title: four ways they could have met and the one way they did
rating: T for language and some dark themes
summary: "And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings." Four ways Inuyasha and Kagome could have met, and the one way they did.
author's note: This is written for day four of InuKag Week, AU Day. Lali ( sankonetsu on and Tumblr) and Cynthia ( inukag on Tumblr) have done a fantastic job putting it together, and I'm so honored (and a little proud) to call them my friends.
1. College
Kagome is cursed.
She's left-handed.
It's followed her her entire life: bumping elbows with the right-handed student beside her, struggling to use scissors, awkwardly opening canned soup… the disaster of being left-handed is everywhere.
For some reason, she expects it to get better after she enters college, but it doesn't. The desks are primarily designed for right-handed students, scissors are still catered to right-handed adults, and can openers are still a pain in her ass.
When she tries to explain to her roommate's high school sweetheart, he tells her that at least it's a nice ass. Behind him, Sango rolls her eyes with a smirk and motions for Kagome to ignore him — which she wholeheartedly does for the next few days.
Sango buys her a left-handed can opener for Christmas and blushes when Kagome begins to cry with gratitude. After that, their friendship is cemented in stone and they are inseparable. Unfortunately for Kagome, that means her boyfriend is also a permanent fixture in her life.
It takes a few weeks, but eventually, she sees why Sango loves him so much.
By the end of the fall semester, Kagome has a boyfriend, and no one is surprised because people are drawn to Kagome the same way moths are attracted to a flame. She burns brighter than most and her entire being feels like home. She makes people want to settle, she makes people want to rest, she makes people want to curl up in her arms and fall asleep to the sound of her lullaby.
But she wants more. She hides an unquenched thirst for adventure in her soul, and no one sees; no one notices.
Hojo is nice and handsome, and he cares for her so sweetly. She pretends that it's enough. She jokes about her being left-handed once and he takes it seriously, too seriously, and proceeds to hold her left hand and kiss it every time they see each other — as if she is some fragile treasure weighed down by something as simple as which hand she writes with.
But she's never seen her curse as weakness until he treated it like one.
They talk together to her first class of the day, and Hojo kisses her on the cheek before leaving; she forgets to wave and smile and watch him leave until he's completely disappeared. It isn't until she's already entered the building that she remembers their old ritual.
Oh well, she thinks, It's too late now.
This is her favorite class, not for its subject matter (what's so interesting about Forestry?), but because there is exactly one left-handed chair. It's a small detail, and not a very interesting one, but it feels like a present just for her every time she sits down.
But today, someone is sitting in her seat.
Kagome feels shock for exactly one second before it turns into anger, because this is one of the few things that belong to just her, one of the few things that make her feel free and empowered and herself.
She walks up to him and clears her throat.
"Excuse me, but you're sitting in my seat."
He looks up lazily, and she's too irritated to notice how good looking he is.
"Doesn't have your name on it."
"Did you even look?"
"No." His eyes narrow. "Did you actually write your name on this seat?"
"Well," Kagome stammers, "no, not exactly, but it's mine. I've been sitting there all month."
"And I'm sitting here now," he crosses his fingers behind his head, leans back, and closes his eyes. "Too late."
The heat rises to her face, and she imagines herself shaking with the anger she feels. "I haven't seen you in this class before."
"Yeah. So?"
"So, I actually show up to class and deserve that seat. I'm the only one who ever wanted it."
"Until now. Get over it, before you embarrass yourself." He opens one eye to glare up at her suspiciously, and it's only then that she notices the strange color of his eyes. As if he knows she's starting to pay more attention to his features, he pulls down the bill of his baseball cap to cast a shadow over his face.
Kagome grabs a pen from her backpack impulsively and leans in. To her private amusement, he almost leaps out of her seat (if only) at her nearness, holding up his hands. "What are you doing?!" he snarls underneath his breath.
She smiles with triumph. "Writing my name on the seat."
He grumbles unintelligibly underneath his breath, probably a string of curses, but that doesn't stop him from peering over her hand with a childish curiosity.
"Kagome," he reads out loud. Raising his eyes to meet hers, he asks, "Your name is Kagome?"
"Yep! Kagome Higurashi. And that's my seat you're sitting in."
He glares at her again and before Kagome can pull away, he snatches the pen out of her hand and begins scribbling on the opposite end of the table, away from her prying eyes.
When he hands the pen back to her, it's with arrogant eyes and a haughty smirk. Kagome takes it with a disapproving twist of her mouth, and he can't help it: he laughs, because her expression is priceless.
He has a nice laugh, she thinks.
No! She did not just think that. No no no, he doesn't have a nice laugh, he's infuriating. Avoiding his gaze, Kagome looks for his name and says it out loud like she's testing the validity of it on her tongue.
"Inuyasha."
He nods. "Inuyasha. Now find your own seat."
She shoots him one more venomous glance before taking a seat a few rows in front of him, ignoring the tingling of two burning, golden eyes staring right at her all throughout class.
2. Soulmates
The stories are almost always beautiful, but Inuyasha knows better: soulmates are tricky business. He knows, because before his father found his mother, he was married to someone else.
Finding a soulmate is unlikely, closer to impossible than to possible, and his father is one of the lucky few who found his true partner in life. That doesn't mean his ex-wife and first son don't hate him — and, by association, Inuyasha and his mother — for it.
Some might believe Inuyasha is a romantic for refusing to even consider love unless they're his soulmate, but he's not. Romance is not in his nature, he thinks, if only because he's seen the crippling consequences of a man who feels regret towards his ex-wife because he found his soulmate. Love, Inuyasha believes, is the same as surrender. It's the same as guilt.
So he rejects it completely, until he meets Kikyo and his world, usually a serene black-and-white, erupts into violent color. He falls in love like he's fighting a war, battling to stay himself as if letting someone in is the same as losing your own identity.
It happens anyway, because Kikyo is adamant about not needing love like he is, and the two find that they have glaring similarities and fascinating differences. He protects her, he cherishes her, and most of all, he loves her.
But then she dies, and Inuyasha's world returns to the black-and-white graininess of a lonesome past.
They blame him because he was driving when the car came rushing towards the passenger's seat, and they blame him because it is easy to hate the boy who did not deserve a perfect girl's heart. Inuyasha learns to live with the hard glares of the community (because he was not the only one who loved Kikyo and he's always known he had to share her), and hardens his heart even fiercer than before.
Imagine his surprise when his world comes to color again — and imagine his fear, too. Because he's never heard of someone having two soulmates, and Inuyasha doesn't know if he can find it in him to love again.
Her name is Kagome, and they meet by chance. She works at the local flower shop and when Inuyasha goes in to buy flowers for Kikyo's grave, she looks up from behind the counter and smiles so brightly that Inuyasha is blinded. He blinks with surprise and then, he sees: her eyes are a clear blue and her skin is porcelain and her hair is dark black and —
And her pink lips part softly and Inuyasha is frozen.
The first thing Kagome sees is that his eyes are deep and golden, and the first thing she thinks is, I love that color.
Her elbow comes up onto the counter and her chin falls into her palm, and Kagome smiles again like the sun.
"Hi, welcome to Crystal Flower. I'm Kagome."
Inuyasha gulps, his throat suddenly thick with apprehension. His heart is hammering, hammering, hammering, and his hands are suddenly anxious to find something to grab onto and maybe throw at the girl who has already ruined his life, and… and…
And she's looking at him and her eyes are so kind.
So he hesitantly takes a step forward and clears his throat of fear.
"Inuyasha."
She seems to understand his confusion and laughs nervously for both of their sakes. "Looks like everything's about to change, right?"
"Only if we let it," Inuyasha says skeptically, already thinking of other nearby florists to frequent after today.
Kagome's head tilts to the side quizzically, her frown slight. "Why wouldn't we let it? Love's the greatest adventure there is."
"Love," he corrects her, "is a battlefield."
She laughs and the sound chimes like a bell ringing in a new day.
"Well," she grins, "let the battle begin."
3. New Years
Inuyasha is the last person to expect at a party, but his friend is a pest. Miroku insists that his date is really something, a girl worth going to a few parties for. When Inuyasha asks why he has to be there, Miroku shrugs and says he needs some backup in case the night doesn't go as planned.
The entire situation is an eyeroll, but Miroku has some incriminating information against him and Inuyasha can't let that kind of blackmail get out of hand. Better to make a deal with him now than to allow the lovesick fool to hang it over his head later.
"She's awesome, man," Miroku rambles, fully aware that Inuyasha is doing his best to tune him out, "She kicks ass, including mine, and her ass is amazing. Amazing!"
Inuyasha looks around for the nearest emergency exit.
"And her hands are so rough and I finally asked her, how the hell did your hands get so scarred, and she tells me that…"
He figures this is the best time to zone out, and his eyes glaze over as they make their way up to the rooftop of the building. The party is hosted by Sango's workplace, a company that… well, he's not really sure what her job actually is, but Miroku seems to think it's impressive. Then again, he's head over heels, and Inuyasha doesn't trust his judgement when he's in this deep.
They arrive and Inuyasha quickly finds himself alone, leaning against the railing and staring at the lights of the city and its tiny people. He only moved here to keep his half-brother off his back, but the city is so different from home and it's beginning to hurt, seeing the night sky roared out by smog.
He misses the stars — although he'll never tell Miroku that. A glutton for punishment, Inuyasha is not.
He stands there for what seems like hours, and he almost doesn't notice someone coming forward to stand beside him.
"It's a nice night, for December," she says.
Inuyasha stares at her like she's an alien, and says nothing. When she realizes that he's watching her, she laughs nervously and moves a hand awkwardly over her hair.
"Any New Year's resolutions?" she asks. He notices that she's not looking at him, and he halfheartedly wonders why.
"I never make resolutions."
He can hear the smile in her voice when she responds. "So you're one of those, then?"
"What do you mean?"
"The ones who think they're pointless. You know, you can change your life whenever you want to, why wait until a specific day to start doing something with your life… And so on."
He scoffs and looks back towards the skyline. "No, I'm not like that."
Only then does the stranger turn to face him. "Then what are you like?"
"I'm fine with the way things are." Even as he says it, he knows it's a lie, and she seems to hear it in his voice, too. Her eyes move down his figure and back up, drinking in every detail: the casual jeans and button-down shirt, the ponytail, the intense gaze that looks almost like a glare.
The city lights hide very little, especially when you're elevated on a rooftop.
"No one who's fine with the way things are comes to the city," she points out, and it's the gentle way she says it that grates on his nerves the most. This stranger, who barely knows him, who he barely knows, speaking the truth so compassionately that even the harshest reality sounds like a comfort.
"Who are you, anyways?"
She smiles elegantly and looks back to the city. "I'm not answering yours until you answer mine."
"I did answer yours! I don't have any resolutions." He doesn't know why he's so intent on knowing who she is, but suddenly it feels necessary, to call her by her name.
The people behind them begin counting down.
"5!"
He continues to stare at her expectantly, and she continues to avoid his gaze, smiling serenely into the night.
"4!"
"Well?" he says like a challenge, his chest puffing out.
"I'll answer yours when you answer mine," she repeats, like she's got all the time in the world.
"3!"
"I told you, I don't have any resolutions."
"Nothing is free, you know," the stranger points out, "Even words come at a price."
"2!"
"Well I don't have any money on me, so—,"
"1!"
The crowd cheers and she turns her head slowly towards him, looking so dangerous that for a fleeting moment, Inuyasha wonders if he should run.
She steps forward, and it seems like slow-motion but it only takes a single second before her lips are on his cheek, just barely missing his mouth. Both of their eyes remain open; hers searching his, his avoiding hers.
When she pulls away, she licks her lips curiously, and hums a sound of approval.
"My name," she says slowly, "is Kagome."
4. Werewolf
Inuyasha has never been one for the rules, especially the ones about when he's allowed to leave the house. So there's nothing really stopping him from walking to the cemetery in the middle of the night.
Mistake number one.
He doesn't see it coming. The wind stops breathing and the moonlight falters for a panicked moment and Inuyasha looks around to see what's disturbed the world so deeply — and then there are gleaming white fangs at his neck, a black that engulfs him, the red of his own blood.
It takes all he has not to fall to the ground at once, and years later, he'll be proud of the fact that he remained standing for a solid ninety two seconds.
The next morning, though, all he feels is bruised.
It takes a few months to fall into the habit of shifting into a wolf. There are some who never return to their human forms. Others completely lose their human compassion. Every werewolf is somehow touched permanently by the change in their bones. For Inuyasha, it's his eyes. They are forever stained yellow, as bright and all-seeing as a wolf's.
Everyone notices at school, and he's too proud to be self-conscious. He wears his oddity like a badge and ignores the rumors of colored contacts and experimenting with drag. His name is Inuyasha, and he is a werewolf.
They're scared of him, when they find out. Supernatural creatures are a fact of life, but that hardly makes them accepted members of society. They stay away from him, back away like the fangs will come out at any given moment.
Don't they know it's only the full moon that coaxes the monster out of him? Don't they know that he is as stuck as a human as he is stuck as a wolf?
The first person to touch him after the bite is a girl. She smells like trees and dirt, like sprinting in the wind with freedom on your shoulders.
She's a new student, transferred from the big city to a small town by the forest. After she is introduced, she waves cutely, and he can smell everyone falling in love with her. But he isn't convinced. The shiniest things often hide the roughest of souls, the firmest of wills.
Friends come to her easily, he notices. She's almost never alone — not that he ever wants her alone. He refuses to bite anyone, not for as long as he lives. Inuyasha is perfectly happy staying a hermit; it's not much different than how it was before.
One day, she ventures outside for lunch. He smells her immediately, but he keeps his head down, expecting to be ignored.
To his surprise, she comes to sit by him instead, acting like she was invited. The two eat in silence, and Inuyasha knows that she is waiting for him to speak first, but why would he? He expects nothing from her, hopes for nothing from her, sees nothing in her but a girl who has won the heart of the school too quickly to be trusted.
"Hi," she finally says.
He grunts in response.
She tries again. "I'm Kagome." Inuyasha grunts again, and annoyance flashes in her eyes. "The polite thing to do is to say your name, too."
He shrugs, still looking down at his food as he eats.
She gives a huff of exasperation. "I hear you're a werewolf."
This isn't news to him, only to her. They must not have werewolves in the city; how can they survive there, without clean air and fresh trees to hide in?
"My ex-boyfriend was a werewolf."
His ears perk up. "Was?"
"Was." She pauses, more hesitation than dramatic, and adds softly, "He ran away, and I think… I think he's dead."
Inuyasha shrugs, fighting off the sympathy threatening to come in a rolling wave. "Your instincts know best."
"That's the thing, though," the excitement rushes back to her words, "My instincts tell me he's dead, but that he's also alive."
He almost drops his food at the ridiculousness of that. "What the hell does that mean? Have you been hanging out with the potheads?"
"No," Kagome rolls her eyes, "I think that he just went all wolf."
"That happens."
She quiets immediately, and Inuyasha almost feels bad before he remembers that it's true.
"Does it? Happen, I mean?"
"Well, yeah."
"How?" He turns to look at her and her eyes are wide, almost ferocious in its curiosity. "He never explained, how it all worked."
"That's not my job," Inuyasha says dismissively, "Besides, it's not even allowed."
"What, is there some law book?"
"No, there's an unwritten code, in our instincts."
He watches her eyes narrow and finally, Inuyasha sees what she's been hiding: a heart of fire, a soul of steel. Something like respect begins to take shape in his mind.
"How do I learn the code?" she asks, although she very well knows the answer.
Inuyasha blinks slowly, warningly, but her expression does not change. She is all earnest fascination, all demanding pursuit of knowledge and experience, all hunger.
"You…" For the first time during their conversation, he falters; because she is leaning in closer and she is suddenly right there…
His mouth goes dry and he licks his lips with growing worry.
"You…"
She nods her encouragement, eyes brimming with something primal and beautiful.
He gulps.
"You become a werewolf."
Her question answered, Kagome grins, and Inuyasha thinks vaguely that there is something wolfish about her teeth.
"Let's do it."
Inuyasha blinks, wondering — who the hell is Kagome Higurashi?
1. The Girl Who Overcame Time… and the Boy Who Was Just Overcome
It begins with falling and a truth that hasn't been completely revealed. It begins with a boy claimed by a tree and a woman long gone, and it begins with a girl with powers she has yet to learn, powers that can and will change the world.
It begins with sharp words and deception and familiarity, and it begins with a battle, and it begins with saving and threatening all at the same time.
It begins by accident, and it begins with a jewel. It begins with a girl putting her faith and her life in a strange boy's hands, and it begins with a boy unwilling to deliver.
But that will change.