Title: Then and Now
Author: SakuraRyuu
Rating: K
Genre: Canon, Angst, Comfort, Drama, Family, Friendship
Characters: Inuyasha, Kagome, Miroku, Sango, Shippo
Author's Note: Inuyasha and all characters in this fan fiction are the property of Rumiko Takahashi.
In his quest for the sacred jewel Inuyasha had set out to be a full-fledged demon. He desired the power that came with being a demon instead of the hanyou he was. When he became involved with Kikyou she convinced him to become human. He desired the acceptance and belonging being a human would offer him. After meeting Kagome he was satisfied to be a hanyou. She offered him acceptance, belonging, love, and friendship just as he was.
On her birthday Kagome had set out to go to school. By the end of the day she was a savior. At the end of a month she was an archer, a warrior and the surrogate mother of a fox demon kit. By the end of a year she was a hero. After three years she was the wife of a hanyou living 500 years in the past.
When he met the human female and hanyou Shippo had been an orphan. In a month's time he had the beginnings of a new, larger family. After six months he had won his first enemy challenge, was learning more about his fox magic, and wasn't as afraid as he once had been. A year later he was going off on his own to train to be a better youkai, visiting his family as often as he can.
Miroku had simply been a monk, traveling the countryside, performing exorcisms as needed, or not, depending on how wealthy the house was. He flirted mercilessly with any pretty girl but was always careful not to leave anyone with an heir due to the wind tunnel in his right hand. He met his friends while trying to steal their jewel shard, and they changed his life. He couldn't have known in a year he would be cured of his family's curse with a wife in a hut of their own.
Being a taijiya was all Sango knew how to do. She was trained, as a hunter and a demon slayer, never thinking her life would take her outside of the slayer's village. Naraku entered her life ad in a matter of days her people were gone, her village empty and she was traveling with a hanyou, a girl from the future, a kitsune and a monk. Not quite a year later her greatest nemesis was dead, her brother saved, and she was married to a monk, settled in a different village.
They all had started as something else, headed in a direction completely different than the path they currently strode. In retrospect, they couldn't imagine living any other way.