InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Broken Fates ❯ Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe ( Chapter 13 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter 13: Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe

There was always something about Sesshoumaru. Even back then, there was so much awe in me for what he was - and now, he seems to be even more. I hated it when he and Inuyasha fought - because it was so hard to take sides.

And even now, he still challenges me.

Kagome chuckled lightly as she came out of her meditative trance. He seems to know just how to get to me, challenging me to live. I never could say no to a challenge, damn him anyways.

It was warm out, and since she'd been sitting outside for several hours under her grandfather's orders meditating, she was pretty sweaty. With a grimace, she stood, and following the rather cheerful mumbling coming from him, she cornered him in one of the sheds.

"Grandfather, I've finished with my meditating for the morning, but if you were wanting me to go and speak with Mika, I need to go shower and change."

Hikari looked up, startled out of his thoughts, and glanced at Kagome. "Is it that time already? How the time passes..." he sighed. "Go ahead, then, girl, go do what you need. When you get home, come and see if there is anything I need from you."

She bowed. "Yes, grandfather." Turning, she hurried to the house, intent on getting in a nice soak before heading out. She had originally planned to take the bus, but Sesshoumaru had insisted that he would have a car pick her up and take her. Why couldn't I have fallen for him, instead?

And then she laughed at herself. And that would have turned out even worse, truly. I'm a simple ningen. Sesshoumaru might care about me as an honored ally, but that's all it could ever be, so if I'd been fool enough to give him my heart, I'd have had it broken just as much. I should just stay away from men entirely... and being a shrine maiden gives me that excuse.

Some people should just not ever try to find love - all it does is bite them in the rear, and I guess I'm one of those who are better off alone. It's certainly safer that way... if I don't give anyone access to my heart, then no one can hurt me. Simple math, really.

It didn't take her long to get ready, even considering the bath, and soon she was on the shrine steps waiting for her ride. She really wasn't looking forward to this whole exercise... but if it got her what she wanted, meaning, everyone off her back, then she had decided she could handle it.

Anything for a little peace...

---cCc---

Yasha watched her go with little joy, even considering that she was finally stepping out and beginning to get the help she needed. He'd been stunned yesterday, as she'd so abruptly changed and gone in the house, and had still been trying to figure it all out when Sesshoumaru had come flying up and stormed right into her room.

He couldn't believe that his uncle had done that. Who told him he had any right to jump in her bedroom window like he owned her or something? And then, when he'd jumped into the tree outside her window and listened in, the things she'd said had hit him right in the heart.

She can't be a shrine maiden... I can't lose her this way - hell, I can't stand to lose her at all.

His mind wandered back to the scene in her bedroom the day before. He'd been horrified when he'd understood what she was saying about life and death... it showed just how much damage had been done, and it worried him - just how long would it take to see her spirit come back... to see Kagome again?

And then... then he'd seen his uncle's face. In that moment, he knew. His uncle wasn't just caring for her as a former ally, or even a potential family member. He was in love with her. Not that Yasha couldn't understand that... far as he was concerned, anyone could fall in love with her, she was just that special. But... just what was on his uncle's mind? He'd felt majorly unsettled since coming to that realization... and knew that he was going to be watching Sesshoumaru very carefully from here on out.

He wasn't about to lose Kagome. Not to her broken heart, not to that Hojo character - and most certainly not to his uncle.

End of story.

If he'd been thinking clearly about it, and not with jealousy, he would have realized that his uncle would never be competition for his miko's hand, simply because of who he was.

But since when has jealousy ever included clear thinking?

He sighed and walked up the steps to the main shrine area, and went looking for Hikari. Since he was gonna be sitting here for a while 'til she came back, he may as well make himself useful, and he knew full well the old man was always happy to have strong young shoulders to use for heavy lifting.

It was better than sitting and thinking. He'd done enough of that for a while.

---cCc---

Mika watched quietly as Kagome was ushered in, and immediately began cataloguing her behaviors. It seemed that the unnatural calm and placid personality that had emerged after her memory was restored was still dominant, and she had to wonder, if perhaps her behavior was due to her former incarnation's ways. It was hard to judge.

Kagome sat down in the chair indicated and nodded politely to Mika. "Doctor."

Bowing her head back, she held her gaze. "Kagome. I am glad you kept the appointment. When your mother called yesterday and told me that you had agreed to see me, I was not sure that you would."

Brow raised, Kagome looked at her, a bland look on her face. "I gave my word. I don't go back on what I promise. However, I will not lie. I have no desire to be here, nor to talk about 'things'." She laid a peculiar intensity on that one word, and Mika knew exactly what she was saying.

"So, you came, but you have no intentions of cooperating with any treatment, then." It was more a statement than a question.

"If you ask a question, I will answer it. I did not say I wouldn't speak, I said I did not have any desire to do so." Kagome had promised, so she would speak. But she wouldn't go out of her way to talk, and she wouldn't volunteer information. The woman before her would have to work for whatever she wanted.

"I see. The passive-aggressive path. So, I will have to fight for every step, ne?" Mika kept a steady, non-judgmental gaze pinned to her, while still letting her know who was in charge.

"Call it what you will. Why should I be cooperative and happy to be here, when all of you went against my wishes and forced that soul-orb back into me? You have, you could say, made me what I am now. If you want to know what that is, I can tell you in one word, then we can be done with this." Kagome refused to back down, whether the woman felt she was in charge or not, she wasn't, and that was reality. She refused to apologize for the way she felt.

"And what is it that you are?"

Kagome laughed lightly, mockingly. "You have made me Kikyou... what else? Really, you all should get with the program and start calling me Kikyou, rather than Kagome, you know. Face reality - acknowledge what you killed... who you killed."

Mika's brow crinkled slightly at her words. "And how do you think that we 'killed' you, Kagome?"

She sat back at that and waved a hand languidly. "Emphasize the name in a vain attempt to deny all you like, it doesn't matter, nor does it change the truth. Kagome really no longer exists... Kikyou does, however, and this lifetime, will live it out as a shrine maiden as I didn't do in the last lifetime."

Mika held silent for a moment, head tilted as she stared at the girl, then asked, "And yet, if you were truly Kikyou and not Kagome, shouldn't you remember your last lifetime in full detail? Have all memories intact? Tell me, what do you remember of you're last life after Kagome came back through the well?"

Kagome's jaw tightened in anger for a moment, then she looked away, staring at the wall. "Whether I remember my last life or not, the person you have made me into, is Kikyou. I have become that which I hate... and now I have no choice but to live as someone else. None of you had the right to force that soul back into me - but you did it anyway. You played kami with my life. Did you expect gratitude for it?" she ground out, not amused with the seeming arrogance of the woman sitting before her.

Mika sighed. "Kagome,without that last bit of your soul you were going insane - and you would have died, soon. You couldn't go any longer without it being returned. You were born with that piece of soul, as Kagome. How could you truly be Kagome without it?"

At that, she leaned forward, anger roughening her voice even more. "The same way I had been Kagome for the years I didn't have it! Arrogant as your father, aren't you? What gave you the right to decide that I had to have it back? Are you one of the kami?!" At Mika's denial, she continued. "Then you should have let me decide what I wanted, and respected my decision!"

"So you would die, just to avoid a tiny piece of your soul?" Mika asked, brow flying into her bangs.

"Like I told your father, I don't fear death," she hissed, eyes flying to meet Mika's gaze head on.

"Tell me. Why do you hate your mother, grandfather, and brother so much?"

That loaded question, delivered in such a straight, almost conversational, voice, caught her attention like nothing else could have done. Kagome was floored.

"What do you mean by that? I don't hate my family." Confusion was rampant in her voice, and Mika grinned internally. Ah-ha. Gotcha. Now, you're gonna have something to think about.

"Well, it surely seems as if you do. If that soul had not been returned to you, you would have died. Did you want your family to watch you die? Were you trying to punish your mother by making her watch her beloved daughter die, while the means to save her was sitting on her desk, right in plain view?"

Kagome stared at her, jaw opening, then closing, as she tried to find something to say. "W-well... uh..." her voice choked off as her eyes dropped to the floor, and she got lost in her own mind.

Is that what I was doing?

Mika, seeing her reaction, dropped another bomb on her. "I'm curious. If you were in your mother's shoes, watching your own daughter go through that, what would you have chosen to do? Would you have let her die? Could you have let her die?"

I... don't know. Would I? Could I? I... well, I would want to respect her wishes, but to let her die?

"I don't know," she said quietly.

Brow furrowed, she stared at the floor, as though it held the secrets of the universe. There was a stillness inside her as the storm stopped, and she just listened - listened to the tides within her, slipping her mind into a place that she could honestly take that question, and put herself into those shoes, like Mika had said.

I want to rage and fight her, but I can't. Because it was a fair question. I have all this anger inside about Kikyou, and that piece of soul... sometimes, I feel so much hatred towards it that I want to claw my way out of my own skin to get away from it, but I can't, and it's because of them. They turned me into Kikyou!

But...

Should mom and grandfather and Sota have to watch me die because I hate myself? None of them really had anything to do with this. I can say that I wouldn't want to watch my own child die because of a crazy situation like this... but from the other side, I hate feeling like a stranger stuck in a cramped body with... well it's like sharing skin with Naraku to me. It's a horrible feeling.

Mika waited patiently, occasionally writing something on a notepad she had in front of her. It seemed that the question she'd asked had catapulted the girl into a very deep round of thought. That was good.

Finally, she looked back up at Mika, and shook her head. "I understand what you are saying, but the bottom line is, this isn't someone else, this is me. I'm the one that has to live with this. I hate having that thing in me. It makes me feel horrified within my own body, and to be honest, I don't know if I can live with it." she looked away again, eyes closing.

"I can feel it, you know. It may be inside me, but it's almost like having two souls inside me. And my part is doing everything it can to get away from her part. If you all thought putting it back inside me was a cure-all, you made a deadly mistake. Because it didn't heal the schism inside me. It just made things worse."

As Mika heard her, she began to worry again. Things with this young woman were not going the way they should. That last part of her soul should have seemlessly blended back in with the rest of it - not be sitting off to the side. Then again, she thought with a frown, was it really? Was it just that it was taking time to fully integrate back in?

With a sigh, she rubbed her hand over face. Things dealing with the soul were in such a gray zone. Who but the kami themselves really knew the true boundaries between soul and spirit, mind and body? Kagome may be the one inside that body and dealing with that soul, but even she couldn't know all of it. There were just too many questions... just like with the mind. Science could only take you so far.

"What do you mean that it's like two souls? You can see the boundaries between the part you've had all this time, and the part she took from you when she was resurrected?"

Kagome looked at her, and frowned, then looked at her desk. Reaching over, she took two decorative, highly polished stones, and held them up. "This one," she gestured towards the larger piece, "is the one I kept after she came back. This one," she held up the smaller, "is the piece she had." Setting them on the desk several inches apart, she nodded her head at them, then looked up.

"That's how it is inside me. On one side, there's her, and on the other," she touched the larger stone, "there's me. In between there's just nothing. The souls don't need boundaries... because they don't touch."

Sitting back and meeting Mika's surprised gaze, she finished.

"They don't touch at all. Two souls in one body. And I am almost positive Kikyou's is the stronger, despite the fact it's smaller. Once it's all said and done, it will be the one running the show. That's why I said you turned me into Kikyou."

Mika drew a deep breath, then let it out, steepling her fingers, she leaned on ehr desk and stared at the stones. When she looked up, she caught Kagome's eye.

"I think you have it wrong, Kagome. I think that you need to reach into yourself and look at that piece. Look at it honestly - and listen to it. It might just want to become whole again... to meld back into itself - even to make amends. Shouldn't you be positive before you just give up and try to become someone you're not?"

Kagome stared at her, unsure. Should I? I've always... tried to be fair. But in the end, I gave away so much of myself always trying to be fair to everyone else, and ignored myself. Do I want to go there again? Or do I want to think of myself this time?

Do I want to, once again, let what everyone else wants, influence me and make my decisions for me?

She shook her head, a stubborn look crossing her face. Looking Mika dead in the eye, she said, "I'll think about it. But that's all. No guarantees." Then, looking at her watch, she stood, and tilted her head. "It's time for me to get going. Good day, Doctor."

And she walked out the door, everyone else forgotten as she lost herself in her thoughts.

I'm tired of the darkness in my life, darkness I took on to keep everyone else from being hurt by it. Why have the kami forsaken me and left me to this hell, when all I've ever done is try to help people without prejudice?

---cCc---

Mika sat back in her chair and caught the bridge of her nose between elegant fingers and sighed deeply. What a mess. After a moment, she moved forward and picked up the notebook and re-read her notes, then picked up her pen and wrote again. When she finished, she tossed the pen down and shook her head.

This was definitely going to be an interesting case.

She slips back and forth between 'her' and 'I' as though they are interchangeable. I think she's so sure that she's going to turn into Kikyou, that she's actually trying to make it happen. Next time I see her, I think I'm going to give her a little homework. If she really is Kikyou like she thinks, then I want her to list all her personality traits... and then label which are Kagome and which are Kikyou. I'll be interested to see what she comes up with on that one.

It's so funny, in a way. It seems that the way to bring her back to herself is to appeal to her in ways that only Kagome would respond to. In other words...

Get her to think about the effects on others. No matter how much she fights it, in the end, she will always put others above herself. It's just the way she's made. And it's the only way to save her, it appears.

How ironic.

---cCc---

A/N: Again, everyone, I am truly sorry about the delays on this. I ended up in the hospital last week for the afternoon, and I found out that I have a couple of serious infections. I'm currently also on a bit of pain meds for the pain, and they are making it hard to really think, and with this fic, because of the subject matter, that's really not helpful. I can't say when I'll be able to get back to a faster posting rate, because these infections are really putting up a fight, and even though I'm almost done with the antibiotics I was given, I'm not really getting better, so it looks like I might end up back at the doctor and needing further treatment. Hope the new chapter is okay!

Amber