Chapter Text
“I’m the one to blame and I know it. That’s the worst part.” InuYasha confessed to the dorment well in one of those nights, when he missed Kagome so dearly it was downright suffocating.
He would never forget the moment when she first taught him about the universe — how it was infinite and always expanding. He still remembered how small and overwhelmed it made him feel.
Even now, that the memory was old and dusty, InuYasha felt the same. Missing Kagome was just like the universe — infinite and always expanding — and he was only himself, powerless and infinitesimal when faced with the immensity of it all.
“I shoulda fought harder for you.” The claws piercing his palm compensated the lack of emotion on the statement. “Not just that last time...” He shook his head, his brain flooded with images of the time they were forced apart and how he had been unable to do anything besides watch it happen. “But before that too. I shoulda told ya how much you meant to me, even though you knew already. I shoulda kissed you each chance I got. I shoulda apologized more.”
A lump housed in his throat as he recounted their journey on his mind, making sure to linger on the mistakes he made with the rawness of salt thrown straight into an open wound. Every argument they ever had seemed so pointless now, and yet, what wouldn’t he give for one more quarrel, if only to hear her voice again?
“And I shouldn’t have let you go!” All at once, the all too familiar anger started bubbling in the depths of his stomach, surfacing through his intonation. “What the hell was I thinking? That just because I wasn’t a selfish asshole for once, everything would be just fine at the end? It ain’t how life works! You’d think someone like me woulda learned that by now.”
Sitting on the grass, InuYasha fought the urge to scream in frustration. It was all bullshit. All of it.
“Before you, I didn’t use to do the right thing and we both know it. So why the fuck should I keep doing it now? ‘S not like it would bring you back.”
Deep down, InuYasha knew the answer. In the end of the day, her happiness and well being were way more important than his self-centered desires, and ultimately, he would never jeopardize all the effort he had put into becoming the man she showed him he could be — a man deserving of her. It didn’t mean he couldn’t feel sorry for himself, just a little.
“They already had at least fifteen years of you in their lives, but we... We didn’t have enough time.”
Part of him argued that it would never be sufficient, no matter how many lifetimes they got bestowed with. The other part reminded him of all the times he had pushed her away.
InuYasha acknowledged his greediness right then. Kagome had already given him more than he ever dared to dream and admittedly more than he deserved. Most of his kind would die without knowing so much as the prospect of love, while he had experienced it in every shape. Because of Kagome, he had finally found a place where he belonged, with people who accepted him. That should have been more than enough.
And yet there he was, asking for more as if he was entitled to it, as if every good thing in his life wasn’t as bright as it could be if she was around.
What an ungrateful bastard he was.
“I need you more than they ever could, anyway.” InuYasha went on, wondering why is was so much easier admitting these things when there was no chance for her o listen. “If you ever come back, I’d do everything different. No more wasting time, no more acting stupid. I’d even tell you how much I love your food and the way you smell, ‘cause I do, I always did.”
He once believed that Kagome was born to meet him. Now it looked they were doomed from the start.
“Just come back and see.”
If the Honekui no Ido was a Wishing Well, her wish would be him.
She knew it was selfish, but it was true.
There was nothing she cared about more, nothing else she wanted so fiercely in her supposedly fulfilled life.
Day and night, she dreamed of better worlds, where they never had to be more than a heartbeat away from each other. If she could, she would change her own, just to fit him in it the same way his Fire-Rat robe used to fit around her shoulders — warm and familiar — and he would know he was safe and sound. She would rewrite each cosmical rule keeping them from being together, speak over the prejudiced voices whispering their bigotry at them, shield him from the hurtful things he pretended to be indifferent to even though it broke his heart. And they would get the happy ending they deserved.
“All I ever wanted was for you to be happy.” Kagome remembered that day, swallowed by the sands of time, when she sat in the very well she now leaned against, and faced with these same emotions, asked InuYasha to stay with him. It was the moment she realized no amount of nasty blows to her ego could make her walk away. Her happiness was tangled with his. “And I promised you I would always be by your side. I guess things never work the way we plan, but I want you to know I would have kept my word. I still intend to.”
Kagome deliberately looked at the pile of books beside her. Most of them turned out to be useless, brimming with inaccurate information. A couple of few managed to carried interesting material and maybe Kagome could even teach Kaede a thing or two if she ever accomplished her main goal, but the rest were not written to be taken serious at all.
The girl, however, was no fool. It was highly unlikely that the solution she was looking for would be laying in a long lost book, and that just like in the climax scene of a hollywoodian movie, she would decode its manuscript, unsealing the magical time portal, consequently, reaching the anticipated joyous outcome, white letters rolling up the screen and lights turning on to reveal a clapping audience.
But what could she do except keep trying? The alternatives were way too depressing and she had promised him. She owed him — owed both of them — that much, and it gave her a purpose. Doing something felt good, even if something meant a new burn to a cauterized heart. What was a little drop of frustration for someone drenched on its rain? What was a little wave of sorrow for someone drowning on its waters?
It was also a good distraction from math problems and her oblivious — despite of well meaning — friends. She welcomed those distractions as much as the lamppost lights that guided her way home.
Truth was, too many new moons had passed and it wasn’t lost on Kagome that the separation would affect her and InuYasha differently. While he knew she was out of danger, secure with her family in pacific modern era Japan, that same courtesy was never offered to her.
Sure, Naraku was gone and InuYasha would always have Tessaiga, as well as their friends, to support and protect him. But he was still a cocky half demon with a remarkable talent to lost his temper and a pretty respectful list of enemies. Trouble would find him one way or another.
Part of her wondered if it already did and, as much as it hurt to consider it, that was why he never met her after the five hundred years gap. But then again, it could also mean that he didn’t have to, because she found a way to get back on her own.
Her attention went back to the open book on her lap.
“I just… I just need to see if you’re okay.” Pleaded Kagome, aware of her own lie the second it left her lips. Just a glimpse of him, brief and distant as it may, and she could never walk away.
The night came and went as she devoured the pages, in vain. Then daylight touched Earth, imposing and golden like his eyes.
The sky was so clear, not a single cloud dared to taint its dazzling blue. Around him, InuYasha could see all the summer colors, as bright as they were, from the floating orange of the butterflies to the endless rainbow of flowers gifted to them by a generous spring. Nearby, he could hear the birds singing their jubilant melodies and the village’s children playing under the sun.
It was a beautiful morning and he hated it.
A day like that without Kagome to enjoy it was such a waste. Everything about it seemed pointless — wrong, somehow — since she wasn’t there to see it.
Particularly, he had grown fond of the cloudy days. It was much easier to blend in. Everybody gets a little sad when it rains.
But InuYasha couldn’t control the weather and certainly he couldn’t extinguish the distance separating them either, as he had previously learned. All he could do was sit there and wait for her.
“And now the little brats are getting old enough to chase me around.” Continued InuYasha, on yet another detailed report Kagome would never hear. “‘S a nightmare, I’ll tell ya. Not even you or your mom were so obsessed with my ears and that’s sayin’ a lot.”
His heart clenched at the thought of the kind woman who had treated him like a son from the very start, but it didn’t last long, as he could practically hear Kagome’s giggles. He had no doubt she would find the whole situation insanely amusing, much to his pretended annoyance.
He didn’t even try to fight his smile.
“Can you believe it? Miroku and Sango have twins!” InuYasha exclaimed, because he sure as hell still couldn’t, no matter how many times the living proofs climbed over him, pulled his hair or pestered his poor ears. “I mean, ‘course you can. You saw it coming way before I did.”
Well, not even her wildest guess would have bet on twins right away, but the important thing was the monk and the slayer were really making marriage work. InuYasha would give anything to see her smug I-Told-You-So expression.
“They’re really happy.” And they had every reason to be. Against all odds, they were together, they had a family. After so much trauma, fights and goodbyes, they managed to stood side by side at the end. They had earned that. InuYasha knew it. And he wanted to be happy for them. He was happy for them. He just couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that would come along with every look, touch or gleeful moments shared between the couple: it should have been Kagome and I.
Then guilt would hit him like a punch, making him avoid the pair for a while just to feel even worse. It was much harder to feel happy for someone else when his own happiness was in the other side of the well with her.
“They miss you, though.”
“Congratulations!” Kagome walked in, dropping her purse to the base of the Honekui no Ido to grasp her hair in exasperation. “You have finally made Tokyo boring and I thought this was impossible!”
The schoolgirl spent the whole day out, passing by parks and stores that had been so fascinating to her in the past, but that now just couldn’t catch her eyes.
Since she was a little child, she always felt her city like a living entity. Pulsating, stimulating, a surprise on every turn.
Then, years ago, she had fallen into that damned well and the conception of adventure that she once had changed forever.
In that new, exciting land, Kagome had been a fish out of temporal water, but then she decorated the tides and made them her habitat. Now that she was isolated from it, she missed it like crazy and the place she used to call home didn’t felt like home anymore.
She was a fish out of water again, but this time in her own town.
The city lights were as pretty as ever, but they could never match the starry night sky from Feudal Era and the more she walked through the comfortable pavement, the more she longed for the freshy grass. It was sickening and frightening.
For her family, Kagome desperately kept trying to make things go back to the way it was before — Studying, hanging out with her friends, helping in the shrine. She never told them it wasn’t working. There was no need to hurt them over nothing.
But she didn’t belong there. And she hadn’t for quite a while.
“What do I do?” She whispered.