Souls are tricky things.

They cannot be created, instead souls must be born. The cycle of reincarnation cannot be interrupted or changed.

A soul cannot exist within two bodies at one point in time. The mikos were a special case, Kikyou's body merely a dirt and clay imitation, not flesh and blood. The reincarnation of her memories extracted and melded from their hatred to tie her to a corporeal form; one that necessitated the haku of other dead women to function.

As such, a soul can be stolen. This does not always work, however, as stated before, souls are tricky. If the skin does not fit, the body may move, but the mind and the individual will most likely cease to exist, leaving nothing but an empty shell.

Even Naraku himself, with the power of an almost complete Shikon no Tama, must abide by these simple rules.

And so, without realizing it, Naraku is collecting souls. Somehow his slimy tentacles slip their way through the Bone Eater's Well, seeking out the perfect fit.

…

Kagura the wind user doesn't have a soul, but Kagura Suzumiya does.

So, when the human slips into a coma after a drug overdose, those slimy tentacles are quick to snatch her up, to drag her down into darkness and force that soul into a new skin, a better one, a stronger one. They wrap her up tight and sow her shut with a bow in the shape of a spider.

And it is the youkai who opens crimson eyes, clouded in confusion and alight in wonder.

Kagura doesn't much care, at first, that she's been ripped from her life. She's always been awkward in her own skin. Even though she was born into it, it never fit quite right, and she's always looked for an escape. The drugs were merely a quick release.

But this skin, this body, feels right. The new strength, the wind in her face and hair, she can see better, she feels more. The earth moves beneath her feet, the wind speaks to her and she responds, flying and soaring, she dances on the eddies and they take her where they please.

It's beautiful, this dance, this life, this world. She can feel it, in her skin and bones.

And to her, Naraku is a savior, he's given her this gift, this new dance of life. She owes him. So she doesn't much care when he tells her to kill the Yourouzokou, she's a youkai now after all, she might as well live up to the legends.

It doesn't matter that she treats it more like a game, she laughs because to her, it is. Killing has become fun, especially when your opponents are snarling wolf men intent on taking your head. All she needs is her fan, one flick and the bodies are rent through. She loves the power of the wind, the way it courses around her and how she can make the corpses dance. Her puppets to control, an amusing spectacle until the end.

Of course there's pain, and the game is over, but this body heals quickly enough, and all she's left with is rage.

She's been betrayed, lied to. She is merely a test subject in some monster's game, a lab rat to be mutilated.

She realizes that she never really escaped anything, that this body, in all it's glory, is not hers. It's no longer a gift, merely a glorified prison. Her heart, it seems, managed to escape, only to be caught by the man whose mark now scars her back.

The reality of it is enough to drive her mad, mad enough to consider returning to a human body. To that weakness. It makes her sick.

She wants that youkai heart, so much so that it aches in the place where the muscle should be.

So she plots his demise, and when she finds someone who might be able to win her freedom, she finds herself falling back on human expressions. She thinks it's ironic, that the man who could be powerful enough to win back her heart is just to her taste.

Sesshoumaru himself doesn't care for her, or at least, never shows otherwise. He's not one for talking, not with her, he turns down her offer of Shikon shards, and refuses to aide her. He leaves her with only basic advice:

If you want something, get it yourself.

Later, she laughs. Not every damsel gets her Prince Charming.

She's punished, of course, for disobeying her master, and with her own eyes she finally sees the monstrosity that spawned this skin she wears.

She starts to regret.

In the time she is confined her resolve is hardened, and she is released more determined than ever to finally own this body, regardless of what created it. She'll get what she wants, no matter the cost.

She covers her tracks as best she can, hides her traitorous thoughts, and keeps secrets that might redeem her. She tries to help those who wish for her master's death, though some don't realize it, others don't acknowledge her actions at all.

It doesn't matter that she's not thanked, it doesn't matter that she's attacked with full force, even though she fights back with less than half her strength. Because she will be free and this body will be hers and her skin will finally fit.

There are setbacks, of course. Like the infant and the white child who can read minds. Her blood boils when she realizes that it would have been hers, had she merely left the stupid runt to die.

But she laughs because Naraku would. Would entrust his heart to her, would count on her ignorance to keep him alive.

It's a slap in the face. And her hunt starts all over again.

Kagura helps, in small ways. She gives the fuyouheki crystal to Sesshoumaru, tells him where Naraku's heart lies. She leads the Inu-tachi to the bastard. That one was a trap of course, but at least she tried.

There are moments, short lived ones, when she doesn't hate this fate of hers. When she thinks, had things been different, she might have had a chance with the dai-youkai. When he pulls her from the river, and what she hopes are concerned eyes watch as she flies away. When he protects her from Mouryoumaru, more or less, in his own way.

She disregards the fact that Sesshoumaru attacks them both, full strength, only moments later. She's always been a bit of a hopeless romantic.

But no matter how hard she fights, or how far she digs her claws into this world, it means nothing.

In the end, her downfall isn't the attachment to the Inu Dai-youkai. It's to a young boy, forsaken just the same as she. He reminds her of a sibling, one she never valued when she'd had him. But Kohaku is close enough, with that simple grin and freckled cheeks.

His body, though only living because of a Shikon shard, is his own. He belongs here. She does not. He deserves to live on. She wonders if she ever deserved to live at all.

Kagura sends the boy away instead of obeying a new master. If she can't win her own freedom, why not fight for someone else's? It might be the only redeeming act she's ever done, she wonders if it's too late to start being selfless.

She knows she'll die, and really, it doesn't matter anymore. Maybe death was the freedom she sought all along.

The Inuyasha-tachi want to help, but it's already too late for that. She won't give herself hope by letting their righteousness get the better of her. Naraku can wait, he's done it before. Why prolong the inevitable? She's fought these people too long, no point in getting attached if she's to die anyway.

She briefly wonders if she should tell the miko, tell her what she should have said all along. But thinks better of it. No reason to make things more complicated. What reason would the girl have to even believe her?

So instead, she flies. As fast as she can, reveling in the feeling of the wind upon her skin. She savors it, the last time she'll have this power.

She's not surprised when he finds her. Lies to her, because that's really all he's ever done. He enjoys it, watching others suffer, far too much for his own good.

Naraku leaves her with a beating heart and gaping holes through her chest. At least he leaves her to herself. He lets her find her own place to die, he won't make her suffer through his gaze in her last moments. She's thankful for that.

She keeps flying until she can't anymore. Til the wind beneath her feathers begins to lose strength and she can't keep herself afloat. She lands in a field of flowers, stumbles through the petals, staining them a brilliant red, her own blood. The blood of this youkai body that she's desired so badly.

She collapses to her knees, lets the wind caress her face. It's not hers, not anymore. She waits, watches the flowers sway in the breeze. She realizes she's never done that before. Never sat in the grass and appreciated it. She does now that it's too late.

She's glad because this body is finally hers. This body with all it's scars and leaking wounds, is hers. She owns it, but it won't obey. Won't move. She wants to scream but even that is beyond her now.

The waiting is the worst thing, but in the end she's glad for that, too, because if it had been quick she would not have seen him again.

She smiles because he's there, and she thinks she sees something other than contempt in his eyes. She wishes she could speak more, could tell him, but really all that matters is that he's there, that he came for her, he won't let her die alone. That maybe he cared.

"I knew it was you." And she smiles.

When her body begins to break apart, the pain stops. She's free from that, too. And she expects the darkness to swallow her. She waits to be pulled into the abyss, because, let's face it, she wasn't the nicest person around, in either of her lives.

What she doesn't expect to see is a hospital room.

There's a man standing next to the bed, his face lit by the green glow of too many monitors. There's some incessant beeping sound coming from one of them, she wants to smash the damn thing, but finds that she still can't move. Her body still won't obey.

There's a woman, crying, screaming her name, a grin spread from ear to ear. It takes Kagura a moment to connect the face to the word "mother".

…

"When you woke up, you were smiling."

Kagura finds that strange, because what does she have to smile about?

She can't do much of anything, she can barely walk, her legs atrophied from five months of disuse. Her skin feels flimsy, too weak, soft. She suspects that's because it's human, not because of the side effects of her coma.

They tell her, in no uncertain terms, that she had been brain dead. That they thought she would never wake up. That it's a miracle she can even open her eyes. She's not really listening.

Kagura, the wind user, may have just been a dream, and that thought terrifies her. But how could it have been a dream, if she couldn't have dreamed?

She tells no one.

…

She hates this body, it's weaknesses.

They teach her how to walk again. How to run. But she can't fly.

She misses the feel of the wind on her face and rustling her hair. The closest she gets is an open window on the car ride home.

She hates this world, the smells and the noise. The chaos that is a city street in the day. Everything is bright and sharp, too hot or too cold, too fast. Too many eyes and smiling faces.

The Sengoku Jidai was never kind. But at least there were no pretenses, life was easy if you knew how to live. And Kagura the wind user had known, she had learned. Maybe too late, but she had learned.

At the very least, she has a family now, one that cares for her. This one was born together, grew together. It wasn't made, wasn't created with evil intent. And while she hated some of her youkai siblings less than others, there was never any expectation that they loved each other.

But this human family is different. She forgets this sometimes.

A cousin comes by two months after she wakes up, bringing their newborn baby, chubby and hairless and swathed in a fuzzy white blanket, two little hands clasped together under its' chin. It's black eyes blink up at her, still too stupid to register its' surroundings. But nonetheless Kagura feels a chill down her spine, she scoffs and grimaces, leaves the room.

Her mother scolds her for it later, but she doesn't go back. Content staying by herself so long as she doesn't have to look into those little eyes.

…

She has nightmares―no, night terrors. Dreams she can't adequately wake up from, that leave remnants standing at the foot of her bed, on her chest, sometimes both, and with her heartbeat erratic and thudding painfully in fear it's as if someone is squeezing it.

Sometimes it's a spider, sometimes a baboon, other times an assortment of youkai bones, red eyes glowing in the dark.

Once, it's Hakudoushi, or Juroumaru, Kageroumaru, Moryoumaru, she can't tell, the features changing and shifting as her mind tries to form the entity. He comes closer, closer than they've ever come before. Kanna…?

And then it shifts, red eyes and greasy black hair because it always ends with him. His eyes and his laugh and his hands squeezing…

She regains movement just in time to swing an arm at the apparition―

―And catches her mother in the jaw.

Tears fill her eyes and her mother cradles her injured cheek, sputtering something about being worried.

She stops checking on her at night after that.

In truth, her parents should be proud because she no longer comes home late, no longer brings home strangers, no longer asks for odd amounts of money for things she can't name.

Instead she keeps to herself. She crawls up onto the roof, stays there for hours upon hours. Often she falls into contemplative silence, anger and rage and melancholy flitting across her face. She reads old books, fairytales and folklores, mumbles to herself and they can never quite understand what she says.

Often they catch her staring in a mirror. She runs her fingers over rounded ears and squints and tugs at her eyes. No matter how much she does this, shapes and colors still don't change.

They never ask her why she does these things, never ask her if she dreamed. She's glad they don't.

…

She doesn't go back to school, no point to it. She'd been inches from dropping out before, that's not going to change now.

Instead she gets a job, and at first that's hard to do because of her record, but she manages. She can handle taking orders from a boss, because there's something in it for her, and she can quit anytime. She likes having that option more than she hates uniforms.

She takes up dance again, something she stopped years ago when she'd started to give up, when she'd found it all pointless. Ballet and the dances of her namesake, traditional, partner less. She hates the idea of being led, of being pushed and pulled like a doll.

She strains herself, rebuilding muscle and flexibility, til her lungs burn and her body aches, til her heart is pounding through her chest. She likes that bit, because it's proof that at least she got one thing out of the bargain.

If her skin doesn't fit, she's damn determined to make it fit. She will make her human skin and muscle more like that of a youkai. She will bend it to her will.

But it's not just the body that she craves, she misses that world. Full of dangerous and fantastical things. Where there were no skyscrapers to damper her wind. Where the trees shook and sang with the breeze. She misses the feel of dirt and grass between her toes. She misses the sight of a blue moon.

Her life continues, and everyday memories of a dream that may have never been slip away. She tries to grab them, writing, in jumbles, disconnected thoughts and memories. She hopes that maybe one day she can prove that it was real, if only to herself.

…

Months later, in the spring, she hears it:

"Excuse me! Excuse me! Has anyone seen my bag?"

A hand groping through the bodies, a familiar voice, but she can't quite place it. She tries to look, tries to peek around the heads and arms obscuring her view. The train dings, announces the closing doors, there's a shriek―one Kagura is intimately familiar with and she finally sees, through a break in the crowd―

Standing there on the platform, a middle school girl with long black hair and clear brown eyes, and holding onto her collar is…

"Inuyasha…?" Silver hair, bright red clothes, a rusty sword at his hip, twitching furred ears, a bright yellow backpack in his other hand.

"Inuyasha!"

She tries to shove, to get out, she needs to get out! But the doors are already sliding closed. The hanyou turns his head, maybe he's heard her. Just as quickly, his attention snaps back to the struggling human in his hold and the doors have locked shut.

Kagura is swept away with a strangled scream, pounding a fist futilely against the window. The wind user would have simply shattered the glass. The human can do nothing but scream and sob, her eyes fixed on that silver and red until the train turns a corner.

She gets out at the next station, waits for the return train. Goes back and tries to find any trace. But the hanyou has already bounded away, probably with the girl on his back as she so often was. Searching for them around the station is fruitless, even when she spends an hour wandering the streets.

She winds up late for work and is promptly fired.

She doesn't care. Now she knows, knows that it was no dream. Knows that somehow, that life was real.

…

If you want something, get it yourself.

Maybe she can get it back, her strength, her youkai skin. She'll settle for that much.

Finding a schoolgirl in Tokyo is harder than it seems, even when she waits at that train station everyday for a month, to see them again. Harajuku is not an easy place to find someone. Frustration eventually wins out, and she gives up that venture.

Phone books tell her nothing, Kagome had never had reason to use her last name. And trying to find a matching school uniform ends up fruitless, she can't find proper records and all of them are too similar, narrowing her search down to some five thousand students. Useless.

She tries the old shrines, old forests, ancient places where ghosts and spirits are said to frequent. But that turns up as a pointless venture as well: her human intuition is weak, and spending too much time in the dark could get her killed by human hands just as easily.

The closest she comes is an overnight hike through the forest. Ghosts are known to appear here, so why not youkai as well?

She tells her parents it's a work outing, not the first lie she's ever told them, but they trust her significantly more now, so they send her on her merry way.

It takes nearly four hours to reach it, and she arrives just after dusk, long after the trails have officially closed. The ancient trees are silent as she walks. She knows she shouldn't be here, that if there is something lurking beyond the trees she is ill equipped to handle it. She carries a flashlight, but it goes unused, swinging idly at her side. The darkness swells around her, a moonless night, the only sound that of her footsteps as she walks. The path is even, nothing to trip her or block her path.

Then, the sound of chirping birds.

The middle of the night, birds should not be chirping in the middle of the night.

But they continue on, the soft "chi, chi, chi" surrounds her, and she feels her blood run cold. Something is―

Keeping her steps even, she knows she is being followed.

"I know you're there."

Goosebumps pebble along her flesh. The beast behind her does not respond, but she can sense it now, a tangible energy at her back. Violent, malicious, hungry.

Not something she should be conversing with.

Kagura keeps walking, all too aware of the thing following her. She wants to turn and look, but is afraid that if she does it will seal her fate. She is not confident she can fight it off with bare hands or sturdy clubs. She laments her lack of preparation and curses her own ignorance. She'd lacked the confidence in her own conviction.

It's nearly dawn by the time she reaches the end of the path. She does not know how many miles she has walked or how many hours it has been with the thing at her back and birdsong ringing in her ears. Only that the first fingers of sunlight are breaching the horizon. Above her, the birds are still chirping and just at the edge of the road, a few feet outside of the forest, she gathers the courage to face her shadow.

With the rising sun and armed with her flashlight she spins, shining the light down the path and sees…

Nothing.

Hn. Maybe she'd gotten ahead of herself. But the chirping has suddenly stopped, not even a wingbeat to indicate the birds' flight.

Uneasy and confused, she decides to be stupid and heads back up the trail, shining the light onto the ground. She sees her own footprints, sunken into the soft, wet dirt, and then, not ten feet from the path's end…

Another set, bootprints larger than her own, abruptly stop and disappear.

Her breathing is heavy as Kagura shines the flashlight around her, trying to find any evidence of a trail. Her ears straining for any disturbances. There's nothing but the sounds of the forest waking up, the birdsong she hears is not the same chirps as before, and now the wind is rustling in the trees.

She wants to curse, but thinks maybe, this is for the best.

"Thank you for seeing me off."

And she runs.

…

After that she decides that maybe searching for spirits is not something she should be involved in. She is far too attached to her own life, youkai or not, to risk the ire of some malevolent spirit far stronger than she for something that is not guaranteed.

She resigns herself to a human life. She works, she toils, she earns her keep. She becomes a role model for her brother, who reminds her of another boy from another life.

Still, every night she crawls onto the roof and stares at the moon. She raises her hand, and tries to grasp the wind.

…

Years pass.

By now she's accustomed to this lifestyle. She knows she won't ever get much better than this. She is not going to college, she still lives with her parents, but that doesn't bother Kagura much. They feel better knowing where their daughter is most of the time and she owes them something, for all the years she put them through hell.

She's twenty now, her muscles are toned and strong, the build of a skilled dancer. It's something she's proud of, it's the way things should be, she's not one for being meek, though it scares most of the men around her. It doesn't matter much.

There are men, of course, she obliges them when they offer to take her out. She sees no harm in it, a free meal, a few drinks. But none of them are worth it. She's gotten over the fact that she'll never see her golden-eyed prince again, but a girl can dream. And besides, none of these boys will ever compare.

But she's so incredibly tired of it, the monotony of human life. At times she wants to claw at her skin, to see what's really underneath. Maybe she'd just deflate, like a balloon.

Sometimes she reads her writings from that first year and is tempted to tear them to shreds, burn them, anything to see those words gone. They make her too hopeful, about what she could have had. She remembers that day on the train and wonders what ever happened to those two, insidious thoughts creeping into her brain whispering that maybe her father finally got the better of them. She wants to stay hopeful.

She's stopped caring about a lot of things. She still works, but sees no point in it. Money is useless when it cannot buy her what she truly wants.

She has a collection of fans hung in her room. They serve no purpose aside from the odd performance she begrudgingly participates in. Sometimes she'll take one down and just hold it, flick it open and closed again, pretend that she has power.

She takes long walks home now, unnecessary detours. A hope that one day she'll stumble across something thrumming underneath her skin, a fleeting hope that dwindles with every passing day.

It is on one such occasion that she passes by the shrine.

Shrines are numerous across her city, nearly all the same, her mind numbing search of them during that first year or so left her less than enthralled with them. But still, the allure of enchanted and old spaces is still strong within her. So she goes, the steps taking her up and up and up.

When she reaches the top she's not really surprised, it's a shrine, typical. She wanders the grounds, reading the plaques posted here and there. The Bone Eater's Well, the Goshinboku…? Something familiar about the tree as she reads the plaque, but she can't place it. Her eyes are kept busy, but she's not really retaining the information. It's not important anyway.

It's calm here, the air is still, except for a slight breeze that rattles the leaves of the sacred tree. The charms around the trunk sway silently, and she absently wonders what could have stripped the bark off such a large tree.

After a while she tires of wandering, and turns to leave when she sees the small shop. Really, it's pitiful, but she's a sucker for those sorts of things. An old man's voice greets her, though she cannot see him as she looks over the goods. Sutras and talismans and charms. Maybe she should get one or two for her parents…

She stops short.

"Shikon no tama…"

There's the sound of shuffling and the old man appears from behind a stack of boxes, having heard her voice. He smiles and welcomes her, his mustache twitching from the movement, and strokes his beard.

"The Shikon no Tama. A jewel of great power, if you keep it your house will be safe and your business-"

"I know what it is, old man!" she's trembling, but she can't explain why. This is the closest she's come, the first she's seen since the hanyou at the station. "Do you know it's history? What happened to it?"

The man stares at her, slightly unnerved by her outburst, but he nods. "When the right wish was made, the jewel ceased to exist."

"What 'right wish'?"

The man looks at her, conflicted, then he nods again. "I will tell you the story, the Shikon no Tama was devoured by a great youkai, a great spider-"

"Naraku…"

She breathes the name for the first time in almost four years and the man stares at her in shock. "How did you…"

Kagura grabs him by the collar with more force than she intended. "Who told you?!" She remembers a school girl, a hanyou carrying a backpack…

"Ah! Ah! My granddaughter! Kagome, she-"

The man is dropped back onto his feet and Kagura's breath leaves her lungs. "Where is she?" she chokes. She needs to know, needs to know how to get back, needs to know if she can return to that body, to that world, to him.

The door opens, a boy only a little younger than her brother stands there, mouth agape.

"Jii-chan!" the eleven year old stares at Kagura, who leans against the counter, using it as a crutch.

"Where is Kagome?"

"Nee-chan is… she's not here."

"Please," she begs, shaking her head, "I just want to know, I want to go back. How did she do it? Please, just tell me. I have to try"

The boy swallows, then nods, understands, or at least Kagura hopes he does. But Souta's seen that desperate look before. He leads her to the well house.

Kagura doesn't question it, when the boy points to the well. He tells her it no longer works, Kagome jumped in months ago and never came back. Kagura doesn't care, she's willing to try. She could break a human leg, or she could gain a youkai one. It's either or. She'll take the chance. She's too close, waited too long.

She braces her hands against the wood, takes a deep breath.

She jumps.

...

Edited: January 2019, originally posted on June 17, 2012

A/N: This has always been my favorite work, and as I'm working on getting back into writing and fics I thought I would revisit this as practice.

This was originally intended as a one-shot, but there is a sequel in the works, it's only a matter of me figuring out how I'm going to end it and finishing it before I can post it. Several other WIPs are taking up my time, so if you liked this keep an eye out but it might be some time before I'm satisfied with it.