DEAD IS A YEAR OLD. OH, AND THE HACK IS STILL A LIAR. And so, you get a double shot. In part to make up for all the time I left you all hanging, and also because Chpt Eighteen is really Chpt Seventeen, Part II, but Seventeen would have been way too long if I hadn't split it up. So here it is, a gift to you from me, for Dead's birthday. Enjoy.


Disclaimer: Chpts One thru Nine
Words To Know:

No vocab this time. : ).


Chapter Seventeen: Truth

X-x-X

'Cause I threw you the obvious,

To see what occurs behind the

Eyes of a fallen angel,

Eyes of a tragedy…

Oh well…oh well…

Apparently nothing…

Apparently nothing at all….

"3 Libras"/ A Perfect Circle

X-x-X

She was forgetting something.

Kagome had the oddest sensation that she had forgotten something, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out what that something could be. Had she left the stove on? Maybe she had forgotten to feed Buyo, or pick up Souta from school and take him to the doctor for Mama? Or maybe she had forgotten to pick up Jii-chan's prescription from the pharmacy?

No. None of that sounded right. There was something wrong with her list, it didn't seem like…the right time. As in, the right time period. She was thinking in terms of her time. And so far, nothing was ringing a bell. So that meant she'd forgotten to do something in the Sengoku Jidai.

She was gradually becoming aware of something else: she was unconscious, but she was slowly coming out of it. The quicker consciousness came, the more fretful she became. She needed to remember what she was forgetting before she awakened. She didn't know why, but whoever she was forgetting—wait a minute. Whoever?

Whoever….

Whoever….

"She's coming around."

She was forgetting someone, not something. But who could she be forgetting…? And all of a sudden, it all came rushing back to her, and her eyes snapped open:

"Kohaku!"

Sesshoumaru had felt the minute changes in Kagome's ki that had warned him that her return to consciousness was not going to be at all calm or serene, and he shot back in time to avoid being zapped when she shot upright on her futon, yelling the old man's name in a panicked voice. Rai and Yuki were not so lucky: Kagome's ki sent them slamming into the wall clear across the room, and Sesshoumaru winced then sighed and made a weary mental note to get someone to fix the cracks in the miko's wall. Then he looked over at the miko herself.

She was still pale and spattered with blood. Her hair was no longer held back by her ribbon—she'd lost it some time during the chaos, he supposed—and her injured shoulder was bleeding again. She'd ripped open the scab that had sealed off the wound. The area around it was pink, and there was dried blood all over her arm and down her side. The only reason he knew this was because Yuki had divested the miko of her haori and underkimono and left her in the bindings wrapped around her chest. He just hoped she didn't start screaming when she realized that.

"Kohaku!" she said again, looking around wildly.

"Quit that abominable screeching," Sesshoumaru ordered, drawing her gaze to him.

"But Ko—"

"The old shit is quite safe, Miko," the taiyoukai said coldly; if he ever heard that hated name again, it would be too soon, in his opinion.

There were groans from the other side of the room, and Kagome turned her attention there. Sesshoumaru looked over his shoulder. Rai had risen and was helping Yuki to her feet. The shika had a hand pressed to her back, and there was a noticeable wince on her face.

"Yuki-san? Rai-sama?" Kagome asked, voice puzzled. "Why were you on the floor? Did something happen?"

Both sent her disbelieving looks, and Sesshoumaru rolled his eyes.

"Don't pay attention to her," he said. "How badly did the impact hurt the wall?"

"Not very bad, Sesshoumaru-sama," Rai said. "Yuki-san is a very light woman. And I believe a beam took most of my weight. A little damage to the plaster, nothing more serious than that."

"Finally, some good news," Sesshoumaru muttered, looking back down at Kagome, whose brow was wrinkled with confusion.

"Weren't we outside before?" she asked.

"Kagome-sama, can you remember anything?" Yuki asked, coming to Kagome's futon assisted by Rai. The ookami commander was not as brave as the shika, and so did not kneel down next to her at the young miko's side.

Kagome pursed her lips.

"I remember…going to the village with—"

"She means after that you dumb bitch," Sesshoumaru interrupted, tone bored, and Kagome glared up at him.

"She was talking to me, Asshole—wait your turn," she snapped.

Much better, the youkai lord decided. The bite's back in her voice. Kagome, he had concluded, did not do pitiful well at all. Total screw-up and obnoxious human, however, suited her just fine.

Of course, he wasn't going to say so out loud, so he replied with,

"Keep a civil tongue in your head or I'll rip it out."

To which she stuck out said tongue at him, and he raised an eyebrow that clearly said, "Ah, so you'd like me to rip it out right now?"

"Kagome-sama?" Yuki asked, bringing the miko's attention from Sesshoumaru, which secretly relieved both Yuki and Rai, who were shocked their lord allowed the woman to get away with such disrespect, and nervous that his famed patience might soon run out if something wasn't done. Of course, Yuki wasn't quite as shocked as Rai, since she'd actually heard the miko refer to her lord in a disrespectful manner since day one. The shika had just never dreamed the daft woman would actually use the disrespectful language when talking to Sesshoumaru.

Kagome's gaze dropped down to her lap, and her eyes clouded and her brow wrinkled as she fought through the haze in her head to remember how she had ended up in the shiro if being outside was the last thing she remembered.

"There was a fight?" she asked, voice very uncertain, looking up at Yuki.

The shika nodded.

"The shiro was attacked a little before sundown."

"When the miko was conveniently gone," Sesshoumaru murmured, and Kagome looked up at him.

"You think my not being here had something to do with the timing?" she asked, surprised. "He didn't seem very impressed by me, Sesshoumaru."

The youkai lord snorted softly.

"A miko, however untutored, is still a miko. And an untutored miko can be even more dangerous than one who knows her strength—the risk of purification can actually go up." he returned.

Kagome tilted her head to the side as she thought about this and decided he had a point: a loose cannon was always a dangerous unknown. But she'd gotten a lot better since she'd last seen the demon…right?

"And you're wrong about his not being impressed by you," Sesshoumaru added. "You terrify him on some level—all youkai can be purified, Miko, no matter how powerful. It may take longer and require more energy for some, but it can be done, without a doubt. The secret is getting you close enough."

Kagome pursed her lips, loath to admit that Sesshoumaru sounded right, so she decided not to admit any such thing. Instead, before Yuki or Rai or Sesshoumaru could stop her, she reached up and absently scratched her right shoulder, which was bothering her. The second her fingers touched her shoulder, she shrieked and jumped, pain tearing up and down her arm and down her back.

"Ow ow ow ow!" she moaned, hunched over, panting.

"What were you doing you stupid bitch?" Sesshoumaru demanded, kneeling down to examine the wound and make sure she hadn't made it worse.

"It hurts," she whimpered.

"Well of course it hurts, baka, there was an arrow in it half an hour ago."

Yuki suggested she help Kagome clean up, and Sesshoumaru let her help the weak miko to the bath house. He sent Rai to go see to the men and ascertain how many soldiers the House of the Moon had lost, and then he settled down beside the miko's futon to await her return, brooding.

The shika servant and her still pale charge returned an hour and a half later, the miko no longer smelling so strongly of her own and others' blood, face pale and still shaking faintly. When Yuki caught sight of her lord, she paused in the doorway, surprised to see him.

"Sesshoumaru-sama?" she inquired.

"Leave the miko to me," he said. "Go see about getting her something to eat. Nothing that will make her sick, if you please—she's difficult enough as it is."

"Hai Sesshoumaru-sama," she murmured, inclining her head.

She let go of the miko after making sure the young woman could stand on her own, then bowed to her lord, backed out of the room and softly slid the fusuma shut. Kagome warily eyed the demon seated by her futon.

"Get over here," Sesshoumaru ordered.

Kagome frowned at him but nevertheless padded unsteadily over to where he sat.

"Sit," he said impatiently.

Kagome startled both him and herself when she let out a snort of laughter. Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow.

"And what, exactly," he asked despite severe misgiving, "was so humorous about that?"

Kagome shook her head, but did as he ordered.

"Nothing…it just…reminded me."

His eyebrow climbed higher.

"Of…Inuyasha."

Sesshoumaru frowned, disgruntled.

"I am not that half-breed," he muttered, easing her yukata off her right shoulder to inspect the now clean area.

"No," Kagome said with a sigh. "It's just…well, the first time I met him, Inuyasha tried to kill me."

"What an odd reaction," was the dry interjection from the demon lord; the miko chose to ignore him.

"Kaede-obaa-chan threw a rosary of subjugation around his neck and yelled at me to say a word, any word, to activate the rosary."

Sesshoumaru paused, then slowly lifted his head and stared at her.

"You didn't," he said quietly.

"I said the first thing that came to mind—sit," Kagome affirmed.

Sesshoumaru's lip curled in disgust, remembering the few times he'd seen his half-sibling "sat."

"Demeaning," he snarled under his breath, and Kagome smiled faintly.

"Inuyasha hated it," she admitted. "But sometimes, he needed a good hard sit."

"What he needed was a sound beating," Sesshoumaru said, voice full of bad temper. "Insolent whelp."

"You gave him plenty of those, as I recall," Kagome shot back with more than a little ice in her tone.

"Not when he needed them most desperately," Sesshoumaru replied, tone just as icy. "He was an insolent child who should have been taught many things, etiquette and the proper manner of defending himself chief among them. It wouldn't have changed the fact that he was a loathsome hanyou, but it would have made him less useless."

"I don't understand how you can speak so ill of him," Kagome said quietly. "I saw how you treated each other the last few years of his life, when I was accidentally getting into your memories—sorry again about that, by the way," she added weakly when he sent her a withering look.

"You don't need to understand," Sesshoumaru snapped irritably, going back to inspecting the wounds.

"Maybe," Kagome said, though she knew for a fact that understanding the demon's relationship and feelings concerning Inuyasha was going to help her understand him better, and hopefully help her heal him.

"There is no room for 'maybe,' Miko," the demon growled. "You need do nothing more than what I ask of you."

"'Ask'?" Kagome repeated archly. "I find it hard to believe you ever asked for anything from anyone a day in your life."

"How astute. Now shut up," he ordered, then rose and walked around behind her, then settled down again.

"How are you going to fix me?" Kagome asked, deciding that it was better for now to switch topics.

"The same way I fixed your hand."

Kagome froze.

"It'll heal on its own," she blurted, horrified; gods, her hand was bad enough, but her shoulder? He had to be out of his mind if he thought she was going to let him lick that wound shut.

"We have no time for that," Sesshoumaru returned. "Stop being such a stupid child about this, it's irritating."

"I just bet," she said bitterly, cheeks flushing.

In the end, she sat quietly and let him attend to her shoulder because she was still too weak from blood loss to give him much of a fight, and she was just so damn tired of fighting, it seemed all she did these days was think of war and death and blood….

"Why does my life have to be so weird?" she asked quietly, staring down at her lap, brow crinkled. She wasn't really watching her lap; in fact, she wasn't really seeing anything, she was really just staring into space.

"What do you mean by weird?" Sesshoumaru asked, pausing, and Kagome blinked, surprised he'd been paying attention to her, and that he'd bothered to inquire.

"Not normal," Kagome returned. "My life has never been exactly typical—not everyone's grandfather runs around throwing sutras at supposedly possessed people or objects, you know—but it was never weird. Well, it was never inaccessibly weird. But after my fifteenth birthday…gods, if I'd known what was in store for me…."

Sesshoumaru snorted and went back to his treatment.

"You do nothing but complain," he said between laves.

"It's not complaining," Kagome corrected, rubbing her forearm slowly, absently. "I just want to know…why me? Why did Fate see fit to connect me to Kikyou and Inuyasha? What is so special about me? Because Fate has screwed with me big time, according to Miroku. Whatever was laid out for me when I was born's been scrapped, and now I have no destiny past sending this youkai of yours to hell."

"You believe your fate is planned out for you?" Sesshoumaru asked, and there was no mistaking the derisive note in his voice.

"Not entirely planned out," Kagome returned. "There's room for change. But ultimately, there are certain things that are fated to happen. Certain relationships, certain choices, certain events, and good gods, I'm starting to sound like Miroku."

"I dislike the idea of being little better than a plaything of the gods and Fate," Sesshoumaru muttered.

"Yeah, well, you would, being you," Kagome replied. "And just for the record, I'm pretty sure that's a universally shared feeling. It's scary not to have control over your life."

He snorted but didn't say anything in reply, and Kagome sighed and closed her eyes.

"I wish I was normal," she murmured, and Sesshoumaru stopped. "I wish I wasn't in love with a dead hanyou from the Sengoku Jidai, I wish I wasn't a reincarnated miko, I wish the only friends I ever really cared about were still alive, I wish I wasn't here…I'd give anything to just be normal…."

Demon and human sat in total silence for a long time, and then Sesshoumaru returned to his ministrations. Kagome didn't say another word for the rest of the time they sat together.

X-x-X

This wasn't funny anymore.

Actually, in all honesty, it had never been funny, Sesshoumaru decided as he found himself, once more, standing in a sunshine-filled, grassy field. The same one he'd found himself in some nights prior, stuck with the miko. He turned around slowly, expecting to find her…and found no one. Several lengthy moments of investigation revealed that he was completely alone in this grassy field on the dream plain.

"Oh what fresh hell is this?" he muttered.

"Sesshoumaru-sama," came a man's voice, and Sesshoumaru whirled around and found a man in dark blue robes standing before him.

The demon lord's eyes narrowed; there was something familiar about this man, and it took him several seconds to place him—the houshi that had traveled with his half-brother, the same one that had come with Kohaku to ask for Rin…the same one the miko mourned.

"The houshi," he said, voice emotionless.

The houshi bowed.

"Hello again Sesshoumaru-sama. It's been a very long time."

"What am I doing here?" Sesshoumaru demanded.

A shadow stole over the houshi's face.

"Sesshoumaru-sama, I thought it was about time we discussed Kagome-sama."

"The miko?"

The houshi nodded. He smiled thinly.

"It's very important that we speak, Sesshoumaru-sama. For both you and Kagome-sama."

"Why isn't she here then?" Sesshoumaru threw back, suddenly very ill at ease without knowing why.

"Kagome-sama has an appointment with someone else tonight," the houshi said with a patient smile. "One she's been waiting for for some time now. Besides, most of what you and I will be discussing, she already knows about."

Well that was unpleasant news, the demon lord decided with a dark frown.

It took the houshi some time to convince Sesshoumaru to sit down in the grass, and after he managed to do that, they watched each other in silence for a long time, Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed and suspicious, the houshi's serious and grim.

"You know Kagome-sama has been dreaming with me for some time now," the houshi began quietly.

Sesshoumaru tilted his head ever so slightly, seeing no need to reply verbally to what was really just a statement of fact.

"I've been trying to get her ready for the task you've assigned her," the man continued, his forehead wrinkling as he frowned. "It's been difficult to do. She's experienced several deeply traumatic events all at once, and the emotional upheaval has been…devastating."

"Stop wasting my time with what I already know, Houshi," Sesshoumaru said coldly.

The houshi watched him, then let out a deep breath.

"Fine, since you're so eager to get through this," he said, and there was a thread of displeasure in his voice that Sesshoumaru didn't miss.

"Impatient," Sesshoumaru corrected, and this time the houshi sent him a dark look.

"I can see why she complains so much about you," he muttered.

"She's a simple creature," Sesshoumaru said. "Complaining is the only thing she can do halfway decently."

"You should treat her better, Sesshoumaru-sama," the houshi snapped. "She's trying as hard as she can."

"I don't want her to try, Houshi—she either does what I want her to do or she doesn't." Sesshoumaru snapped back. "There is no room for 'try'."

"What if she doesn't?" the houshi demanded. "Have you considered that you might be sending her to her death?"

"Her fate is none of my concern," was the icy return.

The houshi's face hardened.

"Is that right," he said, voice suddenly devoid of emotion. "You don't care what happens to your ward?"

Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed.

"'Ward'?" he repeated. "That insufferable woman has never been my ward—for which I am eternally grateful."

"Kagome-sama was never your ward, that's true," the houshi said coldly.

He wasn't sure exactly when his brain made the connection. What he was sure of was his violent and immediate reply:

"Impossible," he snarled lowly.

"I assure you, Sesshoumaru-sama, it is very possible, and it is entirely true." the houshi returned.

"She is not Rin," he said from between his teeth.

"No, she isn't. Now. But once, some fifty or so years ago, she was. Kagome-sama is not merely the reincarnation of Kikyou-sama. In between the two, there was Rin."

Sesshoumaru stared at the houshi, adamantly refusing to believe what he was saying. That stupid woman couldn't be Rin, she couldn't be…wouldn't he have recognized her? He'd raised her, damn it—he would have known her…wouldn't he have?

"I would have known," he said tightly.

"Not necessarily," the houshi returned. "They're two different people, Sesshoumaru-sama. Rin isn't Kagome-sama and Kagome-sama isn't Rin. The soul is the same, but the women are not."

"I would have known," Sesshoumaru insisted, voice quiet and tense.

The houshi watched him in silence.

"Sesshoumaru-sama, even being full-blooded youkai does not mean you have any advantage over a human or a hanyou in recognizing someone from a past life. The souls always remember each other, always, though they may not realize it right away, and when the time is right, it all falls into place." he said finally. "Your association with Rin was cut short to fix a mistake from fifty years before her time."

"What mistake?" Sesshoumaru forced his voice to come out low and even, though he was very close to coming apart inside.

She simply couldn't be Rin. And the hell of it was, she was. There were too many similarities—the scents were too close, the smiles too similar, particular mannerisms too familiar—for it to be a lie. She didn't look enough like her for him to have assumed she was Rin's reincarnation as well, but there was a certain familiarity to her that he'd noticed. He had simply thought it came from having seen her with his half-brother.

The houshi's lips quirked.

"Many many years ago, there was once a hanyou who wished to be full youkai, and a miko who guarded a jewel capable of incredible and terrible things," he said, and Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed.

"Don't patronize me with fairy tales," he snapped.

The houshi's lips twitched into a strange sort of smile.

"This is no fairy tale, Sesshoumaru-sama. This actually happened, and you played a part in it's conclusion."

There was a moment where Sesshoumaru didn't know what the houshi was referring to, and nearly snarled at the infuriating man to stop speaking in riddles. And then realization came suddenly, old memories forgotten that suddenly slammed into the forefront of his mind.

The houshi quietly told the demon lord a story of long ago, a story he hadn't been aware of. He learned of his half-brother's affair with the miko Kikyou, and how Naraku—there was a name he hadn't heard in a while—had been born from the twisted heart of the bandit Onigumo. And then he learned a different tale—a tale of what should have happened but hadn't, because Onigumo had foiled them with his own wants and desires. Fate had deemed that Inuyasha and Kikyou should live out their lives together, he as a human man and she as an ordinary woman. But the dictates of Fate, the houshi explained, are not absolute and carved in stone. As the miko had told him, there was room for change. And unfortunately for Inuyasha and Kikyou and a great many others, there had been enough room for Onigumo to slip in and change everything.

X-x-X

"Oh not again," Kagome muttered.

She was in a grassy field again, full of sunshine and wide blue skies, and Kagome decided that maybe she hadn't been clear when she'd told Miroku she never wanted to be stuck on the dream plain with Sesshoumaru ever again. Though how the letch hadn't understood her, she couldn't for the life of her fathom—she'd been pretty direct in saying that if she should ever be stuck with Sesshoumaru anywhere ever again through Miroku's efforts, she'd find a way to punish the houshi. How she was going to accomplish this was a fascinating but troubling question, so Kagome decided she'd think about that when and if the situation arose.

She turned around, fully expecting to come face to face with a bad tempered taiyoukai…and saw no one. Kagome pursed her lips.

Okay…this was weird.

She walked a little farther into the field and looked around, fully expecting someone to come popping up from nowhere and scare her out of her mind, but nothing happened. It was just her, the grass, the sky…and a little breeze that sighed through the grass.

That was a nice touch, Kagome thought absently. I never knew Miroku-sama was so poetic.

All this solitude was a little creepy, though. Kagome hadn't been left to her own devices on the dream plain since Miroku had begun visiting her in her dreams almost a month ago, and she'd gotten used to the company. Come to depend on and look forward to it. Dreaming with Miroku had become her escape from her present situation, an escape from Sesshoumaru and the duty he'd thrust upon her, a duty she wasn't entirely sure she could complete. And….

And she got to see her friend again. She got to sit with him and laugh with him and talk with him. It wasn't the same, of course, because once she awakened, he was no longer there. But it was a kindness, one small kindness, that Fate had seen fit to afford her, and Kagome treasured it.

The miko sighed and flopped down into the grass on her back and decided Miroku must be late, so she'd have to wait a little while. While she stared up at the sky, a sudden flare of power that didn't originate within her made her tense, alarmed, until she realized it had to be Sesshoumaru's. He'd been in the room with her when she'd finally fallen asleep on her futon. She relaxed, wondering at why he'd stay after he'd tended to her shoulder. She hadn't had the strength or inclination to ask, had merely taken note of it before her eyes had drifted shut.

"I guess he's letting my ki seek out his youki," she murmured. "That's surprisingly civil of him."

She laid her forearm over her forehead and wondered what had made his youki flare like that; was something wrong at the shiro? Should she wake up? But then he probably would have jerked her out of this dream if it had been serious. She knew it wasn't because she was dipping into his memories again, because she wasn't. She had made a conscious effort to stay away from Sesshoumaru's memories, though they tempted her. It would have been so much easier to understand him if she could just see what he'd seen….

Kagome sighed. She'd promised not to invade the private sanctum of his memory ever again. She could understand why he'd been so furious—she'd invaded his head. It was a violation, however unintentional. But she sensed there was more to it than her treading where she'd had no business treading—she was finding out that Sesshoumaru was slightly more complex than she'd first thought.

A rustle made her start out of her musings, and she sat up to lecture Miroku on making her wait—Sesshoumaru didn't let her sleep a whole lot, after all, and they were on a time constraint—but the words died in her throat when she saw not Miroku, but Sango.

The two women stared at each other in silence for a long time, Kagome's eyes huge and her jaw slack, Sango's face wary and nervous and happy and sad. And then Kagome leapt up and shot at her friend and threw her arms around the startled woman, tears dribbling down her cheeks. After Sango regained her balance, she returned Kagome's embrace and they stood like that for a long time, unable to speak because they were both crying….

And because, well, really, what did you say to someone you hadn't seen in sixty years?

X-x-X

Once the houshi had explained everything, he and Sesshoumaru sat in silence for a long while.

Sesshoumaru had not had the trouble accepting the explanation that Kagome had had. In fact, he hadn't batted an eyelid. He'd simply tilted his head to one side in a vague sort of nod every now and again when the houshi had paused, unsure if he should continue. He had understood everything, and the explanation had been acceptable for it's logic. Or lack thereof; Sesshoumaru had never made any attempt to understand the whims of Fate, and he adhered to that outlook now. It served him well, all things considered—at least his head didn't feel like it was going to explode.

There were a few things he was…uncomfortable with, however. The knowledge that Rin had been reincarnated as Kagome was chief among them, but that was such a treacherous avenue of thought that he shied away from it. That he would sit down with later, when he was alone.

But another thing that…disturbed him…was the question of Inuyasha.

"Where is the hanyou now?" he asked at long last.

"Well, in this era, he and Rin are in hell. Or rather, their souls are. In Kagome-sama's time…he doesn't appear to be anywhere."

Sesshoumaru's eyebrow twitched upwards.

"What do you mean by 'anywhere'?"

The houshi sighed and rubbed his temple.

"I mean exactly that. As far as I can tell, he hasn't been reincarnated in her time. But he is no longer in hell, either. I don't know where he is. It's rather a mystery."

Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed.

"How is it that you know so much of what will happen?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't," the houshi corrected. "I died already knowing Kagome-sama was Kikyou-sama's reincarnation, but I didn't discover that Rin had also been Kagome-sama's incarnate until after I died."

"And how did you find this out?"

The houshi smiled.

"As I said, Sesshoumaru-sama: the souls remember one another. Within a body, living a life, the soul is far removed from the other world. It can no longer hear the other world as clearly, because the other world is filtered through this world, the world of the living. It forgets things. But, as soon as it comes into contact with a familiar soul, it remembers. Not who this other soul was in a past life, mind you, although on rare occasions, that's happened. Those souls are unusually attuned to the other world. On the whole, however, the soul only remembers that once upon a time, it had contact with this other soul. If the other contact was powerful, the soul may remember that. If the contact is especially powerful, the association between the souls can be transcendent. It appears that was the case with Kagome-sama and Inuyasha.

"The souls had been thwarted twice, you see. Once by Onigumo, and again by Fate—a mistake kept the Shikon no Tama from being implanted in Rin, and had it implanted instead in Kagome-sama. This mistake was what kept Rin from realizing her spiritual power. And because it remained unused—forgotten, even—when she died the soul took it over. That's why Kagome-sama's soul is so large, because of the untapped spiritual power. And why it was able to stand being torn apart when Kikyou-sama was resurrected. And it explains Kagome-sama's remarkable purity of spirit. Or at least, that's my conclusion, based on what I've been able to piece together. It's really all very strange," the houshi added.

Somehow, Sesshoumaru was able to keep from remarking that that was possibly the least strange thing he'd heard so far.

Instead, he said,

"What you're saying is that she remembered you in the other world?"

"Something like that," the houshi returned. "It's very difficult to explain, Sesshoumaru-sama," he said apologetically when Sesshoumaru threw him a poisonous look that demanded a more concrete answer. "The soul is very different from flesh and bone. As is the language it speaks."

Sesshoumaru sighed and closed his eyes.

"The miko says she has no destiny," he said.

"This is true," the houshi confirmed, tone reluctant and bitter. "Right now, her future isn't certain in any sense. There has been nothing written for her. This…troubles me, Sesshoumaru-sama," the houshi confided, and something in the man's voice made Sesshoumaru's eyes open, made him watch the other man closely, gaze considering.

There was a long stretch of foreboding silence between them, and then the houshi met Sesshoumaru's eyes.

"I have found nothing for her. Fate hasn't touched upon Kagome-sama in the least beyond the duty you've assigned her." He paused. "Sesshoumaru-sama, Fate is now conspiring for you. To that end, it allowed Kagome-sama—who had been languishing in her own time with no particular purpose or destiny—through the well and placed her where you would be able to find her. My own appearance in her dreams is no accident, either."

Sesshoumaru didn't know where this was going, but he didn't care for it all the same. There was something looming on the horizon, something he wasn't sure he was going to like.

"Your destiny…is tied to hers," the houshi said carefully. "In what way, I'm not sure, which is the only reason I've kept this from her. There's something brewing, but I haven't been able to find out what. The powers that be are very nervous. That much I know. And they are watching you and Kagome-sama very closely. It is to their benefit for you to succeed, and they've been working in your favor in the hopes that you will. But Kagome-sama is an unknown factor. There is a chance, no matter the amount of work on their part, that you could fail, and that failure is directly tied to Kagome-sama. Your success or failure depends absolutely on her."

"Why exactly are you telling me this?" Sesshoumaru asked after a long pause.

"So that you are aware of what you stand up against," the houshi replied. "Your enemy is more powerful than you believe. Remember that. And never forget that Kagome-sama—not her power—will ultimately decide your destiny."

"That's insane," Sesshoumaru said finally.

The houshi nodded.

"Absolutely," he agreed. "But I never said this was going to be reasonable, now did I?"