I'm a freaking jerk. I know. You hate me. It's just a one shot though, not a new story, and I'm almost done with Kinda Weird's update. Um… And when you finish this.. well.. read the AN
The Happiest Day
By Rogue Pryde
She didn't even remember what the fight was about.
She'd thought about it every day for the past seven years, but all she could remember was how it ended, never how it began. It had probably started with the usual arguments. Maybe he had snuck off to meet Kikyo, or she had taken too long at school. Whatever it was, things had grown more heated then normal.
"Why do you always have to make things so hard, Inuyasha!" Kagome screamed, her hands clenched into fists.
"That's right." He mocked. "Blame me. Everything that goes wrong in your life, every pathetic little thing, is somehow my fault."
"Well it is!" She was furious. "You're so stubborn about everything. If my life doesn't revolve around you, you do something to ruin it, yet whenever I need anything, you're too busy acting like you're actually something important to care!"
"You of all people have no right to make fun of the importance of others!" He yelled back. "You're the one who's useless! You were only born because Kikyo died before her duty was done. You're a freaking mistake Kagome. Or rather," He corrected cruelly. "You're the attempt to 'fix' a mistake. Fate sure screwed up."
"Screw you Inuyasha!" She screamed back, furiously blinking back tears before he could smell them. "Sometimes I just can't stand you! I really can't!"
Still hurt at from the jibe at his importance, Inuyasha sneered back. "And sometimes I hate you Kagome. I really hate. You."
"Fine!" She shouted, stepping away from him.
"Fine!" He stepped backwards too, watching her head to the well.
"Don't come back for me!"
"I won't!"
"I'm not coming back!"
"Good!"
"I mean it!" She was on the edge of the well.
"Shut up already and get lost!" He shouted, glaring until she was gone.
Seven years.
Kagome hadn't been back to the feudal era since that day. It had started off as a kind of battle of wills. After their fight's, either she would give in and go back, or Inuyasha would finally visit her and apologize. But she couldn't bring herself to go back, not after he'd claimed to hate her. And he'd never came back to apologize.
She stared at the well.
She had watched it for days, weeks, even months, after their fight. Always hoping that someday he'd come through. Finally, she'd accepted a date from Hojo, wondering if Inuyasha would somehow know, and in his anger, come back and yell at her. But he didn't.
She would leave her window open at night, hoping to wake up sometime and see him glaring down at her again. But she didn't. After high school, came a few years of college. There she'd dated a few other guys, always bringing them to the well. So many dates were at that well. She'd placed so many hopes in it. But he never came back.
Now, she was standing by that well again. The walls surrounding it had long since been taken down and now it was part of the scenery in the yard. Decorations were everywhere, and the guests had long since taken there seats. In front of her stretched a long white piece of fabric, trailing all the way to a podium. Standing in front of it, a little to the side, was Aaron.
She'd met him in college. He was everything Inuyasha was not, and didn't remind her of the past as Hojo did. He was sweet, and kind, and had never even once raised his voice to her. His friends told her he liked to party, but he never showed her that side of him, claiming that he never wanted her to be disappointed in him.
She didn't love him. She knew that. But he had changed for her. He had sacrificed something for her. That struck a chord with her, affecting her so deeply she hadn't been able to say no when he proposed. He had suggested a wedding at the shrine, near the well, since she loved it so much.
The wedding march sounded.
She began to walk.
As her feet carried her farther and farther away from the well, she began to feel like she was drowning, sinking deeper into some dark depth that would destroy her. By the time she reached her fiancé, she was blinking back tears. He reached out for her hand, and held it has the priest began the ceremony.
She watched Aaron say his vows. He looked at her so tenderly, mouthing the words 'I love you' to her after he'd finished speaking. She nodded mutely, waiting until the priest paused before reciting her own lines. And that's what it felt like. As if she was saying lines from a play back from her school days.
"I do." The words fell from her lips as if they were dead. Her voice had never sounded so much like Kikyo's.
And he kissed her.
The celebration afterwards kept them apart from each other. He went off with his friends to talk about the 'trials' of married life, and her school friends had pulled her to the side too. It hadn't taken long for her to excuse herself, and before she knew where she was going, she found herself by the well again. All of the guests were inside, enjoying the reception. She was by herself.
In a way, this had been the ultimate test. Would he come back on her wedding day? Would he whisk her away, back to the times of slaying demons and fighting against evil? Her fingers traced the grooves on the aged wood. She had come to memorize the different pits and bumps along the rim in the front, after kneeling there, so many times. This time, however, her fingers kept trailing along the edge, starting to make the complete circle. She hadn't been around the entire opening in a long time.
By the time she reached the back she couldn't see clearly. Her eyes were too filled with tears. She traced along the unfamiliar grooves and than froze. She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and leaned forward, using both her hands to wipe away at the dirt clogging some of the lines.
She continued to pull and tear and the caked gunk in between the cracks long after they became perfectly visible. She began to cry, not bothering to clean her hands before hastily wiping her tears off her face. Her cheeks became dark, then completely black, as more and more dirt and mud were rubbed against them.
She didn't stop until it began to rain, and then she could only stare, trembling, at the jagged scratches on the side of the well she had watched for so long.
Her beautiful white wedding dress was caked with mud, and she had become soaked through to the bone. Her fingers were bleeding in some places, and her nails were filled with dirt. She wiped away her tears, one last time, and stood. With slow, heavy steps, she walked back towards her home.
Towards her husband.
And the rain continued to fall, washing away the last bits of dirt that her long nails hadn't quite been able to clear way. The message was visible now, finally saying what the writer had waited hundreds of years to say.
But it was too late.
It was so late.
Carved carefully, even lovingly, into the wood were two words.
I'm sorry
***
End.
I know! I'm horrible! Dude was that depressing or what? I almost cried writing it! I had just read a Kagome marries someone else fic, and I wanted to write one myself. What do you think?
The reason he wrote it, instead of coming back, was that he didn't want to give in either. He assumed she saw it, not realizing that the side he wrote it on was the back in her time, so she rarely saw it, and that dirt and mud would fill it anyway. So he thought she didn't forgive him. And she never noticed it before, but since her fingers were feeling it so carefully that time, she thought she felt the outline of a word. The more she felt, the more she was sure, and it was also her own hope and dread that drove her. She would have been that determined even if there hadn't been anything, if she had just imagined it. So yeah, that's my story.
Let me know what you think! I'm planning on ending it here, but I might have more (not that more necessarily means a happy ending) because people who give up things to marry someone aren't always really giving it up. In fact that rarely happens. (and if that doesn't tell you what could happen, then go back and read it again).
And I'm aware Inuyasha and Kagome go together like pretzels and ranch. This is not a sign of insanity on my part, just random depression.
Rogue Pryde