Reincarnation.

Chapter Ten: Believe.



Moriko rode in the passenger seat of the Jeep with her stepfather Yash driving. Kimiko sat in the backseat, her arms crossed over her chest. Yash smiled a little when he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her. He liked the way her mouth formed a little bit of a pout; it was cute, to say the least. Sure her demeanor had changed since the time she spent as Higurashi Kagome, but her facial expressions sure hadn’t.



“I don’t see why I can’t sit in the front seat?” she whined.



Yash laughed a little, and Moriko smiled brightly at her mother. “I’m sorry, Mom. I called shotgun, though, remember?” had found h



“Child, I am your elder!” Kimi shot back, sitting up and holding onto the front seats for support. “Shotgun or no shotgun, I get the front seat. Basically just because I’m older.”



Yash sighed then. “Look, Kim, you can have the front seat back after we drop Moriko off at the well. She’ll go back and fix things and return to us. Hopefully when she returns, everything will be good again, and we will never remember this horrible world that Naraku created.”



“But if she changes everything in the past, then Naraku will have never tricked me into having sex with him, and Moriko will never have been born, therefore she would never have gone back into the past to change things, meaning that Naraku will have caused this, and then he’d trick me into having sex with him, and Moriko will be born, but then she’ll go back and fix things, and then…” Kimiko groaned.



Yash laughed again. “Basically you’re saying that this will cause a paradox.”



“Yes.”



Moriko looked at Yash solemnly. “I agree with Mom. It makes sense that my going back into time to stop this time from happening would cause me to cease to exist. If I don’t exist, I can’t go back to stop this world – and my existence – from happening.” She made a face and pressed her hand to her head. “My head hurts just thinking about it and trying to make sense of it. I’m afraid the world might tear in two if this paradox is created.”



Yash had stopped the car when he pulled up to the Higurashi ruins. He looked at his mate and stepdaughter. The identical women gave him identical looks. Their eyes told him to turn around and go home.



“We’ll figure out how to defeat Naraku here, in this time,” Kimiko told him, squeezing his shoulder.



“But what if I go back in time and defeat him then?” Yash asked, looking her right in the eye. “Or you? You would probably do a much better job than me.”



She gave him a serious look. “Remember the necklace, dear.”



His face fell when he remembered what Naraku had discovered. Kimiko had explained to him that the necklace Naraku had found was an artifact Inuyasha’s own brother Sesshomaru had had made when he found out what his little brother’s mate really was. Yash was especially angry when she revealed that Sesshomaru had found her out before he had.



“It was an accident!” she had told him. “He watched when I was walking through the woods and a spider demon caught me off guard. I changed in front of him, and when the demon attacked me, he was surprised to see nothing happen. And when I dispatched it by grabbing its leg and swinging it over the horizon…” She had only shrugged.



He shook his head furiously, returning to the moment at hand. He looked deep into his lover’s eyes, then looked at their daughter. Moriko smiled softly at him, and he sighed. He shifted gears and turned the Jeep around, heading back to the bunker. When they got back, Shipp, Suzume, and Minoru were already suited up. “Good,” Suzume said when they walked through the door, “you’re here.” She handed the baby Aiko to Kimiko, and Minoru handed Minako to Yash. The couple stared at them.



“What?” Minoru asked. “We’ve been cooped up in the house for over a month now while you two have gotten to go around and have fun with the our past selves. I think it’s about time we went out and got some exercise.” He smirked at his wife in her sexy demon slayer garb, trying to ignore the sensation in his tight-ish pants. He shook his head and grabbed her hand, practically dragging her out of the house, her other hand pulling the Hiraikotsu.



When those three were gone, Moriko looked at her mother. She had noticed that Kimiko had been looking a little pale over the past few days. She frowned at this, a little worried about her mother. She looked at Yash. “I’ll take the kids,” she whispered to him as her mother sat at the dining table and held her head in her hands, breathing heavily. “You need to help Mom.”



He gave her a puzzled look. “She’s tired. Doesn’t she need sleep?”



Moriko shook her head and pulled her stepfather to the side. He set Minako on the floor, and the three year old padded over to her mother and gave her a quick hug around her right leg. Kimiko didn’t react, which, Yash knew, was completely unlike her. He expected her to look down at their pup and smile motherly. But she barely moved; she only sat and breathed.



He swallowed nervously. “All right,” he told his stepdaughter. Quietly, Moriko took Aiko from her mother’s arms and led Minako into the back of the house to play.



Yash watched Kimiko for a few minutes. Every now and then, he could hear and see her chest rising and falling while she breathed… but it was very slow and deep. He couldn’t help but worry. He nudged her a little, and she looked at him, breaking the worrisome cycle. He sighed and took her by the arm gently, leading her down the hallway to their bedroom. He shut the door behind them. “What’s wrong, Kimi?” he asked her quietly.



She shook her head as she stood in front of him. Unconsciously, she crossed her arms over her chest, which gave Yash the feeling that she was becoming a little defensive.



He growled a little in frustration. “Look, I know that something is wrong. I just with you would tell me what it is so I can fix it.”



“What makes you think you can fix it for me?” she asked. He looked into her blue eyes, and deep within her, he could see something burning. He smirked a little, realizing with the help of his nose what it was.



The goddess flushed pink and covered her mouth, stepping away from her lover. He just reached over and took her face in his hand and kissed her softly. He sighed. “I just want you to be healthy.”



She looked up at him seriously. “I am healthy.”



He smiled and shook his head. “No, Kim, you need me to help you.”



He enveloped her in a deep kiss that was filled with quiet passion. Both allowed their lips to part, tasting the other and rubbing their tongues together. Kimiko gasped in Yash’s mouth as her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she felt a rolling orgasm overcome her.



Yash pulled back and looked her in the eye, a little confused. “What was that about?” he asked.



She didn’t answer. She just looked at him; he saw that her eyes were glowing a fierce, bright blue. His eyes widened in shock and he took a step back. “Kimi?” he asked uneasily. His Kami lover growled a little at him and pounced, throwing him backward. He landed roughly on the floor of their bedroom, and he winced as pain shot through his neck and the back of his head. He had apparently hit the door when she forced him to the ground.



Yash blinked, a little confused, then gasped and moaned when he felt himself plunging into Kimiko; he looked at her as she straddled him, her eyes still aglow. She moaned as she bucked her hips back and forth slowly, drawing him in. He felt a small orgasm overcome him, and he twitched a little. Kimiko was panting, and she leaned forward and did so right in his ear, so he could hear her pleasure. He blinked, watching her, and her movements nearly drove him over.



Suddenly, Yash couldn’t stand it anymore. He grasped her hips and flung her over, to where he was on top of her. He grinned at her, his own amber eyes flashing with pure passion and playfulness. They held each other’s gaze, and he felt the inner folds of Kimiko’s womanhood tighten around him in anticipation of her upcoming climax.



“Inuyasha… I’m… com… coming,” she breathed heavily, her blue eyes still glowing brightly.



“Go ahead,” he murmured in her ear sensually. “And when you do…” He hesitated a little, knowing the effect this would have on him. ‘She needs it, though,’ he told himself. “Go ahead,” he finished. She nodded, understanding.



She screamed loudly as she was hit with wave after wave of pleasure, and Yash heard crackling and smelled burning as he saw them both become consumed by Kimiko’s ethereal blue light. He saw the light trailing slowly into Kimiko as she completed her climax, and he slowly pulled himself out of her and rolled over on his side, passing out.



Feeling energized from the experience, Kimiko stood and smiled down at her sleeping lover. When she looked up to grab her shirt, she noticed in the mirror that her normal coloring had returned. Slowly and carefully, she picked Yash up and laid him, in all his nude glory, in their bed, covering him with a blanket. She stood there a moment, thinking, then decided to chuck the t-shirt she had been wearing. Instead, she rummaged through their dresser and found his old haori. Smiling a little to herself, she decided to wear that with her jeans. She left the room and found her two daughters Minako and Moriko playing in the playroom with baby Aiko. She sat with her older daughter, and Moriko got the message.



‘Everything went well,’ she thought with a small smirk. ‘Good. Maybe my stepfather isn’t so selfish after all.’

______________________________________________________________________________________



In the year 2007, Inuyasha followed his nose to find his wife. He knew Kagome was in the photography studio in the back of the house, working. It had been almost three years since they defeated Naraku in the feudal era, and they had moved back to Kagome’s time with Sango, Miroku, and Shippo. Her mom, brother, and grandfather had moved to a smaller town outside Tokyo, handing the shrine over to her and her friends. Inuyasha was still a little hazy about how she and her family had worked out, but he figured he shouldn’t ask.



“They aren’t Kami, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she told him as he approached the small studio. Kagome had stepped outside to meet him. She smiled a little at him, and he grunted in mild annoyance that she had been eavesdropping on his thoughts.



“Are you sure you should be working with all those chemicals in there?” he asked her, gesturing to the small studio. She shook her head, rolling her eyes. “We’ve been through this, love,” she replied. “It won’t hurt me or the baby.”



“I just still don’t understand what’s going on,” he told her, his eyes dropping to her still flat tummy. “You’ve been pregnant for nearly two years now, and you haven’t gained any weight or girth. You fight and move as though you’re not pregnant, and nothing seems to hurt you or the baby. And why did we have to tell the doctor that the pregnancy terminated itself?” He sighed, shaking his head in confusion. “Are you sure there’s even still a baby in there?”



Kagome made a thoughtful face, obviously thinking through her next words. “Well, physically speaking, no,” she told him. He stared at his lover, bewildered. “But… Kami pregnancies are not like human pregnancies or even youkai or hanyou ones.



“In a Kami pregnancy, there is no physical fetus,” she told him. “That is why, when the doctor went looking around in preparation for the D&C, he didn’t find anything, so he concluded that it was a complete miscarriage, meaning the baby and the placenta had been expelled. A uterine scrape wasn’t necessary.”



Inuyasha grimaced at those words. ‘Uterine scrape,’ he thought to himself and shuddered. ‘Sounds painful and disgusting. I’m glad my woman didn’t have to go through that.’ He looked into his wife’s eyes as she continued.



“And, you’re right, Inuyasha, I have been pregnant with this baby for almost two years. That’s because that what I am carrying is not the baby itself but the baby’s life force. If you were a Kami with the Second Sight, you would easily be able to look at me and see the small bundle of energy I am protecting. It’s not physically connected to me, as a human or youkai mother and child would be, but it is spiritually connected to me. It sees what I see, hears what I hear… it knows what I know. It feels what I feel. When our baby finally gains permission to become a physical being, it will have already grown from these experiences it has gained from and shared with me.”



Inuyasha’s ear pricked in interest when he noticed something in her explanation that he didn’t understand. “What do you mean, ‘gains permission to become a physical being’?” he asked. “Our baby has to have permission to be born?”



Kagome laughed a little. Inuyasha hadn’t realized it before, but now he sensed the awkwardness radiating from his lover. She was just a little bit uncomfortable talking about this. “I’m sorry,” she told him quietly, still smiling. “It’s just that… well, this is like talking to a child about the birds and the bees. Not that I’m calling you a child, Inuyasha!” she cried out when she saw the look on his face at that. “It’s just that… that’s what it feels like to me. I mean, you know nothing about how my heritage or body works, mostly because it is so different from what you’ve grown accustomed to with mortal bodies.”



“So,” he grunted, nodding to her. “What did you mean before, when you said that?”



“Well,” she went on, “Kami births are also different from those of youkai, hanyou, and human children. Kami have laws… we are actually not supposed to create very many more Kami. Because I created one without gaining prior permission, I have to wait.” She glanced at him. He blinked, now even more confused. “How long will you have to wait?” he asked.



She shrugged, which worried him. “As you can see, there’s no rush. But it could take years.”



He rolled his eyes. Why did these entities have to be so complicated?



“There’s one other thing about the birth,” she went on nervously. “And I need to tell you what it is before it actually happens and you become even more shocked and confused than you are now.”



He nodded uneasily. “Go ahead.”



“Well, I know what you’re expecting,” Kagome started. “You’re expecting blood, and pain, and labor, and screaming, and crying, and you’re expecting a cute little bouncy baby to come forth from my loins into this world.” He made a little bit of a face at her choice of words and the pictures it brought to his mind. She had to bite back her laughter at his expression. “Well, maybe it’ll make you feel a little better to know that that won’t be happening with me. Because this is a Kami birth… it won’t be a baby.”



“What’ll it be then?”



“It will appear to be an adult,” she answered. “The child will be grown, and will just kind of… appear. There will be a little bit of pain and a sick feeling for me, as the energy exits my body… and it will be translated into a physical entity for the child I have helped make to occupy.”



His eyes had become wide listening, and now he tilted his head and stared at his wife. “Will this happen with all of our children?”



She gave him a small, meek smile. “Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on the child… and whether or not we want it to be a Kami.”



“We can choose?” he asked.



“At the time of conception, yes.”



Then he started to wonder. “Do you… I mean, have you had any other Kami children?”



His question caught Kagome off guard. She blinked. “No. I am about three millennia old, and this will be my first child. A real feat for some Kami,” she told him. “Why?”



He shrugged. “You just seem to know a lot about it. That’s all.”



She sighed. “I was born knowing these things. Just like our baby will be born knowing these things and everything else it was meant to know.”



He wondered something else now that he had never wondered before. “Who are your Kami parents?” he asked her. She swallowed a little. “It gets complicated,” she told him. “Izanami was my… ‘parent,’ if that’s what you would call it.”



“What do you mean?”



“Izanami created the idea of me,” she told him. “I wasn’t born, as our baby will be; I was created. I was designed, just like you were.”



Inuyasha snickered a little. “D’you think they designed me for you?”



He was playing, but she shook her head and gave him a serious look. “No. They do not design anyone specifically for other beings, whether they are Kami or otherwise. But, sometimes, without them realizing it, they do create the perfect balance to another one that they have created. A yin to a yang, if you will.”



He watched her. “Is that what happened with us?”



She smiled at him and nodded. “That is why, no matter what form I am, or what my demeanor is like… you love me, no matter what. And I love you.”



He hugged her close to him, cherishing the feel of her hot breath against his shoulder. “No matter what.”



All of a sudden, Kagome doubled over, grunting in pain and accidentally shoving her mate away. He went reeling, then bounced back up to his feet and caught Kagome before she fell over. She started panting, and then she turned a little and threw up. Inuyasha cried out, alarmed, and he was just about to throw his mate over his back and run her to a hospital when there was a bright flash of blue light and someone was standing there with them.



As he observed the newcomer, he realized that this must have been what Kagome had been explaining just minutes before. He had just unknowingly witnessed the birth of a god.



Well, goddess. Their grown daughter stood in front of them, smiling a small smile that instantly reminded him of his lover. She looked exactly like Kagome, with the exception of her eyes. They were Naraku’s eyes, deep and mysterious and violet. She stood with her arms crossed, looking them over. Inuyasha helped Kagome stand, and the older goddess wiped her mouth with her hand as she looked over her daughter.



Finally, the new girl broke the stunned silence. “Hi,” she said simply.



“I’m Kimiko,” Kagome introduced herself. Inuyasha growled inwardly at himself. ‘I still need to get used to that,’ he thought. He felt his lover’s hand rest of his chest and realized Kagome had just introduced him to their daughter.



“I’m Moriko,” the goddess told them with a bright smile, and she shined brightly and happily.



Kagome laughed a little. “We’ll have to help you work on that,” she told her daughter. The two women began to walk back to the house, leaving Inuyasha stunned.

____________________________________________________________________________________



A/N: wow this one was long. I was going to end it at the end of the part with Kimi and Yash, but I felt like I needed to go on and explain Moriko’s origins. Don’t know why I felt like that, but I did it. So there.