1Chapter Two: Unbalanced

Kagome

It had taken a while for me to calm down from my hysterical fit. It had all been, apparently, just too much to all happen to me at once. Quite honestly, I think that all of this happening at once would have been too much for anyone. After all, during that day I had A) finally completed the Jewel, B) (probably) defeated Naraku, C) had the whole Inuyasha-doesn't-really-love-me thing going through my head, D) woken up in another world (again) E) sprouted wings F) met Midoriko and then G) after nearly losing my head from worry over the Jewel, finding out that I was, in fact, in it.

That is a lot of things to happen to one poor girl in one day. And so while, yes, in retrospect the news that I had suddenly been transplanted (or something) into the Jewel itself wasn't so bad, it was just more then I could take. And so I had done the only thing that I could seem to think of, and screamed then broken down crying. Sobbing, actually. Sobbing in great, hiccupping fits that (I'm sure) made me look rather like I was having a seizure and was somehow mentally unbalanced.

Midoriko looked very uncomfortable at it all, but like she was worried for my sake. She let me sit there and cry until it seemed like it was mostly out of my system, and then she came over and did the next shocking thing in a long line of shocking things that had happened that day.

She hugged me.

You know, I was seriously beginning to suspect that, for all our hero-worship of this petite person sitting next to me, mikos knew seriously nothing about this woman. We always looked on her as some kind of goddess, an ethereal being who was the very embodiment of everything that mikos stood for, and who had possessed an astonishing amount of purification energy. She was something that was somehow not quite human, but something more. She was strong, she was good, she was unbelievably powerful, demons feared her, either speaking her name in trembling whispers or spitting it in contemptuous challenge. But that was all that she was, all that she could be. She had to be consumed by her task, so driven and eaten up by it that finding demons and killing them was all that she thought of, that she had never known kindness or gentleness or mercy or love.

A hunter, a slayer, can never truly appreciate these things.

I wonder if Sango ever feels this? I wonder why knowing Sango–and knowing that she was as much a woman as I myself, that she laughed and loved and cried and mourned just as I did–didn't make me start thinking of this sooner. Why I never stopped to consider that Midoriko was a woman as well, and that–though she had probably lead as lonely a life as Kikyo–she would still have wished for love, and rest, and friendship...

For the first time after years of idealism, I realized that I actually knew nothing about my hero.

I'd almost shied away from the simple hug. After all, it was just so strange and confusing, to be sitting here (apparently in the Shikon no Tama, which aught to be enough for anyone) with my new pair of wings and the greatest miko for centuries, the greatest miko ever to live, hugging me.

Like many things that had happened recently, I just couldn't seem to wrap my mind around it. Wings, yes, Shikon no Tama, yes, but Midoriko hugging me? She was supposed to always be so cool, so calm, so collected, so unemotional.

Isn't life funny that way? Then again, everything else in my world seemed to be flipping today, so why not this too...

My wings shifted uncomfortably as she sat back again, her eyes clouded with grief as she looked down sorrowfully. Her voice, when she spoke, was quiet, though there was no trace of tears. "Oh, Kagome, I have cursed you, though you don't know it yet. And I am sorry."

I was still feeling dazed. "What were we even talking about?" I asked. I was feeling dead again. Man! Was I manic depressive today or what? Then, as I remembered, I gave myself a mental shake and came alive again. "It was the jewel, wasn't it? Just how many souls are there in there, anyway? Demons have souls? What fours souls are the ones locked away, if they aren't demons?"

Midoriko smiled again, though rather faintly. I was beginning to see that something like ninety percent of the time this lady spent smiling, in one form or another. This was, of course, further proof that I knew nothing about her. After all, I had always seen her as solemn and fierce. "Yes, the jewel. Untold thousands of scraps of souls make up the jewel itself, there are only four inside, and yes, demons most certainly have souls–though they, unlike humans, can function without them. As to which souls are locked away..." Midoriko went all vague, like she was looking off into the distance at something that I couldn't see.

"Yes?" I prompted.

"The elements, Kagome. Elemental souls."

Everything seemed very unreal when she said that. Maybe the fact that Midoriko was acting so… soft is a good word for it, I suppose, contributed to the dream-like aspect of everything, that floaty feeling that you get in dreams. It was—in part, at least—shock, I supposed. Still, at least I seemed calm. Kind of. Still, keeping that appearance of calm was what was important. Maybe, if I pretended that I knew what was going on hard enough, I'd be able to fool myself.

"The jewel holds the very essence of fire, earth, air and water. Or it used to. You, Kagome, instantly became the chosen one for true and not just in legends when you touched that blade, the blade that is your birthright and your rebirth all in one."

"I don't understand," I'd said helplessly. Nothing was making sense, maybe this was all a dream, a horrible dream, and I would wake up in my bed and shiver for a moment before sighing with relief and then running to the well to meet Inuyasha. But I knew that I was only deluding myself by thinking things like that. Still, sometimes the delusion is very much more nice then the real thing….

"You don't understand yet…? Very well. Kagome, you are a catalyst. Have you ever wondered why you hold Kikyo's soul?"

So we were back on this again. Why couldn't anyone—anyone at all—ever see me as just being myself, Kagome? Why did I always have to be "Kikyo's reincarnation"? I was sick of it all, ever since I had come back to the feudal era I don't honestly think that anyone really thought of me as Kagome. I was always "the reincarnation." Well, all right, I suppose that Sango and Miroku and Shippo and Kirrara saw me as Kagome on occasion, but they—as did everyone—at times saw me as the reincarnation of this beautiful, powerful, calculating priestess. Inuyasha, I'm sure, never saw me as anything but a shadow of Kikyo.

Why was Midoriko bringing that up? Was I only the fulfillment to this prophecy because Kikyo had kicked the bucket too soon? I glared at her. Would I never be anything but Kikyo's replacement?

I stood and began to pace angrily.

"Answer the question, Kagome." She was being stupid, why did she think I had Kikyo's soul?

"I'm her reincarnation, right?" I finally asked bitterly. "Only a shadow of the former, only a replacement, look-alike but not as pretty, powerful magic but no control, too easily ruled by her emotions, too clumsy, not this, not that, never enough of anything…." Every comparison that anyone had ever made that I had heard was being repeated through a throat that kept on wanting to clog, but I kept on thrusting the tears back and back. This was a bitter subject for me—ever since I'd visited the feudal era there had been someone who had been me, only better, and no one had ever let either of us hear the end of it. Sometimes I thought that that was one reason that Kikyo wanted to kill me, just to stop the running chart of comparisons. Then again, why should she? She, after all, always came out on top. I could never win, not in love, not in strength, not in power, not in looks, not in that cursed calmness that allowed her to do anything necessary to protect the jewel and never regret it.

I was too weak, I'd been told repeatedly, when I had cried or thrown up or felt dizzy and had to sit down at the sight of blood and carnage or at having to kill for the first time….

"No."

That simple rebuttal was strange to my ears, a quiet refusal of all of the things I had been laying against myself.

"What?" I asked, slightly taken aback.

"No, Kagome, you are not her reincarnation."

"Wha…? But… no… I must be! Look at us, I could be her twin sister! I have the same powers; we're both good with the bow! We have the same soul, for crying out loud! What else can you call that?" In the back of my mind, in the part that I never really pay much heed to, I was wondering why I was protesting this so strongly. After all, I'd never liked the idea of being anyone's reincarnation. I'd never liked the fact that Kikyo and I were so often compared, I'd never liked it that we were so different, and yet despite that people only saw similarities. I'd never wanted any of it, I'd longed to be proven wrong, and here I was, arguing with a person willing to do so.

There is something very, very wrong with me!

Yet still I couldn't seem to stop my treacherous mouth as it listed reason after reason, similarity after similarity. I had to be insane! And yet, Midoriko didn't have any kind of proof to back up what she said (at least not that I'd heard of) while people had been feeding me proof for their collective theory for the past five years until I'd felt that I was drowning in it. It had started the first day, when I'd met Kaede, and had continued ever since.

"How can I not be her incarnation?" I finally asked tiredly. "Like I said before—all other evidence aside, I have her soul. That seems fairly definitive to me."

"Look at the differences in your eyes, your face, your hair, your height—"

"The reincarnation of a person does not have to be a clone!" I was feeling slightly irrational at that point and started waving my arms wildly, gesturing in huge movements to illustrate my point. "And look at how similar we look, despite all that!"

"Look at the differences in attitude, behavior."

I sighed. There was no arguing with this woman. Midoriko sighed right after, looking as though she shared my sentiments. I felt so tired of it all….

Midoriko sighed again. "Kagome, do you remember how I told you that demons alone can function without souls?" I thought of a few demons in my acquaintance and was tempted to grin. Yes, I could rather believe that. "That is why you have Kikyo's soul, my dear. Because humans can't live without a soul."

I felt confused. "Wait—do ya mean that… I don't know… that I don't have a soul and so I sucked Kikyo's in when I was born? Something like that?"

"Something like that," Midoriko admitted, and I went blank again.

It took a little while longer for the confusion and just utter pandemonium to sink back in this time, but still it did. "I don't even have my own soul?" I cried, once that blankness had worn off.

Midoriko closed her eyes for a few moments and took a deep breath. "Yes, you have your own soul, but it has been sealed away. From a place beyond time that encompasses all of the past and present and future, it has been locked away for all time, and yet for no time at all."

I was so very, very tired. Too much had happened today, this train of thought was too complicated for me to follow. So I did the only thing left to me and asked in a world-weary voice, "Huh?" I seem to have been using that statement far more then the normal quota today, and it was getting old, but it was the only thing left to me that expressed even a fraction of what I was feeling.

Midoriko shook her head slightly after a pause. "I suppose that it is a concept too far-removed for those still trapped in the flow of time to grasp. I would never be able to explain it all, it would take a hundred hundred lifetimes, and I'm still not sure how I would do. Let's just say that it is a place removed from time, something that is two steps beyond the river of time, a place where the past and the future are as interchangeable as identical diamonds. Don't try to understand, Kagome, just accept. There is a place that is somehow neither past nor present nor future, but that is in them all, like rain running through the air. Neither is a part of the other, but they are still connected."

I thought that a pretty strange analogy, but whatever. Obviously I wasn't going to get it, so I figured that I had better just agree. "Yeaaaaa…." I said slowly, smiling faintly and nodding slowly in the way that you do when you are half humoring a person.

Obviously, Midoriko got this. She sighed. "I suppose that nothing can be done for it. You will just need to come to understand that somewhere out of time, your soul is eternally imprisoned. However, by turns, if you succeed then it will also be eternally set free. You see? The two elements are contradictory, but in this place where time has no special meaning, two such things can happen at the same time."

I was so very, very confused. Far too much was happening to me today! This just couldn't be healthy! I just sat there, feeling confused and put upon for a little while before I remembered what had brought all this on. "Wait a second, Midoriko. So you mean that because… because my soul was locked away, I got Kikyo's?"

"Yes."

"And that that is the reason that we have the same soul?"

"And possibly one of the reasons that you two are so similar, yes."

My eyes were lighting up and I was starting to smile. Not a faint little watery smile either, but a huge grin that almost seemed like it was stretching my face. My eyes, I'm sure, were shining like stars.

"That was the only reason that we have the same soul?"

Her smile said it all. To me, of course, it was the best news I could possibly have had.

"I'm really not her incarnation? I'm me, Kagome, and no one else?"

Midoriko smiled, and though her smile couldn't hope to match mine for sheer, toothy brilliance, it was rather radiant. "You always have been, always will be, and never have been anyone other then your own self, Kagome," Midoriko said gently.

That single sentence had to be the single nicest thing that I'd ever heard from anyone. It was… it was music. Music to my ears. I'm sure that (at that moment, if never before in my life) I'd have cheerfully died for this priestess who was in front of me then. She had given me the greatest gift that I'd ever been given, one that no one else ever had. My own identity.

That, let me tell you, is worth something that you can't describe. I was full of this warm, glowing stuff, and I was so brimming with it that I couldn't really think. Nor did I want to. All I wanted to do was to sit there and bask.

I. Was. Kagome.

I'd been insisting this simple fact for five years, ever since I'd met Inuyasha, but after a while even my belief had been worn down. It was like everyone I met was grinding down my defiance, turning me into some kind of sheep. After all, five years of constant arguing do that to a person. It seemed like, over the years (without my even noticing it) I had been relinquishing that identity, and giving into Kikyo.

And here Midoriko came and gave it back again.

With this knowledge, I was perfectly content.

"Of course, just this fact does not explain why your soul was locked away, or what the prophecy is, or even what you are doing here." There, she just had to go and blow a hole in my boat, didn't she?

I felt something brush against me, seeming to want to push me somewhere, and when I looked up Mikoriko was suddenly looking pained. "I must tell you all this, and quickly. Your time here is running out. They become impatient."

"They?" I asked, confused once more.

"The souls."

- - -

This chapter is (sadly) only about half the size of the first one, but it felt like a good place to end it. Besides, now I can update faster. The next chapter will, however, (probably) be longer.

Actually, I don't have much of an idea on that—I guess that they will just be as long as they are going to be. Thank you everyone who reviewed! I'm so happy that everyone is liking this so much thus far!

Reviewer Responses:

cheesynoodle- Thanks for the wonderful review and the fav. As to the four/five souls... did I make that more clear in this chapter? Where I was going was there are actually four literal souls trapped within the jewel, but when Midoriko died then she used her soul and her heart to make the jewel itself, the physical form, because nothing else would be strong enough to hold the souls. Thus the jewel is actually comprised of five whole souls and so... yea. This is also the reason that Midoriko is sticking around–she can't take off until the jewel is purified, aka, her soul released from its current physical limitations.

Nomina- Thank you. And I always use spellcheck (people who don't tend to drive me insane, so I think I see where you're coming from)

kitsune ninja- Well, I hope that the latest chapter met with expectations.

Saint Charles- Thanks! BTW- congrads on knowing all of that saying, not many people do.

Isisoftheunderground- Thank you! I hope that this didn't constitue as "horribly long," I did try!