Falling Patterns
It was some time into her journey—weeks, months, maybe years—when she first noticed him looking at her. She was fifteen and new and mismatched and in love, so she didn't know what it meant at first, and it was easy to ignore him when she had something—someone—more important to focus on.
But time is the weary traveler, and Kagome has never had anything but time, time, time, and certainly, she is weary. After a while she begins to realize (perhaps a little too late) that waiting for Inuyasha is like waiting for the rain in a drought, like waiting for the perfect fortune from a diviner, like waiting and waiting and waiting for her life to begin somewhere, anywhere at all, and she is no good at wanting the right thing. Inuyasha may look at her soul and see Kagome or Kikyou, in the end, she decides, it doesn't matter anyway, because when Kikyou dies again, she will be Kagome. Kagome doesn't want that kind of closure, and she can't compete her whole life for something inevitable anyway; she hates that it lines up so perfectly, she hates that she can be anyone if the circumstances are right.
She read once that Paris loved Juliet, too. It was just a sad little irony that she saw Romeo first, or they could have been together and had everything.
In the time that it takes her to realize that growing up is little more than pain and coincidence, Miroku had found someone new to stare at—Sango. When Kagome finally begins to look at him, he doesn't look at her at all—which is perfect. Because when anyone looks at her it seems as though they see someone else, like her soul is a blank canvas begging for a painting to fill it up. And she doesn't even want him, not really. All she wants is for someone to not look at her, and he seems to be right up her alley.
In the end, she doesn't want to fight this. She's never been good at wanting the right thing, and by God, all she wants is for someone to not look.
"Miroku," she says one day, when the sun is bright and exactly the same as the billion sunny days before it, "do you want to know something?"
And he looks at her face, but not at her soul. That's so good. So, so good. "Sure," he says. Light. Not curious at all.
"I don't think I'm aging anymore."
"Hmm," he says, and it's like the jingling of his shujaku is more important than what she's just said, "And why would you think that?"
And, alright, this is a game.
"I don't know," she lies. Because she does. When she looks in the mirror, there's a thousand million lifetimes looking at her from the past, but not a single one looking back at her from the future.
She's always wondered—what does the end look like?
"I see. A complicated problem, then," he responds, distracted.
She likes this. "I guess so."
Everything is simple, and no one ever says anything.
It's easy to hide when nothing can be found.
On lonely, dark nights, she pretends to try and fight it. But when sleep comes, she falls into a dream of hands and a mouth and eyes that are closed tight, and she wakes with her hand between her thighs and the pressure of a realization crushing her into her bedroll.
After all, you can't fight wanting something when it doesn't mean anything to want it, anyway.
Months and months and rejections and death closing in, faster than ever, and it ultimately comes down to desperation.
The hole in his hand is fracturing at the edges. But it's not going to kill him—no, he'll be dead far before that particular abyss can devour him.
Sango didn't want him. He confessed, sad and hastily, upon a hill at the end of sunset on one completely unremarkable dusk. Sango was quiet and they stood there for a long time before she whispered her answer to him, and anyone would be able to tell that she said no, even at the distance Kagome was watching from.
It didn't feel good, exactly. But Kagome can't deny that it felt right.
Only a fool tosses dice in the middle of a war and expects to win, after all.
"So," she says the day after, "did you like it?"
"Like what," he responds flatly.
"Losing."
He glares blandly at her and turns away, saying nothing.
"So," she says again a few minutes later, "do you want to win tonight?"
He glances at her with curiosity, but not with interest. "What do you mean?"
She smiles. "Let's play a game."
He stares down at his cursed palm for a long moment—
what does the end look like?
—, and then finally whispers, "Okay."
The night is very dark. He rises from her bed mat to leave.
She grabs his wrist. "It's okay to hurt," she lies.
But at least it gives him a reason to stay. The dark is so very comforting.
This is a new game, she knows. New boundaries, new rules, a new Romeo and a new Juliet, but she's still Paris, and she's played this role a million times.
Under her hand he gasps a name, the wrong name, like always—sango, sango—but that's okay. That's okay. She can be her, too. Her soul can look like anyone's in a certain light, and she's good at playing pretend. In the end she will still do it, and she'll still try to justify that, at the very least, she has nothing else to lose. Nothing that matters anyway—just her dignity, but when had she ever had that? They all live in war. She doesn't expect to win.
Under her hand he gasps a name, any name at all—kagome, kagome—but that's okay.
She likes to play this game, too.