He first met her when she had been fifteen years old, already half in love with his brother and got his arm chopped off in his rather disastrous attempt at winning his father's most powerful legacy. That had not made for good first impression, and he had disliked her, not really with heat, simply because she hadn't swung the sword, but dislike was there all the same. He had been subjected to many attempts at friendship, day in day out after the hardest battles had been fought, and a sense of familial urgency seemed to be prominent in her to get him to acknowledge her. With Rin's help, he had finally settled on actually liking the strange Miko with claims of being from the future. They had never been the best of friends, but as a in-law, she hadn't been too terrible.
She died old and grey, smiling with a litter of his brother's pups and him at her side. The grief that had come with that come with her passing had been brief, but there all the same.
She had first met him when she was five years old. He had stopped, surprised, having outlived to see his dead brother's bride had been nothing but a shock to him, something that had never occurred to him to be possible. Having long since grown found of the woman she had become and died as, and he couldn't help but see her again. The second she shot him a gape tooth smile that reminded him so much of Rin as a child, he never stopped coming back.
She had called him older brother in the past, and as a child meeting him for the first time she did the same. It was a comforting thing to come back to, seeing a child trot behind him, grinning and gathering flowers. Familiar, a far off memory of a girl very much like she was, long grown and gone, but still tucked fondly into the recesses of his old heart. His younger counterpart would have called him a sentimental old fool, his current self couldn't help but want to stay, lost in the memories of the days of blood and battle, of forests and of making a path with no limitations. He could pretend along side Kagome, if just for a moment.
Years past, and the Higurashi shrine had been a place of comfort and welcome, and though he never revealed his demonic side in fear of disrupting the course of his past, and her future, he had gotten close to the family. Invested, he had been the first to hold Souta after his birth, the first to know of her father's death, and had been the one to take her to school or take care of her whenever his schedule allowed it. He watched her grow and grow, a little part of the girl he had met first coming into being little by little, and soon he had found himself dealing with the moods of a teenager. Ironically enough, despite his years, he had forgotten that he himself was at a stand still personality wise, and had only aged around two or three years physically, despite the five hundred years that had passed.
He had never expected the repercussions of what that meant until the day Kagome turned fourteen, a year before she left. She hadn't done anything that he wasn't use to, just simply brushed out her hair in front of him. It was longer than it would be in a year, and her skin was paler too, before she had been slightly bronzed by the feudal sun. It had never occurred to him until that point, but the girl in front of him was only really a few years physically younger, and the smile she had sent his way had stilled his old heart. Perhaps he was a sentimental old fool, but the year after that had been strange, and alarming to say the least.
The physical attraction he had felt for her after that day had been a taboo, but not unknown thing, he was a thousand or so years old after all, and aesthetically, Kagome was beautiful, no one, not even his younger self would be able to truly deny that. But the fact that it had been her, the bride of a long dead man, and that he couldn't seem to stop feeling it bothered him more than he could understand. He shouldn't have felt this way, it was wrong and an insult to whatever semblance of affection he had had for her future counterpart, and his brother, not to mention for her. But it hadn't gone away, it lingered, festered, grew, and he was stuck in state of complete confusion at all times around her. His years of keeping his emotions controlled had aided a great deal to form a semblance of normality when it came to his interactions, and he was grateful for all the practice.
It had taken her being pulled down the well to understand his attraction much more clearly. To understand that though he had lusted after woman before, he had never loved a woman, and the two could often be misunderstood as the other. Love, had not struck him as a wonderful thing, because he knew that this love was not meant to be real, to be fulfill, to be returned, simply because he had already seen her story end. He had not been able to stop the nausea within him since, because the young girl he had seen grown up, had already died to him. And the young woman she had become, the woman he had come to love, was in a sense, on a path that would lead to her funeral pyre, five hundred years behind him.
Her adventures in the feudal era, kept hidden and supposedly secret, had hurt, but he had understood that she thought him human, and did not want to see him hurt. In secret, he had destroyed any trace of his prescience, and slowly withdrew from her life so she could have the happy ending he remembered. The day she finished high school, he couldn't help but see her one more time, just once, too see her alive and going off to be happy... She had greeted him with a smile, already on the edge of the well, not even bothering to hide her actions. It had been the same smile that had made him realized his attraction in the first place. In response, he had let his glamour drop, heart pounding as she recognized him. She had cried, and he had wanted to cry, but he had simply held her as he had wanted to do for a very long time.
"Don't go."he had begged, he had never begged save once in his life, and his father had not listened to his pleas to stay home, and she had asked what happened to make him so despite for her to stay, what calamity had caused whatever horrible situation he remembered.
He couldn't answer. She had kissed him on the cheek, legs swinging on the edge of the well. She was not going to stay, not unless he did something crazy.
"I love you."he had told her, most likely looking like a wild man as he stalked forth.
She had smiled passed her tears, whipping them away.
"I love you too big brother."she had said in soft, sweet, loving voice that made him ache.
She had jumped.
AN: I do not in any shape or form, own Inuyasha, it belongs to its wonderful mangakai, publishing company, and animation company. I'm just messing around with the characters...
This was inspired by a what if prompt made by Youkai-Yume on devianart, and well... Yeah. Her picture is awesome by the way!
art/SessKag-Sketch-Don-t-Go-458679172