Disclaimers: No, I don't own Naruto or Inuyasha. Keep in mind that reading in the dark is bad for the eyes, so read in a well-lighted room! Thank you.

Summary: Neither of them are truly over Kagome's mother's death, but Fugaku is trying and Kagome cares too much to be too spiteful.

Fugaku sipped his tea slowly, while his eleven year old daughter watched him.

She idly stirred the sugar in her tea with a senbon, poking at the bubbles moodily.

"It was a boy," she whispered.

Fugaku gave a tired nod, wishing that his baby son had survived the whole damned ordeal, as well as his mother. All he had left was his precious daughter.

"Ka-sama was so excited. She wanted another child so badly, and I was so excited to have a baby brother…" she took a small sip to hide her trembling mouth, eyes clenched shut to hold back tears.

"But she's watching, somewhere. And we'll see her again. Not for a long time, but we will." She said quietly, but not weakly.

Fugaku gave a small smile— rare, nowadays, at his daughter. He settled his hand over hers in a brief moment of comfort before getting up to leave for the police station.

He slid into his work jacket, caught Kagome in a fleeting hug, and left in a swirl of leaves.

Kagome sighed before gathering her scrolls. Her fist tightened. With tensions between the clans thickening, the council was demanding a male heir. They were pressuring Otou-sama to marry again; this time, to his original fiancé, Uchiha Mikoto.

Kagome's mother had been eight years older than her father. Father had married her when he was fourteen. The council had been pressuring him, weighing him down with demands. He, in his youth, had married her mother out of spite against the council.

It had become a successful and wonderful marriage, despite the situations that it had occurred under.

This soon-to-be stepmother was a weak-willed kunoichi who had bent under the weight of the clan, and turned bitter from ency of Kagome's mother. Envious that her mother had married for love –and that she had not bent under the clan's weight. Uchiha Mikoto might have once been bright in life, but she had become complacent, lost courage, turned weak from letting others dictate her life; she had no right to hate the late Uchiha matriarch.

She was envious despite her reluctant respect for the late matriarch's burning will.

Kagome, at the very least would attempt to keep the peace in the coming years, for her mother's peace. That, and her father didn't deserve the crap the elders dished out. She didn't want to make his life any harder.

...

Kagome decided that her stepmother was touched in the head. One minute she was all regretful, the next minute she was spiteful, then sorrowful; another moment and she was all fury and anger, then bravery lost and spine bent.

She also cared nothing for Otou-sama. Too prideful, unwilling to admit that if she would not try, then all the kindness in the world would not save their marriage. Perhaps spiteful because he had married another woman before her?

Kagome smiled coldly at the woman, lips tilted in an eerie expression for the whole of the wedding reception. Of course, she smiled gently for Otou-sama, but she didn't give a damn about her stepmother.

...

Mikoto-san was giving birth to a boy. Kagome smiled bitterly. She gave Otou-sama an exhausted smile as she stepped out of the birthing room, pulling off her bloodied gloves.

"Congratulations, Otou-sama. It's a boy."

They shared a bittersweet smile. Neither were really over her death, but they were better, and they were trying, so Kagome stepped aside to allow Fugaku in to greet his second wife and newborn.

With the newborn boy, Uchiha Mikoto's stating was finally stable— the new Uchiha matriarch, and Kagome didn't know if she should hate the boy or not, but Ka-sama had never cared for the damn title anyway, so it didn't matter as much as it could have. Ka-sama would have her head if she had been cruel to a baby anyway.

A/N: So I'm feeling really accomplished. Having been so busy- I was out the whole day for an appointment that ended with my head spinning-, I didn't think I was going to finish this. I think this is going to be one of those two-shots. I like the idea enough that I might continue it. We'll see.

So the Kagome is Fugaku's daughter. Fugaku married at fourteen to her twenty-two year old mother. Then she died with the unborn child, seven months pregnant. How did she die? Well… I'm working on that.

–sevenisthemagicnumber