{.x. Fatal Fate .x.}

"And I could not
believe that with my going I should bring
so great a grief as this. But stay your steps.
Do not retreat from me. Whom do you flee?
This is the last time fate will let us speak."
- Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 6, lines 610-3

[.]

When we die we die, it's as simple as that, as easy as that, as free as that. There's no changing it, there's no altering what's set in stone. Not even the great Greek God Zeus could unweave what fate had already surely sown, so what is it about us humans that makes us think that we can? That if only we worked harder all would be fine? That someday we will have a cure to all disease?

I think I have the answer to that, we are fools. Very big ones, at that. You see, Zeus accepted his hands were tied; he never tried to avert the inevitable. Not like us, we'd do anything to erase what had been written. But it's futile because fate does not use a pencil while devising each soul's destiny; it etches it all into stone. Sure, we could try to stretch it out with all our might but fate is stronger than any mortal, and what was carved in will still be there no matter how frantically we try.

That's my logic, anyway, that's what I believe, and that's what my soul whispers to me in my sleep. Do you know what else it tells me? I may count myself as one of the few lucky ones that knows when my life will expire, or is it unfortunate? It is a burden, I must admit, but I take the time to stop a smell the roses now—I never really understand that phrase until now.

I watch my friends; I laugh and smile at them as they do to me. They are ignorant of my impending doom and I wish to keep it that way, forever and always.

I think it's for the best, or perhaps I am just selfish? I don't want their efforts to be wasted on helping me, I could say that's all, that's why I'm doing it but it's a lie. I don't want them to give me the same look my family does, they might still smile after the news, they may still laugh, but there will always be that edge of sorrow and I will not have that.

I'd rather keep my illness a secret; it's funny in a very bleak way. Demons have attempted time and time again to kill me, I have constantly been to the edge of the living world, I have almost died on multiple occasions, yet nothing supernatural will be the end of me. Cancer will. I noticed over the series of a few months that I lost weight, Sango commented on my meek façade when we were bathing together a few weeks ago, and I decided it was time to address it. I went to the doctor. Do you know what they say?

For a seventeen year old to even have cervical cancer, let alone such an aggressive form was so unlikely. They said they couldn't do much, they caught it too late, it was at stage three and would shortly enter the forth. Chemo, they told me, would give me two years most likely.

"What if I do not want chemo?" I had asked after I found a way to speak again.

"You have six months, at most," the staunch, detached, doctor retorted with ease. As if it was nothing, as if he saw it every day, and I'm sure he did.

Six months, that's all I had, six months… I would die from something so… so ordinary, I don't know why but that's what bothered me the most about the whole thing. I faced demons on a daily basis, and an illness any woman could get would be the end of me? It was almost insulting.

My family hated that I would not stay, they hated that I refused chemo, and I did feel bad about one of those things but fine about the other. I met this lady when I was exiting the hospital that gave me peace of mind; she was coughing up a lung—maybe even literally—and walking around with an IV in the garden just outside of it. She looked as pale as the gown she was forced to wear.

"Cancer?" She inquired as I walked past her, my mind lost in the horror of what I had just discovered. I hadn't cried when they told me, I hadn't accepted it yet, I… shock shook me, really, is all I can say.

"What?" I whispered with a turn of my head.

"I know that look, cancer," she stated as she wagged a white finger at me, "do you know how old I am?"

I didn't see the relevance of that question; I barely comprehend what the lady was saying.

"Twenty-three," she raised her hand up and slid off the bandana she had covering her bald head.

None of it made sense to me at the time, but later I would realize what she was getting at. The woman that was so young, who had only had been given twenty-three years to live, looked like she could be forty, she looked like death walking, she looked miserable.

"Late stages, that's when they caught it in me," she kept talking though I did not encourage it, I just continued to stare dumbfounded, "chemo gave me eighteen more months to live than if I had denied it. These last eighteen have been the most wretched of my life, it just makes you sicker, and do you want to look like me, cancer girl?"

I never wanted to look like her, I never wanted to suffer like that, so I decided against treatment, I decided to stop going to school and devote what was left of my life to fixing what I broke. The shikon would be completed before I died, I would see Naraku off to hell, I would. That was my death wish, those would be the last things I'd do.

Did I play my part poorly? Was that why you noticed? Why you stopped letting me wonder off alone to ponder my fate? You always came with; you always scoffed when I told you it wasn't necessary, you always sat down beside me as I stared up at the stars.

I'm thankful for that. I loved you more for that.

If you knew the truth you never told me, but I don't think you did. You knew there was something not right but not what and you never will.

I hope you understand why I've done what I have.

I love you, I can't say it enough now because I never said it then. I have my reason, I hope you know I do I just didn't want to confirm it. I think all this would have been harder on you if I had said those three words that were the basis for why I did all I did.

That day when Naraku was killed, you were hurt badly and I was scared terribly. You said you'd be fine, I knew you would. That's not why I was so scared.

Six months had passed.

I had never cried for me in all those months, I never shed a single tear over my loss of life or the pain I felt from the sickness that was eating away at me from the inside out. I didn't have the time, we were too busy collecting shards, we were too busy tracking Naraku, we were too busy with everything…

I saw the way you looked at her lifeless body, the artificial corpse of the woman you once loved—or still do? Naraku had killed her before we could kill him, I could see a glimmer of tears in your eyes, you failed to protect her, I doubted you could ever have gotten over that fact.

"What will you wish for?" Sango had inquired to me meekly.

I had the complete shikon in hand; you had told me months ago you did not want to use it anymore, so it was up to me to make it fade away. That would be my last task.

With the jewel I could wish away the cancer that ate away at me, with the jewel I could have years that I was not fated to have, with the jewel I could live.

Yet, you see, with the jewel you cannot make selfish wishes and would that not be an egocentric inclination?

I had to make a pure wish, a selfless wish, and it would fade away from existence, no one would have to suffer because of it anymore.

My frail hands wrapped around it, I closed my eyes, and I made a heartfelt wish that only carved away at me more.

She'd be alive again, you'd be able to be with her, she'd have our soul. In a way I was giving myself life, wasn't I? She and I were one in the same, I was her and she was me, yet we are oh so different. We'll never be the same.

Please don't think of me when you are with her.

Please tell me you have never thought of her when you were with me.

You were so confused, why did I do that? That's what you bewildered ambers asked when your tongue could not. I just smiled to you and nodded towards her, I wanted to tell you I did it because I loved you.

Instead I said goodbye, I wonder if you were not so wounded would you have followed me as I rushed to the well?

I assume that since the shikon is gone you could not get threw it anymore and that's why a week has gone by and you aren't here. I don't know if that's what I hope for or if I would rather you not be here because you'd rather be with her.

I hope you think whatever makes you feel better, if it is that I'm alive and happy in my era so be it.

I doubt it would make you happy to know I'm dead.

I don't have any regrets.

I love you, Inuyasha.

Does this explain everything? I hope so.

Goodbye Everyone, I love you all,

Higurashi Kagome

A/N: This is... different to say the least. Somehow the three first paragraphs came to me so I decided to write it. The whole 'fate' aspect of Aeneid really intrigued me so I think that's what inspired it. I hope you enjoyed and please review.