Deliverance

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It had been an incredible, long journey to get where she was. She'd been betrayed, reincarnated, revived, nearly killed again, and saved by the most unlikely of saviors - the one she was most reluctant to be in debt to. Despite everything, or maybe because of it, she was jaded, but more than anything she was just tired. She was ready for her task to be complete, for her duty to the Shikon no Tama to be finished, for better or worse.

She had learned many things too after becoming the living dead. For one, she watched as Inuyasha ever so slowly emerged from his shell under the gentle hand of her incarnation.

It made no sense. The girl was green and inexperienced; by all rights she should have been killed many times over already. Yet somehow she managed to make it in a violent world that Kikyou had needed to train so hard to survive in. Not only that but she did it all with a kind of joy that brought peace to those around her.

She would only be lying to herself if she denied the bitterness and envy such knowledge stirred in her.

Still, she thought, if her embroiled soul could be changed through the years to be so different in her reincarnation, maybe there was redemption after all.

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A/N: 'Green' drabble prompt for the LJ community Issekiwa. 222 words.