Chapter Text
Artwork by nartista
She could barely stand; her lifeblood soaked into the Earth, leeching everything from her except for her rage.
At the one who betrayed her.
At Inuyasha.
Kikyō would die that day knowing that her arrow struck true, knowing that the blight of the hanyō was ended, sealed upon a tree to rot in timeless sleep. Nothing less than everything he deserved. For standing by her side, for making her love him. For betraying her.
It felt sweet to watch, as her vision went black, tunneling toward only seeing him, asleep for eternity. Denied the afterlife, denied the—
“Sister…” That voice, the only voice that could break through Kikyō’s hatred, called her back. Kaede’s single eye was wide with grief, hoping against hope that the wound Kikyō knew to be mortal would not take.
“Take this… and burn it with my remains.” Kikyō shakily handed the Shikon no Tama to her sister. “It must never… fall into the wrong hands again!”
She would die that day, yes. There was no helping that. But she had punished the one who betrayed her. She had consigned him to a fate worse than death with her arrow, and that would have to sate her rage.
Kikyō felt the Shikon no Tama lift out of her fingers; she was almost gone now, the warmth of Kaede’s hand, of Kaede’s love: a glimmer of light sprinkled atop the cold vengeance, the last earthly sensation that Kikyō would ever experience.
Goodbye, imōto. I… will miss you. Inuyasha—
Kaede’s fingers closed around the jewel in her hands. The one that Kikyō had guarded for so long. The one that brought nothing but trouble and pain to the village.
Burn it with my remains.
Kikyō meant to bring it to the underworld, far away from all who coveted it.
Far away from the hanyō who would never be able to join her there, his eternal sleep sealed with Kikyō’s arrow.
Days turned to weeks, then months, when the grief was not so sharp and her scars had healed over. Kaede went into the forest many times, to meditate. Inuyasha lay in his stasis, the tree growing around him, enclosing his crimes in its trunk.
“I sometimes wonder what made you choose the jewel over her,” Kaede would say, and she would frown at the serenity on Inuyasha’s face. “It has never made sense to me.”
Kaede knew that the kindest thing to do would be to bring great spiritual warriors, to purify Inuyasha completely, and let him finish his journey into the afterlife. On the days that the thought invaded her mind, she would go to the tree, and she would look upon his sleeping face, seeking resolve, seeking clarity.
Not yet whispered in its branches, on the wind, so Kaede would return to the village and let the hanyō sleep.
As the years grew longer and the world turned around them, famines and feasts and droughts and floods pummeled Musashi, and still Kaede would not choose the hanyō’s death. He was her sister’s memory, after all. So instead she asked that the village men patrol Inuyasha’s forest, ensuring that the hanyō slept, and the tree continued to envelop him.
Only once had Kaede considered—really considered—ending Inuyasha’s sleep. On a day that the village had been ransacked by bandits, searching for the Shikon no Tama. The forest had burned and the village was razed, leaving Kaede with raging villagers begging her to move from that place, to end Inuyasha’s slumber with the sharp end of a blade, so there would no longer be anything there they must guard.
“What do I do, sister?” Kaede had pleaded with Kikyō’s ashes.
Not yet, the wind had whispered once again.
So the hanyō continued to sleep.
Then one day, at the edge of spring and summer, villagers shouted for Kaede to come.
A girl, the spitting image of her sister, had emerged from the Bone Eater’s Well, discovered as she touched the sleeping hanyō’s serene face.
Kagome Higurashi, whispered the wind.
The girl from the future would be the one who returned the Shikon no Tama and opened all’s eyes to the truth behind the fog in Kikyō’s last hours. Kagome Higurashi was who Kaede had been waiting for, all this time.