Inuyasha Manga: 049 Malice

No doubt about it, Kikyou woke up MIGHTY cranky. And you know it's because she ignored that age-old advice not to go to bed angry. But, you know, when you cut off all lines of communication with your partner by sealing them into a magic sleep, you don't really give yourself any choice but to remain angry instead of working it all out. Now she's in the same position as Mayu, having died under terrible hurtful circumstances and with a grudge to settle. Well, with the small tweak of having a body and a good deal more power to exact her that malice with.

Oh, and Kikyou has GENUINELY been betrayed by someone, though her sense of betrayal may well be placed on the wrong person...

Uh, YEAH, Inuyasha. After hearing her story in the last chapter, do you really BLAME her?

Kaede has left Kikyou's side and pulled Kagome from her bath. She must have realized that Kagome was liable to drown if she wasn't removed. While Shippou asks what's wrong with Kagome, Kaede looks back at Kikyou with concern, wondering if she won't be satisfied unless she's killed Inuyasha. She worries that if they can't calm Kikyou's hatred, then the soul will never return to Kagome and Future-Girl won't wake up again.

Kikyou fires another arrow at Inuyasha, which Inuyasha has no intention of sitting still for, as was recommended by Kikyou. He draws the Tessaiga with a groan.

Oh yeah, Kikyou wasn't around when he got that new toy. Must be quite the shock to her.

Inuyasha tosses the Tessaiga aside, to Shippou's shock, and lunges for Kikyou.

He says he's not interested in getting her to like him after all that's happened, but he's also not interested in letting Kikyou kill him for something he didn't do. A sweating Kikyou's eyes widen at Inuyasha's claim to not have done anything. She demands he stop playing innocent, because she was there, and remembers that it was him. His claws, his theft of the jewel, his deceit.

Kikyou remembers the same thing Inuyasha did in his own reference to her deceit a couple of chapters ago, except a tad expanded; Kikyou and Inuyasha sit on that grassy hill, where Inuyasha is asking about the notion of him becoming human. Kikyou tells him it's possible, because he's already halfway there. She thinks of the jewel as she says that when youkai get their hands on the jewel, their powers only continue to increase and perpetuate the existence of the jewel. However, Kikyou believes that Inuyasha's wish to become human would purify the jewel, and it would likely disappear. This hypothesis prompts Inuyasha to ask what would happen to her in that event, because, you know, she would lose her job. Kikyou admits that as the one who protects to jewel, she could just become an ordinary woman.

At the end of her flashback, Kikyou reminds Inuyasha that he promised to become human at that time, and that they could live together. Inuyasha insists that he was serious about that, but Kikyou yanks back on his hands around her wrists, demanding that he stop lying to her.

Inuyasha, this isn't how you make a woman less angry at you. In fact, it's likely to have the opposite effect. And since you let go of her wrists, she can retaliate.

Kikyou appears to be subdued for the moment, though, haltingly saying Inuyasha's name again. She an Inuyasha fall to their knees, Inuyasha still clinging to Kikyou. He begins to waffle on about how she's had a heart-breaking experience too, and as a human woman, she's been far more hurt by the events than him. Kikyou's eyes brim with tears as she says his name again, blinking to let the tears run down her cheeks.

Kaede wonders if this means that Kikyou is feeling a bit calmer now, while Kikyou softly tells Inuyasha that he should let go and that it's too late.

See? See? Still pissed.

Inuyasha crouches some ways away from Kikyou, gaping at her. Kikyou informs him that since she detested him at the moment of her death, her soul isn't going to move on from that point, and she won't rest until he's dead. But... your soul DID move on? What is Kagome? Chopped liver? Speaking of which, Kaede is still holding onto Kagome's body as she yells to a dumbfounded Inuyasha to break her sister's.

Kikyou is understandably upset by her own sister urging Inuyasha to kill her, but Kaede tells Inuyasha to free Kikyou's soul from the imitation body and the oni spell that made it, a tear in her eye. Kikyou tells Kaede that it's no use, because her hatred will prevent her from returning to Kagome's body as well. She raises her hands that crackle with angry energy toward Inuyasha, beginning a declaration that only Inuyasha's death will satisfy her hatred. Inuyasha groans, cracking his knuckles in preparation for a fight, but hanging his head as he forms a fist with his raised hand and realizing that he can't do it. He can't make himself kill her.

Kaede shouts at Inuyasha to get himself out of the way, but she suddenly looks down at Kagome when she feels an odd pulse from the body.

Well that's creepy.

Just as Kikyou is about to grab hold of Inuyasha again, she collapses and hugs herself, the tendrils of soul that had entered her before now leaving from various points of her body. Kaede sits in awe of the soul escaping yet again.

Kaede looks down at Kagome's face with its blank stare and is alarmed that she wasn't just a cast-off shell like Urasue said. She has to drop Kagome, though, when the soul comes barrelling for Kagome's body, being pushed back by its re-entry into its home. Kagome's eyes shut hard as she falls back on the ground, finally expressive again. Inuyasha stares, mouth agape.

Kagome groans, face pressed into the ground, but now looking like she's just sleeping. Kaede kneels next to her again, and Inuyasha approaches as well, speechless but wondering if Kikyou managed to calm down a bit. He looks around to find Kikyou's imitation body staggering off in the opposite direction.

For someone who never wanted to be brought back, she sure is clinging to this new life she has, huh?

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? Inuyasha is SUCH a fucking idiot. He embraces Kikyou without her wanting him to, refuses to let her go, and mumbles about how she must have suffered so much more than he did from this horrible event that tore them apart. It's one thing to restrain her so she can't try to hurt him anymore, but Inuyasha really wasn't doing himself any favors by forcing unwanted intimate contact on her, ESPECIALLY when she views him as a traitorous piece of shit. And without explaining to her HIS similar experience of betrayal in that very same situation, he implies that he's suffered from it as well? Yes, he did, but this nonspecific moaning about it didn't help Kikyou to understand what happened to him and how it's so similar to what she went through. "Your suffering was greater than my suffering" isn't telling her anything she didn't already believe.

He just didn't do himself any favors here, and it was brilliant. He's still reluctant to actually vocalize what actually happened to him, and relate it to what happened to Kikyou. He's still REALLY clumsy in communicating his feelings around the incident, especially in trying to play up Kikyou's feelings around it over his. Furthermore, it's through this clumsy waffling that he reveals he's still in so much shock over Kikyou being there that he's not quite treating the situation as real. He's not talking to her like a real person who is accusing him of horrible deeds, but as a phantom of the past that has popped up screaming and crying and needing to be soothed until it disappears. He's treating this resurrected Kikyou like the dream he had at the beginning of the arc.

Which strikes me as such a layered and delicate attitude to have the intricacies of his character are enriched, and so is the reader's immersion in the chapter. I'm always amazed at the level of depth these characters have, and it's complexity from the simplest of rules. Inuyasha is a emotionally closed individual who finds it difficult to express himself, and presented with all these different situations, we see the various ways he reacts to them within that context.

Kikyou will have a similar complexity, and you can see it already in the way that she's fleeing having her soul taken from her. She began this ordeal being angry that she was brought back to life, and now she's fixated on the hatred of Inuyasha that she carried with her into death and the resurrection. She's an incredibly repressed individual who was unable to express herself while living for fear of showing weakness to enemies, and now we'll get to see how she handles that part of herself in her resurrection.

Of course, she'll have to resist Kagome taking back their soul before that happens.