InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ To Begin Again ❯ Scroll Three: Closure ( Chapter 3 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

A/N: I’m not going to write about the battle with Naraku because the point of the story is not the battles, but the relationships between the characters. So, therefore I’m skipping the battle scenes and going to afterwards.

“The ramen’s cooked, Inuyasha,” Kagome called and dished several lumps of noodles into a bowl, setting it aside for him. “It’s your favorite flavor, too. I bought extra the last time I went home.”

She turned back to the cooking pot and fixed a serving for Shippou and the rest of them.



“Would you like anything…” She’d turned back to where she set the bowl to see if he wanted something with it, but the swift hanyou had already gotten his meal and jumped back into the safety of the tree. “I guess not.”


Kagome sighed and sat with her back against a tree, looking at the completed Shikon no Tama in her hands. Her bowl of ramen sat, forgotten, next to her. The jewel glittered a pinkish color even though the jewel itself was white while in her hands. The leaves above her rustled and she glanced up to see a swash of red cloth. Before she could say anything, however, someone sat beside her. The taijiya, who had become like her sister over the past two years, drew her knees up and looked at the jewel.


“What will you do now?”


It was an innocent enough question and one that should have been easy enough to answer, but, for the now seventeen year old girl from the future, it was the most difficult question in the world. She clasped the necklace back around her neck and cast her cerulean eyes to the ground.




“I don’t know,” she whispered quietly. “I would like to purify the Shikon no Tama, but I don’t know how. Anything we wished for would be twisted and turned evil or considered selfish.”


“That’s not all that’s been bothering you, is it Kagome-chan?” Sango prodded. When Kagome looked at her with wide eyes, she smiled. “It’s not hard to see you’ve been down. I think you seemed happier before the jewel was finished.”


Kagome sighed. Was she really that readable? “No, it’s just, well, when Naraku was alive and I had to find the shards, there was a reason for me to keep traveling through the well, but now…”


“Is coming to see us not reason enough, Kagome-sama?”




Miroku’s question startled her as she had not realized the monk had been listening.




“We would miss you terribly were you to go. Even Inuyasha, although he would never admit it.”



“Mind your own business, monk,” came the heated reply from above them.




Kagome looked up, but couldn’t see much more than a swatch of his hakama.


“Then you wouldn’t care if Kagome-sama were to go home for good?” Miroku couldn’t hide his grin. Though he and Shippou had different ways of annoying the hanyou, both enjoyed the pastime.


“I never said that. I said it wasn’t none of your business.”


Kagome sighed again. Anger was Inuyasha’s way of covering the hurt. He was still grieving over Kikyo’s death and she seemed to be the only one who understood that. She didn’t say that she’d been wondering if he really did want her to leave. The way he’d been treating her was so different from before. Once he had told her that he needed her and once she had known that if she were to leave he would miss her, but now, after everything that had happened, she couldn’t help but wonder if he had changed his mind. But she couldn’t get angry because she couldn’t really blame him if he did want her to go home. She just had to know.


“Leave him alone now, Miroku-sama,” Kagome said softly. “Inuyasha? I need to stretch my legs. Come with me?” The hanyou landed gracefully behind her as she stood up. “If Shippou wakes up before we get back tell him I’ll be back in a minute.” She stuffed her hands in her jean pockets and followed the brooding hanyou into the trees.




“I'm sorry, Inuyasha,” Kagome said quietly, her back turned towards him and her hands jammed into the pockets of her jeans, the sleeves of her yukata shoved up to her elbows. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? I didn’t want to believe it at first because I never meant for it to happen, but I see now that I’m still to blame even though my intentions were good.”


She was about to cry. He could smell her tears and it brought on the same reaction in him that it always did. He panicked. Add on to that the fact that he was lost as to what she was rambling on about and he was one flustered little hanyou.




“Kagome…”


S he turned towards him, determined to look him in the face when she apologized, even if he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Her bangs cast a shadow over her eyes, but the light of the half moon that filtered down through the leaves reflected in the shimmering drops rolling down both cheeks.




It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to cry. She had, in fact, been trying desperately for hours to avoid doing that very thing, but talking to Inuyasha - alone - face to face and knowing what she was about to say…it cut through her like a knife; broke her heart and split her soul ten thousand times more painfully than the first time, when Kikyo had tried to steal it.




A part of her belonged here. A piece of her had found the home she’d always searched for and never knew was missing until the idea that she would lose it for good had slid into her mind. But no matter how much it hurt to leave and say good bye, she had to go. She couldn’t stand to see that pain in Inuyasha’s eyes and know that she was the one who put it there, not after she had worked so hard these past two years to heal him, to mend his heart and the wounds so many years of loss had caused. By staying she had believed she was continuing to heal him, but now she realized the truth: her presence caused him pain.



“Kagome…”


It wasn’t until he spoke again, practically whispering her name in a strained way that Kagome realized she’d just stood there looking at him, in a sort of trance. When he opened his mouth to say more, she shook her head, putting her finger up as if to silence him but never touched his lips.




“Don’t Inuyasha,” she said, voice cracking, “Please, don’t say anything. Just let me say this. I need to say this.” Her hand fell back to her side. “I won’t pretend to understand what I am to you. I know you care about me, about my well-being, and I’m almost certain that I was more than just a shard detector. You are my best friend, Inuyasha. I only ever wanted you to be happy. I really wanted her to live, you know? I wanted to help her, because I knew that if she died again, it would hurt you and I can’t stand to see you hurting.


“I know your sense of honor and loyalty would never let you forget her or let her wander the earth without resolution. I knew it even when I would get upset because you left me to see her. It’s just one of the things I admire most about you and it’s why I was always willing to forgive you for it.



“I never meant for it to happen, my soul returning to my body. I don’t even know how it happened. Maybe if I hadn’t been so close. Maybe if I hadn’t spoken to her or tried to purify the miasma or touched her…I don’t know. I just know that whatever misguided actions I took, I killed her. She died because of me and it hurt you - I hurt you. I know you blame me and you should. I’m not arguing that fact. I just needed to say that so that I could work up the guts to say this. I’m going home, Inuyasha. You won’t have to have me as a reminder anymore. I put the Shikon no Tama back together. My responsibility has been fulfilled.”


Her eyes had drifted back down to the forest floor, unable to watch him as she spoke, not wanting to see the confirmation in his face. “Please, just take me back to the hot springs. I need to wash my face before I go back to the others.” She wrapped her arms around herself, head bowed, waiting. “We should get back to Kaede-obaa’s by tomorrow evening, ne?”


Inuyasha stared at her. “Yeah…we’ll be there before sundown,” he answered, throat suddenly dry. Why was she doing this? And then acting all weird, not giving him a chance to say anything. Did she really think he blamed her? She couldn’t be that dumb, could she?


But wouldn’t it be safer if she were to go back to her era? There were hardly any youkai there and she would be safe from them. Kohaku and Kikyo’s deaths were proof enough that he had failed as a protector. He had told Kikyo he would protect her and he had let Naraku kill her again. He had made that same promise to Kagome. What if he failed again?


He turned and silently headed in the direction of the hot springs, keeping his pace slow so she could keep an eye on her footing. Yes, he would let her go home to her own era, but he would have to tell her that he did not hold her responsible for Kikyo’s death.


At the spring, she knelt and splashed water on her face, washing away any remnants of her earlier tears. When she was done and had dried her hands on her pants leg, she turned, seemingly surprised he was still there, like she had expected him to go off and leave her. Does she honestly think I would do that? I thought she understood…


“What are you looking at?” he snapped a little more harshly than he’d meant to. Just the thought that Kagome might not trust him as much as he thought she did scared him. Hadn’t he proven to her over and over again his first thought was always for her safety?


“Nothing, Inuyasha. `Sorry,” she muttered walking past him. “It’s just…I thought…we’re close to camp…”


“Keh,” he growled to mask his hurt at her lack of confidence in him. “Even if I was mad at you, do you really think I’d leave you here, alone, so any ol’ youkai could come and kill you?” He tucked his hands into the sleeves of his haori and scowled at her.


“No.” Her smile was small and sad. “I know better.”




She was on the verge of tears again, the depression in her scent was overwhelming.




“I ain’t mad.”


His sudden statement caught her off guard and she stopped, turning slowly to look at him. “Eh?”


“I said, I ain’t mad so stop acting all weird and stuff.”




His scowl was still there and if she didn’t know him better, she’d swear he was angry. When she took several steps towards him, he frowned.




“What?”


“Y ou aren’t mad at me?” she asked slowly, hopefully, making sure he had no choice but to look directly at her.


“I just said that, wench!” he snapped.


“But you do think that it was my fault?”


He growled again, uncomfortable with the conversation and her intense stare. “No, damnit. I know it wasn’t your fault, what happened. Naraku killed Kikyo, not you.”




His scowl deepened as she leaned closer to him.


“Really?”


“Look, wench -”


He never got to finish as her fist collided with his upper arm and he yelped in surprise. “What!!”


“You….you…jerk!” she exclaimed and hit him again. “I thought you were mad at me. I thought you were blaming me for Kikyo’s death and I convinced myself that it had to be true. Baka!” Her fist collided with his arm again.


“Damn it! Stop it, Kagome!” He gently caught her wrist when she tried to hit him again and held her at bay. “Where do you come up with this shit?”




His look was scolding, but his voice was exasperated, as if he did not want to be talking to her about this particular subject. He was a master at masking his emotions, but Kagome had spent a lot of time and energy to be able to translate the little clues he couldn’t hide. Little clues like the look in his eyes, the way his ears moved, the tiny growl or whimper in the back of his throat. All these were hidden signs that only she could read and use to decipher his true meaning. What she saw now was that, despite his words and scowling expression, he still wouldn’t meet her eyes and his ears were laying back slightly, a movement he only made when he was sad or in pain or afraid.


She shook her head, feeling her own exasperation at their situation. Two months was long enough to let this drag out.




“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you’ve been ignoring me?” she accused finally, fists clenching and tugged at the wrist he was holding, easily wrenching herself free from his light hold.


“I am not ignoring you. If I were ignoring you, would I be here now?” His ears lay back further. He’d known it was coming. It’d been building up for months now.


“You might as well be!” she argued and poked him in the chest. “You don’t fight with me anymore -”


“I thought you didn’t like it when we fought!”


“It’s not natural for you!" She threw her hands up in the air before whirling on him again. "The two times I have gone home, you didn’t come after me -”


“You always get mad when I do!”


“But at least I felt wanted,” she retorted.




She hugged herself around the middle, sighing and looking at the ground by her feet. “You won’t look at me. You don’t touch me anymore except when you carry me. You used to hold my hand and put your arm around me or even touch my face and hair when I was asleep…”




She smiled sadly, eyes fluttering shut for a second before raising them to look at him. He stared at her chin.



“You don’t even do that anymore. Whenever I come around, you disappear into a tree and won’t talk or come down till morning. Or if we’re at Kaede’s you leave the hut and sit at Kikyo’s grave or in Goshinboku till I’m not around.”


Her voice cracked and she took a deep breath trying not to cry again. “But that’s not even the worst part,” she continued when she could speak evenly again. “The worst part is that you don’t talk to me anymore. I know you’re secretive about your past because you don’t want it used against you, but I always thought you knew you could trust me. You used to tell me things. You stopped talking, Inuyasha, and that hurt more than anything you could do to me.”


His expression was unreadable, blank almost like Sesshomaru’s. He hadn’t realized…no…that was a lie. He had known what he was doing to her, but he had pretended not to see because it had hurt him to acknowledge that he was hurting her. So he’d convinced himself that she didn’t care, she didn’t notice the severed bond, didn’t feel the distance. She could, after all, manage to get along and move on with her life just fine if he weren’t there, but he had come to depend on her more than he ever wanted to depend on anyone. She was his weakness and his strength. Without her he lost his reason to live, to fight, to try. He had to learn to function without her comforting presence. If he was going to continue to protect them, he had to get over his dependency on her.


“You’re school starts soon, ne?” he asked, catching her off guard.


“Yes,” she answered slowly. “Why? What does that have to do with this?”


“Kagome - when I said I needed you before, I meant that, but I can’t keep needing you. You have a life in your era and you’re not going to be here.”


And he’s been avoiding you because...because he wants to be strong on his own, she realized. Was he kicking her out of Sengoku Jidai? Did he plan on keeping her away?




“Inuyasha, do you want me to go home for good or not?”


“NO!” For the first time in two months, gold met blue as he finally looked her in the eyes. “Hell no, I don’t want you to go wench, but you got stuff you gotta do, ne? You got that school thing and friends and family…”


“But you want me to stay here?” She had to know. She had to hear him say it. If he didn’t say those words this whole discussion would mean nothing. She had spent too much time agonizing over her responsibility in Kikyo’s demise and she had become insecure and unsure of her place in his life and she needed his affirmation.


“Damn it! Yes, I want you to stay.” His growl rumbled in his chest and he narrowed his eyes at her. “Better?”


“Much better.” She nodded and took another deep breath, steadying her now frayed nerves. “Take me back to camp, please.”


He shook his head, muttering something she didn’t quite catch under his breath and passed her, leading the way back to the camp even though she knew the path. She quietly came up beside him, her hands in her pockets again.


“I am going to go home,” she said after a few minutes of silence, “but I’ll come back. I mean, I won’t be here as often or stay as long, but I’m coming back. I have a year left in high school before I’m finished and it’ll be the hardest one yet. I’ll be going to class every day, but I get a break every five days and I’ll be here for those two days. And you’re always welcome at the shrine.”


He nodded, hands stuffed in the sleeves of his haori. “Then what?”


Kagome shrugged. “I’ll figure that out when the time comes, I guess.” She sighed. “I told you once that I’d stay with you as long as you wanted me to. I’m not going to go back on that promise.”


“Keh, you got that right, wench,” he muttered, still looking straight ahead.




She ducked her head and hid a smile, happy to know that he did not blame her and that he did still want him there, just glad that they had finally been able to work out the things that had been plaguing them for the past months.



Sango watched as Inuyasha and Kagome walked off into the trees and sighed. She still missed her brother, but even she had begun to slowly heal from the wounds his death had caused. Because of Miroku’s quiet assurances and Kagome’s support, she was able to cope with the loss. However, their hanyou friend seemed to only sink deeper into his own grief and she was truly worried for him. Perhaps he would allow Kagome to help him. It seemed the girl was the only one capable of getting through to him.


“I suppose this means that Kagome-sama will be returning to her home,” Miroku commented, coming around the fire to sit next to her. “I imagine that is why she asked Inuyasha to walk with her, to tell him without causing a public scene.”


Sango turned her head to look at him, drawing her knees up the way that Kagome so often did, and rested her cheek on them. “Do you think that Inuyasha would argue? There is no reason to now that the jewel has been restored and he’s been so quiet lately. He’s had very little to do with any of us, even Kagome-chan.”


Miroku nodded. “I imagine he has been contemplating the idea that Kagome-sama will leave him now that her duty is done. He was mourning Kikyo-sama’s death, but I do not think that he spent all of this time dwelling on that fact alone.”


Sango raised her head and nodded, turning to look at the fire once more. They lectured the hanyou quite often about his relationship with Kagome, especially when they had first begun to travel together. They all realized the depth of his feelings for the girl even if he had trouble seeing it for himself.




“You’re probably right,” she said softly. She had begun to relax in the calmness of the night, but started when she felt something touch her hand. She looked around at the monk who had taken her hand in his and lifted it to his lips, kissing her knuckles lightly and held it in both of his as if it were quite a natural thing to do.


A soft smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she looked up at him. He had turned his gaze back to the fire before them and absently stroked the top her hand with his thumb. Was this what love felt like? Was this what her mother had felt for her father? Unfortunately she had not been old enough to have had such discussions with her mother before her mother died, and her father…was a man. He raised her as he raised his son. Womanly influence in her life was sporadic and she had no one - besides Kagome-chan who had about as much knowledge of love and life as she did - to go to for advice. That worried her. Her life had been spent training to follow in her father’s footsteps, to become a taijiya. Kohaku would have, of course, taken on her father’s role as village headman, but she would have been among the greatest of the taijiya clan. Her sole devotion, her main goal, her consuming purpose, had been youkai extermination and learning how to use her various weapons and repair them and make more. Love had never crossed her mind…until she met Miroku.


At what point in their travels had she begun to see him as more than just a lecherous monk? When had she begun to consider him a friend? And then more? When had her heart started skipping a beat whenever he would come near her or speak her name in that smooth, rich voice. When had it become so that she could not imagine never seeing him again, that the thought of not being with him terrified her?


The idea that he had not really meant what he said on the hillside the day he asked her to live with him and bear his children had brought her near to tears on more than one occasion. He had been so sweet and so sincere when he spoke those words, when he had explained his hesitation to ask them of her. She was special. But the thought of marrying scared her too. Without a clue how to be a wife or what wives did, she was almost certain she’d screw it up entirely. Trying to think back to the distant memories of her mother only brought on a headache. She’d been much too young when her mother died to remember her properly.


Shippou whimpered from Kagome’s sleeping bag, kicking slightly as if he were having a bad dream. Kirara raised her head, large red eyes blinking to focus on her surroundings before getting up and trotting her small body to the kitsune cub, nosing his shoulder a bit. The cub grunted in an uncharacteristically doglike way that acutely reminded her of someone else they knew. Miroku chuckled under his breath and she too grinned. Poor kit. He was spending too much time with the hanyou and was unknowingly beginning to show the same behavioral patterns.


“Miroku,” she said, drawing their attention back away from the neko and kitsune, “you…when the others are here…you don’t…it’s not like this…”




She couldn’t help the blush that had risen to her cheeks even though it was true. When they were alone he was more attentive to her than when they had witnesses - another similar trait she’d noticed in the hanyou. However, unlike Inuyasha, Miroku was not uncivil or rude or distant when they had company. He was just…confined…proper… Never touched below her shoulder, never took her hand, and still referred to her as Sango-sama. Yet, when they were alone, as they were then, with only the neko youkai as their chaperone, he was affectionate and sweet….




And still hentai!


When she hadn’t been paying attention, one hand had left hers and was slowly inching its way towards her bottom. Sango stiffened immediately upon notice of this and closed her eyes, mentally counting to ten.




“Do not even consider it,” she hissed through clenched teeth. And just when things were so nice!


He grinned and brought his hand back, stroking her palm this time, relaxing her once more.




“Yes…well…I was not sure if you were yet ready for displays of public affection,” he answered blushing a bit himself. “You’ve never seemed comfortable the few times that we were caught in an…intimate…position and I did not want to make you uneasy.” His smile was genuine this time. “Kagome-sama and Inuyasha, of course, have known about our arrangement for quite some time -”


“Probably before we did,” she interrupted, sounding slightly annoyed and yet amused at the same time.


“You are right about that. They have known for a long time. However, I did not want to pressure you into moving faster than you were prepared to go.”




He looked down at her, violet eyes catching a few flickering reflections of the flames. His expression was morbidly serious and made her breath catch in her throat.




“Despite what you may believe, your safety and comfort have always been my first and foremost concern.”


“Miroku…I…” What could she possibly say to that? Certainly he’d saved her several times, but…




She didn’t have to reply. When she’d started to try and stutter out a response, he had hooked his finger under her chin and tilted her head towards him, slowly lowering his face closer to hers. Their breaths intermingled and she closed her eyes, waiting anxiously for the next moment. A moment, that when it came, left her wondering why she hadn’t given in to it sooner. His lips brushed against hers in a gentle, chaste kiss that lasted only a mere breath, but left her mouth tingling from the contact.


He pulled away, finger still under her chin, and she slowly opened her eyes, surprise and pleasure shinning in her dark brown depths as she tried to steady her racing heart. His light and airy assault on her person had left her speechless, unable to believe that he had so tenderly caressed her, had given her something she’d never expected…


Her first kiss.