InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Forget Me Not ❯ My heart will go on ( Chapter 7 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: SplendentGoddess 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Angst | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 06.23.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 4.2K | Visits: 3.4K | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Angst | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 06.23.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 4.2K | Visits: 3.4K | Status: Completed
Blanket Disclaimer:
Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.
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Chapter 7 – My heart will go on
Sitting quietly by her mother’s side, a raven-haired Izayoi waited patiently for the sound of her name being called by the nurse. The other children in the waiting room frightened her. Some of them were crying, and some of them were running around and screaming, causing their mothers to yell at them to sit back down. She didn’t understand why children even so much older than herself acted like little babies. What was the big deal about getting poked with a needle? It didn’t hurt that badly, and if it would keep her from getting sick…
Kagome smiled down at her daughter, ruffling the hair of her hatless head as they waited their turn in the Emergency Room. Getting her daughter’s vaccinations hardly constituted an emergency, but the hospital was also where all of the less fortunate families took their children. Kagome couldn’t afford to take Izayoi to the family clinic…though not for financial reasons. If the doctors ever found out what the child actually was she would be paying for it with far more than money. The clinics weren’t open at night.
Kagome didn’t much care for exposing Izayoi to the mayhem of the after-hours waiting room at the county hospital, but she knew it was worth it, she thought as she smiled down at her daughter a second time, smoothing a lock of Izayoi’s midnight tresses back behind a human ear. While it was true that Izayoi might have inherited her father’s immune system, which would mean that all of this fuss was for nothing, the future-born miko also knew it was better to be safe than sorry.
Inuyasha…
She never could stop her thoughts from eventually drifting his way, even after all this time. She wondered what he was doing at that very moment. Was he happy? Was he with Kikyou? The thought triggered a small bubble of sadness within her heart, though she felt no jealousy. Kagome had known very well what she was doing when she had first made the decision to give them the Sacred Jewel. She would rather know that he was with Kikyou, the two of them both alive and well, than to think that he had descended with his first love into the fiery depths of Hell. The fact of the matter was that Inuyasha was going to end up with Kikyou one way or the other, so then if she could gift them both with the choice of life over death, that was enough for her to be happy.
It had both surprised and pleased Kagome tremendously when she had first discovered the carving he had left for her on her windowsill, a going away present she cherished almost as deeply as she cherished their daughter. She knew he loved her, otherwise he never would have agreed to share the night with her, but she also knew that he also loved Kikyou, and she did hope that the two of them were happy together. It was not her wish for him to be miserable for the rest of his life. She had wanted always for him to live and be happy.
As she continued to sit there in the waiting room waiting their turn, Kagome glanced around at the other single mothers, and even a few single fathers, that filled the space along with all of the other medical emergencies of the evening. As her eyes drifted across the other children in the room, Kagome found herself wondering…did they have any kids? And if so, did they look like Izayoi? Were they also hanyou by day, human by night, or was it possibly the reverse? Human by day, hanyou by night? Was Izayoi’s pattern a fluke, and their children all had a smaller window of weakness, maybe even just once a month, like their father? Then a horrible thought suddenly struck Kagome, and she found herself growing cold as all the blood drained from her face. What if…what if along with making Kikyou alive again, they had somehow also used the jewel to turn Inuyasha human?
No…no they couldn’t have, could they?
Could the jewel have done both? Was it powerful enough?
Kagome honestly didn’t know how powerful the Sacred Jewel was, or rather…how powerful it had been. But if bringing Kikyou back to life hadn’t purified the jewel in its entirety…
I guess the bigger question here is, even assuming that they could…would he have?
Would Inuyasha have willingly turned himself human? Even after promising her that he would remain a hanyou?
Though of course, if you were going to get technical, his exact words had been that he would remain a hanyou ‘a little longer’ for her…not forever. Now that he knew that he was never going to see her again, there was really no point in him keeping such a promise, was there? ‘Longer’ was over now. And hadn’t his promise to Kikyou that he would turn human actually come before his promise to her, anyway? Of course it had, by about five decades. One could also just as easily argue that he’d only said to her that he would remain a hanyou as opposed to turning himself fully youkai. That had been the nature of their conversation, after all, his lingering desire to become a full-fledged youkai. By intent, he had only actually promised Kagome that he would not use the jewel to become full-youkai, and she was one-hundred-percent certain that he had kept that promise, at least. But he had never actually sworn that he would not use the jewel to turn himself fully human, and suddenly, Kagome found herself getting depressed at the thought.
Initially, a part of her had hoped, assuming Inuyasha had survived somewhere in hiding over the last five hundred years, that he would eventually come forward and make his presence known to her. Even if he presently at that time had a family of his own, a wife and kids all living in hiding with him in some kind of secret youkai underground she knew nothing about, Kagome had still held out the hope that he would at least let her know that he was still alive. For the first few weeks after her return with still no sign of him she had started to try and tell herself that maybe he was doing what he thought was best for her by letting her move on. Maybe he had seen and done too many things and was now too changed of a person for her to consider him the man he used to be. But when Kagome had first discovered that she was pregnant her hope of seeing Inuyasha again had been reignited. Surely he would come forward to assist her with their child, if nothing else? Of course, as the months slowly turned into years, it became more and more obvious to Kagome that he simply wasn’t out there…he wasn’t going to suddenly reveal himself one day. She figured there were logically three possibilities. One, he hadn’t recalled what exact year she’d been from, and was still planning on coming back around once he was sure his past-self had disappeared for the last time, but was merely off on his math and had missed the mark. That was the least likely scenario. The one she truly prayed for the most was that he had simply forgotten about her. Five hundred years was a long time, after all. She honestly couldn’t even fathom the concept of living for so long. After Kikyou’s eventual passing, did he find himself someone new? And then someone new again after that? Who would remember a one-night-stand from five hundred years ago? If that were the case she would easily forgive him, and continue to pray for his happiness. The third, and regretfully most likely scenario, was that he was not still alive. Anything could have happened to him, at any time, and she would never know it. He could have simply grown old and passed on at some point in time in the past, or he could’ve even died in battle somehow or another. She did believe that he was probably capable of surviving to her time based on what she knew of his lifespan, so battle had been the most likely scenario for his death…at least until the possibility of him turning human had entered her mind. Had he actually grown old and died five hundred years ago? Still, so long as his life had been a happy one…
Kagome knew she would never actually have the answer to that question, and that alone tore her up inside more than anything else; the not knowing was what sometimes still kept her up at night, what sometimes had her gasping for breath as she bolted awake in wide-eyed panic after witnessing a haunting image of a miserable Inuyasha crying out her name in sorrow.
“Higurashi Izayoi?”
Snapping herself back into reality, Kagome was grateful for the distraction as she stood up with her daughter to head back into what she liked to call the ‘little’ waiting room. It didn’t do her any good to allow her mind to torment her in such a way. She was just grateful for her daughter being human at the moment. Far too many times had Izayoi busted her feeling depressed, her little angelic voice asking out of nowhere why Mommy was sad always managing to make Kagome feel guilty on top of everything else. Anyone else would probably think that she was just feeling sorry for herself, because she missed Inuyasha and wanted him with her in her life. While that was true, while she most certainly missed him and would love nothing more than for him to come back to her, she knew it was a lost cause. It was truly the never knowing that ate at her the most. She couldn’t count the number of times she had scowered her grandfather’s old storage sheds for any possible note, any scroll, some kind of a message in a bottle that he had left hidden on the shrine grounds for her to find. There was nothing.
It wasn’t just Inuyasha, but Sango and Miroku, and even little Shippou…she didn’t know what had become of any of them. While Sango and Miroku were human, and Kagome wasn’t stupid, knowing that they had obviously perished somewhere a little over four centuries ago from her perspective, she couldn’t help but to wonder how rich their lives together had been, and how many children they’d had. She would love to be able to find an ancient family tree and track down any and all of their current living descendants, though she knew that was also impossible since there was no such family record, at least not that she could find. She had already checked, but she had no idea what family name Miroku had chosen for himself, or even if he and Sango had bothered with family names at all, since they had not yet been standardized among the simple people at that time. How many generations had passed before a family name had been chosen? Kagome had even tried going backwards, tracing the Higurashi lineage itself. How cool would it be to discover that she was actually descendent from Sango and Miroku, herself? But the various records she could find didn’t support the likelihood of that scenario.
Still, forgetting about Sango and Miroku for a moment, what had happened to Shippou? As a full-blooded youkai, he should definitely have still been alive after only five measly centuries, especially since he’d been a mere child at the time. Had something bad happened to him, as well, or had he simply moved on in his life? Had he been killed off during whatever the hell kind of ‘great purification’ had apparently wiped out all the youkai of Japan? Kagome still had her spiritual powers, she knew that because she could sense her daughter’s youki during the day, but she hardly ever sensed any other youkai in her time. In fact, the only other youkai she continued to feel in her world after returning for the last time was the soul-piper. That made sense because that youkai was born from the spirits of deceased children. A youkai like that couldn’t be destroyed the same way an animal-based youkai could be killed. But maybe she was jumping to unnecessarily gruesome conclusions. Maybe all the youkai of Japan really were still around, but just in hiding. Maybe they all had some kind of charm that concealed their youkai appearances and prevented people with spiritual powers from sensing their demonic auras. But if that were the case, you would think that somebody, even a total stranger, would have shown up at the shrine one day from sensing her daughter’s aura and wondering why the hell she had been left out of the loop that was the youkai underground. Then again, maybe it was every youkai for themselves, and so there weren’t going to be any Good Samaritans out there with any interest in helping her with her daughter.
Still, she wasn’t about to complain, considering that at least no random youkai had ever shown up wanting to hurt her daughter, either.
So what had become of little Shippou? Surely he would have come to see her if he were able, especially considering the fact that she’d had Inuyasha’s daughter. She could understand the kit wanting to let her live her life and not risk interfering with the timeline, should he accidentally come to see her too early, before her final time arriving back in her world for good, but surely he could have kept tabs on her from the shadows to know when it was safe to approach. She had thought, even if something had happened to Inuyasha, that Shippou would have tried to get in contact with her by now…provided he was still alive. Maybe he had forgotten about her, as well? She knew she couldn’t hold a grudge, if that were the case, even despite his childhood vow that he wouldn’t. Five hundred years was a long time, after all. She hoped he actually had forgotten about her and was still alive and well somewhere living his own life, considering the alternatives, though she supposed that, there again, she would simply never know.
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Finished with the hospital, Kagome snickered quietly to herself as Izayoi whined about how ‘no fair’ it was to have to walk up all of the shrine steps without her powers. Normally she could bounce around like she had pogo sticks for legs, and would probably be able to scale the entire stone stairway in a single bound, but whenever they returned from one of their nightly outings she had to take the staircase one step at a time, and the child found it exceedingly boring and time consuming.
Finally making it to the front door, Kagome called out her greeting to the rest of her family as they entered. Smiling as Izayoi remembered to take off her shoes before heading into the rest of the house, something the eager girl sometimes forgot about in her haste to get back to her toys, Kagome shook her head in amusement before following after her daughter up to their room. After helping the three-year-old out of her street clothes and into some fuzzy pajamas that had a print of puppy paws all over them, Kagome grinned while humming to herself as she brushed out her daughter’s raven locks. Tucking the brush away when she was done, she changed into her own sleepwear before sitting down cross-legged on the floor as her daughter snuggled into their futon, not quite ready for sleep herself as she pulled out a small diary and pen from the chest in the corner. The miko had never considered herself much of a poet, but the occasional haiku did find its way within her catalog of daily events.
The more recent ones read…
Somewhere lost in time
There’s a man with yellow eyes
Who lives in my heart
Once upon a night
I embraced the man I love
Never to return
Child made from love
Born in a world not your own
You are not alone
And the newest one to be put to paper…
Your eyes so like his
Captivate my very soul
Daughter of the dogs
Writing down the rest of her day, formatted in the way a woman might speak to her husband, Kagome knew Inuyasha was never going to read it, but it still made her feel better; especially if he truly had passed on at some point in time in the past. If so, then maybe it was possible that he was looking down on them both, smiling to himself as he read her journal entries over her shoulder. She couldn’t decide if that thought brought her any comfort or not. She would rather know that she was truly alone if that knowledge also came with it the security of knowing that Inuyasha was still alive and well in his own world, a world that simply didn’t include her, but considering that that was a peace of mind she knew she would never be granted, there was truly no point in praying for it to be so. She would make herself sick thinking about all of the different possible outcomes if she didn’t find a way to cope, and keeping a journal worked well enough for her. It wasn’t as if she could talk to a therapist, after all, and she didn’t like burdening her mother with such pointless worries. Closing the book with a sigh, Kagome tried to keep herself focused on the here and now. Tomorrow was Sunday, which meant she had the day off and could spend it at home with her daughter. The forecast called for rain, but that wouldn’t stop her from having the barbecue she’d promised Izayoi. The patio was covered, after all.
Finally crawling into bed beside her daughter, Kagome couldn’t suppress her smile as Izayoi rolled over in her sleep to cuddle with mommy. Wrapping her arms around the precious child, Kagome rested her chin atop Izayoi’s head, subconsciously shielding her from the world. No matter what had or had not become of Inuyasha, she would protect their daughter with her life.
The following morning, Kagome crawled groggily out of bed, somewhat shaken by the disturbing imagery of her dream. She’d had a vision of Inuyasha and Kikyou sharing what had felt distinctively like a goodbye kiss, as if they were parting forever. Her memory of the dream was vague and fuzzy, and she hoped it hadn’t been a true vision of Inuyasha perhaps trying to show her his death, since she’d gotten the distinct impression that Inuyasha had been the one leaving, as she’d experienced the dream almost through Kikyou’s eyes. Had he been sick or injured? Had Kikyou tearfully kissed him goodbye knowing she would never see him again because he had been on the brink of death? It was possible, being Kikyou’s reincarnation, that suppressed memories from her past life could actually come forward, but Kagome didn’t want to think about that and she vowed then and there to stop worrying over it so much. It had probably just been her own overactive imagination spinning tales based upon her worries and nothing more. Today was her day off, the museum was closed, and her mother had agreed to close the shrine for the day as well. Today was Izayoi’s day to run around outside and be a happy girl. Kagome was going to make barbecued ribs for dinner; somehow, she thought with a chuckle, she was pretty sure her canine daughter would like the special treat.
Putting on a brave smile, then, she playfully shook Izayoi ‘awake’, knowing there was no way her one-quarter youkai daughter was actually still asleep by that hour. She always awoke at dawn thanks to the sensation of her youkai powers returning to her, her hanyou features shifting back into place. Still, that didn’t mean that the toddler didn’t still love to lay in bed for as long as she could get away with it.
“Oh no, Izayoi! Mommy’s being possessed by a tickle-youkai!” Kagome warned in feigned worry before reaching for her daughter’s belly, the young girl’s giggles soon to follow as a pair of golden eyes opened to greet her mother’s gaze, blessedly unaware of the human woman’s less than cheerful mood upon waking.
Getting dressed, mother and daughter headed downstairs to meet the rest of the Higurashi household for breakfast, and the rest of the morning went by smoothly, as a thick layer of rain clouds began creeping in overhead. The rain started around mid-afternoon, and wearing a hooded raincoat to protect her sensitive ears, Izayoi ran around in the rain laughing and squealing, jumping in puddles and splashing about without a care in the world. Kagome watched her daughter play from the porch, a tender smile on her lips; a smile that was repeated by the lips of the older woman standing beside her, as Izayoi’s grandmother wrapped a tender arm around Kagome’s shoulder.
Needing to head to the store in preparation for that evening’s meal, Souta agreed to keep his niece occupied for his sister with a game of hide and seek out in the yard.
“No fair Uncle Souta!” Izayoi called out as she checked around yet another corner. “I can’t smell you in the rain!”
Laughing quietly, Mrs. Higurashi, who was keeping an eye on the game, asked from her place on the patio, “And just how is it fair to use your nose at all when Uncle Souta can’t use his nose when it’s his turn?”
Glancing her grandmother’s way, the appendage in question became crinkled as Izayoi scrunched up her face, though if it was in true thought or simply realization of getting ‘busted’ for all the times she’d won hide and seek in the past she couldn’t be sure, causing the elder Higurashi woman to chuckle quietly in amusement. The girl was just too cute for her own good.
Sudden movement off to the side quickly distracted the toddler, her growing pout sprouting back into a huge grin as she darted after her fleeing uncle.
The game continued over the next couple of hours, as Kagome returned from the store and started working on that night’s dinner. Izayoi had never had barbecued ribs before, so this was sure to be a special treat. There wasn’t any special occasion they were celebrating; Kagome always tried to do special things for her daughter whenever possible.
Soon the delectable aroma of grilling pork joined the pleasant scent of rain. Shaking herself dry as much as possible before entering the house, Izayoi washed up before dinner like a good girl.
Dinner was served a little earlier than normal, before sunset; Kagome wanted to be sure that her daughter got to enjoy her meal with the full strength of her senses intact. The sun slipped out of sight as the miko helped her mother wash dishes in the kitchen while Jii-chan helped Izayoi with her reading lessons on the TV, Souta up in his room working on some last minute touches to an assignment due at school the following morning. It was a normal close to a normal day.
Exhausted and weary as she was, Kagome didn’t notice the faint spark of magic coming from the direction of the well-house.
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Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.
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Chapter 7 – My heart will go on
Sitting quietly by her mother’s side, a raven-haired Izayoi waited patiently for the sound of her name being called by the nurse. The other children in the waiting room frightened her. Some of them were crying, and some of them were running around and screaming, causing their mothers to yell at them to sit back down. She didn’t understand why children even so much older than herself acted like little babies. What was the big deal about getting poked with a needle? It didn’t hurt that badly, and if it would keep her from getting sick…
Kagome smiled down at her daughter, ruffling the hair of her hatless head as they waited their turn in the Emergency Room. Getting her daughter’s vaccinations hardly constituted an emergency, but the hospital was also where all of the less fortunate families took their children. Kagome couldn’t afford to take Izayoi to the family clinic…though not for financial reasons. If the doctors ever found out what the child actually was she would be paying for it with far more than money. The clinics weren’t open at night.
Kagome didn’t much care for exposing Izayoi to the mayhem of the after-hours waiting room at the county hospital, but she knew it was worth it, she thought as she smiled down at her daughter a second time, smoothing a lock of Izayoi’s midnight tresses back behind a human ear. While it was true that Izayoi might have inherited her father’s immune system, which would mean that all of this fuss was for nothing, the future-born miko also knew it was better to be safe than sorry.
Inuyasha…
She never could stop her thoughts from eventually drifting his way, even after all this time. She wondered what he was doing at that very moment. Was he happy? Was he with Kikyou? The thought triggered a small bubble of sadness within her heart, though she felt no jealousy. Kagome had known very well what she was doing when she had first made the decision to give them the Sacred Jewel. She would rather know that he was with Kikyou, the two of them both alive and well, than to think that he had descended with his first love into the fiery depths of Hell. The fact of the matter was that Inuyasha was going to end up with Kikyou one way or the other, so then if she could gift them both with the choice of life over death, that was enough for her to be happy.
It had both surprised and pleased Kagome tremendously when she had first discovered the carving he had left for her on her windowsill, a going away present she cherished almost as deeply as she cherished their daughter. She knew he loved her, otherwise he never would have agreed to share the night with her, but she also knew that he also loved Kikyou, and she did hope that the two of them were happy together. It was not her wish for him to be miserable for the rest of his life. She had wanted always for him to live and be happy.
As she continued to sit there in the waiting room waiting their turn, Kagome glanced around at the other single mothers, and even a few single fathers, that filled the space along with all of the other medical emergencies of the evening. As her eyes drifted across the other children in the room, Kagome found herself wondering…did they have any kids? And if so, did they look like Izayoi? Were they also hanyou by day, human by night, or was it possibly the reverse? Human by day, hanyou by night? Was Izayoi’s pattern a fluke, and their children all had a smaller window of weakness, maybe even just once a month, like their father? Then a horrible thought suddenly struck Kagome, and she found herself growing cold as all the blood drained from her face. What if…what if along with making Kikyou alive again, they had somehow also used the jewel to turn Inuyasha human?
No…no they couldn’t have, could they?
Could the jewel have done both? Was it powerful enough?
Kagome honestly didn’t know how powerful the Sacred Jewel was, or rather…how powerful it had been. But if bringing Kikyou back to life hadn’t purified the jewel in its entirety…
I guess the bigger question here is, even assuming that they could…would he have?
Would Inuyasha have willingly turned himself human? Even after promising her that he would remain a hanyou?
Though of course, if you were going to get technical, his exact words had been that he would remain a hanyou ‘a little longer’ for her…not forever. Now that he knew that he was never going to see her again, there was really no point in him keeping such a promise, was there? ‘Longer’ was over now. And hadn’t his promise to Kikyou that he would turn human actually come before his promise to her, anyway? Of course it had, by about five decades. One could also just as easily argue that he’d only said to her that he would remain a hanyou as opposed to turning himself fully youkai. That had been the nature of their conversation, after all, his lingering desire to become a full-fledged youkai. By intent, he had only actually promised Kagome that he would not use the jewel to become full-youkai, and she was one-hundred-percent certain that he had kept that promise, at least. But he had never actually sworn that he would not use the jewel to turn himself fully human, and suddenly, Kagome found herself getting depressed at the thought.
Initially, a part of her had hoped, assuming Inuyasha had survived somewhere in hiding over the last five hundred years, that he would eventually come forward and make his presence known to her. Even if he presently at that time had a family of his own, a wife and kids all living in hiding with him in some kind of secret youkai underground she knew nothing about, Kagome had still held out the hope that he would at least let her know that he was still alive. For the first few weeks after her return with still no sign of him she had started to try and tell herself that maybe he was doing what he thought was best for her by letting her move on. Maybe he had seen and done too many things and was now too changed of a person for her to consider him the man he used to be. But when Kagome had first discovered that she was pregnant her hope of seeing Inuyasha again had been reignited. Surely he would come forward to assist her with their child, if nothing else? Of course, as the months slowly turned into years, it became more and more obvious to Kagome that he simply wasn’t out there…he wasn’t going to suddenly reveal himself one day. She figured there were logically three possibilities. One, he hadn’t recalled what exact year she’d been from, and was still planning on coming back around once he was sure his past-self had disappeared for the last time, but was merely off on his math and had missed the mark. That was the least likely scenario. The one she truly prayed for the most was that he had simply forgotten about her. Five hundred years was a long time, after all. She honestly couldn’t even fathom the concept of living for so long. After Kikyou’s eventual passing, did he find himself someone new? And then someone new again after that? Who would remember a one-night-stand from five hundred years ago? If that were the case she would easily forgive him, and continue to pray for his happiness. The third, and regretfully most likely scenario, was that he was not still alive. Anything could have happened to him, at any time, and she would never know it. He could have simply grown old and passed on at some point in time in the past, or he could’ve even died in battle somehow or another. She did believe that he was probably capable of surviving to her time based on what she knew of his lifespan, so battle had been the most likely scenario for his death…at least until the possibility of him turning human had entered her mind. Had he actually grown old and died five hundred years ago? Still, so long as his life had been a happy one…
Kagome knew she would never actually have the answer to that question, and that alone tore her up inside more than anything else; the not knowing was what sometimes still kept her up at night, what sometimes had her gasping for breath as she bolted awake in wide-eyed panic after witnessing a haunting image of a miserable Inuyasha crying out her name in sorrow.
“Higurashi Izayoi?”
Snapping herself back into reality, Kagome was grateful for the distraction as she stood up with her daughter to head back into what she liked to call the ‘little’ waiting room. It didn’t do her any good to allow her mind to torment her in such a way. She was just grateful for her daughter being human at the moment. Far too many times had Izayoi busted her feeling depressed, her little angelic voice asking out of nowhere why Mommy was sad always managing to make Kagome feel guilty on top of everything else. Anyone else would probably think that she was just feeling sorry for herself, because she missed Inuyasha and wanted him with her in her life. While that was true, while she most certainly missed him and would love nothing more than for him to come back to her, she knew it was a lost cause. It was truly the never knowing that ate at her the most. She couldn’t count the number of times she had scowered her grandfather’s old storage sheds for any possible note, any scroll, some kind of a message in a bottle that he had left hidden on the shrine grounds for her to find. There was nothing.
It wasn’t just Inuyasha, but Sango and Miroku, and even little Shippou…she didn’t know what had become of any of them. While Sango and Miroku were human, and Kagome wasn’t stupid, knowing that they had obviously perished somewhere a little over four centuries ago from her perspective, she couldn’t help but to wonder how rich their lives together had been, and how many children they’d had. She would love to be able to find an ancient family tree and track down any and all of their current living descendants, though she knew that was also impossible since there was no such family record, at least not that she could find. She had already checked, but she had no idea what family name Miroku had chosen for himself, or even if he and Sango had bothered with family names at all, since they had not yet been standardized among the simple people at that time. How many generations had passed before a family name had been chosen? Kagome had even tried going backwards, tracing the Higurashi lineage itself. How cool would it be to discover that she was actually descendent from Sango and Miroku, herself? But the various records she could find didn’t support the likelihood of that scenario.
Still, forgetting about Sango and Miroku for a moment, what had happened to Shippou? As a full-blooded youkai, he should definitely have still been alive after only five measly centuries, especially since he’d been a mere child at the time. Had something bad happened to him, as well, or had he simply moved on in his life? Had he been killed off during whatever the hell kind of ‘great purification’ had apparently wiped out all the youkai of Japan? Kagome still had her spiritual powers, she knew that because she could sense her daughter’s youki during the day, but she hardly ever sensed any other youkai in her time. In fact, the only other youkai she continued to feel in her world after returning for the last time was the soul-piper. That made sense because that youkai was born from the spirits of deceased children. A youkai like that couldn’t be destroyed the same way an animal-based youkai could be killed. But maybe she was jumping to unnecessarily gruesome conclusions. Maybe all the youkai of Japan really were still around, but just in hiding. Maybe they all had some kind of charm that concealed their youkai appearances and prevented people with spiritual powers from sensing their demonic auras. But if that were the case, you would think that somebody, even a total stranger, would have shown up at the shrine one day from sensing her daughter’s aura and wondering why the hell she had been left out of the loop that was the youkai underground. Then again, maybe it was every youkai for themselves, and so there weren’t going to be any Good Samaritans out there with any interest in helping her with her daughter.
Still, she wasn’t about to complain, considering that at least no random youkai had ever shown up wanting to hurt her daughter, either.
So what had become of little Shippou? Surely he would have come to see her if he were able, especially considering the fact that she’d had Inuyasha’s daughter. She could understand the kit wanting to let her live her life and not risk interfering with the timeline, should he accidentally come to see her too early, before her final time arriving back in her world for good, but surely he could have kept tabs on her from the shadows to know when it was safe to approach. She had thought, even if something had happened to Inuyasha, that Shippou would have tried to get in contact with her by now…provided he was still alive. Maybe he had forgotten about her, as well? She knew she couldn’t hold a grudge, if that were the case, even despite his childhood vow that he wouldn’t. Five hundred years was a long time, after all. She hoped he actually had forgotten about her and was still alive and well somewhere living his own life, considering the alternatives, though she supposed that, there again, she would simply never know.
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Finished with the hospital, Kagome snickered quietly to herself as Izayoi whined about how ‘no fair’ it was to have to walk up all of the shrine steps without her powers. Normally she could bounce around like she had pogo sticks for legs, and would probably be able to scale the entire stone stairway in a single bound, but whenever they returned from one of their nightly outings she had to take the staircase one step at a time, and the child found it exceedingly boring and time consuming.
Finally making it to the front door, Kagome called out her greeting to the rest of her family as they entered. Smiling as Izayoi remembered to take off her shoes before heading into the rest of the house, something the eager girl sometimes forgot about in her haste to get back to her toys, Kagome shook her head in amusement before following after her daughter up to their room. After helping the three-year-old out of her street clothes and into some fuzzy pajamas that had a print of puppy paws all over them, Kagome grinned while humming to herself as she brushed out her daughter’s raven locks. Tucking the brush away when she was done, she changed into her own sleepwear before sitting down cross-legged on the floor as her daughter snuggled into their futon, not quite ready for sleep herself as she pulled out a small diary and pen from the chest in the corner. The miko had never considered herself much of a poet, but the occasional haiku did find its way within her catalog of daily events.
The more recent ones read…
Somewhere lost in time
There’s a man with yellow eyes
Who lives in my heart
Once upon a night
I embraced the man I love
Never to return
Child made from love
Born in a world not your own
You are not alone
And the newest one to be put to paper…
Your eyes so like his
Captivate my very soul
Daughter of the dogs
Writing down the rest of her day, formatted in the way a woman might speak to her husband, Kagome knew Inuyasha was never going to read it, but it still made her feel better; especially if he truly had passed on at some point in time in the past. If so, then maybe it was possible that he was looking down on them both, smiling to himself as he read her journal entries over her shoulder. She couldn’t decide if that thought brought her any comfort or not. She would rather know that she was truly alone if that knowledge also came with it the security of knowing that Inuyasha was still alive and well in his own world, a world that simply didn’t include her, but considering that that was a peace of mind she knew she would never be granted, there was truly no point in praying for it to be so. She would make herself sick thinking about all of the different possible outcomes if she didn’t find a way to cope, and keeping a journal worked well enough for her. It wasn’t as if she could talk to a therapist, after all, and she didn’t like burdening her mother with such pointless worries. Closing the book with a sigh, Kagome tried to keep herself focused on the here and now. Tomorrow was Sunday, which meant she had the day off and could spend it at home with her daughter. The forecast called for rain, but that wouldn’t stop her from having the barbecue she’d promised Izayoi. The patio was covered, after all.
Finally crawling into bed beside her daughter, Kagome couldn’t suppress her smile as Izayoi rolled over in her sleep to cuddle with mommy. Wrapping her arms around the precious child, Kagome rested her chin atop Izayoi’s head, subconsciously shielding her from the world. No matter what had or had not become of Inuyasha, she would protect their daughter with her life.
The following morning, Kagome crawled groggily out of bed, somewhat shaken by the disturbing imagery of her dream. She’d had a vision of Inuyasha and Kikyou sharing what had felt distinctively like a goodbye kiss, as if they were parting forever. Her memory of the dream was vague and fuzzy, and she hoped it hadn’t been a true vision of Inuyasha perhaps trying to show her his death, since she’d gotten the distinct impression that Inuyasha had been the one leaving, as she’d experienced the dream almost through Kikyou’s eyes. Had he been sick or injured? Had Kikyou tearfully kissed him goodbye knowing she would never see him again because he had been on the brink of death? It was possible, being Kikyou’s reincarnation, that suppressed memories from her past life could actually come forward, but Kagome didn’t want to think about that and she vowed then and there to stop worrying over it so much. It had probably just been her own overactive imagination spinning tales based upon her worries and nothing more. Today was her day off, the museum was closed, and her mother had agreed to close the shrine for the day as well. Today was Izayoi’s day to run around outside and be a happy girl. Kagome was going to make barbecued ribs for dinner; somehow, she thought with a chuckle, she was pretty sure her canine daughter would like the special treat.
Putting on a brave smile, then, she playfully shook Izayoi ‘awake’, knowing there was no way her one-quarter youkai daughter was actually still asleep by that hour. She always awoke at dawn thanks to the sensation of her youkai powers returning to her, her hanyou features shifting back into place. Still, that didn’t mean that the toddler didn’t still love to lay in bed for as long as she could get away with it.
“Oh no, Izayoi! Mommy’s being possessed by a tickle-youkai!” Kagome warned in feigned worry before reaching for her daughter’s belly, the young girl’s giggles soon to follow as a pair of golden eyes opened to greet her mother’s gaze, blessedly unaware of the human woman’s less than cheerful mood upon waking.
Getting dressed, mother and daughter headed downstairs to meet the rest of the Higurashi household for breakfast, and the rest of the morning went by smoothly, as a thick layer of rain clouds began creeping in overhead. The rain started around mid-afternoon, and wearing a hooded raincoat to protect her sensitive ears, Izayoi ran around in the rain laughing and squealing, jumping in puddles and splashing about without a care in the world. Kagome watched her daughter play from the porch, a tender smile on her lips; a smile that was repeated by the lips of the older woman standing beside her, as Izayoi’s grandmother wrapped a tender arm around Kagome’s shoulder.
Needing to head to the store in preparation for that evening’s meal, Souta agreed to keep his niece occupied for his sister with a game of hide and seek out in the yard.
“No fair Uncle Souta!” Izayoi called out as she checked around yet another corner. “I can’t smell you in the rain!”
Laughing quietly, Mrs. Higurashi, who was keeping an eye on the game, asked from her place on the patio, “And just how is it fair to use your nose at all when Uncle Souta can’t use his nose when it’s his turn?”
Glancing her grandmother’s way, the appendage in question became crinkled as Izayoi scrunched up her face, though if it was in true thought or simply realization of getting ‘busted’ for all the times she’d won hide and seek in the past she couldn’t be sure, causing the elder Higurashi woman to chuckle quietly in amusement. The girl was just too cute for her own good.
Sudden movement off to the side quickly distracted the toddler, her growing pout sprouting back into a huge grin as she darted after her fleeing uncle.
The game continued over the next couple of hours, as Kagome returned from the store and started working on that night’s dinner. Izayoi had never had barbecued ribs before, so this was sure to be a special treat. There wasn’t any special occasion they were celebrating; Kagome always tried to do special things for her daughter whenever possible.
Soon the delectable aroma of grilling pork joined the pleasant scent of rain. Shaking herself dry as much as possible before entering the house, Izayoi washed up before dinner like a good girl.
Dinner was served a little earlier than normal, before sunset; Kagome wanted to be sure that her daughter got to enjoy her meal with the full strength of her senses intact. The sun slipped out of sight as the miko helped her mother wash dishes in the kitchen while Jii-chan helped Izayoi with her reading lessons on the TV, Souta up in his room working on some last minute touches to an assignment due at school the following morning. It was a normal close to a normal day.
Exhausted and weary as she was, Kagome didn’t notice the faint spark of magic coming from the direction of the well-house.
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