A.N.: hello friends. Sorry for the long wait, I got wrapped up in some other projects that have been clamoring for my attention, but I'm back to post the last chapters of this and finish it off!

Ned's apartment is much homier than hers, Kagome decides, and much better for the talk they're about to have than her sparsely furnished little place. And the dog was a nice touch too.

This time the suicide was actually a suicide and not a convoluted murder case. Open, shut, no mystery, no rewards. Chuck had collected the man's final words for his family and would deliver them herself. Ned was sorry for the victim but relieved that they wouldn't get swept up in another fast paced race-against-the-clock murder mystery, at least not yet, as he was antsy to get this big knot in his new relationship untangled so it could actually be a relationship.

He sat across from Kagome on the couch, rattled with nerves and the looming sense that something big was about to take place. She seemed unbothered, which gave him at least some sense of ease that the "big thing" wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Kagome places her hand on his knee and giggles.

"I'll go first I guess since you look ready to pass out."

Ned winces and grabs her hand, lacing their fingers, so supremely glad that he doesn't have to maintain a strict but safe distance on top of everything else.

She's alive and he can touch her and she won't disappear.

"Sorry, there's just been... a lot."

"I know," Kagome smiles in understanding, and then clears her throat. "I'll try to make this fast for now. We can go into more detail later if you like, it's just a really long story. I'll just tell you the important bits necessary to clear the air. I'm a time traveling priestess and I used to use an old well on my family's shrine property to travel 500 years into the past so I could help Inuyasha, who is only part human, defeat an evil villain and save the world. My priestess powers give me the ability to sense the auras of other people. I've learned to tell when people are happy, sad, angry, lying... all by reading their auras, but most of all I can tell when someone is completely human or not and Ned, I've known you had some sort of power since one of the first times we met. There. That's about the gist of it!"

He stared at her in silence for several moments, digesting the giant bombs she'd just dropped on him without breaking a sweat. It was almost too fantastical to believe.

But he brought dead people back to life, so who was he to judge someone else's unbelievable abilities?

"I can raise the dead."

His voice is flat as his brain continues to click along, still trying to sort and process everything that had already happened today.

Kagome giggles again and he blinks and shakes his head to re-center his thoughts.

"I can raise the dead... but there are limitations."

"What kind of limitations?" The curiosity burning in her eyes gives him a jolt of confidence to continue. She must not think he's too crazy.

"If I touch them again after waking them, they die immediately, and I can only keep them alive for 60 seconds, or something or someone has to die in its place. If it's a person, another person will die, when I bring rotten fruit back, flowers and house plants die, an ant would replace a butterfly... that sort of thing."

Kagome stares off into the distance, stroking her chin and nodding, understanding him at once.

"The Law Of Equivalent Exchange. I see."

Her eyes slant toward him with suspicion.

"So that's why you're always buying all that moldy fruit. You bring it back and bake it into your pies!"

He smirks, finally allowing himself to feel a touch of relief at her good humor.

"I save a lot of money."

"I'll bet you do. Alright so, how did you learn about your power and all of these limitations?"

He sighs and readjusts on the couch.

"When I was a kid, Digby here was hit by a car. He was very dead until I touched him, and then he came back. That same night my mother died in the kitchen from a brain aneurysm. I touched her immediately to see if I could bring her back like I'd brought back Digby. She woke right up and carried on like nothing had happened.

When she tucked me in that night and kissed me, she died again. The next morning I found out Chuck's dad had died, too. She was may neighbor. After some trial and error with bugs and things I hammered out all the rules of bringing dead things back to life. I also figured out I was the reason Chuck's dad died. My mother stayed alive for over 60 seconds, so he took her place."

"I'm so sorry." Kagome smiles sadly, placing her other hand on top of their joined hands and rubbing her thumb over his knuckles. It sends a comforting warmth through him and bandages up some of those places that are still a little tender.

"So, when did you resurrect Chuck, and who had to die to keep her alive?"

Ned winces again, remembering that she knew, probably because of her priestess powers, that Chuck was most certainly not traditionally alive anymore.

"I know I shouldn't have. We were just going to investigate her murder and put her back to sleep but... she was my first kiss, my childhood sweetheart, we got caught up in this big romantic idea and then I couldn't do it, I couldn't touch her again. One of the funeral home directors died in her place. He turned out to be a thief who stole off the bodies but that doesn't excuse it and I've lived with that and have never consciously let it happen again."

She could feel his guilt and sincerity, it flared brightly in his aura. It had been the wrong thing to do, to be sure, but her own past had its own smudges and things were never so simple when supernatural abilities came into play.

She smirked at him, ready to lighten the air.

"Did you know Inuyasha also had a dead ex girlfriend that came back to life?"

Ned settled in to hear what he is certain will be the most unbelievable tale he's ever heard. But if it's Kagome, he wants to hear it and believe it all. She never lets go of his hand, and he never tries to shake free, so content in the ability to share simple touches, nearly giddy with the freedom of all his deepest secrets being in the open.

When she kisses him goodnight and falls asleep wrapped in his arms he's certain he'll wake to find it all a dream, this woman who understands him, has an even more remarkable story than his, who knows him.

But it's not a dream.

It was just a gift he had to mow down in a grocery store.