Final Promise

The blue flames touched the sky, a loud roar filling her ears as she stopped before the stunned Inuyasha, reaching out her hand.

Slim fingers wrapped around the partially completed Shikon Jewel, and she kept her gaze locked upon the shards, determined not to look into his eyes least the throbbing in her head increased double fold, but when she tugged on the thread that held the jewel shards, her hand brushed against a strange bead necklace.

Her breath caught painfully in her chest when two words floated through her hazy mind, 'Rosary beads...'

The throbbing intensified, threatening to knock her unconscious, but she fought the darkness that threatened to suffocate her, wondering why the hell she knew what those beads were called...

Snapping the thread that held the jewel shards, Kagome quickly lowered her hand, sweat trickling down her temple, and her eyes rose involuntarily, clashing with Inuyasha's dark violet ones.

Staring into her dull brown eyes, he felt a painful emptiness fill him; unable to believe it was his fault, for some stupid promise she made to him, that she had turned into this...

Empty shell.

'Immortal...'

The thought crossed his mind, one simple word making everything clear...

His eyes lowered to the bloody wound on her chest from the arrow, blood still freely darkening the cloak, yet she didn't seem to notice the slightest.

Forcing his eyes upward, he encountered the jagged black scar that lie on her cheek.

'That bastard Naraku gave her that...'

He didn't doubt that she had numerous other scars scattered about her body from the session's of torture she went through, though none would be that color... a grotesque black that contrasted sharply with her pale skin...

No, that mark must have been where Naraku forced the immortality demons through to her power.

He cringed at the thought of how painful that must have been for her, his eyes softening, and unknown to him, Kagome's heart skipped a beat, losing herself in their violet depths.

Déjà vu seemed to settle in on her, stealing her breath away, and she felt like she was in some other time...

Rain misting about her, a heavy sadness squeezing her heart...

But then it changed, a nearly identical boy standing before her, his golden eyes wide with shock, an arrow penetrating his chest...

Lifting her hand against her will, she brushed it against his cheek, startled by how right it felt...

How perfect.

Blinking, Kagome broke from her little daydream, realizing the boy before her... Inuyasha... was wearing an identical expression to her own, his eyes wide with shock and breath caught in his throat...

He couldn't believe it, her dull brown eyes had sparked with recognition for the briefest second, but then she had blinked, returning to the bleak emptiness.

That didn't matter to him though, a spark of hope had flared in his chest at that spark of recognition, and he knew his Kagome was still there...

He just had to get to her somehow.

There had to be some way!

How could he make her remember?

As he sat there pondering, the cloaked miko was shaking, unable to comprehend what was happening, and a voice inside her warned her to get away from this boy...

While another voice told her to go to him for protection...

Head pounding, stomach churning, and hands clammy, Kagome quickly turned from the stunned boy, wanting to escape from this place, just to rid of the confusion...

The temptation to know.

She had to flee, ignoring both voices inside of her and instead following the primal instinct of survival...

Flee from the danger.

Blue flames swirled about her slim, cloaked figure, as she started off for the forest, intent on getting away...

"Wait..." The command came from Kikyo, who lay sprawled against a tree, her eyes glinting dangerously, but Kagome continued walking away, starting to draw the hood of her cloak upward, "What will you do once you complete your promise?"

Freezing in her spot, the cloaked miko's body stiffened before their very eyes, her hands dropping the hood to fist at her sides, and Inuyasha glanced at Kikyo with narrow eyes, noting her smiling, features colder than ice.

With an unnatural grace, the dead miko rose from the ground, eyeing the cloaked girl before her with a strange glint in her eyes as she whispered, "You have no reason to live, do you, Kagome? Yet you want to know -why-... don't you?"

Spinning around to face the dead miko, Kagome fought to ignore what the woman tempted her with...

To understand what danced just outside her grasp for so long, to know why she was here.

To know what happened, whom she was...

To know everything that had eluded her, for what seemed like forever.

Her body was stiffer than a board, face pale and set as the blue flames leapt in deadly arcs around her body, lighting the scene around them in eerie shadows, expressing the turmoil inside her...

But one thing overrode everything else...

The thought that had always conquered...

The promise she must fulfill.

'Complete the Shikon Jewel'

Deftly pulling her piece of the Shikon Jewel from beneath her cloak, hanging from a string around her neck similar to Inuyasha's own...

That was now held in her hand, he realized with shock, but Kikyo simply laughed, whispering, "Yes, Kagome, complete your final promise... COMPLETE IT NOW!"

Without a sound, the cloaked miko held up the final piece of the jewel shard to her piece, and they connected...

Nothing happened.

Inuyasha blinked, surprised that he didn't feel some sense of triumph...

After so many years, the Shikon Jewel was finally complete...

But instead of triumph, a deep chill settled within his bones, freezing his blood as he watched Kikyo walk to stand behind the motionless Kagome, the blue flames once again simmering about the cloaked miko's body.

Laughing, Kikyo gazed at her reincarnation, laying a smooth hand on the rough material of the cloak to grip the girl's shoulder, and the dead miko raised her eyes until they landed on the hanyou-human, whispering, "I knew the temptation was too great..."

Staring into Kagome's eyes, Inuyasha realized they had darkened beyond recognition, a trickle of fear sliding down his spine when her words from earlier floated through his mind, 'I... I must complete the Shikon Jewel... that is all that matters...'

What happens now?

She had fulfilled the only thing that kept her here in the land of the living as Kikyo had put it...

But how was that possible, if she was immortal?

She would forever reside in the land of the living...

Unless...

Eyes widening in shock, Inuyasha's gaze snapped to the bitch Kikyo, a snarl pulling his lips back.

The only way to kill Kagome now was to take her power, thus taking her immortality, and that was exactly what Kikyo was planning...

"Don't lay a damn hand on her Kikyo!" He snarled as everything clicked into place, all of the facts adding up to the inevitable it seemed...

Inuyasha's thoughts were cut short when Kikyo laughed, her dark eyes flashing with amusement, and she voice her thoughts out loud, "Those were the exact words your dear jewel shard detector threatened me with... before she attempted to kill me of course, not the thing I will be wanting to repeat any time soon."

Frowning down at the girl before her, Kikyo looked slightly miffed before continuing, "Luckily for me though, Kagome was too preoccupied with completing her other senseless promises to notice she hadn't put enough energy behind her blast to kill me... thought it was nearly enough..."

Shrugging her slim shoulders, she laughed softly without any humor, her black eyes colder than ice as she continued, "I was at the brink of death, the true death where I would never return, flattened to the forests floor quite literally... If not for her inward battle with Naraku, I would never have made it through. But now... ah yes, she will pay for it all..."

With a growl, Inuyasha quickly started towards the two mikos, but he was stopped in his tracks when Kikyo's ghostly white demons wrapped tightly around him as he fought desperately to free himself, though it was useless in his human body.

Glaring darkly at Kikyo while she merely raised her eyebrows, they were both startled when the shimmering blue mist around Kagome blazed into flames once again, swirling around her body with a tremendous roar before settling down into a slow simmer, and the cloaked miko gazed at Inuyasha with glazed eyes.

A bleak emptiness had filled her body instantly after the Shikon Jewel had been completed, after so many long years fighting and killing to complete her promise...

And finally she had managed to do it, yet now...

She didn't know what to do.

There was no commanding voice that spurned her on, telling her she must complete the Shikon Jewel...

There was only emptiness, a void that needed to be filled...

But with what?

The boy's eyes clashed with her own, their dark violet depths shining with something that seemed so familiar...

The throbbing in her head increased once again, a second heartbeat it seemed, and blackness was rushing down at her, threatening to swallow her whole...

She fought against the numbness, knowing there was something about the boy...

Something comforting yet painful at the same time.

A pressure on her shoulder reminded her that the woman was still standing behind her, and the churning of her stomach increased dramatically when she felt the dead miko's breath caress her neck...

Everything was hazy, except for those violet orbs that held her own eyes.

Struggling against the ghostly white demons that held him prisoner, Inuyasha felt a desperation fill him as he gazed into Kagome's empty eyes, a hand squeezing his heart, realizing after more than six lonely years of being unable to do a thing to bring her back, now she was back...

But he couldn't do a damn thing to help her, because he was a damn human!

Mentally concluding there was less than an hour before the sun rose, a small light of hope flickered in his chest, but Kikyo quickly caught his attention.

Bending her head until her mouth was scant inches from the cloaked miko's ear, her cold smile widened, black eyes narrowing in her eagerness, and whispered, "My beloved Naraku failed to gain your power, but now you have no protection left... You completed your final promise, the only obstacle that stood in my way... the only thing that held your spirit intact."

Dammit, Kikyo wasn't going to waste an hour before going after Kagome's power!

His struggling increasing, the hanyou-human growled, breaking eye contact with the cloaked miko to bare his normal teeth at Kikyo, eyes flashing in anger.

"Oh, Inuyasha, don't go getting angry at me... it is entirely thanks to you that I will now be able to gain this wonderful power..." Kikyo murmured, watching him with wickedly dancing eyes, "In order to protect you from dying, this bitch broke the connection she had formed..."

"The rosary beads?" He asked in bewilderment, blinking in shock, but Kikyo merely shook her head, continuing, "No, you stupid mutt, your precious jewel shard detector was at death's door but still her spirit remained intact... even though she had no protection at all..."

"Damn you! It was all because of..."

"Yes, I tricked you into giving me the rosary beads... I was overconfident thanks to your stupidity, mutt. So I believed if I rid of you, since the connection was broken, Kagome would lose hope and her spirit would break."

"Hope? So... the only reason she was still alive was because she had hope I would save her?"

"No, nothing like that..." Kikyo whispered thoughtfully, tapping her hand on the cloaked miko's shoulder unconsciously and studying Inuyasha intently, "She had no intention of living through that day, Inuyasha..."

The hanyou-human froze, the vision of Kagome as she destroyed Naraku surfacing...

The look in her eyes...

The look of certain death.

A shudder passed through his body, sending goose bumps up and down his arms, but he ignored them, instead seeking the empty brown eyes of the cloaked miko, a tightening in his chest when he realized she really hadn't meant to live through that encounter...

"You see, the only hope she harbored was to complete all her promise. she managed to complete some of them without trouble... freeing Kohaku, finding Shippo a family... but her other promises required more power than she could tap into without a connection to you."

"Destroying Naraku..."

"Indeed, so how was she to gain a connection to you? Simple... with the love she had for you, she created a bond far more powerful than any connection formed by those silly rosary beads... Then she had you acknowledge this bond..."

"When she was Kohaku... then I saw her... standing there with Naraku, blood everywhere... I could feel her... the pain, the misery..."

Blinking as he gazed into Kagome's eyes, he felt the heaviness in his chest triple, making hard to breath...

Kagome had loved him; the carefree girl that he had always berated, yelled at, and scorned had loved him...

It hurt like hell knowing everything that had once been was no more, that there was no way to make everything perfect like it had once been.

Tired of the silence, Kikyo decided to wrap up her little story and make the final slam, whispering, "She realized that if she still had this connection with you when she let her power destroy her from the inside out, you would also die... so, she broke the only connection she had with you in order to save your mangy life."

Barely able to stand, Inuyasha fought the onslaught of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him, tearing him apart without mercy, and with a heartless laugh, Kikyo added, "Poor Kagome just wanted the pain to end... to have peace at last..."

Sliding her hand from Kagome's shoulder, Kikyo laid it on the exposed skin of her throat, digging her nails into the tender skin there as she squeezed, but she pulled back with a cry, the tips of her fingers turning black and nails burnt to the skin.

"Bitch!" The dead miko shouted, lowering her hand to the cloaked shoulder once again, her anger firing up against her better judgment, but she squelched it with a laugh, "Of course, even at death's door, you remain pure... how ironic, Kagome."

Not noticing any of this, Kagome stood there in a trance, her eyes depthless and dark, but the dark blue flames around her body picked up intensity, spreading outward a few inches with a sizzle.

Her vision was hazy and she could barely hear Kikyo's words, but she continued to gaze into the hanyou-humans' eyes, unwilling and unable to break away from those penetrating eyes.

The flames rose higher, causing the shadows in the darkness to deepen and dances, but Inuyasha took no notice, instead once again taking up his futile fight against the ghostly white demons with a growl, shouting, "Kikyo, I swear if you lay a damn hand on her I will..."

"What shall you do Inuyasha? You can't protect her as you are... you a weak human."

"I... don't... care..." He muttered, struggling all the harder against the demons that bound him, but to no avail, all it managed to do was tire him.

Laughing, Kikyo stepped out from behind Kagome, her dead eyes shining with glory, and her demon friends swirled around the cloaked miko, forcing her to the ground on her knees.

Unaware to any of this, Kagome stared ahead in a daze, her body limp, but some inner part of her sensed the danger, her power springing to life.

Blue flames swirled around her, pushing against the demons and roaring with its ferocity once again, but soon her arms were shackled above her head by the white demons, her knees inches from the ground where she had been kneeling a second ago.

Gasping, Kagome fought against the demons, panic rising inside of her hazy mind as she was pulled from the trance that had lasted through Kikyo's talking, and her eyes widened, mouth opening in a scream, the position that she was held in so familiar...

Yet, how could that be?

Sweat beaded on her forehead as she fought a scream, the blue flames around her roaring to life once again, and Kikyo watched her with shining eyes, the smile on her lips heartless.

"Do you wish to see why your precious jewel shard detector wished for her death? Why she wished to be free? Well, I shall gladly demonstrate for you..."

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