AN: I was challenged to write a short Kikyou
introspective on the topic of my choice by inufan625. This was the
result, written as a companion piece for Live
and Let Die.
A Kikyou Introspective
If she was unhappy with the current situation, she had
no one to blame but herself.
Kikyou almost never just said what she meant. She spoke
in cryptic words that she just assumed others would understand the
meaning of. When she told the priest that, “He is a hanyou that I could
not bring myself to kill because of his human half. You will have to
decide what you want to do with him,” she assumed
that he would understand that InuYasha was
not evil, and should be turned loose. She thought perhaps they would
keep him tied up and delay him for a while, but not that they would
attempt to kill him. After all, the priest must have gone through
training similar to hers, so why had he not understood her?
Yes, InuYasha kept getting in her way and at the time
she had thought that she didn't care whether he lived or died, but
realized later (after her reincarnation had rescued him) that she did.
Not only that, she was actually jealous. She had assumed she had a
great deal more influence and control over the hanyou than she really
did. Who knew that one single action on her part would send him
straight into the arms of her rival - her living, breathing,
reincarnation.
Kikyou thought back on the first time she met InuYasha.
She did not figure out until much later that it was he who had been
lurking in the forest, and made sure no harm came to her when she was
injured before the others showed up looking for her. When she came
across him in the wood, she could not bring herself to kill him because
he was half human; even if she would have liked to get rid of his demon
half. And when she thought back, after discovering later on what he was
truly capable of, she realized he had never seriously tried to harm
her, or even to steal the jewel from her. She had come to realize that
he followed her out of loneliness and the need for some kind of contact
with another living soul.
As a priestess, she too was separated from the common
people of her village and was lonely for companionship. And while she
claimed to want to be an ordinary woman, in truth, she relished her
power and status. Yes, she did have to fight demons, and her life did
become challenged more often after the Shikon no Tama was given to her
for its protection, but she never wanted for anything. The villagers
made certain that she was never hungry and always had a roof over her
head. She had far more than the average person in the region had. She
did not have wealth, for that would have been inappropriate for a
priestess, but she had respect and those that looked up to her. She
also knew that there were other priestesses that were somewhat jealous
of the gifts she had been born with.
And still, she was lonely.
The priestess wondered if what she felt was truly love,
or a want of something she thought she could not have. She had grown
tired of protecting the Sacred Jewel, for her life had become much more
difficult once it was entrusted in her care. She thought she could kill
two birds with one stone. If InuYasha would have wished on the jewel to
rid himself of his demon half, he would have been acceptable for her to
take as a husband. In addition, the jewel would have been purified and
gone so that demons would no longer have come after it. She had not
thought of the possible consequences of that action at all.
Back then she had no idea of what InuYasha's demon half
was, other than an Inu. In her wanderings after her rebirth, she had
learned that InuYasha had a half-brother, who was not just an Inu
Youkai, but also the Taiyoukai of the Western Lands. That meant that
InuYasha's demon half was nothing ordinary - he was the son of one of
the most powerful youkai to ever roam Japan. And yet, he had been willing to give
that up for her. Did that mean he truly loved her? She could not allow
herself to love him unless he changed, but it appeared he had loved her
enough to change for her.
She did not know or care that there were demons that
would still come after him, even if he were human. Just the fact that
he was the son of the great dog general would be reason enough for them
to want to kill him, even if he were no longer a hanyou. She also did
not take into consideration the number of demons that would still be
looking for the jewel. She would still be fighting them, but would no
longer have InuYasha's hanyou strength to help, and probably would have
lost her own spiritual power as well. She had assumed that he would
become human, that she would no longer be a priestess, and thereby
ending her troubles. Looking back, she realized that neither of them
would probably have lived for very long.
And then there was her reincarnation. The girl made no
bones about the fact that she loved InuYasha as he was. She had no
problem with his demon half, and had accepted him without reservation.
And while Kagome may have cried over it, she never tried to stop
InuYasha from coming to see her. The only times she had truly raised a
fuss was when she decided to attempt to take InuYasha to Hell with her.
The girl may let him see her, but she wasn't letting him leave, at
least not like that. In addition, even when she had tried to cause the
girl harm, she did not tell InuYasha about it - of that the undead
priestess was fairly certain. There were several times when Kagome
could have been negative towards her, but she never tried to poison
InuYasha's mind against her. No, she did a good job of doing that all
by herself.
Then there was the undeniable fact that Kagome had saved
her life more than once, and it was partly because she thought that
InuYasha still loved her, and would be sad without her, in addition to
the fact that the girl thought it was the right thing to do.
Was this what love truly was? The willingness to accept
someone for who and what they are, and wanting them to be happy, even
at your own expense? Kikyou pondered these things as she headed towards
her old village.
Even looking back on the day of her death, she realized
that she should have known that InuYasha would have never done such a
thing. Even when he thought she had tried to kill him, he went after
the jewel, not her. Yes, he trashed the village in his anger, but he
did not intentionally harm anyone. She would die from her injuries and
her soul could go on and be reborn, but she had sealed him deliberately
to Goshinboku, to neither live nor die. She had instructed Kaede to
never seal a demon to that tree or it would be there forever, but then
she had done it herself. At first, it was in anger and hatred for what
she thought he had done, but before her life was drained from her, she
almost regretted it. She tried to convince herself that she had sealed
him because she couldn't kill him, but at the time she knew that it was
not true. She thought that she had been betrayed, and she was tired of
protecting the jewel, so she let her life slip away after she
instructed Kaede to burn the jewel with her body.
Who knew it would turn back up in her reincarnation from
five hundred years in the future fifty years later, and shortly after
that the witch Urasue would revive her to start her endless wanderings
as the walking dead? That strange little girl, who had absolutely no
training, affected everyone around her. It was hard to believe she was
her reincarnation, not because she was untrained and Kikyou liked to
think she had no power, but because of the tremendous amount of love
that the girl had for everyone around her.
Even when Kikyou thought of Kagome as weak, it was clear
that the girl had the power to inspire and unite others that often
would be enemies, something that Kikyou could never have done, or would
even have tried to. The girl loved the hanyou openly, and it only
increased her powers. She had frightened Naraku the most when she
became so angry over his treatment of Sango that she blew his body out
from under his head, forcing him to go into hiding to create a new one.
And her love of the hanyou had driven her to find him when no one else
would go, the result being that they now were mates - and the girl was
even more powerful than before. Who knew?
She finally came to the conclusion that she had loved
InuYasha as much as she was capable of, but it wasn't nearly enough.
She wondered how many times her soul had been reincarnated over the
five hundred years that finally it evolved to the point that a young
girl could accept a hanyou openly, be reborn with the jewel in her
body, and then pulled through the well? For all appearances, the girl
was here to right what had been wronged, which included freeing
InuYasha from his seal. Perhaps the regret that she felt just before
her death had been real, and she came back in a later lifetime to
release him from the sentence that had been imposed upon him for a
crime he had not committed.
Maybe.
If that was the case, then she had no reason to
apologize to either of them, or even feel guilty, for any of her
transgressions. After all, if this was fate, then none of them had a
choice. It was just the way things were meant to be.
©
2007
created 04/08/07
created 04/08/07
