Shard # 22 - Jewel

[hana-ginkawa.livejournal.com]

Oooh, she's updated again.  Damn Muse.  I'm SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING!

*Sigh*  Hope you enjoy.

Title:  Sacrificium

Pairing:  Sesshoumaru/Kagome

Theme:  Jewel

Rating: PG

Squicks: None

Summary:  Along the same lines as my previous writings, the ending of all beginnings, but by no means the end of this story.  A different sort of ending.  A different sort of resolution.  From Kagome's POV. 

 

 

 

They all had their roles to play.  She was no exception.  She may have been the girl from the future, with mysterious ways, but she was not held above those around her.  She knew this.  It was a matter a fact.  It had never entered her mind that she should play this out any different.  How could she? 

 

She was merely a player in this place.  A person of fiction who flitted in and out of existence when she chose to.  Her name might never go down in history, but she knew within her heart that she would be remembered and that as long as she herself remembered the time spent in this place, it would remain real.  It's colors may fade, but the days of happiness spent at their side would forever keep her warm.  Thus she was shocked to no degree when the jewel was complete that her time spent in the past would diminish. 

 

She fell into the well at 15, broke a gem of immeasurable power and thus had to put it back together again.  It was her duty.  Through their journey, she came to love Inuyasha.  While being a truth which she had clung to in the hours when she thought the sun might never shine again, she knew that whatever happened, she had to let it be.  Whatever fate or destiny deemed proper, she would comply.  But that didn't mean when the time came for the balance to be equaled, that she would accept it happily.  That was the right she earned from the sacrifice she would perform. 

 

In a series of battles, their group took back the shards and as her companions formed a ring of protection around her, she fused the jewel into one piece.  As the cracks melted together forming a solid pink sphere, she looked up at Inuyasha.  His eyes showed his desire for the jewel, but the two years fighting together, and her giving to him a love unconditional, had shown him his own worth.  The acceptance of his brother, who now fought beside him, also sealed his wish.  And it had become such that it was contradictory of one he had held so dearly before. 

 

Thus fortified, while Naraku and his minions constantly beat at her shell of friends, she caught Sesshoumaru's glance and smiled at him as she held the jewel closed in her palms, close to her heart, near where he himself had invaded.  The daiyoukai had learned to care by the heart of a little girl that would be safe now in her bed.  He had extended that care to those he now fought with.  It was a cold respect at most times, but Kagome had come to be his confidante in all things he never showed to those around him.  Time spent with the mending youkai had changed her.  If she could stay and Inuyasha chose Kikyou, would she have found something with Sesshoumaru?  She would never know now.  And that was the way of it.  It all was apart of her sacrifice.  And they would never know of it. Oh, they would remember her.  She would not be removed from them in that way.  She was going to give them exactly what they would not ask of her.  It would be her parting gift.  As their memories of her would be her own.

 

She closed her eyes to the battle that raged on around her and focused on her task.  She had figured out the riddle that had plagued Midoriko so long ago.  While Kikyou had been correct in assuming that a choice of purity of that which was sin would cause the jewel's demise, it was not a selfless desire.  In addition, Kikyou, as well as Inuyasha at the time, did not know the whole of themselves, far be it to accept that which they had been.  The miko resented all darkness, her duty towards its destruction, and denied any of her own base desires save one.  Inuyasha knew not what love really was and thus did not know himself, being only acquainted with the demon-side of his nature, despite his wish to belong.  To rid the world of the jewel, it was not so much a wish that was to be granted as it was the feeling of the jewel's bearer.  Jealousy. a desire for power, would create disonance, purity would contradict the world's own nature, while a harmony within oneself of the darkness and light would only keep the jewel from taint.  Kagome knew her heart's desire, she knew her soul's longings as well, but most of all she knew the anger and pain she held in her darkest corners.  She held the jewel close to her center below her heart, feeling acceptance run through her at the world's cruelties and miracles.  It was the way of things.  All life was trials and suffering, one had only to find their own truth that was solely theirs to become happy.  Sometimes it could never be found.  And that too was the way of things.  She then felt the desires of Midoriko and the sins of the demons she battled.  Her own longing for harmony wove around the light and darkness at the core of the jewel, swirling in a pink band of clarity, diluting the contradictions between the forces held in the Shikon no Tama.  She not so much as wished, as gave the gift of her own hardwon acceptance.  She felt the wrongness in the world and righted it, she felt the imbalance in the lives of those around her and settled the scales.  Power swirled around her in swirling arcs of tricolored trails and pushed out from her circle.  It began to encircle the meadow and soon the valley they fought in became a small supernova.  In the next few moments, the world would cease to move, breathless in its patience. 

 

Naraku had become an abomination.  He was taken apart by the combined energy of Kagome and the jewel, his carcass soon melting into the earth's embracing and forgiving arms, promising what was left that it would grow once again.  Kagome knew she couldn't change the world, but she could right what wrongs had been allowed to fester by Naraku's existence.  He would be remembered, but taken from his role and given a real rest.  To him, despicable as he had been, she gave her forgivness.

 

Kikyou's heart began to beat again, her soul restored.  Sango's brother sighed in remembered, but not harsh, pain, his life returned by a sword.  Miroku was given the gift of a long life, Sango and Shippo the family they had lost, though all the wishes in the world could not bring the originals back.  Kanna was given a soul and a freedom she never knew she wanted, a freedom she would relish as her sister had.  Inuyasha was given the gift of a woman who forgave and loved once more, in addition to the self-assurance of his own worth.  Sesshoumaru was gifted with a child that would grow up never more knowing danger and a sense of completeness where before he had sought power to fill the emptiness of his heart.

 

She felt the love for those around her swell into her own sort of miasma that engulfed them and assured each one that while doubts, injuries and jealousy had occured, as they always had, her faith in them and in her love for each and every one of them would not fade with the dawning passage of time. 

 

When she finally opened her eyes, it was to the inside of the well-house, deep in the belly of the beast that had kidnapped her in the first place.  Inside the feeling of rightness continued, but no matter how good she felt at surviving and erasing Naraku's plague from the world and the people she knew, the pain that she would never see them again swelled up in her throat. 

 

This too was normal.  This too was harmony. 

 

While the world began moving once more, a golden set of eyes crowned with a crescent moon gazed at her from across the firelight of her memories and she cried as the clenching grasp of grief tore her apart.