The Sins of the Father

~Sengoku Jidai~

Envy.

It was an emotion that Tsubaki knew all too well, and one that would eventually damn her.

However it was not envy she felt, but satisfaction, as she held the blackened Shikon fragment in her hand and watched the young miko and her friends struggle ineffectively against her power.

Tsubaki had the reincarnation panting on the ground, very near death from the mental torture Tsubaki was inflicting on her. None of her friends were able to offer the young miko any help; mostly because they were otherwise occupied trying to fend off the inu beast Tsubaki had sent after them, and not having much success at it.

But as… beautiful as the scene in front of her was, it was a small cry to the beauty of the large, blackened jewel fragment she was holding.

How many years had she desired this very thing? How many years had she hated Kikyo for being trusted with the responsibility, while she was passed over as undeserving?

It had been fifty.

Fifty years since she had challenged the other miko for the jewel, which by all rights, should have been hers to begin with. After all, the elder from the taijiya village had given it to her own master to protect and keep it purified. But when her master fell ill, and the time came for him to pass on the responsibility, he gave the jewel to Kikyo instead.

It had sent Tsubaki into a jealous rage. Why, why did he do that? He knew how much she had wanted the jewel – it was to be her key to eternal youth and beauty, after all. But instead, the aging priest chose another miko – one that had not dutifully served him for years.

She immediately left her master, and went to challenge the other miko for the rights to the jewel. Upon seeing her for the first time, Tsubaki’s jealousy and anger compounded even more. Kikyo was nothing special. She was not as pretty as Tsubaki, not as lively as Tsubaki, and definitely not as… worthy as Tsubaki. In her rage, she had directed her shikigami to attack the other miko. Kikyo easily blocked the attack with her bow, thus sending the shikigami ricocheting back to her where it struck her directly in the left eye. Now, she would bear a scar around her eye for the rest of her life.

Was it any surprise that she started practicing the darker miko arts afterwards? After all, what had devotion and conviction to the lighter arts earned her? Nothing but a betrayal by the one she had looked up to with reverence.

And in order to obtain the eternal youth and beauty she had so desired, the kuro miko had been left with no other alternative than to make a devil’s bargain with the very creatures that were supposedly the bane of her very existence. Much like Onigumo before her, Tsubaki had offered up her body as a host for nearly a hundred lesser youkai. This act had indeed given her power and the ability to extend her life and keep her youthful appearance, but it had not come without a price. For the demons inside of her began to devour what was left of her soul and her sanity, and she knew that she had to undo what she so foolishly had done.

Tsubaki began a search for Kikyo, now that she had the power to annihilate the miko who had thwarted her. She had planned to kill her, and claim the jewel for herself, once and for all. That way should could use the jewel to rid herself of the demons who were plaguing her and poisoning her mind, and keep her eternal youth and immortality in the process.

To her horror, she found that the other miko was gone from this world, and she had taken the Shikon Jewel with her in death.

Now, fifty years later, the jewel had returned, and in the body of Kikyo’s reincarnation no less. The thought of that absolutely had her blood boiling – for it was another affront to Tsubaki that the jewel should follow her nemesis through yet another life.

So when Naraku approached her with his very large fragment of the jewel, and offered it to her in exchange for her services, Tsubaki agreed to his proposal almost immediately. She would have agreed anyway, since it gave her the long desired chance to gain vengeance against Kikyo’s very soul.

Tsubaki grimaced, as she looked into the mind of the reincarnation. How pathetic. She was – in love – with the same hanyou that had been her previous incarnation’s downfall. Even more pathetic was her obvious envy of her own soul.

Tsubaki played upon the girl’s insecurities and fears, causing her great pain and distress as the small, blackened fragments of the jewel inside of the younger miko responded to the animosity and hatred present in the much larger fragment that Tsubaki held. She finally had her nemesis weakened and dying in front of her, and she felt such a rush of power from it. No longer was she the weaker of the two. Look at what she could do with it, how she could twist it to harm its own chosen guardian?

No longer was she unworthy of the jewel.

The other one, the weak little miko writhing around on the ground in pain – she was the unworthy one.

~~~

~Meiji Era~

The woman who lived in the small shrine deep within the oni forest was much, much older than those of the nearby village could even guess.

At this point in her life, she was a peaceful and penitent woman who had spent the last four centuries analyzing her own existence. Her self imposed penance for her past sins was to protect the well, and consequently protect the events that had yet to pass along with the ones that had already long since fell into the realm of legends.

She was also miko with some small skills. Not nearly as many as she had had in her youth, but she was still able to use her faithful shikigami to help keep the simple forest youkai at bay. She also had the boy and the neko youkai to assist her in her task. The neko youkai had been wary of her at first – after all, the last time she had seen the firecat, she tried to kill its companions – but had warmed to her once the extent of her remorse became clear.

Remorse. It was something she now knew well. It wasn’t an emotion she had initially felt, when the hanyou defeated her and left her for dead. She had survived – the gods had not seen fit to grant her with the gift of death – but the demons that she had been harboring within her body were driven out by his attack.

Remorse was something that came in the many years that had passed since then.

Initially, she had wallowed in self-pity. For when the demons left her, so did her beauty, and she reverted to the old and scarred woman she truly was. She had hoped that death would come swiftly, because the alternative was living the rest of her life as a half-blind old hag, and that she could not abide.

However, the Kami had not deemed her worthy of that gift. And so Tsubaki wandered for many years, angry at the gods, unwilling to recognize that she had brought their wrath down upon herself. It took almost two centuries before she finally realized that she had been flawed, and that she had never been worthy of anything.

Nearly two more centuries passed before she finally came to accept herself as she was – an old, handicapped miko with little power and no beauty.

But she did not truly learn the extent of her sins until that day in the inn, when she became responsible for the life of another.

And of all the things in her life that she had not been worthy of, the love and devotion of Yasuo topped off the list by far. He was the one bright spot in a life that was otherwise wasted, and for him, she would do anything.

The gods had a sense of humor she supposed, as she thought about the irony of her caring for the child who was not only the last descendant of the taijiya and the houshi, but who would also be the ancestor of Kikyo’s reincarnation. But care for him she did, as if he was her own son.

Really, the purpose of life was so simple, and had nothing to do with outer beauty or immortality, and everything to do with love.

How could she have misunderstood that simple truth for so very many years?

The Kami allowed her to begin aging again on that day when she brought Yasuo and Kirara back to the shrine. And the last eleven years had not been kind to her at all. She could barely walk anymore, and was losing what remained of her sight in her right eye as well. She knew that she had little time left before death would finally claim her. But at least she would die happy and content with herself...

And she would die worthy.

~~~

“Kuso!”

Sano swore aloud as he cut himself yet again when he tried to move a particularly thick set of brambles out of the way of the path.

So far, he had not seen any demons, and he was really beginning to think that the old innkeeper was a coot. However, the overgrown plants on the path were definitely demonic in and of themselves, and he silently cursed the kid who supposedly traveled this path all the time. Would it have killed him to clear it off a bit?

He was nearly an hour into the forest, and still had at least another five or six hours before he came upon the old shrine at the eastern edge of Tokyo. The more he thought on it, the more he was certain that the shrine was where Kenshin would be, and he picked up his pace a bit in anticipation. .

He came to a small clearing, where there was a large stump from a tree that had recently been cut down, and sat for a moment. Sano reached into his bag and pulled out a canister of water and took a large swig. He was a little sweaty from the walk and the fight with the local vegetation, and the cool water felt really refreshing as it trickled down his throat. In the clearing, he was able to look up and see the bright sun and the blue sky through the tops of the trees. It really was a very nice day, and had he not been in such a hurry, he might have enjoyed this little trek through the woods.

Sano yawned and stretched his arms, in preparation to continue, when the sky overhead suddenly darkened. He tensed, sensing an ominous presence, and looked skyward.

What he saw was enough to send him home screaming.

There were… wasps… huge ones, flying at an amazing speed directly overhead. There must have been at least two dozen of them. Frozen in terror, it was all he could do to stay completely still with his heart rate accelerating and his breathing coming in fast spurts. He contemplated reaching into his bag for one of the throwing stars, but as of yet the huge insects had not paid any mind to him, so he felt for the time being it would be better not to antagonize them.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably closer to sixty seconds, the wasps were gone and the blue sky was once again visible. Sano pulled himself to his feet, as white as a sheet, and shook his head.

‘They were not bugs. No, that was not what I saw. Not demonic bugs, Sano. Don’t let the old man get to ya. They were just birds. Big, fucking birds… and youkai don’t exist.’

As he shakily started walking on the path again, Sano silently repeated the mantra ‘youkai don’t exist’ in his head, and firmly ignored the scared little voice in his head reminding him that he’d just seen undeniable proof that they do.

~~~

“Tsubaki-sama?”

The old miko was pulled from her reverie by the breathless voice of her ward. She turned her head in his direction, and offered him a small, tired smile.

“Hai, Yasuo. What is it?”

She could barely make out the boy’s facial features, but could tell from the shadows of his stance, and his rapid breathing that the boy had come to her in quite a hurry. Something was definitely amiss.

“I feel a strange energy emanating from the well.”

“WHAT?”

“I don’t know how to explain it. I was gathering some more wood from the forest – I almost have enough to start building the well house, by the way! But anyway, when I dropped off the pile of logs next to the well, something started happening. I saw a blue light, and I didn’t know what to do, so I ran here. Tsubaki-sama – what does the light mean?”

Tsubaki had an idea – she knew of the terrors that the boy of Naraku had caused; after all it was because of him that Yasuo came to be in her care – and if the well had been activated, that meant that she was here. If she was here, it was because the Kami had decided it was time for her to complete what was left unfinished so many years ago, and remove the scourge of the dark hanyou’s evil for good.

“It means we have some visitors, Yasuo,” she answered, and the boy looked at her with dawning understanding. After all, he had been raised on the legends of the Shikon no Tama and the Bone Eaters Well.

Tsubaki knew that she could be of assistance – if only to provide her with what little information she had managed to garner. Also, the neko youkai could be of some help to the miko in her quest.

Tsubaki no longer held any hatred or envy for the girl from the future in her heart, but the other miko did not know that. Tsubaki also knew that the girl would not initially trust her, and could only hope that the presence of Yasuo and Kirara would convince her that she meant her no harm.

The neko youkai in question suddenly made herself known as she jumped into Tsubaki’s lap with a small mew.

“Hai, Kirara… we shall go,” she said softly, as she reached down to pet her. The cat jumped down and instantly transformed, in order to offer Tsubaki a ride to the well.

Yasuo helped her mount the large firecat, and Tsubaki turned to him and smiled.

“Come on Yasuo-chan… let’s go greet our guests.”

~~~

Kenshin felt a little dizzy as the blue light enveloped him, and for an eternal moment he seemed to be completely surrounded by nothing but the stars. Kagome was there with him in that void as well, tightly holding on to his hand, giving him a measure of strength and reassurance that he so desperately needed.

All of this was so surreal, and had he not witnessed and experienced it himself, he would have thought it impossible. Time traveling was a thing of fairy tales, after all. But then again, so were youkai and hanyou.

After a short while, the blue light receded and he found himself at the bottom of the well. Kenshin blinked when he saw the blue sky overhead. Hadn’t they been in a well house? But then again, if they really were back in the Meiji era, perhaps it hadn’t been built yet.

Kagome looked at him with some concern.

“You okay? The first time I traveled through the well, I felt like I wanted to hurl. But then again, I was pulled into the well by a centipede youkai, so maybe the ‘wanting to hurl’ feeling was really part of that,” she said, a bit nervously, as she brushed off her hakama.

He nodded and offered her a small smile, before he started to look around. There really was only one way out of the well, and that was via a rickety looking ladder against the side. He doubted it would support both their weight at once, so he decided to offer to go first, in order to preserve her modesty.

“Kag—“

He stopped mid sentence when he realized that she was already half-way up, her hakama loose and open around her legs, and he had a perfectly good view of her—

“Are you coming, Kenshin? Don’t worry about the ladder supporting both of us. It is much sturdier than it looks.”

He swallowed thickly; not so much because of the thought of climbing up the ladder, but because of the view she was unknowingly presenting to him. Kami, her legs were so well formed, and her skin was pale and beautiful, and –.

“What’s the hold up?”

“Uh… hai, Kagome-dono,” he stuttered out as he forced himself to ignore the reactions of his body and followed her up the ladder.

“I told you to drop the dono!”

“Hai.”

When they reached the top of the well, Kenshin blinked a couple of times. This was definitely the same shrine, however the house on the shrine grounds was much smaller. He was confused about it for a moment, before he realized that sometime over the next century, this house would come down and the one that Kagome lived in would be built to replace it.

About twenty seconds after they were both out of the well, the bright blue glow appeared again within its depths. With a small cry and a large leap, Shippo was standing in front of them, with little pieces of wood in his hair and dirt on his face from the floor of the wellhouse.

Kenshin tried, he really did, but he couldn’t stifle the snicker that came forth of its own accord.

“Kagome, I swear that was so mean! How could—“

But Shippo suddenly cut off with a growl. Startled, Kenshin turned and saw that Kagome had her bow out in front of her, and an arrow nocked and ready to go. He followed the line of the target with narrowed eyes, and saw that she was aiming for…

Was she aiming for the old lady or the demon? Certainly, she was not going to fire at the boy, was she?

Concerned, he looked at her face, only to balk at her narrowed, sapphire eyes, and the terrifying expression upon her face.

For it was an expression he knew all too well. It was one that the Battousai frequently used, after all, and one that promised death.

“Tsubaki,” Kagome hissed with more venom than he thought her even capable of, and Kenshin subconsciously dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword.

~~~

A/N: Well, there you go, Chapter 17. I WON AN AWARD – WHOO HOO…. I’m so very flattered… it was from the IYfanguild for best Xover, 4th quarter 2004. I didn’t even know I had been nominated for one! Wow! *squeals* … thanks everyone who nominated/voted for me for that thing. Seriously! I’m very, very flattered.

I would like to extend a great big THANK YOU to Diane, who is now beta-ing this fic for me. She’s also helping me to further refine the back chapters. Diane absolutely rocks!

FYI: Made a minor change to chapter 1: Before I had miroku and sango escorting kagome to the well – obviously that doesn’t work with the kouga/hiko plot point. So I changed it so she’s now stealing out in the middle of the night, for consistency.

Also, if anyone is interested, I along with a woman that I co-author fics with (rose a.k.a. BuffyBot76) have started a yahoo group for hentai anime crossover fiction. Mainly focusing on IY/YYH/RK stuff. If you like that kind of thing (and if you’re reading this, and have gotten this far into the story, then it must at least intrigue you somewhat), come join us! The url is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/hentaiXanime

Now, for some reviewer responses:

Thank you to sexililkagome for being my 100th reviewer! Whoo hoo!

Deep Serenity – Yes, Sesshy’s always had a big case of overconfidence; especially when his half-breed brother knocks the hell out of him time and time again. I don’t like stories that make him ‘more powerful than god’. He lost an arm, for crying out loud! The guy has weaknesses! But his largest weakness by far is pride.

Coffee Gyrl – You know I love you… lol and I really like the absolute sacrilege of Kagome flushed with passion while her miko hakama is hiked up, and open in the front LOL. Oh, the possibilities… BTW your description of Kenshin’s ‘shita’ is exactly how I imagined it. My hubby used to be in the army for a while as well, and spent a good deal of his time eating dirt when they did drills. Also, Kenshin’s half human, and as a kitsune-hanyou, he’s a little more delicate than an inu-hanyou – so what wouldn’t bother Shippo or Inuyasha could really hurt Kenshin. He has other abilities that more than compensate for Inu’s strength, if you were going to compare the two. He’s much faster than Inu, handles his sword better (mmm…. Kenshin’s sword… LOL sorry, I’m a hentai), and will be able to do some kitsune magic; especially the illusion stuff. And, yes, I’ll be sad to see his pink gi go as well; especially since the fire rat robes are going to clash terribly with his hair LOL.

Kuwa: Yes, I’m sure Inu’s having a good laugh right now in the afterlife. It’s revenge from the grave for all those “Kagome – Inuyasha is being mean to me!”, “OSUWARI” moments!

Jasmine Fields: Sesshy’s time is coming, but probably not for another 10 chapters or so, if not more. But it will DEFINITELY be worth the wait, LOL. I have the whole scene mapped out already!

Thanks to everyone else that reviewed!

Japanese Words:

Sengoku Jidai – Japan’s Fuedal era
Miko – shrine maiden
Kuro Miko - Black Miko
Youkai – demon
Shikigami - Literally means paper mat. This term is also used in reference to familiars (magical pets) and creatures created from ofuda by Shinto magic. In this case, I am using it to refer to Tsubaki’s snake like thing.
Neko – cat
Inu – dog
Hanyou – half demon
Kami – god/gods
Kuso – shit
Hai – yes
Hakama – loose pleated pants worn over a kimono.
Dono – miss
Battousai – Directly translates to ‘Sword Drawing’…
Hitokiri Battousai – translates to ‘Sword Drawing Man Slayer’ (pretty accurate description of Ishin Shishi kenshin.