THE GROUCH IN THE CABIN IN ALASKA
A/N: I might start writing bits and pieces of this. We shall see. I don't personally headcanon Inuyasha to be 200 or whatever years old, I like the idea of him aging somewhat normally, but I decided to play with the idea of him aging like a full-demon and this happened. Less than 800 words.
It was obvious I'd end up alone in Alaska someday.
Even back when the rumor of Alaska had just begun to spread across the Russian border and spilled into the minds of the Europeans, I had a feeling that it was calling to me. And not for gold, not for land.
I just wanted peace.
I kept notes to myself, not a diary, don't confuse me for a sissy, just a patchwork made up of a few dog-eared pages, reminding me to go back to Japan in 1981. She'd be born in 1981. And I'd see her again.
I never did make it back there though.
500 years of me traveling every corner of this small insignificant rock in our vast solar system, and I still didn't move from my root in Mountain Village, Alaska, to silence the voice in my head that implored for me to find her again.
I tucked those notes into a cabinet that have long since been covered in dust by now, and for a few years I did everything I could to forget I ever planned to see her again in the first place.
After my first human war, I realized that the stupidity of humanity truly knew no bounds.
We were marching together as a group of maybe 25, 000, led by that short little man named Nobunaga, but the enemy was fooled into thinking we were double that size, and even though we emerged victorious, the bitter sting of a flesh wound jabbed at my side at the bottom of a ditch, alone again. And that's when I swore off warfare combat forever.
And it'd be almost another 354 years before I broke that promise.
After Miroko and Sango's grandchildren passed, I tended to their graves, gave them my best, and I traveled.
Some days, I kept going even when I couldn't distinguish my fingers from my toes, and the wind was so dusty that I used my hearing to guide me through the storms. I snuck past a group of settlers one night, the rats following me as companions, and I set sail towards strange and distant lands. I traveled for a long time, and some nights I didn't even sleep, although sometimes I think I would have preferred to.
If only to see her face again.
Of all the things in life that had faded from my memory, her face was the one thing that stayed consistently clear. Like the beating of my own ridiculous heart.
"We finally got someone who wants to start some research here!" Jim broke through the winter snow and plotted himself down on the creaky bar-stool while motioning for a drink. He made an exaggerated "whew" sound by blowing his cheeks, while forming an "o" with his mouth, and then preceded to annoyingly pat his legs to rid the cold. "Isn't that interesting?"
A hunched over figure nursed his beer in silence and shrugged, indifferent.
Jim shifted eyes from the curvy bar-tender back to the tightly bundled up man sitting two chairs across from him. The woman behind the bar looked back at him and gave him a sympathetic look. Jim put one bent elbow on the table in front of him and cupped his chin, tapping his cheek with his index finger in thought. How to go about this one…
"So," He started again, swiveling around on the stool and crossing his feet on the chair in-between them, "I offered the recruiter some dorms down closer to the city, but he said that the graduate is more of a country mouse and doesn't like the noise so much."
A pair of cold, guarded, golden eyes, pierced his blue ones and he gulped, already regretting his choice in direction.
"And?" A voice rasped out, scratchy and muffled by the scarf around his face.
"And…well….you…have an extra room, don't you?"
A/N: Rereading, I realize this might sound a little bit like Sesshomaru, but I assure you IT IS INUYASHA. HE IS JUST JADED AND LONELY.