XLIX

Speculum Speculorum

Without a clear lead or a sure a direction, the uncomfortable couple that is Kikyou and Inuyasha wanders the forest near Edo, seeking a hint or a sign of the shikon no tama.

At first Inuyasha is pleased with Kikyou's silence; he doesn't know what to say to her, has no idea how to address this woman when he possesses so many memories of her and she barely recognizes his name. He catches her staring at him, sometimes, her eyes wide and dark and fixed; he catches himself staring at her, too, over and over again.

Whenever he notices what he's doing he drags his eyes away, but as the first day becomes a second, and then a third, the weight of silence and the emptiness of Kikyou's eyes begin to wear on him. That night, he builds a fire and hunts for himself, and this time for her, too. She eats slowly, as if in a dream. He wonders if she tastes it, or if she needs it, and if she knows that she's not really human any more.

Inuyasha doesn't ask. It doesn't seem – right. Instead, he begins to tell her stories.

He tells Kikyou about the day they met; about his own brash promises of darkness, about the way she shone to him; about the children and how much she loved to play with them, to teach them – about how he watched her, day after day until he finally got up the courage to approach her.

He tells her about the uneasy alliance they had made against the youkai attacking their mutual territory; about how that uneasy alliance had become an uneasy friendship...a desperate seeking of trust, each of them reach out for the other because there was no one else who would, who could, support them.

He tells her about the days they had journeyed together, and about the struggle to protect the shikon no tama; the thing they were seeking now, shattered somehow into many pieces. Rumor is already spreading widely across the countryside about that.

Inuyasha talks until his voice is hoarse, and then falls silent. He can't say anything about his feelings for her; he can't say that he used to love her when he thinks he might still; he can barely bring himself to think about it, especially when she's sitting on the other side of the fire from him, staring with wide, blank eyes.

That night while Inuyasha sleeps the shallow sleep that is all he's known since childhood, Kikyou sits awake and stares into the shifting campfire's flames. The body she has been reborn into has no need of food, or sleep; she rests, but only because she has no real purpose, no intensity of will, not because she is tired.

The fire takes shape in front of her, flickers and changes as fire does, but slowly the shapes imprint themselves with the words that Inuyasha spoke before he slept – years of stories compressed into his memory and transmitted in words.

Visions of the past dance before her in the flames. She wonders if it is memories that are coming to her, or if it is just the words of Inuyasha.

Inuyasha.

She sees – water. A river; a boat. His body, warm against her – the gold of his eyes – and flicker, and some terrible battle plays out, familiar presence behind her...Inuyasha. And a blink, and there is darkness in a meadow elaborated to her sight only by the gleam of a thousand fireflies and the sight of uncounted stars...

Inuyasha. Always Inuyasha.

Something hurts inside her; something delivers terrible pangs to this strange body of hers that isn't even flesh. Inuyasha.

She holds out her hand toward the flames; she looks through them at the hanyou asleep on the other side of the fire, and she whispers the name again to herself, no louder than the fire's rush.

"Inuyasha. Inuyasha, why is everything I remember tied to you?"

She lay by the fire and closed her eyes.

She doesn't sleep, but maybe she dreams; maybe she remembers.

Fire.

She dreams of fire, and screams, and darkness; the darkness of her own death.

She dreams the white flash of hair and gold eyes that is attached to every recollection of the past.

She dreams his mouth on her mouth; chapped lips and uncertainty and sweetness.

A little at a time Kikyou opens her eyes again and looks through the fire. That kiss – she doesn't understand why she remembers it. Wasn't she a miko? Wasn't she a pure and virtuous woman blessed by the gods? Wasn't she -

I was the guardian of the shikon no tama.

The thought rings through her and leaves vibrations of confusion behind it.

"Shikon...no tama."

The witch that had back to this life had spoken of it. The woman who claimed to be the sister of the Kikyou she had been had also spoken of it – and her companion, Inuyasha. Is this the reason she has been reborn? Is this the reason she walks the earth again?

She feels a surge of great frustration, the first intense feeling that's come over her since she awoke.

"Why can't I remember! Why!"

Her voice escapes her shrill and loud and pained. Inuyasha jumps into alertness and crosses the fire in half a moment. Her fists are tight in her long hair and her eyes are wild and wet with tears. Tears. Inuyasha stares at them; Kikyou doesn't notice them at all. Her eyes are on his face, the deep concern there; her time is suspended because she knows this moment. The fire behind them; the dampness on her cheeks; she knows it all.

She leans forward and up and presses her lips against his mouth. For a moment he is stiff and unyielding against her. Then he succumbs, wraps his arms around her and clutches her tight against his body.

He tastes the same as the dream, and she knows now it was memory for certain.

Inuyasha.

Chapped lips and uncertainty and sweetness.

A/N: Yeesh! Kikyou didn't want to cooperate at all, but I have made her do what she should do, the little fwoom. Thus, today's chapter! The title, "Speculum Speculorum" translates to "mirror of mirrors"; more tomorrow, my dears, as always!

Please Review!