Title: A little MessageGenre: General?Rating: T (Little sex talk I dont think its too bad)Pairing: Kouga/KagomeWarnings: A little sex hinting. Nothing graphic. Note: I am in love with the Kouga/Kagome pairing. Dont tell anyone though its a huge secret. Oh, but if you know any good ones let me know!
Disclaimer: Inuyasha is property of Rumiko Takahashi and co. not I
When she came out of the well for the last time there were a few people who she had expected to be there, and there were a few people who she had hoped would be there. She hadn't expected him. Not, that she wasn't happy, he was just … unexpected.
"Kouga" She whispered to the man she hardly recognized.
"Kagome" He whispered back to the girl who looked exactly the same as the last time he saw her, 500 years ago.
Kagome could only stare for a moment. He looked different, older. Now he looked like a man in his mid-forties. A man who aged exceptionally well, but she could see the fine lines around his eyes and mouth, and the tired way that his shoulders slumped. She could see the few grays mixed into his short black hair. It was still long enough to just barely cover the elfin points of his ears, but he looked tamer now. She wondered where his tail was; if it was perhaps hidden in the leg of his jeans. His blue eyes were still the same, they still held the glimmer of youth and life.
All in all it didn't matter that he had changed, that was to be expected, what mattered was that he was there. He was there to catch her as she collapsed, sobbing, into his arms.
He didn't tell her that day, or the next, what happened to any of her friends. He knew that she knew that the mortals were dead, but there was still a chance that Inuyasha or the kit were still alive. He waited to tell her that they weren't. It might be easier if she grieved in stages, he thought.
"He told me before he died. He got old and he knew that he didn't have a lot of time left so he told me where and when to find you. He asked me to be here when you came back. He wanted me to tell you that he loved you and that he was sorry that he didn't live long enough to be here." Gone was the rivalry, gone was the posturing and derogatory words. The only emotion in Kouga's voice, as he told his first love the fate of her first love, was a deep understanding.
Again she collapsed into his arms, and again he let her cry on him until she was coughing and choking on her tears.
Kagome was grateful that after he delivered his 500 year old message he stayed around. Getting to know him now was so much different then it was back then. There were no battles, no life or death situations, no Inu-hanyous throwing insults and empty threats. She missed the insults and the empty threats along with the person whose mouth they came out of, but as time went by the ache turned into a dull throb and then eventually into a numb spot in her soul that she learned to accept.
Between day classes and night classes, so that she could catch up and possible graduate high school on time, Kouga took up most of her spare time. She didn't date any of the boys that went to her school no matter how hard her friends tried to push her. And oh, how they did try, but the answer was always the same: 'He's just not my type.' How could any normal high school boy impress her when the other men in her life could move mountains?
In the years getting to know him, she learned him inside and out. He presented himself like an open book to her. He held nothing back.
She loved the fact that he hadn't waited 500 years just to see her again. She learned that he had been married 9 times, each time to humans, each time he remained by their side until they died, and each memory of the women he told her of she could see the love shining in his cobalt eyes. Kagome was never jealous because she knew that once that love shined for her and maybe someday it would again.
She asked him why he didn't bother covering any of his demonic traits, except his tail, and he told her it was because no one knew them for what they were. No one remembered him or his kind. But, Kagome did, Kagome remembered when he could out run the wind, she remembered when he still sang to the moon, she remembered what he was. And he remembered her.
Kagome was surprised to learn that he worked at the zoo. It wasn't the fact that he worked at the zoo that surprised her, it was the fact that he worked with big cats instead of wolves.
"You can talk to them right? I mean, I've seen you do it before." She had asked him, genuinely confused.
He smiled a fanged smile at her, a smile that didn't reach his eyes, and rested his head back on his arms that were folded behind his neck. He looked so alone then, surrounded by pavement and glass and other modern things. "They live their whole lives in cages. I can't see them caged."
Kagome couldn't see him caged either, so after that day they spent their time together at his apartment. There, in his own home, he was free to wear his pants low on his hips so that his tail was free to swish and sway about.
And when he worshiped her body between his sheets, making her cry and scream and moan and beg, she knew that he loved her. The fact that he got her there in the first place showed them both that she loved him too.
Shortly after her eighteenth birthday, she refused to do it on her birthday because of the special significance that her birthday held for her, they were married.
"He's …old!" Eri, completely scandalized by the fact that her childhood friend was marrying a man twice her age, oh if she only knew, shrieked while they were getting ready.
"I think he has that aged wisdom kind of handsome thing. Like Shawn Connery." Ayume stated. She always was the romantic one of the group.
"But he's OLD!" Yuka belted, a last ditch effort to convince her best friend not to marry such an old man.
Kagome only smiled and laughed, because she knew, that he would outlive her by at least a hundred years.
When her grandfather finished the ceremony and pronounced them man and wife, Kagome whispered against his lips, "I'm your woman now"
"And wolves mate for life" Kouga whispered back, unable to contain the smile that crossed his lips as they met hers and they sealed the deal.
Kouga would always remember that day as the best day of his life. And it wasn't in the silly cliché way that that is depicted in movies and jewelry store commercials. No, it was in a the real, heart bursting kind of way, the way that thinking back on it years later his eyes would still water a little and his head would feel dizzy and faint.
Together, they spent 50 years traveling the world. They spent their time insuring that villages in Africa had clean water in their wells, and babies in the Himalayas had their shots, and that the people in South America who lived in the rainforests had a rainforest to live in.
Then one day Kagome was too tired to travel anymore. She was old and frail and Kouga was still the same. She was horribly embarrassed for a long time, she was wrinkly and her once smooth pale skin had spots from the sun, but Kouga didn't seem to mind. He still told her she was beautiful and he still made love to her whenever he had the chance. When he looked at her he still saw the fifteen year old school girl in the silly uniform. Sometimes, if she looked in his eyes the right way, she thought she could see that girl looking back at her too.
Kagome knew it was coming before it happened. Its was just a kind of feeling, like she could no longer imagine in her head what was going to happen tomorrow. For herself she wasn't afraid, but poor poor Kouga would be alone and she didn't want him to be alone. He had done this before, watched the woman he loved die, but this time it was different and she could feel it as well as he could.
She took her last breath in bed with him wrapped tightly around her and her clinging to him apologizing over and over for leaving him.
"Nonsense," He told her as he wiped the tears off of her face, "We will see each other again soon."
Kouga had lost wives before and never did he cry. He loved them all, but it was inevitable; humans die all too quickly, and that is just the way of things. When Kagome fell limp and lifeless in his arms he cried. He had never felt alone before because he knew that she would be there in the future, but now the future seemed cold, and bleak, and lonely.
He thought about using the ornamental sword that he kept from the time that he was a prince, but Kagome would have wanted him to live. Kagome would have wanted him to get married again and love her with the same passion that he loved Kagome. He never could though, and he never would.
Kouga would spend the rest of his life finishing the work that they did together alone. He would be happy and free in the sun and the forests, his memories would keep him happy even if nothing else could. And his last breath would be a sigh of relief, as he knew that now, maybe, in another life, another world, another time; they just might find each other again.