"I'll come back," I said, meaning it. "Very soon. I promise."

"I believe that," Kaede said. "In fact, I have never been so sure of anything."

She rose to her feet, chin inclining—and for a moment I saw the familial resemblance tying Kikyo and Kaede together, even in death. It wasn't that they just looked alike. They acted alike, carrying themselves with the same identical pride, that same surety I wished I had even a little speckle of. Did Kaede see Kikyo—Abbot—when she looked at me? Was the resemblance in my face alone, or did something else speak to the connection we shared, too?

But tonight was not the night for that answer, like so many others that had come before. Head held high, Kaede declared, "Kagome. Travel safely. I will have our men see you to the edge of the village. Dawn arrives soon, but I will not have you traverse the night alone." She whirled toward the door with a flutter of sleeves. "If ye will follow me…"

We left the bathhouse with no more ceremony or speech. Kaede worked quickly, sending someone running to summon a cavalcade of the heartiest men the village had to offer. Once gathered, they escorted us through the town and to its very edge, where we paused as Kaede prepared to see us off. Keiko, meanwhile, looked up and down and left and right, clearly searching for ways of ditching our escort once we left the village. She soon began to describe to the men where we needed to go and what we'd require of them—and because she had it handled, and because I trusted her to lead us without any fuckups (those were my territory, after all), I stepped into Kaede's shadow and tugged gently on her sleeve.

"Can I ask you another question?" I said when she turned to me, voice unnaturally small. "Please?"

Kaede nodded. "You may ask a hundred, if that is what ye wish."

"Was Kikyo happy?" I asked—because this was the most important question of all. "Did she lead a happy life?"

And Kaede answered at once, with a smile on her face. "The priestess Kikyo was the best elder sister with whom I could have been blessed, a person widely admired for her strength, loyalty and power," she said. "Many sought her blessings, and I wished to be her."

"But was she kind to you?" I pressed.

Kaede didn't speak for a long time. Then, slowly, her hand clasped my shoulder, and words dropped from her lips like stones into quiet water.

"In her own way," she said, eyes on the sun-streaked horizon. "But there are times when strength matters more than a gentle hand."

She sounded like she believed it, too.

But I wasn't so sure if what she said was true, if it led my Abbot to such loneliness.

Because I could not bear to let her share my pain, I did not give voice to my doubts. I hugged Kaede around the waist and promised once more to return. I only moved when Keiko gestured for me to follow—and with one last whispered goodbye, I let Kaede go and headed toward the Bone-Eater's Well with Keiko, arm in arm, to return to the present once again.

NOTES

Two chapters left! 16 will be a decent length, and 17 will be a short, final epilogue.

Kagome gets a lot of blame for what happened in this fic, but I think that's unfair. She's been manipulated since the very first chapter. Cut her some slack, all right? She caused none of this; it's not her fault.

Many thanks to all those who chimed in last time. My readership dropped quite a bit after my hiatus, so I'm especially grateful to all of you still tuning in: rickrossed, HuangBaiLian, MissIdeophobia, Kaiya Azure, MysticWolf71891, Junyahui, Sorlian, IronDBZ, Kitty-ryn, cestlavie, rya-fire1, SesshomarusLuvr, Viviene001, xenocanaan, Biku-sensei-sez-meow!