Title: As Tears Go By
Author: landofthekwt
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Soul sucking vampires
Word Count: 667 including song lyrics
Prompt: Tear (InuSongFics Week 18)
Song: As Tears Go By by Marianne Faithful
Universe: Canon
Warning: Soul sucking vampires
Summary: Kikyou reconciles herself to the fact that she will never know the love of children
Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from Inuyasha or "As Tears Go By" They belong to their owners and rightful users.
She waved merrily to the children returning to their families and sighed. Memories of long ago came to her unbidden. Memories of other children. Flower hunts in other meadows. Collecting leaves in the fall. Playing games with them. Their smiling faces gazing eagerly at her. She wanted it so badly. Wanted their love. Wanted their trust. Wanted their enthusiasm.
It is the evening of the day,
I sit and watch the children play.
Smiling faces I can see
But not for me,
I sit and watch as tears go by.
But those were just memories of another time. Other children long since dust. Just as those children had belonged to others, so did these children. Her body of clay would never produce children. No babies to nurse at her breast. No small one to rock to gently in her arms while she sang them to sleep. She was fooling herself now as she had then. Somehow she believed that all of her time with the children made them hers. It did not. At the end of the day, then as now she went home alone . . . At least then she had Kaede. Now her only friends were the demons who brought her the souls of young girls to nourish her body. Once she had hunted these monsters. Now she was truly one of them. What child would want anything to do with her if they knew what sort of creature she was?
My riches cant buy everything,
I want to hear the children sing.
All I hear is the sound
Of rain falling on the ground,
I sit and watch as tears go by.
She had been fooling herself. Making herself believe that she could go back to her life before her death. Better she abandoned her charade and return to death once she had completed her vengeance against Inuyasha. Pretending only made it hurt more. The night revealed what she truly was. Not the gentle miko the children loved. , but the soul eating vampire who stalked the night and killed anyone who got in her way. By morning the word would spread. None of the children would return to her side. She must move on and complete her task. Children were not meant for her. Their laughter only mocked her. She wanted to cry, but her body did not produce any tears. There was no release for the hurt and the pain that she felt. Only the emptiness of knowing that she could no longer feel the love of children as she once had. With her life that too had been taken from her. She was left with a bitter taste in her mouth.
It is the evening of the day,
I sit and watch the children play.
Doing things I used to do
They think are new,
I sit and watch as tears go by.
She had been better off dead. At least then she did not have to face Inuyasha. It had been hard enough killing him the first time. She had begged him not to say her name, not to revive her. But she could not speak through her reincarnations lips and Inuyasha could not help saying her name. As a result she was left with this false body and its memories. Memories of a time when the love and laughter of children had made her hard life as miko worth living. Now they only served to remind her of what she could never have. She could touch them, but no feel them. She could hear laughter, but could not laugh with them. Where her heart had been, there was only a hollow cavity filled with the souls of dead girls. She ignored their pain, but she could not ignore her own. The sooner this life ended the better. No use to pretend. No use to play the friend to the children. She had to admit to herself that she was a monster and let go of the fantasy that used to be her life.