"Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human…"

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, and so far as I know, nobody has thrown any money at me over it. The title and tagline are from Assemblage23's "Human." And, yes, this is a non-porn Inuyasha story from me; try to contain your shock.

Forgive Me My Mistakes

By Lady Dementia

She had grandchildren now, and even a great-grandchild, small and tender in her arms like the first of her children had been. So sweet and so new to this world, a baby completely guarded from the cruelties by the fierce love of family and friends. She held the tiny babe in wrinkled hands rough with calluses and smiled, because she loved her great-grandchild as only a great-grandmother could. As not many grandmothers had the chance to in this hard world the baby hadn't met yet.

Kagome looked up into the faces of her family, all of them far younger than merely years could excuse, and wept.

He took the child from her arms and returned him to the loving arms of their oldest girl, long grown to now be a grandmother in her own right. It was the human blood in her veins that let them see this great-grandson, or grand-nephew, or whatever relation the newborn was. Pureblood demons bred much slower. If not for her gift and curse of mortal blood, they would look younger than they did, but the crowd of children and children's children looked on in wonder when their father, so less vulnerable to age than his wife, stroked her thin gray hair back and murmured that time had won after all.

Her skeletal hands crept around his shoulders and clutched him, but the desperation in her weak grasp wasn't for love of a husband. His throat closed as the horde of family left and a hoarse, age-flat voice pleaded, "Inuyasha, take me back."

He wished he could deny her, but he'd lost this fight long ago. Kagome's eyes had dimmed with the passage of years, but never had they lost their power over him. He refused to look in them, and only lifted her in his arms. The ears she had often tweaked with a bittersweet smile twitched as her tears fell; he could hear every splash of salt water, and he could hear the falter in every heartbeat. She cried enough tears for the both of them, but that didn't mean his eyes couldn't burn with an extra share. Something smoldered in the pit of his stomach, something more painful than love, older than mere regret, and hotter than passion. It had eaten through his heart years ago.

"Goodbye," she whispered as he jogged as smoothly as physically possible away from the life they'd painstakingly built, and maybe she hadn't meant for him to hear, but his ears had always been sharper than a human's.

She had grandchildren now, and even a great-grandchild, but it still wasn't enough. She should stay here. She should BE here. She would die soon and they both knew it, and yet she begged him to take her away from the family she'd birthed and raised.

He clenched his teeth and ran because there wasn't much time left. But time had won already.

Kagome was only human.

The fox waited for them at the God Tree outside the village, sharp green eyes solemn and chin trembling. He might not live in the village anymore, but he'd smelled the slow decay of mortality on the wind and read the sharp death cutting the wrinkles deeper by the second in her flesh. She'd been his mother after his own family died, and he'd counted each fold of age as a blessing that it existed at all. He'd visited often and run grateful hands over the signs that she still lived, and inside the old woman whose tears he now smelled, he sometimes could see the young lady she'd been, vibrant and laughing.

"Shipphou," she croaked, and her breath paused unhealthily between the syllables. She reached a crone's hand for him, and he took it before its shaking could entirely reduce him to unashamed sobs.

"You shouldn't be here," he said gently, not reprimanding but unable to stop himself, and the man holding her raised tormented eyes to him. They'd never really gotten along, but while Shipphou hadn't formally been adopted into Kagome's natural family, her husband had never barred him from her or her from him. Everyone loved her. That kind of love couldn't be defied. It was hard enough pretending about other things; they picked their battles realistically.

Shipphou didn't try to take her from his arms. He didn't try to keep her where she belonged. There was enough misery in the air.

She summoned a smile for him, craggled teeth and all, and whispered, "Inuyasha's going to take me back."

Stricken green eyes stared into her dimmed gaze, and the fox gulped. He knew why they'd come, looking into those hypnotic eyes, he'd even known why today--why else would they have come here, right here and now at the end of it all?--but that was different than actually KNOWING. He met the eyes of the one who'd kept her, loved her, adored her and the family she'd given him, and tried to project all the sympathy he could for this last support propping up a dying woman.

"Let's go see everyone, Kagome," he said instead of fighting a battle already lost. He wasn't sure whose tears filled his eyes. It seemed like all of time cried today, for all that time had won.

Kagome was only human.

He cradled her in his arms as he knelt among the markers near the God Tree, close enough to feel its timeless shade, and patiently let her unsteady hands place the flowers he'd picked for her. They'd often come here; she with her flowers and sparkling chatter telling the dead of her life, and he with his grudging respect, staying silent for the dead. Now, too, he stayed quiet as she spoke in low tones to each weathered gravestone, and his heart ached as she bid them hello, telling them of old news. The fox knelt beside them, his head turned toward the human woman and green eyes searching her face for some sign, some hope, as she coughed in his arms. Her lungs rattled against his forearms like a box of oracle bones ready to be flung loose.

He already knew the future they'd foretell. It was painfully obvious.

"Take me back, Inuyasha," she breathed in his ear, and the burning in his gut filled his body with futile anguish. Not back to their family, no. Not back to the world Naraku had stranded her in or the life they'd created from the fragments of their lives after the Shikon jewel. They'd gone through Hell to reach this--the other side, the side with grandchildren and words piling up where emotion had choked them off in his throat--and all she wanted was to go back. Back to before the blood and tears, when she had something beyond dirt floors and fire pits and a husband who wanted her, smiled at her, lived for her. Before, when they'd had more than each other. When there weren't these graves and the fox who'd grown so much and looked at her with an adult's face framing an orphan's eyes. Back to when she hadn't been broken down and needed him to rebuild her with these hands that, still just as tenderly, lifted her up and carried her.

He held her close to his chest and his breaking heart, and took her back. She'd asked, and he couldn't say no. She'd asked before, more often in the past years as time wore down duty and need, and he'd silently taken her to the graves, to the fox, and, like now, to the well. He'd looked into those impossibly hopeful eyes, eyes full of hope that had faded and crumbled but never disappeared, and taken her back. Even now, when maybe he should insist that she die where she belonged, where she was needed, he couldn't deny her. Not to this, not now, and now never again. This would be the last time he'd hear the plea that shattered the life they'd built together, the last time he realized like an arrow to the heart that she no longer needed him, and the wanting showed through.

Time made a mockery of necessities when it won. The things once thought so important paled beside what truly were. He didn't doubt that she loved her children and the great-grandson sleeping somewhere, new and full of the life she'd given him. But mortality had pared away the days and nights where small voices laughed sweetly and maternal hands cleaned sticky faces. These things didn't matter when balanced against the greater loves a girl never let go, only buried deep until time won, as it inevitably did.

Perhaps if they'd been given more years, or if the ending had been different..? No. That wouldn't change the beginning, and that was what she asked to be taken back to.

Kagome was only human.

She smiled, thin lips wreathed in wrinkles, and didn't really see them anymore. Her attention was on the well that had haunted her memories all her long life. The fox wanted to force her chin around, make her see him, but he wanted far more desperately than any petty desire to see her happy one last time. He'd had a lifetime, even it'd been a human lifetime, of her attention. Still, an inherently selfish spark of glee couldn't be contained when the well's magic failed to work once again, and Shipphou spotted that same spark in the eyes of her husband as he jumped gracefully back out of the Bone Eater's Well.

She couldn't leave them. She would remain here with them, even if it be against her will. The well had stopped working long and long ago, stranding her 500 years in the past, but she'd spent the present with them. And they, helplessly loving her, thanked the well for closing. The choice had been taken from her, just as it had in years far past, but even as her tears fell, the two men who loved her most shot identical looks of gratitude at the source of her pain.

"Inuyasha, take me back!" she wailed, and more pathetic than what she asked for was the harsh rasp of death underlying the words. The arms holding her with infinite care tightened, pained, and Shipphou rushed to comfort her.

"Kagome, please don't cry!" he said, and asked forgiveness with his eyes over her bend, grayed head as he continued, "Inuyasha will take you back in the morning, okay? We'll try again."

Each tear seemed to take too much out of her, and the fox had to bite his lip with a fang in order to fake a reassuring smile. If she hadn't been dying, old and infirm, she would have seen the lie in his face. He couldn't hide his trickery from her, ever. Except now, and tears stood out in his eyes when she nodded, sniffling.

She wouldn't make it until morning. There would never be another try, and silently, the fox thanked whatever god granted such small mercies. Let her sleep tonight with her undying hope, and let her, just once more, be happy with the life she had. Time had won, but they would take what victories it allowed them. After all, in the morning, the watery smile she gave them now would be all they'd have left of her.

Kagome was only human.

He sat with his back against the side of the well, and the fox withdrew discretely, knowing what awaited in the oncoming night. He held her like a drowning man holds onto the last gasp of air in his lungs, and she dozed in the warmth and security of his arms. So much trust, even now, even after all their years together. His tears fell into the folds and wrinkles of her skin, dripped onto thin, gray hair, and every touch of papery skin, every raveled feather of labored breathing, felt more precious than any before. Come the morning, there would be a body to carry back to the mourning of children and grandchildren. For tonight, there was only a husband and a wife, teetering on the edge of goodbye.

Kagome had given him everything when everything had been lost. So much death to create a life out of, but they had struggled through. Now there remained only this last night, and he hoped achingly that she could feel his arms around her, the night sky above her, the moon dancing with the stars and the earth like a living thing beneath them. Surely these things, as they always had, would bring that sweet, joyous light to her eyes. These were the things he would give her, this last night alive, that she might be happy.

His tears weren't for her. They ran down his face because he looked down at a face he'd loved more than anyone else alive, and he looked into a future without her. He'd had more time with her than most humans got, and counted himself incredibly lucky. Just…not lucky enough. He didn't mourn her. Not yet. He mourned for himself.

Swallowing hard, he leaned down and, with utmost care, placed a kiss on her lips.

Her eyes, those beautiful eyes, fluttered open, fragile and confused. Her sparse brows puckered to see him so close, then relaxed when she recognized him. It plainly hurt old joints, but she reached up for him, and he bent down to meet the kiss halfway. "Inuyasha…" she sighed against his lips. "Take me back…promise?"

The tears fell faster, but he blinked rapidly against them, unwilling to steal even a moment of her dreams. She'd given him a lifetime of reality. He could humor her fantasy, no matter how his heart broke to pieces at her final choice. Pulling her close, he tucked her underneath his chin and nodded. She sighed again, a content sound, and he had to ease her back down to his lap before she noticed how his arms shivered with suffering. She was already asleep.

He'd wanted to keep vigil and watch over her until the very end, but their granddaughter had kept him up for days when delivery had taken a bad turn. Most of the family had been wearing holes in the floor pacing while waiting for news, and he'd been no exception. When sleep began pulling him down, it interrupted the torture of listening to each faint breath drag in and out slower and slower. She would die before dawn, and likely not wake again. Worn out as he was by worry, grief, and tears, all he wanted to do was sleep beside her one final time. Carefully, a muscle at a time, he stretched out beside the well, making sure not to jostle her in any way as he shifted her to lay on top of him, his body cushioning and protecting hers. It even seemed like she breathed just a bit easier, laying this way.

All her life, he'd treated her with this gentle caution, knowing that time would win. It was the only way he knew to fight the unavoidable truth.

Kagome was only human.

The fox waited until dawn before returning, cheeks raw from the tears he'd cried all night. Being an adult didn't mean he'd outgrown loving her, and she'd been the best and brightest thing in his life. It was hard to watch the light die.

The clearing appeared empty when he entered, but he smelled them on the wind. It confused him when he didn't smell her death, not real death or approaching death. That was an absence that made his feet fly until he stood over the man slumped beside the well.

Kagome wasn't there.

"Where..?" Shipphou shook his head, casting about, but the clearing was empty but for the man on his knees before him. "Where is she?"

The eyes lifted toward him contained a heart so torn it literally made him stagger back, away from the pain. He gasped and darted forward, but shaking hands pushed him away, refusing comfort. The scent on the wood behind him, however, told a missing story, and his stomach dropped to his feet. In a split second, he'd hopped onto the rim of the well and looked down, horror-struck stare expecting to see a beloved body broken at the bottom.

Nothing but demon bones and dirt met his eyes, and then he knew. "It worked," he said, throat pinching shut around the words. "It worked."

Maybe Inuyasha really had taken away her in the middle of the night, taken her back to the time she'd never really left. Maybe she'd returned to Shikon shards and Naraku, Sango and Miroku and Kaede, her family and things he'd never seen. Maybe the Bone Eater's Well had pulled one miracle over time, triumphantly given her back everything that had been stripped so cruelly away. Maybe she was the young lady he remembered from the distant past once again, doing homework in the middle of battlefields and loving everyone, even those left behind. Maybe the two men collapsed beside the well, grieving in the early morning, weren't casualties of a war they'd so bitterly fought to lose.

But he doubted it, because he knew where the scent had finally gone, and that she was forever lost to them. She'd woken and somehow managed to get her old, feeble body up over the rim in one last, practiced motion that all the years between couldn't erase from her mind, and now time stretched between them, an impenetrable barrier more implacable than death itself because it left them with nothing at all.

Inuyasha hadn't taken her back. She'd gone back to him, back to the time that had won despite everything they'd tried to defeat it. And, as he listened to Kouga's smothered sobs, Shipphou found that he could only mourn her loss, not blame her for the blindness of old age and older hopes. There was nothing else he could do.

Kagome had only been human.

END

LD's Note: This could very easily be rewritten from Hojo's POV from the future. Hmmm. Anyway, I started to think on the twofold vulnerability of humanity as seen by demons: physical and emotional fragility. Kagome got old and…well, if you've ever been around an Alzheimer patient, you'll recognize some of the mental problems. In this case, Kagome reverts to her dream of living with Inuyasha, when in reality the final battle with Naraku killed everyone but Shipphou, herself, and Kouga (hence Kouga's dependence on her in the fic). Perhaps worse, if Kouga had been Inuyasha in this fic, she also chooses to return to her own time over staying with him, although the well has closed. I really wanted to get across the demons' despair that they can't defeat time, either the draw of the world beyond the well or her wishes for a past long gone. I hope it worked.