When
Part IX
When they're twenty-and-a-half, Kagome is pulled out of a sound sleep a second before a demon named Magatsuhi attacks their camp. He hates her on sight, and swallows Sesshomaru, and if the strap on her quiver would just stop making her pajama top ride up maybe she could concentrate enough to save him. To do something, anything, because he's not allowed to die. Not now. Not when it was too dark to even see his face on last time.
Sesshomaru saves himself, with his new left arm and his new sword, and even though Magatsuhi gets away he's very happy about it.
"I thought we agreed we weren't going to be reckless anymore," she says during a walk the following evening, when everyone has been patched up and they've moved camps. Totosai is with them, going in to raptures over the new sword.
"Did we?" Sesshomaru says, helping her over a log.
"It was implied." They come to a river, the low bank covered in reeds and long grass and little white flowers Rin would love. The air is cold, still on the edge of spring. There's no one else around. She turns to him, "If you die again, I'll kill you."
"That is a very contradictory sentence."
She kisses him, holding his face in her hands and reveling in the feel of his jaw. His skin. The taste of his mouth. Reluctantly, she pulls away.
"You know what I mean," she says.
Taking a deep breath, she steps back and looks him right in the eye. She takes off her top.
"Kagome," he sighs.
She kicks off her boots and wriggles out of her jeans. She peels off her undershirt. She unclasps her bra. She doesn't stop looking at him.
"I feel like you're getting the better end of the deal," she says shakily.
He kisses her hard, shedding his clothes and ripping off her underwear and running his two hands over every inch of her. The ground is hard, and the spring grass is cold, but she doesn't care because all she can feel is him: his claws scraping against her scalp and the hot slide of his skin; his mouth on her breasts, and the weight of him between her legs. It's sweaty and painful and perfect and god, god god god, it's so much better than she imagined.
After, he can't stop touching her. He runs a finger over the star-shaped scar she got from the jewel and draws a path across her belly, to its messier twin. He kisses it. She thinks he wants forgiveness. She never thought he needed it.
"Kagome," he whispers, resting his chin on her hip, "I will succeed where my father failed."
They're not the first human and demon to come together like this. They're not breaking new ground. But in all her travels, she has never met a couple that has lasted. That was old and happy and together, with more than one half-blood child. As strong as he was, Sesshomaru's father couldn't save Inuyasha and Izayoi and himself. Sesshomaru, apparently, is much stronger now. Maybe he's right. Maybe that'll be enough.
Tracing the crescent moon on his brow, she says, "I'll help."
