Ok, so today I was watching Inuyasha and I watched the episode where Naraku makes them all relive/see the worst thing that could happen to them and Kikyou flat out tells Inuyasha she tried to kill Kagome and he's pissy but doesn't… you know, KILL her. And I was sittin there like, man, you're a douche. A kinda awesome douche, but a douche nonetheless. Then I was watching the one where Sesshy McFluffikins first meets Rin and was like, wow, you're kinda all angsty and cute. So anyway, I was feeling angsty and annoyed and decided to write this. If I like the way it turns out I may make a longer story out of it but for now it's a one chapter deal.

Enjoy!

The Golden Meadow

Something pierced Kagome's chest and threw her backwards off the craggy cliff. As she fell into the silent mist the blackness in her vision cleared into brilliant sunlight. It was a place so golden and bright that her vision took a moment to focus.

She landed on her back in a soft field of long grass.

"Mommy!" A little girl squealed in delight and catapulted herself into Kagome's arms.

"What… what's going on…?" Kagome looked around herself in bewilderment.

The field was cut with a clear stream and freckled with wildflowers. A modest house was tucked into the trees with a dimly lit figure sitting cross-legged on the porch.

"Who-?" Kagome turned her gaze to the girl in her arms, a child with the most unusual hair and eye coloring she had ever seen. She had blue-black hair that faded to silver down her back and soft brown eyes shot through with gold. But it was her ears that made Kagome's heart skip a beat. Furry black ears with silver tips swiveled in her hair as she whipped her head around curiously, trying to see everything in the clearing at the same time.

"Izayoi. Don't jump on your mother." A familiar neutral voice trailed off as the meadow faded.

Freezing cold shocked her back to her senses as she landed in the river at the base of the cliff. As she struggled to the surface of the water her back slammed into a rock and her vision went black again.

"Who… who are you?" She asked the little girl.

The silver-haired child stood and straightened her pale blue kimono importantly. "I am Kimi. Daughter of the almighty priestess Kagome and-"

Something hard and slippery crashed into Kagome's arm and as it dragged past she reflexively grabbed it. It was the root of a tree, slick with years of built-up algae. Her numb fingers traitorously let it slide out of her grasp.

The turbulent waters dragged at her body and she gasped for air but drew in only water.

The figure on the porch rocked up to his feet and stretched with a huge yawn, fuzzy ears twitching on top of his head. The girl raced to him and he stepped off the porch, sweeping her up and tossing her into the air. Kagome squinted hard, trying to see his face but the glare of the sun blocked it first and then the body of the child.

Long silver hair caught the light and she could hear the sound of the people she loved laughing. The little girl looked over her shoulder at Kagome. Seeing the child being held lovingly her father made the back of Kagome's eyes prickle, and when the little girl reached out to her and said "Mommy" the tears blurred her vision and spilled over.

"What are these for?" A calloused thumb gently brushed under her eye, holding a shining drop to the light.

Smoothed rocks caught Kagome's body as she drifted downstream, halting her movement in the shallows. Her hand felt like lead as it lifted upwards and touched the arrows protruding from her chest. She remembered meeting someone on the cliff.

She had left her arrows on a boulder while she gathered herbs.

Kagome frowned frustratedly, all that trouble to get herbs and she had dropped them when she went over the cliff. "How could I be so careless?" She thought. "Kikyou would never be so careless."

She remembered someone with long black hair laughing at her before the pain and the fall. "Did I fall onto the arrows? Or…"

Her eyes widened and pupils contracted as she remembered.

Kikyou had cornered her on the cliff, the spark that usually lit her cold eyes was gone, they looked flat and lifeless as she had laughed at Kagome. She called her stupid for falling for a man whose heart had already been given away. She called Kagome a waste of space, a doll emptier than herself with a borrowed soul.

Kagome's response had been that she pitied Inuyasha for loving someone with no heart.

Kikyou said she didn't need a heart as long as she had Inuyasha's.

"Inuyasha!" Kagome remembered suddenly. "Was he the man in the meadow?"

She rocked to her side and clawed up so she was half-way out of the water on the rocky bank. As her strength gave out she collapsed, the pain making her simultaneously vomit up water and lose consciousness.

The clearing was colored umber with the setting sun as two sets of arms were wrapped around her with two heads resting against her chest.

"Can you hear her heartbeat Kimi?" The rumbling question came from the taller person with silver hair who was kneeling, asked of the smaller person with the black and silver hair who was standing on his knee with her fuzzy ear pressed tightly against Kagome.

Kagome put her hands into their hair. It was so soft and she pushed her fingers from his bangs to the back of his head without interruption and rubbed the girl's overlarge puppy ear. As her other hand drifted down the side of his face she ran a finger around the edge of his pointed ear.

Kagome woke in a meadow on her side wrapped in something as soft as fur. She thought for a moment that she was in the same meadow but it wasn't sunny. The sky was stormy and overcast. Her chest and shoulder throbbed viciously and she groaned.

"So… you're alive." The voice was familiar and sounded bored.

She managed the shift her eyes to the side and found a length of silvered hair beside her. Next to that was a kimono… and armor… and then…

"Sessh…?" She whispered hoarsely.

"Foolish human, don't talk."

Kagome fell silent. The makeshift bed she lay on was the furry boa-like thing that Sesshomaru carried and that she had always suspected was actually attached to his body. She tried to push it away but he pushed it back.

"Blood…" She rasped again.

"-Has been on it before and will be again."

Kagome was silent again. Usually being around Sesshomaru was a bad thing, but ever since he had allowed Rin to accompany him there had been a certain softness around his eyes that she had never seen before.

"Inuyasha will be here soon."

The news didn't comfort Kagome as much as it normally did. She had been struck down by Kikyou after all, and while Inuyasha chose to accompany her rather than Kikyou she suspected it was because Kikyou would never allow him to be with her. She wasn't sure what to do; she didn't think she could stay with Inuyasha if he still felt the same way about Kikyou after this, but she also couldn't begrudge him for still loving her. Kikyou was who he was meant to be with after all, it was only because of Naraku that Kikyou died and Inuyasha didn't become human and marry her. That life that was meant to be was one that Inuyasha would never be able to let go of. Kikyou would always be his first love, and she would always be his second fiddle.

"Whatever you are thinking of is putting more strain on your body little fool." Sesshomaru glanced down at her with a neutral expression. "Do you so long for death?"

Kagome took a deep breath to calm herself and by doing so shifted the arrows inside her. A lightning bolt of hot pain blinded her vision and she was once again in the golden meadow.

Night had fallen and the stars and moon lit the clearing. She held the small hands of two almost identical girls. One with gold lines streaking her eyelids and faintly marking her forehead, the other with a constant smile and stream of narrative.

The girls shifted and grew taller and changed into two men, both with long silver hair and golden eyes.

Kagome looked from one to the other, then forward where each of the little girls now stood before their respective father. Both girls were looking at her, the one with the golden markings had a faint smile and her narrower eyes held more wisdom than her years; the other had a carefree grin and unconditional love in her eyes.

Kagome looked down at the claw-tipped fingers that wrapped around both of her smaller hands, then up to each of the brother's faces one at a time. Both were physically beautiful but in the meadow she could see their souls reflected around them. Sorrow and hope colored both and while Sesshomaru's was as expansive as the night sky, Inuyasha's burned as brightly as the sun.

She raised both of their hands to her lips and kissed them.

Sesshomaru watched the unconscious woman with mild interest.

He had been passing nearby when Tensaiga pulled him to the riverbank. He was interested to find Inuyasha's priestess woman there, lying on her side barely out of the water with two arrows pierced through her body. Despite her condition he could sense no aura of death about her. When he held the hilt of Tensaiga he could see her soul drifting in and out of her body but it was not detaching.

Curious despite himself he had pulled her further up the bank and propped her up with his Mokomoto so she wouldn't put pressure on the entrance or exit of her wounds. As he carefully arranged her he felt a faint pull around his wrist. He glanced down, expecting to see a piece of her clothing caught on him but there was nothing visible.

As she had her strange out of body experience Tensaiga pulsed constantly until he took hold of it again. "What do you want Tensaiga? She is not near death." He thought as he wrapped long claw-tipped fingers around the hilt again. The surrounding area around the girl darkened as it did when he saw through Tensaiga. But instead of the usual minions of the underworld he saw that she had what looked like a tangled red ribbon pouring from her chest.

The ribbon flowed out of her like it was alive, twisting and crinkling in the direction that he could smell his half-brother coming from. As he watched he noticed a thinner more tenuous ribbon that snaked from the same spot in her chest and to his alarm was winding hesitantly around his wrist.

"What is this?" He thought, pulling gently with the captive wrist. He looked at the Tensaiga and pondered it. It was the sword that could save lives, so the ribbons must have been connected somehow to her life. He decided to ignore the ribbon connected himself to her for the time being and focus on the ribbon that connected her to Inuyasha.

The ribbons couldn't signify love, he reasoned, because he had no love for Kagome. The only reason he saw her was through Inuyasha but they couldn't represent family because he would be tied to her through Inuyasha, not directly to her. He had heard of the lines of fate from his father before he passed, lines that tied people together. Tensaiga had shown his father of his fate to be with the human woman, Inuyasha's mother. His father also said that Tensaiga could sever the lines of fate, as he could have severed himself from Izayoi and lived.

"But you must never sever fate lightly Sesshomaru." Inutaisho had said. "By severing someone's fate you sentence them to a life of uncertainty."

Sesshomaru did not like uncertainty. When he made a decision he did not change his mind, it was what made him a good leader like his father. And although he would never be as famous or infamous of a warlord as his father, he held onto the qualities that he inherited from him with a vise-like grip.

As much as he wanted to blame the little priestess for tying him to her fate, he was no fool and understood that fate had a mind of its own. When he reflected on it he realized that if he hadn't followed Tensaiga to the girl in the first place and tended to her this would never have happened.

The demon frowned down at the girl; her soul was huge, almost too big to be human. If she were a demon she would have power beyond his comprehension. He had seen for himself that she had spiritual energy that other humans had to die to find. Kikyou went through death, became one with the universe and then returned knowing more secrets than she would ever tell. She and the living Buddha were the only spiritual beings that matched Inuyasha's ordinary far too tenderhearted human girl.

She wasn't unattractive; Sesshomaru mused, even covered in blood and soaked to the bone she was pretty for a human. Though he knew his brother was attached to the priestess for her spirit and soul he had still been lucky to get them packaged so nicely for him.

The girl stirred and tried to speak.

"If you insist on communicating…" Sesshomaru sighed and kept a hand on Tensaiga, putting two fingers against Kagome's forehead. It was something his father had taught him that he had never had the inclination to try. Speaking to someone through the realm of their mind.

Without warning he found himself standing in the sun. He had been expecting an echo of a voice or even a picture of words, but to actually see where the girl's mind was was extremely surprising.

"Hmm." He said to convey his shock.

He could feel his body sitting in the grass by the unconscious girl but his mind was forming a body for himself in the plane of the girl's mind. It took him another moment to recognize that it wasn't his mind forming a body for him, but hers.

"Hello Sesshomaru." Kagome stood in the field, holding two little girls' hands. "I'm glad you could see this, Inuyasha wouldn't understand."

"That's because he is a fool."

"You really like that word." Kagome replied with a smile.

Sesshomaru was beginning to see why his brother liked the girl so much, she talked to everyone in the same manner, as though they had no guilt or taint in their soul. As if they were as pure as she was.

"Idiot then."

"Agreed." She laughed and the sound rang across the meadow like a bell. "I want you to meet the two most important people to me." She walked forward with the girls.

'Do you not know that they only exist in your mind?' Sesshomaru thought, but to his alarm found that he could not shield his mind when he was a guest in hers.

Kagome smiled again. "They exist." She led one of the girls forward.

He was stunned to see a faint crescent mark on her forehead, and golden demonic markings around her eyes, his eyes.

"Impossible." He murmured.

The girl looked back behind Kagome and Sesshomaru followed her gaze to see the faint outlines of Inuyasha and himself, standing in the shadows of the trees. When she looked back at him and reached out a small hand he found himself taking it.

"Her name is Kimi." Kagome said, still holding onto the girl's other hand and smiling tenderly at her.

Sesshomaru looked up at her in alarm. He had never told Inuyasha of his mother's name, it was not possible for the priestess to know.

Kagome went up to her toes and pressed her lips lightly to his own.

"Do you understand now?" She asked, tears in her eyes.

"I understand."

Sesshomaru pulled his fingers away from Kagome's forehead as Inuyasha's approach became audible. He wanted to be out of her mind, it was too… inviting to stay.

He did understand and did not envy what she had to do. She didn't have to choose between father's, she had to choose between her children, which child to bring into the world and which to leave behind. He pushed up into a kneeling position next to the girl. There were tracks of tears down her face despite her peaceful expression.

"Stay in your golden meadow a little longer young priestess." He brushed away her tears and didn't have to ask what they were for.