Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha in any way shape or form, but Ogen Tomoe belongs to me! Sorry for the sudden butting in on REFLECTIONS fanfic, but I had to write this quick intermission fic before it slipped me! This fic occurs during REFLECTIONS when, during which Lady Mother gives Rin the Meidou seki stone. For those of you who haven't read it, go check it out (I'll be updating soon) but for now, enjoy this oneshot side story, as the main character will appear and be mentioned in REFLECTIONS. Enjoy!
She never spoke to any of the teachers. Her meals were quiet and in between, usually she supped on the cafeteria's lunch special which included pork bun, warm dumplings overheated from yesterday's club day, and a bowl of lukewarm miso. By the way, her dumplings were getting cold now, as you can see the perspiring glaze that now muddles the dough. Fingerprints are now pink sauced brown smudges in the fried appetizer that was only ever meant to be shared for one. Another pair of empty chopsticks on the table and an untouched bento.
We are observing the young and forlorn look of Ogen Tomoe, a-once bountiful happy woman of thirty-two years; suffering from mild depression and the occasional mishap of under filing her lesson plans. She's only been teaching for three years. In the beginning, it used to make her happy, but now she simply stares at her: Best Teacher of The Spring award coffee mug, laving her painted on magenta lips, and looking all sooty lash lowered at a pair of nail filers.
"Ogen san! The principal would like to see you." Nurse Akagi was never one to miss snooping into another staff member's personal business. Ogen, in her plain colored two piece and even plain colored glasses, shook her head of long "square n' prompt" cut bangs, exiting with a clatter of wood dining utensils.
"Ogen, your depression is turning too severe for these children. I can't have you teaching here proper without at least seeking some help. I'm giving you the week off." Ogen pushed up the front of her glasses over the bridge of her nose; short work was made of those stairs-why you're just an organized hill. Day in and day out, routine was a redundant cycle of hello miss and pencil shavings, chalkboard dust and practically lazy high school students: "Ms. Tomoe sensei!" only one student ever gave her cause to brighten her day, Souta. She had been teaching the Higurashi children since they moved here-in fact, it had been coincidently at the same time she too had done the same. Both for similar reasons. Kagome (her earlier student in homeroom) had moved here at the unfortunate time of her father's early death in a care accident. Mr. Higurashi, old as he was, an only but scarcely living relative. Ogen would morbidly wait any day now for when Souta would break the bitter news. Herself having lost her own father to poor mental health.
Usually he wove phantasmagoric stories out of the blue, ones of floating stone castles, talking heads, and swords that could talk. All of which to Ogen was utter nonsense. A grown woman does not believe in fairytales…."-Ms. Tomoe sensei, mom cooked you a family meal. She said she'd love to have you over, since you came over after Kagome nee-chan's graduation." Souta flustered and smiled, "See you after school, sensei!" Ogen watched with sad blue-brown eyes. One's that people always said had too much water in them. Perhaps from the dry tear tracks spread along the painted on blush of her cheeks to hide it. Though it never seemed to deceive snoopy co-workers. So, our Ms. Tomoe san packed up her sparse things, with sparsely written papers in a sparsely cluttered briefcase and closed and locked her door for today. The student body would appreciate recess a lot more than home economics or learning to quilt booties for your newborn baby.
xxxxxx
"Hm. I wonder," clicking in worn brown heels. The pink of her nails pressed numbingly hard along thin lower lip, Ogen removed her shoes as politely as she could at the front shrine house and made her way around. No one met her nor led her way and she hadn't been to this shrine in only the first time she had been there. Ogen silently addled around the grounds before coming to a peculiar old tool shed. Clickack clack. Removing her glasses like so and stepping barefooted, squatting over a small three set of steps. The low mewls of the Higurashi's fat cat as he slinked off into some dusty old hidden corner. Sutras, scrolls, old scabbards, and the musty rank of centuries spewed the word ancient in her face. Sneezing on the balls of her feet pressed to her rump, Ogen sniveled and could have sworn, that looking down below the steps to a very old and dried up looking well-she could hear the sound of voices.
Xxxxxxx
"Kagome, let the kid learn, I think it's cute!"
"Inuyasha there is nothing cute about our son…playing-with his…his thing!"
"If he's got it I say let'em flaunt it, right lil' guy!" Inuyasha had matured in some ways, but less so in others. The wild stray hair was usually carried an unkempt wind blown quality to it now wrangled into a high-top. Not that he was particularly adored with the fashion himself, but Kagome called it: "getting with the times?" Toutousai, in all his banter and hoot n' holler, demanded the half demon wear at least some form of armor (not that he could afford it) and on their "budget"—he'd really wish Kagome would stop using all these foreign sayings and words—had it replicated to a style similar to Koga's, in the end there was a fight to be had on the licensing of armor similarities and getting one's own idea; in all honesty Kagome didn't want to impede judgment on bringing copyright laws and signature, five hundred something years, too soon.
"Anyways, as long as he doesn't grip it too hard and—"
"Inuyasha, the last time he used Shippou's crayons and colored it green! For two nights your son had a green-"
"Alright, feh! Don't see me or him tellin' ya not to play with yourse-"
xxxxxxx
"Be careful not to lean to close to the edg—" Souta never finished, for he had the uncanny talent of surprising people at unnecessary moments, especially if these unnecessary moments included an ancient well sitting in a shrine on their grounds. Ogen splayed her hands front first and tried to steady herself, but the balls of her feet at the back of her heels betrayed her. She was falling, accelerating at a pace that gravity and fate would not have otherwise, and the teacher up skirted a boy whom she knew nothing of, landing face first in (probably 300 year old) soil.
Xxxxxxx
Now. One must know that the well is not at all sometimes, as it may seem. You fall down and sometimes you come up, you fall up and you come down, sometimes one just forgets which ways is up, and dear Ogen, your panties are showing. "Whaaa!" painted nails prim n' proper pushed her skirts from flying up over head, while legs crossed and long back hair with their proper square bangs went right-side up. Ogen was falling up into the sky, her eyes inked with corner tears and her chest heaving violently mid panic. "I've got you!" Soon she was encompassed by the warmest hold. Hands firm and strong calloused by years of turmoil, confrontation, and ever wearing. Ogen hadn't stopped screaming.
Yet.
"Ms. Tomoe sensei?"
"Uh—Higurashi san?"
Inuyasha, still holding the woman blinked momentarily between the two. "You both know each other?" Kagome blinked and so did Ogen, but not in surprise, she was practically blind; and winced at the tell tale crunch of her glasses being obliterated by a man's crushing feet. "She fell out of the well."
"She's my high school teacher."
"She's my high school student."
Xxxxxxx
"So I'm in the Sengoku era, five hundred years in the past?" Ogen was shocked, readjusting her broken specs that Kagome had carefully bandaged back into neat and proper place. "Yes, that's correct." Stirring the warmed stew and brewing the last of strained tealeaves, Kagome called the children in for the evening meal. It was still very hard to believe that a tired, always sick, lethargic fifteen year old that used to drool sleeping in the back of her classroom-had always been doing something more important instead. Like saving the past. "What I want to know is how'd you cross over. The only one's who can—or well seem to be is Inuyasha and I. I wouldn't have expected anyone else, let alone my ninth grade high school teacher." Kagome was picking her stew in absence, all the whilst eyeing Inuyasha from the glinted corner of her eye. Her husband had remained stonily quiet. Mouth thinned and brows furrowed. "I don't know really. I remember hearing talking from the well's edge so I—"
"So you what? You just decided to fall in?" Inuyasha burst in with fiery tongue and equally harsh demeanor, those dog-ears fell back. "Inuyasha! Apologize to Ms. Tomoe sensei at this moment!" Inuyasha was practically fuming, cheeks reddened. He only growled and lashed with even haughtier words: "Kagome, she deliberately put herself in danger by coming here!" Kagome let her food bowl fall with a clatter and she stomped to the small chin height of her husband and practically fumed with displeasure. "You have no right to talk to my teacher that way!"
"And she has no goddamn right to be here!"
"Why are you getting so defensive, Inuyasha?"
"—It's because I felt drawn." The couple lowered the surmounting rage of their heated argument and waited in baited breath. "I came because your mother invited me to dinner. I honestly didn't want to go, Kagome. I'm sorry. But…but I just couldn't deny these feelings." A short tear ebbed its way down the distressed woman's cheekbones. "I felt drawn here and so longingly too, and when I heard your voice I knew I had to come. To see if what I heard and felt could really be real."
She continued with a sniffle and turned her head away. "I'm sorry, I had no right to intrude on your lives-but day in and day out, it is the same cold ache. Eating food that has no taste, drinking, sleeping, waking, and living. The depression gets worse and swallows you up, it chokes you and makes it hard for you to breath, to truly live-and now that I'm here. I don't want to go back."
"…You should go back," Inuyasha muttered. "You don't belong here. You can't. Belong here."
"Inuyasha!"
"Goddamnit Kagome!" in a flurry of red, before Kagome could stop him, the half demon reached down and gripped the nylon fabric and soft cotton fibrous coat. Tore apart the seams and tear away the fraying threads. Pearl buttons tumbled and clattered in a beaded floor along the cool polished wood flowing of their hut; as fast as the hanyou's tears were tumbling down, claws shredded apart her lacing and things. Past bodice stitching's and fraying fabric: "See Kagome! This is why, damnit! You don't understand anything and you can't! You don't know the loss of a mother! It's the same place where that bastard Takemaru of Setsuna stabbed her on the night of my birth, and the only reason I know about it," he hissed. "Is because she fucking told me so…" exposed on her belly, just above the navel was a long grizzly colored birthmark. A splay of dark smudged skin that looked as if the cells there had been dying. "Inuyasha…"
"She's-your teacher, is the reincarnation of my dead mother, Izayoi."
His head buried into the soft pink rumples of clothe. Ogen's eyes were empty but spoke of sad and torn up love, her emotions crinkled in her eyes, exploding at the seams. Tearing her belly inside out in raw emotion. "How, Inuyasha?" Kagome's voice was but a squeak.
"I knew when I held her when she first fell out of the well…"
"Tomoe sensei—"
"I knew, Kagome."
"Eh?"
"Ever since I was a little girl." Ogen sat at the beside table, her arms riddled in bedside flowers. She wore pink today. It was her father's favorite color, but today, she wasn't listening: "And he'd fly back to his phantom castle in the clouds—and oh my dear what a sight it would have been to behold!" her nails buckled up along her skirts. "Daddy, I don't believe in fairytales anymore. I'm a grown woman now. You should get your head out of those fairy tales, and work on getting better." The old man did not smile behind his wrinkles and instead looked up with a crinkle in his warm smile. "But Ogen, that was your favorite story…"
"He used to tell me all the time, stories of phantom dogs and floating castles, and half demons and swords that could talk. For years Kagome I've suffered from depression, always dreaming of rooms aflame. My lovers and boyfriends always left me. I always tried to get pregnant and had to sit and watch from the kitchen windows of the children of the neighbors playing in my yard." She paused bitterly. "And a hand was always there on my shoulder…"
"Leave."
"Inuyasha!"
"Get out. Please. Go."
"I'm going."
"—And don't come back here. Pretend this never happened."
Ogen turned in a scuffle and bundled up her things, pulled on blouses and tied them as best she could. She'd learn to forget as she ran down the muddied forest trails to the old and broken bone eater's well. Slow drizzles poured down, as the sky seemed to sadly yawn across the landscape, yawning its grey and dreary breath all over the bright green fields and making their grass blades grow dewy from tears. Ogen was about climb down, when a clawed hand pressed reassuringly along her shoulder.
"Can I see him? One last time?"
"Sure Ogen."
Xxxxxxx
Just as in her dreams, only her and him. The red robe of the fire rat was put over her shoulders. The warm red strands, the sort plucky hairs of carefully woven haori, the musk of wood fires and ancient sage temples, of wood and open summer pastures. Winds flicked and blustered along their cheeks, clearing fog and white mists. Stone monuments loomed like bowed headed monks muttering in prayer. "We're here." Ogen straightened her bangs and balanced the flatness of her splayed palms. "As I remembered him."
"Isn't he magnificent?" Ogen slapped the spot between her breasts. "Me, or my breasts?" her fingers pulled away at the minuscule flat form of the flea demon who flushed but felt none the worse for it. "I see you've regained your memories, but not so fortunate to remember me." Wrinkling up her nose, Ogen tried not to laugh as she eyed the great bones of the fearsome and terrible lord of her fairytales….
Ogen awoke. It had all been some faint and distant bleary-eyed dream, brushing her teeth before a worn fogged mirror, condensation collecting from her shower. Painted her lips with the soft color of red that she likes and lined her eyes faintly just the same. The woman packed her boring books, in her boring bag, for another days banter of the same old boring city life she was more familiar and accustomed too. She found her hair still smelled of loamy earth, that petrichor scent of wet stone and earthy cement; spice and wilderness. But our Ms. Tomoe, chose to forget it, she tugged on her heels for work and descended the steps with a late-woman's jog. The cabbie charged her a small cents' fee too much than she was used to, but her melancholy did not allow her to mind so much. Driving by, the wheels rolling exaggeratingly slow past the Higurashi shrine-
"Wait!"
"What, miss you can-"
"Let me out!" she shoved the locks up and disregarded the man's wails to pay her fair. She just threw change at him. Knocking off heels-running, never get a second chance!-wait! Please! One more chance at a life I wish I knew I had had! Her feet violently pounding up the shrine steps. "Ms. Tomoe—what are you doing here! Oh my!" Grandfather Higurashi was bowled over, fluttering paperwork and a dropped suitcase clattered down the steps, paper fluttered white like confetti. Her hands tugged apart that ridiculous hair knot! Flinging away coat and hopping one foot to detach a separate heel. Gone her wristwatch. Gone with the clatter of her new mobile cell phone. She reached the well as old man Higurashi hollered of a mad woman running through the shrine grounds towards the well. The well that awaited her future. She jumped down and landed hands and knees first. The sky went down and the green grass went up. There were flowers and springtime rays beaming, her hair was tossed up and legs thrown down. Everything collided and whirred and slammed together; the world righted itself as she stood on the bone eater's well's very edge, almost her feet betrayed her again with the flatness of her soles. Careening back but gripped bare wrists were too hands.
"Kagome san! Inuyasha!"
"We couldn't let you go back. We would have tried to find some way-anyway."
"Kagome and I were worried."
"Oh, you both!" the three huddled, awkwardly, her above them and had to lean over just like so. But her arms could never be enough to hold them as long as she wanted and for how long. She had at least a good more thirty years left to relive. "Kagome! Inuyasha!"
"Ms. Tomoe sensei, please stay with us."
"Stay Ogen san-please."
He never said it openly. But silently in their hearts. Mother.
End
Author's note: I figured if Kagome could be a reincarnation of Kikyo, why not his mother too? It can't be an impossible theory, it would have been cool in the series but a bit awkward. I hope Ogen and Inuyasha can bond…and share what they could have had. Who knows, maybe the future would have been different. But it is time to start over and see where they go from here. PS whether or not Ogen stays in the Sengoku Jedai is up to the reader~. Please review! 333