InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Forget Me Not ❯ If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with ( Chapter 5 )
[ 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: 5.3K | Visits: 3.5K | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Angst | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 06.23.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 5.3K | Visits: 3.5K | 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 5 – If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with
Inuyasha had been going over everything in his mind for the last six months, over and over again, but had finally decided that this was the right thing to do. He simply couldn’t live in misery for the rest of his life; he knew Kagome wouldn’t have wanted that. She’d always said that she wanted him to be happy. He wasn’t sure that he was ready to truly be happy again, yet, but at least he was finally ready to try.
Finally, he and Kikyou had the talk that’d been months in the making, as he called her over to his hut one day so that they could speak in private. He’d finally gotten the balls to say all the things that he should’ve said back at the very beginning.
“I still care about you.” he told her, “I never forgot our past.” he assured her, “Live with me.” he whispered in her ear, daring to pull her into an embrace.
Kikyou was surprised, shocked even, but also overjoyed, as she readily returned his embrace. She’d had a lot of time to think, too, during the last six months, and she had decided long ago that if Inuyasha still wanted her, she would be his. She was well past the proper marrying age, and given her history, none of the other men of the village had expressed any interest in her. She wanted to be an ordinary woman, but a huge part of that was learning what it was like to feel like a woman, and such a feeling, she had realized over the last six months, came from belonging to a man. She wanted to be a wife, more than anything, and even despite his youkai blood she still cared for Inuyasha. She was sure she could be happy living with him.
Finally pulling back from the hug after a moment, Inuyasha then went on to apologize for the way he’d been acting for the last six months, but Kikyou quickly assured him that she understood, and that no apology was necessary.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked her.
“There’s nothing to forgive.” she answered with a smile.
Shaking his head in denial, he argued, “But all I’ve been doing is wallowing around in self-pity, not even noticing your feelings on the matter.”
“My feelings on the matter are my own,” she answered cryptically, unable to deny his words, yet not wishing to confirm them either. “It was plain to see that you were hurting, and it was not my place to interfere.”
“Thank you…” he sighed in genuine gratitude, remembering how Kikyou had more or less been keeping to herself, not going out of her way to seek him out or engage him in conversation, knowing that he’d needed time to figure everything out on his own.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to avoid you…it’s just…” His words faltered as a small amount of pain suddenly resurfaced.
“I understand.” she answered softly, seeing the inner turmoil his soul still suffered from, even now. “Are you certain you are ready for this?” Kikyou asked him then, in reference to their own budding relationship.
“Absolutely.” he assured her, pulling her in even closer. Whispering in her ear, his voice darkened suddenly, carrying with it a husky undertone she’d never heard him use before. “You told me once…” he started slowly, “…that you had longed to do this…” Moving his mouth away from her ear he turned his face towards hers, their lips a mere hair’s breath apart. “…when you were alive.” he finished, pressing his lips against her own.
Their kiss was slow and sweet, and felt both wrong and right at the same time. Some part of Inuyasha’s mind couldn’t stop screaming at him that he was betraying Kagome’s memory, but the fact of the matter was that Kagome was gone. She would want him to move on, and he was certain that she had concluded herself that he would end up back with Kikyou. Why deny himself his one last lingering chance at possibly finding at least some small measure of happiness? Especially since he was sure that Kagome thought he was with Kikyou, anyway.
Finally pulling apart from the kiss, Inuyasha looked into Kikyou’s eyes, and for the first time in six months, he found himself smiling. She truly was the same Kikyou she used to be, the one he’d fallen in love with once upon a time. The false Kikyou, the undead one comprised of clay that had only felt hatred and vengeance, she was gone. This woman in his arms, she was real, she was flesh and blood, and she was Kikyou. She was his first love given back to him by his second love, a gift he refused to continue taking for granted.
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It didn’t take long for word to spread throughout the village that Inuyasha and Kikyou were officially together. The hanyou feared it would turn into a scandal, their precious miko restored to them giving herself to a filthy half-breed, but nobody offered any objections. Not even his friends. By that point Miroku and Sango were simply relieved to see a spark of life returned to Inuyasha’s eyes, and once they had gotten to know her, the real her, they had discovered that Kikyou was truly not that bad of a person. There had been some secret speculation between the monk and his wife as to whether or not Kikyou would be willing to be with Inuyasha as he was, since the jewel had been used up to restore her to life and he could therefore never be transformed into a human, but that didn’t seem to be an issue as Kikyou happily told her younger/older sister the good news. Being of low status in a humble, farming community, there was truly no need for any kind of official wedding ceremony, and so it was that Kikyou simply moved in with him, declaring herself to be his wife.
Their first night together was beyond awkward. Not only had Kikyou been born and raised in Feudal Japan, where it was often taught in stricter communities that sex was a wifely duty and not something to be enjoyed by the woman, but Kikyou had also personally been raised to be a miko, meaning she had always been told that, for herself, sex was forbidden. She was pretty much abandoning her role and her robes in order to live with Inuyasha, but that was all right with Kikyou because she wanted the life of an ordinary woman. What Inuyasha wanted, however, was a woman who would make him feel wanted, a woman who made him feel attractive and desired, a woman who made him feel like a man. He was willing to share his life with Kikyou, to love her, to raise a family with her, and to put Kagome out of his mind except for that special little corner of his heart that would forever house her memory, but Kikyou was not at all what he had expected. She pretty much stripped and waited for him to take her. When he attempted to get a little passion going between the two of them her responses were reluctant at best. Having no personal experience to go on except for his one night with Kagome, Inuyasha had no idea if he was doing something wrong, or if it was because Kikyou was inwardly disgusted by his hanyou features. Why did she not have any desire to touch him in return, as Kagome had done? She did respond to his kiss, however, and though it took him a while, he finally managed to get Kikyou to come out of her shell, at least a little bit.
Everything Inuyasha knew about sex he’d overheard in his years spent living alone in the forest, hearing highwaymen talk of their encounters with whores. His knowledge of the female body had been extremely limited prior to his encounter with Kagome, but thanks to that one night of ‘practice’, he knew how to give his wife pleasure. He was disappointed when she remained quiet, however, not moaning or thrashing or crying out his name…again, as Kagome had done. It made him doubt that Kikyou was truly enjoying the experience, which tampered his own passion and made their joining feel more obligatory than anything else. He had no idea if her one silent moment of shuddering meant that she’d reached completion, but he wasn’t about to ask her. She only spoke once during the entire process, whispering with a twinge if fright in her voice, “No…your claws…” when he started to move his fingers within her, so it was with a dejected spirit and intact hymen that Inuyasha completed their joining. Knowing Kikyou would feel discomfort in the act, he aimed for his own orgasm. Closing his eyes, he finished in only a few strokes, and the irony was not lost on him that after so many heartless moments of comparing Kagome to Kikyou, he would discover that the future-born miko was far superior in this one, very important way.
Inuyasha supposed it wasn’t really Kikyou’s fault; she was under the presumption that a wife merely allowed her husband to take his pleasure and that was that. But he didn’t want to be that kind of a husband, and he wouldn’t allow her to be that kind of a wife. They would need to have a nice long talk on the subject…tomorrow.
Inuyasha was disappointed again when Kikyou dressed in a sleeping yukata after their encounter was over, having been looking forward to holding her naked in his arms as they slept. Seeing his puppy-dog expression, the former miko attempted to appease her husband with a smile and the statement that she was merely cold; he didn’t bother informing her that direct body contact was the best way to stay warm. Nothing broke his heart more, however, than when Kikyou mixed a strong batch of herbs together, telling him in passing that they were to help her sleep because she had gone without sleep for so long in her false body that she sometimes had trouble drifting off now. It wouldn’t have been a problem except for one thing – he had a nose, and it told him two things. One, that Kikyou was nervous; she was lying. Two, his experience around the herbs Kaede often kept on hand informed him that nothing in Kikyou’s mix was anything her sister had ever used as a sleep aid. It was only all too easy to guess what the herbs were really for, and he felt tears sting the back of his eyes.
“Is something the matter?” Kikyou asked sweetly when she finally came back to bed, Inuyasha turning away from her as she pulled their blanket over herself.
“I’m just really tired.” he lied through his teeth.
Fangs…he mentally corrected, cursing himself quietly. He should have known.
“Goodnight, husband.” she murmured from behind him then, settling herself down for the night. She sounded complacent, but that was a good thing, wasn’t it?
“Goodnight, wife.”
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Inuyasha ended up chickening out when it came to having that long talk with Kikyou the following morning, figuring it was probably something he could work on with her silently, gradually, through repeated physical encouragement. She was just new and shy; she would loosen up eventually. When Kikyou didn’t appear to possess any desire to bed with him that night, however, Inuyasha didn’t fight it. Kikyou almost seemed…relieved…when he left his kosode on.
Other than the matters of the bedroom, Inuyasha found that he was truly happy living with Kikyou. It was easy for him to fall back into the same feelings he had once held for her, and he followed her around often as she collected herbs. While Kikyou had given up the life of an official miko, her herbal and medical knowledge did qualify her to function as a village healer and midwife. He was glad that she had something to do with herself so that she wouldn’t become bored in her new life. At first, they continued to make love on occasion, each time with hope in Inuyasha’s eyes that Kikyou would develop a passionate spark about her, but nothing ever seemed to change. She would never deny him. If he flat out told her that he wanted her then she would obey without question…she would obey…like a good little obedient wife of his time period had been taught to do. Why couldn’t she be a bit more fiery and break a few protocols from time to time? Start an argument and yell in his face? He wasn’t stupid enough to voice his opinions out loud, however. And after every time they coupled she fixed herself that same herbal remedy. It was curious how she never seemed to have any trouble sleeping on the nights when they didn’t have sex…
He wasn’t masochistic enough to voice his opinions on that.
Everything changed dramatically during their first new moon together. Kikyou already knew it was coming, having already witnessed his transformation several times by that point. Inuyasha wasn’t really in the mood to do much more than force down his dinner and crawl into bed to wallow in the misery of his human emotions, his longing for Kagome getting the better of him on his human nights, but instead of being offended or hurt by her husband’s obvious melancholy, Kikyou surprised him by offering to make him feel better. It was the first time she actually approached him with the offer of sex, and as she leaned forward, initiating the kiss, Inuyasha felt something stir from deep within his belly as Kikyou’s hands began exploring his body, finding their way within his kosode to stroke his bare chest.
That night was, by far, the most passion filled night of their entire three-week marriage, and Inuyasha looked at it as a good sign. Especially when Kikyou snuggled her naked form against him afterwards, falling asleep almost immediately with an extremely content look upon her face.
She hadn’t taken her anti-pregnancy herbs.
Yes, he knew what they were, and it hurt to know that love him as she might, she wasn’t willing to have his children. Or apparently, at least not his demonic children. Inuyasha wasn’t sure if he could father a pure human child during the new moon or not, but it didn’t matter since the nights of the new moon did not match up with Kikyou’s fertility cycle. Still, having a wife was more than he had ever thought he would have or deserved, and he knew that Kikyou loved him. She had been willing to sacrifice so much of herself in order to be with him. Of course, Kagome had been willing to sacrifice a whole lot more…
Reaching a hand up to his chest, Inuyasha wrapped his fingers around the heart shaped pendant he still wore, nearly seven months later. Kikyou had to know that the necklace was a keepsake of Kagome’s, but she had never once said anything on the subject, nor had she ever inquired as to what had become of the kotodama. He was hardly in a position to criticize how fully Kikyou did or didn’t love him when his own heart was still split in two. If she never wanted to have his child, honestly, that was all right with him. At least he could have one night of passion every new moon. It was more than any other hanyou would ever receive, he was sure…especially when you considered how few hanyou actually survived to adulthood at all. He had absolutely no right to feel sorry for himself.
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Time continued to move forward, as it often did, and before long Inuyasha and Kikyou had been wed for three whole months. Of course, that also meant that the slayer was about ready to pop, and when Sango went into labor Kikyou assisted Kaede with the delivery. The slayer gave birth to healthy, twin baby girls. Some people looked at twins as a bad omen, and many men especially would be disappointed to have two daughters when surely they had been hoping for a son, but Miroku honestly couldn’t have been happier. The simple fact that he was a father was more than enough for him. He didn’t believe in the superstition of twins being a bad thing, and he even joked that the kami had given him two girls on purpose as punishment for his womanizing past. Now he would learn what it was like to be the overprotective father, constantly on the look out for men like him. Still, it was a future he was looking forward to.
Inuyasha was honestly happy for Miroku, but he couldn’t hide that buried feeling of longing from his friend’s astute observations. Upon Miroku’s drilling to know what was wrong, he told the houshi in private how Kikyou was taking herbs, and how she’d yet to even say one thing to him on the matter, and how he was too cowardly to raise the topic with her himself. Miroku was shocked, and honestly didn’t know what to say. But Inuyasha seemed content, for the most part, to accept things the way they were. He accepted the fact that he would never be a father.
“It’s not like it was a life-long dream of mine or nothing.” the hanyou assured his friend, adding, “Hell, my life-long dreams used to just consist of staying alive.”
Who was he to complain about having a beautiful, sweet, caring wife to cook all his meals, to keep him company, and grant him the use of her body for physical pleasure? At least he’d finally gotten Kikyou to squirm and moan beneath him…it turned out, so long as they weren’t tipped by dangerous claws, she really liked the feel of his fingers.
It was three months later, near their six-month anniversary, that Inuyasha was feeling especially frisky for some reason, until he leaned forward to kiss Kikyou’s neck and suddenly got hit with a spike of panic. Outwardly she didn’t make a move to resist him, unless you counted the wide, nervous look in her eyes. At first he didn’t understand, and was especially hurt that she could somehow fear him even after all that time, until something suddenly dawned on him.
“You’re out of those herbs, aren’t you? They’re out of season, and you used the last of them last time.”
That explained the twinge of worry he’d detected in her when she’d crawled into bed after their last coupling.
Kikyou’s eyes widened even further at his words, a confession on the tip of her tongue as her scent clouded over with fear and guilt.
“Relax…” he shrugged off, adding, “Don’t you know your own cycle? You’re not fertile right now.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, she couldn’t speak, and he suddenly realized why she’d felt the herbs were necessary to begin with.
She’s worried that since I’m half youkai, my seed might live longer than a human’s, and stay within her until her body’s ready for it.
Honestly, he couldn’t reassure her otherwise on something like that. He didn’t know that much about inu-youkai, although it was true that in every case of another hanyou he’d ever come across during his lifetime, their human mothers had all gotten pregnant from only one, single encounter. Still, that could’ve easily been a coincidence, and that was with full youkai sires, which he was not. But most animal-based youkai could scent when a human female was fertile, if they thought to look for it, and so…at least in the cases of Shiori and Jinenji who had both been born from love, not to mention himself…their youkai fathers had probably all known that their women would conceive. With the number of sadistic oni out there who liked to rape human women, not to mention horn dogs like Hachimon who would take on a human illusion to get laid in a teahouse, the hanyou birth rate would probably be a whole lot higher if every single encounter led to pregnancy. All this thought on human/youkai coupling and pregnancy had one passing concern flash before his eyes, but he dismissed the thought just as quickly as it’d come, and as for the woman lying beside him, he honestly doubted that Kikyou had anything to worry about so long as it was the wrong time of the month. Still, he wasn’t about to try and talk her into ‘letting’ him bed with her. Suddenly, he wasn’t really in the mood any more.
“Never mind…” he finally muttered, rolling over to face away from her.
“How long have you known?” she finally whispered, her heart breaking just a little bit more for the man lying next to her when her human ears managed to pick up his faint reply of, “Since the first night.”
“Inuyasha-”
“It’s okay,” he interrupted, still lying with his back to her. “I understand.”
Kikyou did her best to hold back her tears, knowing that he would be able to smell them. She believed him…that he understood. But that didn’t make it right.
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The following morning nothing was said on the subject, though Inuyasha did not approach her again until the next night of the new moon. He was a flesh and blood male with needs and desires, after all, so he wasn’t about to miss out on the one night a month when he could actually have passionate sex with his wife…at least until those little plants of hers came back next spring.
Time continued to move forward, and everyone’s lives along with it. Inuyasha and Miroku still got hired out on the occasional exorcist job, and besides assisting the holy man with matters of youkai slaying, Inuyasha also earned his own way in life by hunting game deep in the forest, trading the meat and hides for things like rice and cloth. Things he couldn’t acquire for himself and Kikyou with his own two hands. Most of their meals came from his catches, be it red meat, fish or fowl. Kikyou had also started a small vegetable garden beside their hut, which provided plenty of greenery to augment their daily meals. Life was good, at least on the surface.
When Myouga paid his master an unexpected visit one day, Inuyasha was grateful that Kikyou was currently out of the house assisting some sick villager or another, allowing his retainer the opportunity to chew him out in private. The flea-youkai was shocked to learn what all had happened while he’d been away. Inuyasha argued that that was what he got for disappearing for over a year. Nervously, Myouga confessed to having been summoned away by Sesshoumaru for matters pertaining to the West. Fleas made excellent spies, after all. Upon returning to the Western Lands after the completion of his mission to relay all his gathered reconnaissance, the daiyoukai had stated something in passing about Inuyasha being an even greater fool than he had originally thought, and so Myouga had rushed right over to see if it was true that the inu-hanyou really had ‘allowed himself to become house trained’ as his elder half-brother had put it.
After lamenting Kagome’s absence from their world, Myouga was fortunately able to educate the hanyou on a few topics that he still had questions for. It turned out that his seed was ‘most likely’ not that much different from a standard human’s, although there was truly no way to test that theory, so he decided not to hound Kikyou about her herbs, except to maybe make sure she always kept a much larger supply on hand in the future. Another bit of information Myouga shared regarding youkai physiology was their ability to bond one’s self to one’s mate. It was a merging of souls, of auras, which could easily be achieved in a woman like Kikyou because of her inherit abilities as a miko. She was no ordinary human, despite living the lifestyle of a simple housewife, and because she had her own internal magics, Inuyasha should be able to perform the bonding without issue. That would mean that he could keep Kikyou with him always, throughout the remainder of his lifetime rather than merely the length of hers.
Initially, Inuyasha was ecstatic to learn that there was such a spell and how to perform it, but it didn’t take long for doubts to start creeping their way into his psyche. Would Kikyou want that? To be bound to him for what would seem like eternity? While it was true that he wasn’t technically immortal, Myouga believed that he would probably live for several centuries, at least. That would certainly seem like immortality to a human, and to a human who didn’t want to live forever it would probably feel more like a curse than a blessing. Then another thought occurred to him, as horrible as it sounded. Kikyou couldn’t be made immortal, because she was Kagome’s preincarnation. That meant that in order for Kagome to be born, Kikyou, at some point in time, would have to die. They had already had that discussion long ago in Kaede’s hut - not that Kikyou had to die, in so many words, but that Kagome was not the reincarnation of Kikyou’s first death. The elder miko had hypothesized that since Kikyou had been brought back in her clay body with such absolute hatred, from feeling such hate at the exact moment of her death, and Kagome had been born with such a kind, loving and forgiving soul, that it had actually been destiny all along for Kikyou to have been brought back and given a second chance at life, because Kagome was actually the reincarnation of her second death…which had yet to occur by that point in time. But it did make sense, because Kikyou now knew the truth about what had happened on that fateful day fifty two years ago, and when she did pass on, hopefully as an old woman who had enjoyed many happy years on Earth, her soul would be at peace, and would be able to be reborn into someone who was kindhearted and pure. The fact that Kagome had been born with the Shikon no Tama within her body was not suddenly a mystery when you considered the fact that the jewel had more or less merged itself with Kikyou’s form in order to grant their wish of turning her human. Her clay body had been transformed into one of flesh and blood through the magic of the jewel. It was within her, it was one with her, and it made perfect sense that it would still continue onward into her next life. Yes, it was a bit of a time paradox, if one tried to dissect everything too closely, but it wasn’t that hard to comprehend or accept on the surface at face value.
All things considered, Inuyasha finally decided against voicing the option of the soul-binding to his wife, knowing that she would probably say no anyway, and for the same reason he had already reached on his own. Her eventual death was required to ensure Kagome’s existence, and ensuring Kagome’s existence was required to maintain the integrity of space-time as a whole, as they knew it. After all, if Kagome were never born, then she wouldn’t have gone back in time, which meant that Kikyou herself would still not have been given a second chance at life, and Inuyasha would even still be stuck to the tree. But beyond all that, even assuming that Kagome would still be born as she had been and that everything that had happened would continue to play out as it had before in the giant circle that was time, Inuyasha found himself feeling more than a little guilty to suddenly realize that even if he could, he honestly didn’t want to bind himself to Kikyou in that way. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. He didn’t mind sharing his life with her now, and had no intention of leaving her, but he was still planning on trying to make it back to Kagome’s time in five hundred years so that he could be with her again, also. He wasn’t sure how fast he would really age, and if he would be an old man by that point, or - hopefully - look only a tad bit older than he currently did, but whatever the case may be, he planned on finding out. But showing up in Kagome’s time with a five hundred year old wife on his arm was not a part of the equation.
Kikyou did not ask Inuyasha what was troubling his mind later that night at dinner, and he didn’t have the heart to confess to her his sins. For as many times as Kikyou, while driven by hatred, had scornfully referred to Kagome as her ‘copy’, Inuyasha now realized that, in reality, his heart considered Kikyou to be the substitute.
It was going to be a long five hundred years.
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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 5 – If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with
Inuyasha had been going over everything in his mind for the last six months, over and over again, but had finally decided that this was the right thing to do. He simply couldn’t live in misery for the rest of his life; he knew Kagome wouldn’t have wanted that. She’d always said that she wanted him to be happy. He wasn’t sure that he was ready to truly be happy again, yet, but at least he was finally ready to try.
Finally, he and Kikyou had the talk that’d been months in the making, as he called her over to his hut one day so that they could speak in private. He’d finally gotten the balls to say all the things that he should’ve said back at the very beginning.
“I still care about you.” he told her, “I never forgot our past.” he assured her, “Live with me.” he whispered in her ear, daring to pull her into an embrace.
Kikyou was surprised, shocked even, but also overjoyed, as she readily returned his embrace. She’d had a lot of time to think, too, during the last six months, and she had decided long ago that if Inuyasha still wanted her, she would be his. She was well past the proper marrying age, and given her history, none of the other men of the village had expressed any interest in her. She wanted to be an ordinary woman, but a huge part of that was learning what it was like to feel like a woman, and such a feeling, she had realized over the last six months, came from belonging to a man. She wanted to be a wife, more than anything, and even despite his youkai blood she still cared for Inuyasha. She was sure she could be happy living with him.
Finally pulling back from the hug after a moment, Inuyasha then went on to apologize for the way he’d been acting for the last six months, but Kikyou quickly assured him that she understood, and that no apology was necessary.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked her.
“There’s nothing to forgive.” she answered with a smile.
Shaking his head in denial, he argued, “But all I’ve been doing is wallowing around in self-pity, not even noticing your feelings on the matter.”
“My feelings on the matter are my own,” she answered cryptically, unable to deny his words, yet not wishing to confirm them either. “It was plain to see that you were hurting, and it was not my place to interfere.”
“Thank you…” he sighed in genuine gratitude, remembering how Kikyou had more or less been keeping to herself, not going out of her way to seek him out or engage him in conversation, knowing that he’d needed time to figure everything out on his own.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to avoid you…it’s just…” His words faltered as a small amount of pain suddenly resurfaced.
“I understand.” she answered softly, seeing the inner turmoil his soul still suffered from, even now. “Are you certain you are ready for this?” Kikyou asked him then, in reference to their own budding relationship.
“Absolutely.” he assured her, pulling her in even closer. Whispering in her ear, his voice darkened suddenly, carrying with it a husky undertone she’d never heard him use before. “You told me once…” he started slowly, “…that you had longed to do this…” Moving his mouth away from her ear he turned his face towards hers, their lips a mere hair’s breath apart. “…when you were alive.” he finished, pressing his lips against her own.
Their kiss was slow and sweet, and felt both wrong and right at the same time. Some part of Inuyasha’s mind couldn’t stop screaming at him that he was betraying Kagome’s memory, but the fact of the matter was that Kagome was gone. She would want him to move on, and he was certain that she had concluded herself that he would end up back with Kikyou. Why deny himself his one last lingering chance at possibly finding at least some small measure of happiness? Especially since he was sure that Kagome thought he was with Kikyou, anyway.
Finally pulling apart from the kiss, Inuyasha looked into Kikyou’s eyes, and for the first time in six months, he found himself smiling. She truly was the same Kikyou she used to be, the one he’d fallen in love with once upon a time. The false Kikyou, the undead one comprised of clay that had only felt hatred and vengeance, she was gone. This woman in his arms, she was real, she was flesh and blood, and she was Kikyou. She was his first love given back to him by his second love, a gift he refused to continue taking for granted.
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It didn’t take long for word to spread throughout the village that Inuyasha and Kikyou were officially together. The hanyou feared it would turn into a scandal, their precious miko restored to them giving herself to a filthy half-breed, but nobody offered any objections. Not even his friends. By that point Miroku and Sango were simply relieved to see a spark of life returned to Inuyasha’s eyes, and once they had gotten to know her, the real her, they had discovered that Kikyou was truly not that bad of a person. There had been some secret speculation between the monk and his wife as to whether or not Kikyou would be willing to be with Inuyasha as he was, since the jewel had been used up to restore her to life and he could therefore never be transformed into a human, but that didn’t seem to be an issue as Kikyou happily told her younger/older sister the good news. Being of low status in a humble, farming community, there was truly no need for any kind of official wedding ceremony, and so it was that Kikyou simply moved in with him, declaring herself to be his wife.
Their first night together was beyond awkward. Not only had Kikyou been born and raised in Feudal Japan, where it was often taught in stricter communities that sex was a wifely duty and not something to be enjoyed by the woman, but Kikyou had also personally been raised to be a miko, meaning she had always been told that, for herself, sex was forbidden. She was pretty much abandoning her role and her robes in order to live with Inuyasha, but that was all right with Kikyou because she wanted the life of an ordinary woman. What Inuyasha wanted, however, was a woman who would make him feel wanted, a woman who made him feel attractive and desired, a woman who made him feel like a man. He was willing to share his life with Kikyou, to love her, to raise a family with her, and to put Kagome out of his mind except for that special little corner of his heart that would forever house her memory, but Kikyou was not at all what he had expected. She pretty much stripped and waited for him to take her. When he attempted to get a little passion going between the two of them her responses were reluctant at best. Having no personal experience to go on except for his one night with Kagome, Inuyasha had no idea if he was doing something wrong, or if it was because Kikyou was inwardly disgusted by his hanyou features. Why did she not have any desire to touch him in return, as Kagome had done? She did respond to his kiss, however, and though it took him a while, he finally managed to get Kikyou to come out of her shell, at least a little bit.
Everything Inuyasha knew about sex he’d overheard in his years spent living alone in the forest, hearing highwaymen talk of their encounters with whores. His knowledge of the female body had been extremely limited prior to his encounter with Kagome, but thanks to that one night of ‘practice’, he knew how to give his wife pleasure. He was disappointed when she remained quiet, however, not moaning or thrashing or crying out his name…again, as Kagome had done. It made him doubt that Kikyou was truly enjoying the experience, which tampered his own passion and made their joining feel more obligatory than anything else. He had no idea if her one silent moment of shuddering meant that she’d reached completion, but he wasn’t about to ask her. She only spoke once during the entire process, whispering with a twinge if fright in her voice, “No…your claws…” when he started to move his fingers within her, so it was with a dejected spirit and intact hymen that Inuyasha completed their joining. Knowing Kikyou would feel discomfort in the act, he aimed for his own orgasm. Closing his eyes, he finished in only a few strokes, and the irony was not lost on him that after so many heartless moments of comparing Kagome to Kikyou, he would discover that the future-born miko was far superior in this one, very important way.
Inuyasha supposed it wasn’t really Kikyou’s fault; she was under the presumption that a wife merely allowed her husband to take his pleasure and that was that. But he didn’t want to be that kind of a husband, and he wouldn’t allow her to be that kind of a wife. They would need to have a nice long talk on the subject…tomorrow.
Inuyasha was disappointed again when Kikyou dressed in a sleeping yukata after their encounter was over, having been looking forward to holding her naked in his arms as they slept. Seeing his puppy-dog expression, the former miko attempted to appease her husband with a smile and the statement that she was merely cold; he didn’t bother informing her that direct body contact was the best way to stay warm. Nothing broke his heart more, however, than when Kikyou mixed a strong batch of herbs together, telling him in passing that they were to help her sleep because she had gone without sleep for so long in her false body that she sometimes had trouble drifting off now. It wouldn’t have been a problem except for one thing – he had a nose, and it told him two things. One, that Kikyou was nervous; she was lying. Two, his experience around the herbs Kaede often kept on hand informed him that nothing in Kikyou’s mix was anything her sister had ever used as a sleep aid. It was only all too easy to guess what the herbs were really for, and he felt tears sting the back of his eyes.
“Is something the matter?” Kikyou asked sweetly when she finally came back to bed, Inuyasha turning away from her as she pulled their blanket over herself.
“I’m just really tired.” he lied through his teeth.
Fangs…he mentally corrected, cursing himself quietly. He should have known.
“Goodnight, husband.” she murmured from behind him then, settling herself down for the night. She sounded complacent, but that was a good thing, wasn’t it?
“Goodnight, wife.”
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Inuyasha ended up chickening out when it came to having that long talk with Kikyou the following morning, figuring it was probably something he could work on with her silently, gradually, through repeated physical encouragement. She was just new and shy; she would loosen up eventually. When Kikyou didn’t appear to possess any desire to bed with him that night, however, Inuyasha didn’t fight it. Kikyou almost seemed…relieved…when he left his kosode on.
Other than the matters of the bedroom, Inuyasha found that he was truly happy living with Kikyou. It was easy for him to fall back into the same feelings he had once held for her, and he followed her around often as she collected herbs. While Kikyou had given up the life of an official miko, her herbal and medical knowledge did qualify her to function as a village healer and midwife. He was glad that she had something to do with herself so that she wouldn’t become bored in her new life. At first, they continued to make love on occasion, each time with hope in Inuyasha’s eyes that Kikyou would develop a passionate spark about her, but nothing ever seemed to change. She would never deny him. If he flat out told her that he wanted her then she would obey without question…she would obey…like a good little obedient wife of his time period had been taught to do. Why couldn’t she be a bit more fiery and break a few protocols from time to time? Start an argument and yell in his face? He wasn’t stupid enough to voice his opinions out loud, however. And after every time they coupled she fixed herself that same herbal remedy. It was curious how she never seemed to have any trouble sleeping on the nights when they didn’t have sex…
He wasn’t masochistic enough to voice his opinions on that.
Everything changed dramatically during their first new moon together. Kikyou already knew it was coming, having already witnessed his transformation several times by that point. Inuyasha wasn’t really in the mood to do much more than force down his dinner and crawl into bed to wallow in the misery of his human emotions, his longing for Kagome getting the better of him on his human nights, but instead of being offended or hurt by her husband’s obvious melancholy, Kikyou surprised him by offering to make him feel better. It was the first time she actually approached him with the offer of sex, and as she leaned forward, initiating the kiss, Inuyasha felt something stir from deep within his belly as Kikyou’s hands began exploring his body, finding their way within his kosode to stroke his bare chest.
That night was, by far, the most passion filled night of their entire three-week marriage, and Inuyasha looked at it as a good sign. Especially when Kikyou snuggled her naked form against him afterwards, falling asleep almost immediately with an extremely content look upon her face.
She hadn’t taken her anti-pregnancy herbs.
Yes, he knew what they were, and it hurt to know that love him as she might, she wasn’t willing to have his children. Or apparently, at least not his demonic children. Inuyasha wasn’t sure if he could father a pure human child during the new moon or not, but it didn’t matter since the nights of the new moon did not match up with Kikyou’s fertility cycle. Still, having a wife was more than he had ever thought he would have or deserved, and he knew that Kikyou loved him. She had been willing to sacrifice so much of herself in order to be with him. Of course, Kagome had been willing to sacrifice a whole lot more…
Reaching a hand up to his chest, Inuyasha wrapped his fingers around the heart shaped pendant he still wore, nearly seven months later. Kikyou had to know that the necklace was a keepsake of Kagome’s, but she had never once said anything on the subject, nor had she ever inquired as to what had become of the kotodama. He was hardly in a position to criticize how fully Kikyou did or didn’t love him when his own heart was still split in two. If she never wanted to have his child, honestly, that was all right with him. At least he could have one night of passion every new moon. It was more than any other hanyou would ever receive, he was sure…especially when you considered how few hanyou actually survived to adulthood at all. He had absolutely no right to feel sorry for himself.
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Time continued to move forward, as it often did, and before long Inuyasha and Kikyou had been wed for three whole months. Of course, that also meant that the slayer was about ready to pop, and when Sango went into labor Kikyou assisted Kaede with the delivery. The slayer gave birth to healthy, twin baby girls. Some people looked at twins as a bad omen, and many men especially would be disappointed to have two daughters when surely they had been hoping for a son, but Miroku honestly couldn’t have been happier. The simple fact that he was a father was more than enough for him. He didn’t believe in the superstition of twins being a bad thing, and he even joked that the kami had given him two girls on purpose as punishment for his womanizing past. Now he would learn what it was like to be the overprotective father, constantly on the look out for men like him. Still, it was a future he was looking forward to.
Inuyasha was honestly happy for Miroku, but he couldn’t hide that buried feeling of longing from his friend’s astute observations. Upon Miroku’s drilling to know what was wrong, he told the houshi in private how Kikyou was taking herbs, and how she’d yet to even say one thing to him on the matter, and how he was too cowardly to raise the topic with her himself. Miroku was shocked, and honestly didn’t know what to say. But Inuyasha seemed content, for the most part, to accept things the way they were. He accepted the fact that he would never be a father.
“It’s not like it was a life-long dream of mine or nothing.” the hanyou assured his friend, adding, “Hell, my life-long dreams used to just consist of staying alive.”
Who was he to complain about having a beautiful, sweet, caring wife to cook all his meals, to keep him company, and grant him the use of her body for physical pleasure? At least he’d finally gotten Kikyou to squirm and moan beneath him…it turned out, so long as they weren’t tipped by dangerous claws, she really liked the feel of his fingers.
It was three months later, near their six-month anniversary, that Inuyasha was feeling especially frisky for some reason, until he leaned forward to kiss Kikyou’s neck and suddenly got hit with a spike of panic. Outwardly she didn’t make a move to resist him, unless you counted the wide, nervous look in her eyes. At first he didn’t understand, and was especially hurt that she could somehow fear him even after all that time, until something suddenly dawned on him.
“You’re out of those herbs, aren’t you? They’re out of season, and you used the last of them last time.”
That explained the twinge of worry he’d detected in her when she’d crawled into bed after their last coupling.
Kikyou’s eyes widened even further at his words, a confession on the tip of her tongue as her scent clouded over with fear and guilt.
“Relax…” he shrugged off, adding, “Don’t you know your own cycle? You’re not fertile right now.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, she couldn’t speak, and he suddenly realized why she’d felt the herbs were necessary to begin with.
She’s worried that since I’m half youkai, my seed might live longer than a human’s, and stay within her until her body’s ready for it.
Honestly, he couldn’t reassure her otherwise on something like that. He didn’t know that much about inu-youkai, although it was true that in every case of another hanyou he’d ever come across during his lifetime, their human mothers had all gotten pregnant from only one, single encounter. Still, that could’ve easily been a coincidence, and that was with full youkai sires, which he was not. But most animal-based youkai could scent when a human female was fertile, if they thought to look for it, and so…at least in the cases of Shiori and Jinenji who had both been born from love, not to mention himself…their youkai fathers had probably all known that their women would conceive. With the number of sadistic oni out there who liked to rape human women, not to mention horn dogs like Hachimon who would take on a human illusion to get laid in a teahouse, the hanyou birth rate would probably be a whole lot higher if every single encounter led to pregnancy. All this thought on human/youkai coupling and pregnancy had one passing concern flash before his eyes, but he dismissed the thought just as quickly as it’d come, and as for the woman lying beside him, he honestly doubted that Kikyou had anything to worry about so long as it was the wrong time of the month. Still, he wasn’t about to try and talk her into ‘letting’ him bed with her. Suddenly, he wasn’t really in the mood any more.
“Never mind…” he finally muttered, rolling over to face away from her.
“How long have you known?” she finally whispered, her heart breaking just a little bit more for the man lying next to her when her human ears managed to pick up his faint reply of, “Since the first night.”
“Inuyasha-”
“It’s okay,” he interrupted, still lying with his back to her. “I understand.”
Kikyou did her best to hold back her tears, knowing that he would be able to smell them. She believed him…that he understood. But that didn’t make it right.
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The following morning nothing was said on the subject, though Inuyasha did not approach her again until the next night of the new moon. He was a flesh and blood male with needs and desires, after all, so he wasn’t about to miss out on the one night a month when he could actually have passionate sex with his wife…at least until those little plants of hers came back next spring.
Time continued to move forward, and everyone’s lives along with it. Inuyasha and Miroku still got hired out on the occasional exorcist job, and besides assisting the holy man with matters of youkai slaying, Inuyasha also earned his own way in life by hunting game deep in the forest, trading the meat and hides for things like rice and cloth. Things he couldn’t acquire for himself and Kikyou with his own two hands. Most of their meals came from his catches, be it red meat, fish or fowl. Kikyou had also started a small vegetable garden beside their hut, which provided plenty of greenery to augment their daily meals. Life was good, at least on the surface.
When Myouga paid his master an unexpected visit one day, Inuyasha was grateful that Kikyou was currently out of the house assisting some sick villager or another, allowing his retainer the opportunity to chew him out in private. The flea-youkai was shocked to learn what all had happened while he’d been away. Inuyasha argued that that was what he got for disappearing for over a year. Nervously, Myouga confessed to having been summoned away by Sesshoumaru for matters pertaining to the West. Fleas made excellent spies, after all. Upon returning to the Western Lands after the completion of his mission to relay all his gathered reconnaissance, the daiyoukai had stated something in passing about Inuyasha being an even greater fool than he had originally thought, and so Myouga had rushed right over to see if it was true that the inu-hanyou really had ‘allowed himself to become house trained’ as his elder half-brother had put it.
After lamenting Kagome’s absence from their world, Myouga was fortunately able to educate the hanyou on a few topics that he still had questions for. It turned out that his seed was ‘most likely’ not that much different from a standard human’s, although there was truly no way to test that theory, so he decided not to hound Kikyou about her herbs, except to maybe make sure she always kept a much larger supply on hand in the future. Another bit of information Myouga shared regarding youkai physiology was their ability to bond one’s self to one’s mate. It was a merging of souls, of auras, which could easily be achieved in a woman like Kikyou because of her inherit abilities as a miko. She was no ordinary human, despite living the lifestyle of a simple housewife, and because she had her own internal magics, Inuyasha should be able to perform the bonding without issue. That would mean that he could keep Kikyou with him always, throughout the remainder of his lifetime rather than merely the length of hers.
Initially, Inuyasha was ecstatic to learn that there was such a spell and how to perform it, but it didn’t take long for doubts to start creeping their way into his psyche. Would Kikyou want that? To be bound to him for what would seem like eternity? While it was true that he wasn’t technically immortal, Myouga believed that he would probably live for several centuries, at least. That would certainly seem like immortality to a human, and to a human who didn’t want to live forever it would probably feel more like a curse than a blessing. Then another thought occurred to him, as horrible as it sounded. Kikyou couldn’t be made immortal, because she was Kagome’s preincarnation. That meant that in order for Kagome to be born, Kikyou, at some point in time, would have to die. They had already had that discussion long ago in Kaede’s hut - not that Kikyou had to die, in so many words, but that Kagome was not the reincarnation of Kikyou’s first death. The elder miko had hypothesized that since Kikyou had been brought back in her clay body with such absolute hatred, from feeling such hate at the exact moment of her death, and Kagome had been born with such a kind, loving and forgiving soul, that it had actually been destiny all along for Kikyou to have been brought back and given a second chance at life, because Kagome was actually the reincarnation of her second death…which had yet to occur by that point in time. But it did make sense, because Kikyou now knew the truth about what had happened on that fateful day fifty two years ago, and when she did pass on, hopefully as an old woman who had enjoyed many happy years on Earth, her soul would be at peace, and would be able to be reborn into someone who was kindhearted and pure. The fact that Kagome had been born with the Shikon no Tama within her body was not suddenly a mystery when you considered the fact that the jewel had more or less merged itself with Kikyou’s form in order to grant their wish of turning her human. Her clay body had been transformed into one of flesh and blood through the magic of the jewel. It was within her, it was one with her, and it made perfect sense that it would still continue onward into her next life. Yes, it was a bit of a time paradox, if one tried to dissect everything too closely, but it wasn’t that hard to comprehend or accept on the surface at face value.
All things considered, Inuyasha finally decided against voicing the option of the soul-binding to his wife, knowing that she would probably say no anyway, and for the same reason he had already reached on his own. Her eventual death was required to ensure Kagome’s existence, and ensuring Kagome’s existence was required to maintain the integrity of space-time as a whole, as they knew it. After all, if Kagome were never born, then she wouldn’t have gone back in time, which meant that Kikyou herself would still not have been given a second chance at life, and Inuyasha would even still be stuck to the tree. But beyond all that, even assuming that Kagome would still be born as she had been and that everything that had happened would continue to play out as it had before in the giant circle that was time, Inuyasha found himself feeling more than a little guilty to suddenly realize that even if he could, he honestly didn’t want to bind himself to Kikyou in that way. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. He didn’t mind sharing his life with her now, and had no intention of leaving her, but he was still planning on trying to make it back to Kagome’s time in five hundred years so that he could be with her again, also. He wasn’t sure how fast he would really age, and if he would be an old man by that point, or - hopefully - look only a tad bit older than he currently did, but whatever the case may be, he planned on finding out. But showing up in Kagome’s time with a five hundred year old wife on his arm was not a part of the equation.
Kikyou did not ask Inuyasha what was troubling his mind later that night at dinner, and he didn’t have the heart to confess to her his sins. For as many times as Kikyou, while driven by hatred, had scornfully referred to Kagome as her ‘copy’, Inuyasha now realized that, in reality, his heart considered Kikyou to be the substitute.
It was going to be a long five hundred years.
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