InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Palm of Your Hand ❯ Drops in the River ( Chapter 4 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Disclaimer: InuYasha is the property of Rumiko Takahashi, not me. I'm just having fun and making no money doing it.

Drops in the River

He must have tried the well a hundred times that first day.

He knew. Deep down he knew it wouldn't let him through, but still he tried. For the first few years he tried the well almost every day. There was never a time he walked past it that he didn't jump in at least once. Eventually he stopped trying, though. Actually, he stopped going near the well altogether. If he was honest with himself he would admit that he had stopped believing it would let him through long before he stopped trying.

He knew there was a possibility he could see her again, if only he lived long enough. He had no idea how long he would live. Not only because he could be killed at any time, but also because he was the oldest living hanyou he knew of. He didn't seem to be aging very fast, but his life was essentially a trial run. Since youkai aged so slowly, if at all; it seemed logical to assume that he might only age in his human form. If that proved to be true, he would age, albeit incredibly slowly; but that was just a theory. He might die of old age before her time, or he might be an old man by the time she was born. Hell, he might not even age at all, like his brother. There was only one way to find out. Live and learn.

And so he lived. To him it felt like several different lives that he had lived. Among them, his life with his friends in the human village. His life after that, in the wild again, like he had lived in his youth. His life with his brother's family, after they had made their peace with one another. It was during this time that the age of youkai came to an end in the eyes of mankind.

Youkai, for the most part, had long tried to peacefully coexist with humans; but human fear continued to spark conflicts that always ended in favor of the youkai. All lesser youkai had been eradicated by this time, and the higher level youkai saw they had two options: hide themselves away or rid the world of humankind. They chose the former in a move that InuYasha had already known would inevitably be made. He had seen the future, after all, and there were so many humans there. So, seeing that the mortals would eventually provoke their own extinction (and thanks in no small part to the love his brother held for a certain human being), the youkai, for the preservation of humankind, chose to conceal themselves among them, reigning quietly over them. There were dissenters, of course, but the ruling class youkai were in agreement and the dissenters were dealt with swiftly.

Many reinventions of himself had brought InuYasha to his present life. Working as a software developer for his brother's computer software company, Cellsync. When he finally decided to attend university for the first time, in the nineteen seventies, he had discovered that he was not nearly as stupid as he had always been made out to be. In fact, despite his crude demeanor, he was significantly more intelligent than his mostly human peers. He could have had his pick of prestigious jobs, but he chose to work for his brothers company where he could essentially be his own boss. He had never answered to anyone and he wasn't about to start now. Living over six centuries tends to set a person in their ways.

Looking back, he remembered thinking of that first day, when the well had closed, as the longest day of his life. That was before he lived one hundred eighty-five thousand seven hundred ninety-three more days without her.

<<>>

It was around the time he started working at Cellsync that InuYasha started to recognize things. The technology and architecture of what he remembered of Kagome's time was beginning to take shape. He started checking the birth announcements every Sunday in the newspaper. For almost ten years he got nothing, then on one early spring morning in the nineteen eighties, he finally saw what he was searching for. Her name. Higurashi Kagome.

He thought the years had been long up to this point, but they were nothing compared to the next fifteen. He could have went to the shrine to see her, she wouldn't have recognized him, seeing as how she hadn't met him yet; but he would have just been torturing himself. He visited the shrine once when he knew she would be at school, and spoke with a man he had at first assumed to be an employee, but later realized was actually Kagome's not-yet-dead father. Her mother was pregnant with Souta at the time. She wasn't showing yet, but he could tell by her scent that she was pregnant. It was nice to visit the shrine; but seeing her mother, so young and so like Kagome, only made him miss her more. He vowed to himself not to return to the shrine until they could be together again.

During the months following Kagome's fifteenth birthday he had initially worried that he might run into his younger self accidentally, but then he realized that it was impossible, since if it had happened he would have a memory of it now. When enough time had finally passed that he was sure the well had closed, he prepared to finally go to her. Finally. Then he got a reality check, in the form of his brother threatening him with a slow and painful death if he dared to get involved with a fifteen-year-old girl while holding a prominent position at his company. InuYasha hadn't even thought about that. He had aged. Not much, all things considered, but at this point he appeared about the age of a thirty-year-old human. And thirty-year-old men dating teenage girls was frowned upon, as it should be. Never mind the fact that, in reality, he was completely ancient and everything about this would seem weird to someone on the outside anyway.

He wasn't actually afraid his brother would kill him, but he had to agree with him. She was too young right now. He decided that he could wait a couple more years. At least until she turned eighteen. He couldn't have known that this would turn out to be the worst decision of his life.

<<>>

InuYasha chose the day after Kagome's high school graduation as the day he would finally reconnect with her. He went to the shrine first thing that morning, both excited and anxious to finally see her again. He didn't know what kind of reaction he was going to get, but he was confident that even if she had moved on, he would do anything within his power to win back her heart.

He had expected her to be angry with him for waiting so long to contact her. What he didn't expect was to learn from her mother that she had graduated months earlier, at the close of the previous semester, and had moved out of the country. He wasn't sure what to do. Kagome's mother didn't recognize him, since not only was he older, but he was also wearing a concealment charm, and Mrs. Higurashi had never before seen him in his human form. She had asked him if he was one of Kagome's teachers, to which he said 'yes', figuring it was as good a cover as any. He didn't want Kagome's mother to know who he was, as he was sure she would notify Kagome of his appearance, and he didn't yet know how she was going to react to him suddenly returning to her life. He thought it would probably be better if he had the element of surprise working in his favor. He didn't ask any more questions that day, so as not to rouse suspicion. He figured he could trace her location on his own easily enough. He unfortunately didn't know that she was living in a foreign country illegally, with no proper form of identification, and being paid cash under the table. Her name wasn't on any leases or other contracts. She was a needle in an earth-sized haystack. The only information he had to go on was that she wasn't in Japan.

He searched for months with almost no success. Her last blip on the radar was that her passport had been used to enter the United States the day after her eighteenth birthday. His only chance of finding her was to find out from her mother where she was, so he returned to the shrine. After an hour of listening to the old man ramble on about it's history, of which he was already quite familiar, Kagome's mother finally made her appearance.

"Konichiwa, Takahashi-san," she addressed him as she exited the house. "It's good to see you again."

She remembered him.

"Konichiwa, Higurashi-san. How are you?" InuYasha responded.

After a few more minutes of polite small talk he cut right to the chase.

"So, how is Kagome?" he asked her. He could tell the last time he had spoken with her that she was hesitant to tell him where Kagome was exactly. He could tell she was suspicious of him, and taking into consideration that he was, in fact, being deceitful, she had every reason to be. It was going to be even harder to get information out of her this time around.

"She is doing well. We really miss her around here, but she has made friends and is very happy." Mrs. Higurashi replied.

"Where is she living now?" He decided to just come right out and ask.

"The United States."

'No shit.' he thought. "I've been there a few times myself." he said nonchalantly. "Although it's been a while. It's alright, but there's no place like home." InuYasha could already see that he was going to have to reveal his identity to her if he hoped to get Kagome's location out of her.

Mrs. Higurashi nodded. "I've actually never been out of Japan, but my son and I are planning to visit Kagome sometime during the summer. I've tried convincing her grandfather to join us, but he is having trouble accepting the fact that she is living with a boy." She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "He's very old fashioned, as I'm sure you've noticed." She smiled and rolled her eyes.

Mrs. Higurashi was intentionally being ambiguous. This man was obviously interested in Kagome, of that she was sure; and she couldn't shake the feeling that he was being deceptive. 'Could Kagome have had an affair with one of her teachers? No. There's no way. Kagome is a good girl.' she thought.

"Yeah." Was all InuYasha was able to choke out. He couldn't believe it. He felt like he'd been punched in the face. He wanted to kill the motherfucker who dared try and take his Kagome away from him. No. He wanted to go on a fucking killing spree from here to wherever the hell she was. 'What the actual fuck!' InuYasha thought to himself, struggling to stifle a growl. 'Living with a guy? She's fucking living with a fucking guy?! Fuck this! This is bullshit! I'm gonna find out where the hell she is if I have to sniff every last inch of the goddamn planet, and I'm gonna drag her ass back home and that's all there is to it.' He had waited so long to be with her. He would be damned if he let some useless human twerp take her away now. He deserved to be with her. He had waited over five centuries to be with her. How could the little prick compete with that? Unless…

InuYasha swallowed thickly. "Is she happy?" he asked her dejectedly, not meeting her eyes. "I mean, does she...does she love this guy?"

Mrs. Higurashi was actually starting to feel somewhat sorry for this man. She had just watched what appeared to be the first four of the five stages of grief play across his face in a matter of seconds. "She's happier than I've seen her in a very long time." she answered honestly. "And from what she tells me, they do love each other very much." She felt slightly guilty about misleading him, but at least she wasn't telling a bold faced lie.

"Oh...okay then…" InuYasha said, completely crestfallen.

What could he do? Was it not he himself who had let her slip away in the first place? Now that he thought about it, was he even sure that her feelings for him were the same as his feelings for her? No, he wasn't… Why had he never considered the idea that she might just flat out reject him? Maybe he was just a pathetic, delusional fool… His head was suddenly swimming with thoughts of uncertainty that he had never before entertained.

"Well... thank you for everything, Higurashi-san." he said sincerely as he turned away, his confidence shot.

Kagome's mother said nothing more, she only watched him with sympathetic eyes as he headed down the shrine steps, back to his car, and to what he feared would be the rest of his life without her.

Since that day almost seven years ago, he had carried on with his life, but he had never let go. Periodically he would check to see if she had returned to Japan, or possibly even gotten deported...or married... Anything that would let him know that she was still out there somewhere. As long as she was alive he would never stop hoping that she would come back to him one day. So far, he had never come across the smallest hint that she even still existed.