The idea for this came from a forum where my friends and I dream up ways to kill our least favorite characters of InuYasha. Thanks to my friends at Sango's Haven for the push!

Dark Intentions

(What if Kagome had chosen not to tell the others how to save Kikyo in Episode 108, "Onward to Hakureizan"?)

Kagome realized it almost instantly what needed to be done. The barrier was repelling the shinidamachuu. All they had to do was move her over the hillside and she would recover quickly. But…

Her fist clenched at her side as she looked at InuYasha's face as he bent over Kikyo. He still loved her. He would always love her and Kagome would always be second best. He'd told her as much already, but deep down inside, she could not extinguish that flame of hope that one day he would turn to her instead. But…

She glanced up at the barrier where the shinidamachuu evaporated. She glanced back at Kikyo. She glanced at InuYasha. She turned her eyes to the ground and said nothing. The silence was thick and it seemed to her quite hard to breathe, but she bit her lip deeply, waiting.

At long last, InuYasha looked up from his gaze at Kikyo; his eyes were misty and his voice shook ever so slightly as he spoke.

"We…had better get after the Shichinintai. They're getting away."

Unable to look back at the body of his dead love, InuYasha hurried off through the trees and was gone before anyone could utter a word of protest. With his actions, InuYasha had signaled to the rest that he had pronounced his great love dead at last. There was nothing more to be done.

Miroku whispered a short prayer over her remains, and then they took off. Kagome dared not look back, her heart beating in her throat as she pushed back her tears. She didn't like it, but she'd done what she had to do. It was her only chance to be with InuYasha. She knew it was her only chance at happiness.

What she didn't know was that the shards she wore around her neck had begun to cloud over in her act of selfishness.

Unbeknownst to the rest, a small group of children lurked in the wreckage of one of the barns nearby, too afraid to come out. After some hours of quiet, however, a few brave souls peeked out from under the charred wooden beams and eventually came out into the wreckage of their village. And in the midst of the smoldering huts and charred craters, Chiyo spotted a shock of red and white.

As the children gathered around Kikyo's abandoned body, some cried, and some turned away, but, with the strength that can only come from learning to fend for yourself shortly after you learn to walk, they began to discuss, in their simple way, what was to be done.

"Is she dead?" asked one.

"I think so," another offered, wiping his eyes.

"But what if she really isn't?" entreated a small girl.

"That's right!" cried an older boy, "I remember one day they brought a man to Suikotsu-sama who had been struck on the head with a stone! The man slept like he was dead for 5 days and 5 nights, but on the sixth day, he woke up and healed quickly! Perhaps she isn't dead!"

"Then we must care for her, since Suikotsu-sama has gone away," Chiyo said decisively.

"But the house is burned up!" the small girl pointed out.

"And what if those men come back?" another offered with a whimper.

Chiyo and the elder boy discussed this for a moment before deciding.

"There is a small traveler's hut just outside the village. If we can get her there, we should be safe! Then we can send someone back for food and medicine. I'm sure that's what Suikotsu-sama would have done!"

Standing in agreement, the children managed to pull a straw mat out of one of the less damaged buildings. With much huffing and puffing, they managed to move Kikyo onto it, and began to pull. It took the better part of 2 hours, taking turns, to reach the edge of the village where Chiyo knew the hut to be.

It was as they neared the small building that a strange thing occurred. Above them could be heard a sound unlike anything they'd heard before, and as they stopped to listen, from the trees descended the shinidamachuu, like snakes swimming through the air. Several of the children cried out, others simply stood away in fascination and fear as the shinidamachuu began filling the vessel that was Kikyo with shimmering balls of light, which faded quickly into her.

Kikyo's eyes fluttered open, and she saw the children standing around her, frozen in horror. However, as they came to notice she had awakened, their joy overcame their ignorance and they ran to her, hugging her as though she could shelter them all at once from everything that had happened that they didn't understand.

"What has happened?" she asked Chiyo calmly.

As Chiyo related all he knew, Kikyo came to realize that the children had saved her from fading away in to nothing, and she hugged them closer, doing her best to make them feel safe.

"What will we do, Kikyo-sama?" Chiyo asked plaintively, "The village is gone!"

"We will sleep here tonight," Kikyo told him, indicating the little shack, "and in the morning, when I have regained my strength, we will go back to the village. It is certain that others will come back as well, and they will know just what to do."

Satisfied and feeling safe, Chiyo hugged her and then began helping the other children into the hut.

Kikyo gazed down at the wreckage of the village one last time, many questions still buzzing inside her, and a worry as well. She had her suppositions, but she could not confirm them. The land here was too pure. It would destroy the dark heart, and she had no way of warning any of them.

Kagome held tight to Sango's waist as Kirara bounded along through the air. InuYasha had been off tracking the Shichinintai, and when he returned to the group, he had not offered to carry Kagome, nor had he even glanced at her. She had been hoping, deep down, that he would come to her for comfort. The secret knowledge that she had as good as killed Kikyo, accompanied by the less than fruitful results she was so far experiencing with InuYasha made her feel sick inside and she thought she might cry if she didn't make a conscious effort not to. As she was concentrating with that, she went on, oblivious to the spreading darkness in the shikon shards, which resonated so closely with her own heart at the time that even concentrating, it would have been difficult to detect.

They had moved far into the foothills now, and showed no signs of stopping. As the scenery passed, the pain and nausea, the feeling of wrongness, continued to crescendo inside her; the darkness of her secret was reacting with the purifying barrier of Hakureizan, and even the youkai of the group did not feel it as she did, for they had never outright committed murder. Not like her.

And though, unbeknownst to her, Kikyo was now recovering from the near miss in a small hut outside the long reach of the barrier, the intention behind the act, the selfish carelessness of it, regardless of the outcome, had damned her in the eyes of the pure and wicked barrier. It felt her sin, and hated it. It wanted to destroy all that sin, and make clean the heart that held it, even if that meant destroying it in the process.

As the barrier caught hold of her, and of her jewel shards, it clutched at the darkness there and she felt a pulse of energy emanate from her body, leaving her breathless with pain. Her grip on Sango loosened, and she felt herself slide sideways. The world became a blur as another pulse of energy shook her and for a dazzling moment she felt weightless. Then she hit the ground hard, but had no time to focus on the pain of that before the next pulse hit her. The barrier was searching her soul, examining her and hovering over her, like a vulture circling a dying thing. It was quite alive, and she felt it reaching into her, not just through her body, but through the jewel shards.

The jewel shards! As another wave of energy rocked her against the pavement, she reached up to touch the vial that held them, but found that she could not; they had become utterly dark, the taint of her secret combining with her pain and the rage of the barrier at the presence of evil. It was using the shards against her. Somewhere through the haze of her mind she saw her friends crowded around her, and she was sure they were shouting something, but she couldn't hear it above the pounding in her ears.

The searching claws of the barrier wrapped themselves around the shards and channeled its anger into them. An ice spread through Kagome's body as she felt her dark deed magnified and turned against her. Like a knife in her heart, the shards sucked her soul out, bit by bit, so that it might be saved…but as her soul evaporated, darkness was left in its place, and as she died, images of Kikyo, laying dead in the wreckage of the battlefield haunted her mind. The expressions of fear and concern on the slightly blurry faces of her friends became sneers of accusation and hate. Shadows crept around her sight, horrible monstrous thoughts, regret and anguish. She'd done a terrible, selfish thing, and now this entity, this barrier of cold and inhuman purity, was making her pay.

She tried to scream but couldn't. She tried to run, but her body had stopped working. She was trapped inside herself, unable to move, utterly desperate and helpless. Just as Kikyo must have been…

As the last of her pure soul was extracted into the bright and pure barrier, ending her life, she managed to convey the words she so desperately need to say.

"I'm…sorry…"

But as in any great tragedy, her regret was too little, too late.

Optional Ending

It was utterly dark in the cramped little hut when Chiyo woke. He wasn't quite sure just what had awoken him, so, scrubbing at his eyes, he extracted himself from the tangle of bodies that had fallen asleep together and padded softly to the door. The sight that met his eyes as he peeked out was shocking.

Kikyo-sama was kneeling on the roadside, surrounded by glowing orbs of bright light, her hair unbound and her shoulders shaking almost violently; her arms were hugging her chest and he could see a stain of bright red on her white robes. Countless shinidamachuu swam in circles around her, and seemed to be fighting a battle, with her body as the battle ground; they were fairly bombarding her with souls, but as quickly as they passed into her, more seemed to escape.

The boy was frozen to the spot with indecision and fear…what could he do? Suddenly a ragged moan escaped the miko's humbled form, and he forgot his fear. Was she ill again? He had to help her!

Running to her side, he knelt in front of her.

"Kikyo-sama!" he entreated, still without any idea of what to do to help her, "What is the matter!"

Kikyo looked up at him, her eyes glistening with moisture. "My soul. My soul has returned and it hurts…" One of her hands moved to the wound on her shoulder. "After all this time, it did not heal…I suppose…the wound never really was on my body…it was really on my soul after all…"

With a shuddering breath, she collapsed sideways quite suddenly and Chiyo cried out as the puddle of blood splattered up onto his clothing and face, though his tears quickly washed it away.

"I don't understand!" he pleaded helpessly. The lights had begun to fade away, and the swimming white snakes had broken formation and were drifting off, scattering to the four winds without the guidance of their mistress.

In the fading light, Kikyo's eyes looked glassy, and her chest hitched violently, and Chiyo realized for the first time that she was breathing…he also realized for the first time, and was surprised that it never occurred to him, that before now, he had never seen her breathe. It made no sense.

"Be…be brave, Chiyo. Everything…will be…" The last word never left her lips as a final breath passed them. No matter how hard Chiyo shook her, or how loudly he cried, she would not wake.

End

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