Raventhedarkgoddess: Don't bother if you're a hater, this is a Kikyou peice. ((Although I call her Kikyo here for English dubbing purposes...)) Just some senseless angst, enjoy if you can... Not that I expect you to. Leave a review if it suits you. Also, I don't own InuYasha. ((I could never draw that well...))

Stepping Stone

Kikyo stood alone. There truely was no other way to descirbe her, standing there with a mournful, thoughtless expression on her face, her hair catching on her ears as she quietly let it down, the raven cloud falling, twisting on the wind. One could almost have mistaken her, from the back alone, as Kagome... But only almost, because as soon as she turned, you could see the difference in their motions and viewpoints.

No one could have told you what she was thinking: If truth be told, she couldn't have known herself. Her kimono was dragging onto the sodden ground, but she seemed not to notice, or to care. Of course, being dead could have that effect on a person. She still seemed thoughtful the closer she walked to the water's edge, seeing herself in the water, her own vengful looking reflection.

A hand came down and scattered the beaded drops of water that made up the reflection, shooting them in various directions, one of them clinging to her eyelashes like a single, solitary teardrop. It shone there for a moment, then dropped back to join the other drops, becoming undistinquishable, falling away into nothing before it could ever be recaptured, like a broken memory who's shards had fallen among those of her broken, torn dreams, for nothing is retained for the dead...

She uttered a sigh: It was a slightly inhuman sound, as though the wind that was passing around her had caught on a stray branch in the forest around her and broken it from the tree. She was that broken limb in the same breath, torn from the tree by love and a foolish, daring act to save everyone and still save herself.

A failed, frutile attempt to save everyone, and failing, saving everyone but herself, letting herself become an empty no one.

She moved away from the water: The water was the essence of life, a symbol among people of purity and forever. "When you are dead, you have no forever. You do not even have the now." But am I truely dead? Kikyo wondered. Or am I too cursed from my life to die?

Standing against a tree, she looked around her at everything: The truth was that she didn't really seem to see any of it. A normal person looking as quickly as her might have missed something, such as the sun, the moon, the stars... But Kikyo missed nothing, because she had no desire to see anything but an answer to her empty questions. Nothing jumped out, nothing answered her questions.

Because there can never be any answer, can there? The question fell dead in her mind. Dead, dead like her. Dead like the land she had finished walking. Dead like she wished Kagome were. "I used to care about life..."

"And now I just want to see someone die." The words were hollow, and a voice in the back of her mind tried to press her. You don't mean that, Kikyo! It cried out in shock, as if afraid that it was gone far enough to be wishing death on a girl who was far from home and didn't even want to be there.

"I hate her." Kikyo knew how odd the entire discussion would sound to someone who just happened to walk by, but part of her didn't care: What was there to care about? Humans were nothing but trouble, and she was no longer a human. They could never understand her, not now, not ever, and neither could the voice inside her heart that still clung to it's humanity.

But you can't hate her that much! Your mission was always to protect, the voice protested loudly.

"I don't care." The words rang with remorse and bitterness. "Give me a good reason to care, and then I'll start thinking about what it's like to care." The voice at the back of her heart fumbled for an answer and, finding none within it's reach, fell abjectly into silence.

The moonlight caught her eyes: She hated the way the moon caught her, trapped and alone, placing her into eternal darkness with nothing but that small light to cling to. The light was her human side, the side she resented. If only I could stop feeling...

"...Used to come here." A voice nearby startled her: It was not like her not to hear someone approching. Kimono still dragging slightly on the ground, she left the riverside, crossing a small, flat rock:A stepping stone of some sort she had never noticed before.

And then she saw them, InuYasha and Kagome, holding hands, looking around. She raised her bow: She could do them both in with one swift arrow to their hearts, kill them, end her own suffering as much as theirs, finish it all. "Yes," she whispered to herself, "Do it now!"

"I'm sure Kikyo loved this place far more than I can," Kagome was saying. "The way you always talk about her, I'm sure she had a lot more good qualities than I did, and I'm sure she was a wonderful person..." She looked around with shining eyes.

"If you think you know pain, you are wrong, girl..." Kikyo locked eyes with Kagome and saw there emotion, life, love... Everything she hated. Everything she had once seen in her face, felt in her own heart. She raised the bow, it's bone-tip straight ahead, ready to finish it...

"You're right. But remember, you're my Kikyo now. Truth be told, sometimes they get everything right on the second try. Come on," he added quietly, "Come off that stepping stone." She accepted his hand, and Kikyo saw her alignment: It was now or never.

But do you really want to do this? Are you really that far from being human? Is all you can really feel now hate? The voice declined to leave her alone, declined to do anything but ask the questions in her own human voice until she gave up.

"...No." Kikyo lowered the bow, moving it so that her arms came down quietly, one inch at a time, much like waking from a trance. "I cannot kill again, I cannot... Because I still love InuYasha." She looked away, her eyes clouded with tears, and she moved over and fell onto the stepping stone, almost able to feel the pain of the inamunate object.

Because it was a stepping stone. It too, had been stepped on. It was used to bring people from one side to the other, meant to stay there forever.

And she had been the stepping stone for Kagome.

She knew she could not kill her.

But the pain and the hate weren't about to leave her.

Two cries were heard: One from the broken heart of a living girl, the other the cry of the undead. Both knew that they had nowhere else left to go.