InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Unicorn and the Spider: Kik/Nar drabbles ❯ Grit of Winter ( Chapter 28 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

AN: Written for the “Advice” theme at 30shards and the “Betrayal” theme at iy_wiltedrose, both at Livejournal.

Grit of Winter

“Let me give you some advice,” Tsubaki says with a grin that Kikyou doesn't like. The woman scrutinizes her with cold eyes - cold like deep winter; and Kikyou is prepared to ignore whatever Tsubaki tells her. Before the dark priestess speaks, Kikyou has deemed her words unusable, but she humors her anyway. “You'll fall in love, and it'll be your ruin. A miko has no right to love.”

Whatever truth is in her words will fade away like hovering shadows. Kikyou scoffs. Who can love her?

She can't love the hanyou Inuyasha. Tsubaki's words, futile yet clingy, feel foreign.

Nothing will happen anyway. She won't let it come to that. Kikyou walks away, and Tsubaki's looming face and pointed words are pushed into the back of her mind.

Her heart dies that day, when blood pours out the wound in her shoulder and her little sister's screams and sobs are the last thing she hears.

Betrayed - by the man she loves, the beast she is not supposed to fall for but slips into the ravine anyway.

Kikyou shuts her eyes and drops into the dark. At least, she thinks, love is sweet for the short time it exists.

She walks the earth on Mara's time, borrowed and fabricated for folly and temptation. Her real self dwells in Hell somewhere, choking on a paradox and streaming in limbo between herself and a stranger from the future.

The stranger steals the love that was meant for her, and Kikyou feels a rebirth and death of her heart again - the betrayal stinging with a different edge.

She is alone - more alone than before when she becomes guardian of the Shikon Jewel.

Everyone betrays everyone, in some way. It is not like her to be cynical, but Kikyou is no longer her true self. She sees the darkness ebb from every corner, from behind every lying gaze and wicked laugh.

In this respect, she realizes how much she's like Naraku. Inuyasha is long gone from her, and his pining is nothing more than denying the inevitable.

Naraku carries her to his castle. She gives him the pieces of the jewel, and he watches her with his hungry eyes. She thinks he's lying to her when he says his heart is elsewhere.

He's fooling her or fooling himself, and Kikyou hates the similarity between them, yet defeating him is still within her purpose. She cares not for Naraku's heart, pining away for her love like she once pined (still pines, maybe) for Inuyasha.

Still, reborn of darkness does not completely turn her into a monster. A sliver of her humanity lingers, and she gives her betrayer some honest advice.

“You will never have me, Naraku,” she says - a promise, not a threat. Threats only exist at the swell of her power and the tip of her arrow. And she does not lie to him. False hope exists in his eyes, just as in Inuyasha's. Kikyou knows better not to give into either.

Naraku smiles, believing he knows better, that he will prove her wrong. Kikyou remains steadfast. As she begins to leave, Naraku lets her without interference.

Kikyou walks alone under the dark midnight sky. The air feels cold, and Kikyou knows that winter is coming. It reminds her of Tsubaki, of what she once said, and of things that can no longer be undone.

Like winter, everything will soon die and make way for things that are brand new. The dead rot and wilt away, leaving behind barely a trace of themselves, their past dying with their shells.

Kikyou's knows her true season is coming.

END