A/N: Before every chapter begins, there will be a short snippet of a flashback.

Title: Intertwined

Summary: Post-Final Battle, Kagome is trapped in her time with a lot of energy absorbed from her entrapment in the Shikon, causing her powers to be temperamental. Having come to the attention of the Spirit World, Kagome has no choice but to accept weekly visits from an employee to help her balance her reiki.


"It will be a surprise if you meet your majority," Naraku whispered, his energy curling around her, weaving in and out of her aura in insidious loops. The Shikon hummed around them, pulsating with each new touch of their souls against one another. "Time has a way of correcting things."

"Then time will surely deal with you, Naraku," Kagome spat, hatred coloring every nook and crevice of her voice only to be dismissed with a laugh.

"Have you not realized yet? We are beyond time, little miko." His words, though contradictory, were so final, and hung so concretely in the emptiness around them. And, though she wouldn't admit it out loud, the definitive weight to his words scared her.

"I'm done talking with you," Kagome hissed, her disembodied voice echoing in the void.

"Have you forgotten already? We're here to fight, Kagome. You can't simply ignore me," Naraku tsked.

A hand that she didn't even know existed pushed its way through the chest that she had forgotten she had even had. Wisps of fingers grasped tightly around what was left of her heart in sick triumph.


"You be polite," Kun-Loon chastised, a flour dirtied hand propped on her hip as she observed her daughter as she passed into the kitchen.

"Hai, hai," Kagome murmured dismissively as she placed the broom back beside the old refrigerator, dust clambering up around her dark amethyst hamakas.

As she rounded the corner, her mother took her clean hand and lifted Kagome's chin so that she could see her daughter's face. "Kagome, listen to your okasan. Please do not dishonor our family by being disrespectful to the kami's appointment."

Kagome found her heart clenching as she looked at the worry lines that had etched themselves into her mother's once smooth face. They were caverns across her forehead and little tributaries that pulled her mouth down, betraying how many times she had frowned and worried. And it was painful to know that these lines were due to her mother wondering, each time that Kun-Loon watched her disappear down the well, if her daughter would ever come back.

"I promise, okasan," Kagome whispered, squeezing her mother's frail fingers.

Love warmed her mother's stern eyes, melting them so that Kagome could see the worry underneath. "Sometimes," she murmured, smoothing a midnight lock out of Kagome's face. "Oh, I don't know," she faltered as she rested her hands on Kagome's lean shoulders. In that moment, Kagome almost could feel her emotions pressing into her.

"Sometimes you wish I hadn't gone down the well?" Kagome said, smiling sadly at her mother when she breathed out a sigh.

"Sometimes, I do too," Kagome admitted. "But, without the Sengoku Judai, I would have never met the people that I did or have been able to hone my power so that I could protect others."

"Just don't let it consume you."

Kagome smiled again, albeit more softly this time. "Don't worry, that's what the Reikai representative is here for. He'll help me reign in my reiki."

Even now, she could feel her reiki hugging her in a comforting vise, creeping around the walls and caressing her mother. The air shuddered with the raw power that was pulsing within her and it made Kagome shiver to know that the temperamental was coming from her.

"Well," Kun-Loon blew a silvery strand out of her face. "You just need to be on your best behavior. Don't be so apathetic, dear. It only makes people wary." We don't want them deciding that you are a threat went unspoken.

"Yes, okasan," Kagome said, letting her mother caress her hair once more before she pulled away and made her way to the bathroom, the dark locks whirling with her. Her hair had gone from her usually manageable shoulder length to reaching mid-back.

Kagome looked in the mirror and almost cringed at the features that she saw. Her face had lost more of its roundish quality and though not quite as sharply featured, she could clearly see Kikyou in herself. The truth, though, was that it wasn't her facial features that made her look similar to the clay miko. It was her eyes. Though a bright, foreign blue in comparison to Kikyou's earthy color, her eyes mimicked hers in that they contained less happiness. Any brightness that they had had been smothered by the harshness and realities of her battle within the Shikon no Tama; only a small streak of light still existed.

Kagome closed her eyes to escape the sight, loathing the fact that she couldn't embrace the naivety that she once held before. She was only seventeen and the world was a dark, cruel place; the world beyond their time, before their time, in their time, and-

Orange and red flashed behind her eyelids, making Kagome open her eyes, reluctantly noticing the flickering lights and the cracks that were spiderwebbing along the glass, distorting her face. She tried to squelch the panic by breathing deeply through her nose, but that only encouraged her anxiety and out-of-control feeling to coil tighter.

Control. Control. Control it.

"Kagome, some guy is here for you!" Souta yelled up the stairs, her little brother's voice making everything snap back into focus, her aura fading back into dormancy but not before the shaky retraction rattled the toothbrushes on the sink-side, causing them to spill out.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Kagome ran her hands across her miko garb, smoothing out any stray hairs or wrinkles that had clung while she did her work on the shrine. While the tourists had been few today, the chores were not.

Be polite. I can do this. I can do this.

As she passed through the kitchen, she caught her mother's stern glance before the woman busied herself with tending to her sticky rice.

She didn't have to impress on Kagome how important it was that her meetings with the Reikai representative went well; she was well aware. Koenma, the leader of the Reikai, had given her the ultimatum of having a tantei help control her reiki or be sentenced to life confinement. As the Shikon no Miko, her powers had already been great, despite being untrained; but after the final battle and her time within the Tama it had grown exponentially and at a rate that she found herself having a thin grasp over. And after she had fought tooth and nail to get back to her family, she wasn't willing to lose them all over again.

"You must be Kurama-san," Kagome greeted him, unable to help her cooled tone as she approached the stranger standing in the center of the living room.

Vibrant ruby hair was gathered up into a pony tail that was slick against his strong neck in the heat of the day, and the bright green eyes studying her analytically abruptly reminded her of a less playful Shippo. Curiously, she saw that he was dressed in a distinctly Chinese outfit though she was fairly positive that he was Japanese. His height loomed over her, but wasn't towering or intimidating in any way. For a second, he almost looked like a bishounen, but the slightly angular shape of his features dispelled that image; that, and the overall sense of subtle power that she could warily feel wafting from him.

To her dismay, her reiki roused at the foreign presence, stretching out lazily as it teased around the stranger unrelentingly.

Pulses of feedback swirled around her, and Kagome realized that it wasn't that his aura was less playful than Shippo's, rather it was mischievous in an entirely different way. It had a darker, more sensual overtone that left her breathless.

"Pleased to meet you," Kurama's voice rolled out in gentle timbre, surprisingly soft and yet masculine at the same time. He didn't give any impression on whether or not he had felt her aura practically engulf him, but the curiosity burning in his eyes had intensified.

Kagome thought—idiotically—for a second that her knees might go weak but then she caught ahold of herself with an internal scoff and a little more than a mental slap.

Well, he sure is way too damn attractive, she thought with disdain.

Since Cerulean is my priority right now, I won't have time to update this unless I get ten reviews to show that people like this. I'm sorry if that upsets some people, but this is a low priority fic unless people show interest. A simple "Loved it" or "Hated it" works just fine!

Thank you for reading!

-Eryn "Ninja" Silvenia