Abschluss
closure, fastening, seal; end, close, conclusion, termination.
by Elke Tanzer, elke@elke.slashcity.org
Posted: July 2003
Rating: PG
Pairings: Kikyo/Inu Yasha, Kagome/Inu Yasha
Archiving: I'd prefer if you linked directly to either this page or my website rather
than storing a copy. Thanks!
Disclaimer: Inu Yasha and all related elements are copyright of Rumiko Takahashi, Shonen Sunday magazine, Kadokawa Shoten and/or Viz Entertainment. This story is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and is solely meant for entertainment.
Summary: Choices and vengeance at one possible end of the quest for the Shikon
Jewel.
Author's Notes: I dedicate this humble effort to Second Element Video, whose Two-Way Dream has captivated me during the past few weeks, and to Krista Perry, whose writing showed me nearly a decade ago how marvelous anime fanfiction can be. I've never forgotten; I just left for a while.
Thanks to Moonlight Spike, who kept me going on this when I really needed a cheerleader. I wrote this after seeing the first twenty or so episodes, and reading thirteen volumes of the manga. It's a futurefic based only on that, although I know there is a lot more canon out there which I haven't seen or read yet... so you should probably consider this an alternate future, though I've tried to keep the characters as close as possible to the canon I'm familiar with.
The definitions provided with the titles are from Cassell's German Dictionary, ninth printing.
After I finished writing this, I started looking for screen captures to manipulate into illustrations, and it was very startled to find some that looked a little too close to the plot of this, in screencap collections of later anime episodes and movies which I have not seen nor read about. Very strange.
i. Prologue
for those not familiar with the fandom,
summarizing the first few episodes' pertinent canon
Feudal Japan is filled with warlords and demons, a chaotic place far more dangerous than our own time. The priestess Kikyo, possessing strong spiritual powers, has as her duty the protection of the sacred Shikon Jewel, a mystic artifact which in the wrong hands can be the source of incredible evil power. The half-demon Inu Yasha wants the Jewel, as its power could make him a full-fledged demon. His father was a mighty dog-demon, lord of the Western lands, but his mother was a beautiful human woman. He does not wish to kill humans, Kikyo especially, but only seeks to steal the Jewel. Kikyo, weary of her unending battles to kill the demons seeking the Jewel for themselves, and longing for a normal life, sympathizes with the half-breed and does not kill him when he attempts to steal the Jewel. After many unsuccessful attempts to steal the Jewel, he asks her why she will not kill him, and they eventually simply sit and talk. They find common ground in their experiences as outsiders to human society, and she tells him that he could use the Jewel to become human, which would purify the Jewel and likely cause it to cease to exist. He promises her that he is willing to become human, to be with her, to live with her... and they arrange a secret meeting to which Kikyo will bring the Jewel.
It is at this point that things go horribly wrong. At the end of that terrible day, Inu Yasha is in an ensorcelled slumber, pinned to an ancient tree in the forest outside Kikyo's village by her enchanted arrow through his chest. Unbeknownst to the half-demon, Kikyo lies dead of her wounds, and has instructed her younger sister Kaede to burn the Shikon Jewel with her body so that she may take it with her into the other world, the afterlife, where it cannot fall into the wrong hands and be used for evil.
Fifty years later, Kaede is a priestess in her own right and, still pinned to the ancient tree in the forest now named for him, Inu Yasha slumbers on.
In modern-day Tokyo, the fifteen-year-old Kagome has grown up at her family's shrine, beneath the shade of that same tree. Most places within the shrine have their own stories to tell, including the so-called Bone Eaters Well. It is that well which provides the portal from modern Tokyo to feudal times, and Kagome is drawn into the well and back in time by a centipede-demon seeking the Shikon Jewel. The demon sensed what Kagome herself does not know... that the Shikon Jewel is within her body.
During her struggle with the centipede demon, her discovery of Inu Yasha in the forest, and her introduction to Kaede's village, it becomes clear that Kagome is Kikyo reborn, the reincarnation of the mighty priestess, though she does not know her own powers and is completely untrained. In a violent struggle with the centipede, Kagome is injured and the Jewel is freed from her body. Kagome's cry for help wakes Inu Yasha, and in the heat of battle she decides to try to break the arrow's spell which traps him. He is freed, and kills the centipede demon, but then demands the Jewel for himself. Kaede places a special necklace of prayer beads around his neck, giving Kagome the power of subjugation over him... whenever she says the word "Sit!" he immediately crashes to the ground, usually face-first. He decides to stay only because he is waiting for Kagome and Kaede to lower their guard so that he may steal the Jewel, but the first few times a demon attacks trying to get the Jewel, he ends up teaming up with Kagome to vanquish them. She has the spiritual sight to sense the Jewel and the fortitude to stand up against demons, and he has the strength to battle the demons and win. There's only one problem... during their first confrontation with a carrion crow demon, the Jewel is stolen, and in attempting to slay the demon with an arrow, the inexperienced Kagome accidentally hits the Jewel itself, fracturing it into an unknown number of fragments, each of which can hold terrible power if used for evil. The shards are spread far and wide, and each one of them is a disaster in wait for the human population.
The combination of Kaede's advice and a few attacks by demons, including one demon making its presence known through the well into Kagome's own time after she attempted to go home and forget everything she experienced in the past, convinces Kagome and Inu Yasha to work together to recover the shards of the Shikon Jewel. It is a strange partnership, with Inu Yasha maintaining that he only wants the Jewel for himself, and Kagome learning to survive and use her spiritual gifts in a strange time. Inu Yasha is also obviously uncomfortable with the fact that Kagome looks much like the priestess Kikyo, and sometimes struggles with the idea that she could be the reincarnation of the woman whose ensorcelled arrow struck him so brutally so many years before. In spite of that, they become a more or less workable team, gradually collecting the tiny Jewel shards in a small vial which Kagome carries. They make friends with Shippo, a young orphaned fox-demon, who joins them on their journey, hoping to avenge his own father's death by teaming up with Inu Yasha to fight his father's killers.
The demon Urasue appears, and steals Kikyo's remains and some graveside soil from the shrine in Kaede's village. She hopes to resurrect Kikyo, and manages to raise her body, but without her soul. Kaede, Shippo, Kagome and Inu Yasha attempt to recover the remains, but Urasue captures Kagome and causes her soul to flow out and into Kikyo's resurrected form. Kikyo, unwilling to be Urasue's puppet, kills her, and confronts Inu Yasha, demanding to know why he betrayed her. She accuses him of a brutal and ultimately murderous attack while she was on her way to meet him to give him the Jewel, though he had promised to be with her as a human. He is shocked, for his own memory tells him that she is the one who betrayed him, attacking him that day and attempting to kill him. After that confrontation all those years ago, when he dodged her arrows, he broke into the temple to steal the Shikon Jewel, hoping to then leave her village forever, but was pinned to the tree instead by her arrow. He maintains that he meant every word of his promises to her!
She does not believe him, believing instead that he is still trying to trick her, and attacks him. Kagome's still form calls her soul back to herself, and most of her soul does return, leaving Kikyo a mere shadow of her former self, a hollow husk motivated only by the hatred infused in her dying breath, the vengeance she seeks to visit upon Inu Yasha for his betrayal. Kikyo stumbles away, falling into a deep chasm, to become a near-demon herself, requiring the souls of others to continue her quest for revenge. Inu Yasha is left grieving, believing that she is likely dead, and wondering how their devotion to each other could have gone so wrong, but continues his quest for the Jewel shards with Kagome and Shippo.
During the course of their journeys, they make some friends and allies, including the monk Miroku and the demon-exterminator Sango, but also some enemies, including Inu Yasha's half-brother Sesshomaru, a full-blooded demon who contests Inu Yasha's right to a magical sword made from their father's fang, the Tetsusaiga. It turns out that the Tetsusaiga only transforms into a mighty blade when it is wielded by someone with demon blood who is also defending a human, which makes it uniquely suited to Inu Yasha and Kagome's quest. Over time, Kagome gradually becomes more proficient with the bow. They also learn that the mysterious shapechanging demon Naraku almost stole the Shikon Jewel fifty years before, and is thus implicated in the misunderstandings and betrayal between Inu Yasha and Kikyo's spirit...
ii. SettingThis story begins some years after all of that, however, jumping ahead to the time which Inu Yasha and Kagome had both hoped for and doubted would come. They have had many adventures which are assumed and alluded to, including violent confrontations with Naraku and other powerful demons, but they have not yet resolved Kikyo's search for vengeance; she wanders the land, motivated only by the bitterness which has taken root in the bones and graveside soil which now make up her body, unable to find rest or peace.
During Inu Yasha and Kagome's quest for the Shikon Jewel shards, they have faced terrible foes together, and have come to assume two things: that their quest will take far longer than they ever expected, and that each confrontation with a demon to reclaim a piece of the Jewel will be increasingly difficult, because the more powerful demons have had time to defeat their weaker counterparts for fragments of the Jewel.
