Disclaimer: I'm just a poor, innocent, teenager.
Pfft.
Well, even if I'm not that, per se, I AM most definitely not the brilliant Rumiko Takahashi, and thus, must settle for pretending to control her colorful characters. So don't sue me, because it's not cool to sue minors.
~Kamibi
It took four years to save the world. It took a remarkable two minutes to lose her temper and seriously contemplate doing something she might regret.
Well . . . the victim of her fury might regret it more than she would.
Some things were never meant to mix. Orange juice and toothpaste, good and evil, Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru—bad things happen when they do.
For example, now that Kikyou had briefly disappeared to gather some herbs for her medicines, Inuyasha's face and body were twitching in a grotesquely amusing way, and she could almost SEE the profanity bubbling behind his clenched fangs. In contrast, Sesshoumaru was calmly and primly resting in the Lotus position with a cup of tea that he got from God knows where.
When his complexion had reached the point where Kagome was about to ask whether the brash hanyou required more oxygen, he gave up trying to hold all of his anger in and unleashed a torrent of curses.
"What the hell are ya doin' here, ya bastard?"
Sesshoumaru sipped his tea and swallowed elegantly, before lowering the fluid and breathing deeply. Only then did he deign to respond, "I am drinking tea."
"Keh! Of course a stupid asshole like YOU wouldn't think beyond the surface!"
There was another tense pause.
"How amusing, Little Brother, that is exactly how the rest of the world views you."
When Kagome had had her fill of Inuyasha's profanity and Sesshoumaru's retorts, she finally gave in to her baser urge.
Which was to scream the S-word until her rage was subdued.
"SIT! SIT, SIT, SIT, SIT, SIT!" There was now a respectably-large crater where Inuyasha used to screech. "You're such an IDIOT!" Kagome proceeded to scream some stronger words that made her audience slightly uncomfortable, dirt-to-face contact aside. "I'm sick and tired of you whining so much! He's your brother, and he will do whatever he damn well wants because he's SESSHOU-FREAKING-MARU AND HE'S THE GODDAMNED LORD OF THE WEST."
Inuyasha pulled himself out of his crater after some time, scratched and seemingly mollified, but Kagome knew it wasn't over.
Her rant earned her an entire twenty-three seconds of peace. Not like she was counting, or anything. Then, Inuyasha softly muttered, "Keh. If the jerk would take that stick from up his—" He was cut off by his brother.
"Perhaps I should have taken you in, if only to shield the civilized folk from your uncouth vocabulary."
Undaunted, he fired back, "I can survive in the wild, by myself! And I'm damn proud of growing up alone!"
Now it was the "lying-through-my-teeth" portion of their argument. Great.
Sesshoumaru opened his mouth to bite out a clever reply, but Kagome's temper proved to be even mightier than The Western Lord's irritation.
"That is IT! I wish I could meet your father, and tell him ALL about you idiots! Maybe then you'd stop acting like children!"
Silence. What the hell? All she had to do to get some quiet was play on their daddy-issues? She wanted to smack herself.
"Kagome," Inuyasha whispered, expression horrified. "The Jewel . . ."
For all of a second, Kagome was confused. Yeah, the Shikon no Tama; they'd defeated Naraku, taken his shards, then acquired Kohaku's—whom Sesshoumaru revived very generously with his amazing magic-sword—to complete the cursed thing. As Shikon Miko, she kept it tucked inside her shirt at all times. . . .
Well, that was just splendid.
They had just enough time for her to receive a despairing look from Inuyasha, and a haughty one from Sesshoumaru that proclaimed his disdain for her ditzy-ness. Well. He probably didn't think that word-for-word, but . . .
A bright, blue radiance illuminated the edges of her vision, and her attention was immediately captured by the newest manifestation of the hatred God had for her. She recognized the shine of it; it was the Bone-Eater's Well. She quickly deduced that said well was assisting the Jewel in granting her wish.
"Oh, sh—" And then a burst of white light illuminated the clearing; when everyone could see again, Kagome was gone. Kikyou returned to her mate with her basketful of herbs just then. Her reincarnation's aura was nowhere to be found, despite having been in the area just a moment ago. The miko's eyes widened dramatically, and she dropped her basket, plants scattering everywhere. She cursed a rather vile curse—which led Inuyasha to fluff with pride—and ran from the clearing, apparently to find help.
After some tense silence, Sesshoumaru remarked dryly, "This one is under the belief that your speech-patterns rub off onto your women entirely too much."
" . . . Keh."
~Bird in the White Cage~
"Keh," Kagome muttered, dusting imaginary particles off of her and angrily plopping down on the dirt.
After kicking the sides of the well repeatedly, she felt much calmer. Shrugging, she muttered, still a bit ticked off, "Finally, some quiet," and began to think.
It had been a while since she had that opportunity. Four years, to be precise.
Because it was then, at the tender, foolish age of fifteen, that she was dragged into a well that began her life. For some stupid reason, that life was an adventure with a kitsune kit whom she adored and fretted over, a monk with less-than-saintly ways, a Taijiya who gladly filled the place of the sister she had always yearned for, and a hanyou she thought she loved.
Ah, yes, her embarrassing crush; whenever she saw him back then, she would get this flutter in her chest, and she assumed it was love.
Surprise, surprise: it was actually indigestion.
Snorting, she went back to her previous line of thought before her . . . self . . . broke in. It wasn't love, nor was it heart burn. It was fear.
She was afraid. There was always a lot of fear back then. She was afraid of the danger he represented, afraid of her future, but she was mainly afraid for him. How could he live while yearning for a dead woman, how could he go on with their mutual murderer still tormenting them? How long could the brash, silver-haired Inu-hanyou endure such torturous conditions?
Thankfully, Kagome had fixed one problem, which ended up solving them all. Just before the final battle, Kagome approached the icy miko, and purified her on a whim (actually, that was just what Kikyou and Kagome told everyone else. The lookalikes both knew that Kikyou was only purified because she was about to corrupt the younger girl). All the anger, the hate, the pain; all of it melted away under the powerful force of the younger priestess's gentle aura. But some of her power stayed with Kikyou, granting her the life she never should have lost in the first place, and the once-corpse willingly returned her shard.
That was when Kagome met the real Kikyou, the one Inuyasha loved, and would gladly go to Hell for—or at least, would be very conflicted about going to Hell for. Kikyou was soft, and kind; she was quiet, but stubborn; she was loyal, and brave, and intelligent. She was shy, and laughed often. She was even a willing and particularly apt teacher of miko techniques, like running holy energy through muscular tissue to strengthen it. Kagome was forever grateful to her, and she knew that Kikyou felt the same way.
She was Kagome's second—but no less beloved and cherished—sister, both because of their friendship, and because her hanyou brother mated the woman. Kagome was happy for them.
Still . . . she couldn't help but be a little envious of their love. That feeling of rightness, of belonging: Kagome knew that she would never find that in either her world or Inuyasha's. She had long ago resigned herself to that fact, and had learned not to doubt her gut instincts.
And at the moment, said gut instincts were sending off blaring alarms.
Coming out of her cathartic state, she glanced up to see that the sun was setting, and she was running out of light in the well. Focusing her senses, she was startled by the bonfire of dark, evil auras that lit up disturbingly close to her location. She was about to take off the other direction (her specialty was disintegrating individual youkai; that's why she and Inuyasha worked so well together, mutt had crowd control like whoa), when she realized that someone was fighting the awesome horde of demons.
Someone. Singular.
Certain suicide or no, Kagome would not leave a person to die. Cursing her strong conscience, she flooded her reiki into her legs with the ease of a thousand rehearsals, and she vaulted out of the shaft and into a battle that she would never, not in all her years, forget.
~Bird in the White Cage~
The silver Inu was in a particularly irritating skirmish against throngs of low-level youkai; for every one he slew with ease, another ten popped up to take its place. If he had the fingertips to spare, he would have rubbed his temples. His aggravation, however, was slowly giving way to incredulous panic. If this thing didn't end soon, he would succumb to the sheer number of demons attacking him.
That would be really embarrassing.
Just as he was beginning to question the prospect of seeing sunrise the next day, a new entity came into his awareness. Surprised, but not once faltering in his attacks, he took note of its characteristics.
The scent is sweet like vanilla, indicating a kind or weak nature, but also spiced, as of with cloves, which indicates a certain strength. She is female. Her aura is the purest I have ever seen, surpassing even that of my dear friend's. And by the Kami themselves, she is strong.
In fact, her aura of power was nearly a match for his own. Then, the owner of those attributes was right beside him. He didn't glance at her because he was a trained warrior, damn it, and he knew that if he looked away once, he would be overwhelmed. But he nodded in thanks, even as his Inner Youkai drooled at the amazing aroma.
A clumsy yet potent burst of energy from his companion leveled about half of the remaining forces. Pleasantly surprised, he found that his morale had been restored. Within ten minutes, the pair had defeated the rest.
Panting and sweating slightly, he flicked the blood off his blade, slid it back into its sheath, and turned to face his savior.
Pure energy still radiated around her, crackling on the air. That meant that the one who had saved him . . . was a priestess?
"Damn, I was afraid my pants weren't gonna make it."
He stared at her as she ran a hand through her thick, dark hair and yawned a little, cocking her hip to the side. "You were engaged in battle with an army of demons, and you were concerned for the safety of your pants?"
Defensively, she claimed, "These are quality pants! Do you know how long it took to find the perfect fit?" "And I wasn't sure I would be able to release reiki through my hands a second time because that crap is damn hard" was what she didn't add, so as to seem less intelligent and therefore less of a threat. Hey, she had been doing this adventuring-thing for a while. It's hard not to learn something from constantly having your life in peril.
"I would've been more worried about the claws intent on killing me," he scoffed, apparently thinking her ditzy. Good. He'd be less prepared if he turned out to be an enemy.
"You men are all the same! First off, how are you supposed to walk around in pants that are too large or too small? What if they fall off your waist? Secondly, this particular garment is enchanted—painstakingly, I might add—by myself. I spent a freaking long time making sure they would meet my needs! Seriously, no male understands the importance of a girl's pants," she huffed, crossing her arms.
This conversation was going nowhere very quickly, and following a decidedly insane woman. "As it were, your pants are safe, and your help much appreciated, Lady . . . ?"
"Kagome," she supplied, "And please, don't call me Lady. It makes me feel snooty—I have a request, if you don't mind," she interrupted herself.
"Yes?"
"Catch me."
"What—?"
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and he belatedly took note of how much energy she had expended as her knees gave out. Reflexively, he caught her, and decided to bring her with him.
Life got boring as a wanderer.
Dropping her down on some hides laid down by a tree, he paused a moment before rearranging her limbs more comfortably. After all, she had saved his life, though he'd never say it out loud.
I like her, his Inner Youkai spoke up. He rarely communicated with the exterior persona, so his Inner was usually taken very seriously.
We hardly know her, he replied, focusing more on the task of starting a fire than talking to himself.
I want to keep her.
I'm sure she has places to be; I'm just going to let her heal, and then she can get on her way.
But I like her.
So you've stated.
Kagome moaned in her sleep, her eyelids fluttering, and her brow beginning to sweat.
"Perhaps you are not as well as you led me to believe," the demon scolded her quietly. "But why go so far to save a demon? And who are you?"
He decided that the only way to get his questions answered was to get her back to full health, so he dragged her closer to the fire and boiled some water.
Frowning, he stared silently into the flames and waited for his new companion to wake up.
~Bird in the White Cage~
Author's Note:
Hey guys, this is the first installment in what is sure to be a semi-long story. I'm going to be screwing with the time line a lot, so if you want to know something, contact me and I'll send you some clarification! Also, I only read until a certain point in the manga before I discovered that the fanfiction for it was so much better. So if I have gaps in certain pieces of the storyline, it's not my fault. Well, I guess it is, but this is my own universe, anyways. So, ha.
The Shikon Jewel disappears because what Kagome really means when she wishes is that the brothers should stop fighting so that they and the rest of Japan can have some peace to themselves, and finally achieve the happiness they deserve. So it's a pure wish…
I totally agree with Kanna37's explanation of that particular event (that there really is no need for a pure wish, it's just an ideal created by fans; all that really needs to happen is for the right wish), but I enjoy playing with the idea too much to give it up. Maybe in a different fic.
For a full timeline, please visit my bio. I'll be updating it as I update the fic, so the one or two people who follow the entire way won't get any spoilers.
Love,
~Kamibi
