AN: Sooo, it should be pretty apparent by now what the end pairing for Paradigm Shift is. While Sesshomaru/Kagome is my all time favorite pairing for fics, like I've said; this sort of ran away from me. In all honesty, I've been pretty nervous about how it's going to be taken when the ball dropped and everyone realized the pairing. I know it's not a popular one. Maybe that's why Paradigm Shift fell into my head in the first place, dunno.
The big question for me now is whether or not to post the pairing at the beginning of the story or not. I've been reading/writing fanfiction since 2001 and I know that sometimes it's ruined the anticipation for me, knowing that they would be together in the end.
Thoughts, suggestions on the dilemma?
Also, if anyone is curious, a google image search for 'hopemore eight point star' will bring up the one that I had in mind for Kouga's and Sesshomaru's marks.
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Paradigm Shift
Chapter Nineteen: Align
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It felt like the whole world was turning in slow motion for Kagome as she made her way back to her room at Atsuta Shrine. Their room. Going through the motions of pulling her thin cotton pajamas from her bag in the corner and dressing herself felt robotic, and her mind was just blank. Too many nights of too little sleep and too many days of too much different that brought too much emotional upheaval had been catching up to her for too long and she lowered herself to the floor, cross-legged on her futon, and traced the little pink stars on her blue pajama pants with her index finger.
Her eyes focused back on reality again as they skimmed unseeingly over the other side of the room and fell on the neatly folded kesu and monsuke sitting on top of Miroku's, her friend's, futon. Her brow crinkled as she looked at it and she moved into a kneel, stretching her arm out over the mat and picking up the clothing.
Kneeling there, with his robes sitting on her thighs, she pinched the fabric between her fingers; just feeling it and her confusion. It was something so uniquely him and she felt torn between crying and laughing as memories of the last two… almost three years went fleetingly through her mind. She let her thoughts wander as the memories came and went, not really paying attention to any of them for more than a second.
She just felt. Her vision was consumed in nothing except that purple fabric, eyes once again unfocused as she concentrated inward. There was safety, companionship, friendship, annoyance, laughter, and just so many other things that all coalesce into what was between them.
The memories slowed as she let her emotions wash over her. She had formed a unique relationship with all of her friends. Each one different and each one unerringly perfect to her. Unwavering.
But now this one was wavering. Changing.
There were so many unknowns surrounding her right now.
When a hand settled onto the back of her head she was startled out of her internal musings; clutching the bundle of robes to her chest with one hand as she scrambled away from the source with a shriek of surprise. She was on her feet before she realized, with her back to the wall, looking at Miroku who was bent over her previous post with a hand hovering midair.
"Don't do that!" Kagome said furiously, pointing at him with her free hand.
"Apologies." Miroku straightened and strode over to her, slowly moving his hand to run over the folds of cloth that she had pinned to her chest. "Are you holding my robes hostage?"
"Oh! Oh. No. Here." Kagome thrust the bundle into his chest with a glowing blush spreading over her nose and cheeks. Miroku didn't take them. He just laid his hand on the underside of her rigid forearm and gave her that same serious, penetrating look that terrified her.
"What were you doing?" He asked.
Kagome was silent for a long time as she tried to figure out how to explain what exactly she had been experiencing as she had sat there. As she tried to figure out whether or not she wanted to explain. She felt vulnerable and exposed in her thin, colorful, nighttime attire. Exposed and vulnerable and far too comfortable with his hand there on the sensitive skin on the underside of her arm.
"Remembering." She finally whispered, looking out through the small window and into the sunset rather than his face. His hand stilled.
"Remembering?"
Kagome nodded to him slowly.
"Remembering. And…" Her forehead crinkled as she thought. "And feeling, I guess."
"Remembering what?"
"Everything. Everyone."
"How so?"
Kagome's eyes unfocused again, her head tilting to the side as she kept her unseeing gaze on the reds and oranges outside the window.
"Just thinking." She told him.
"Thinking and feeling and remembering?" Miroku's voice held a tinge of amusement now as he repeated her words. "That doesn't make much sense, you know."
"I know. It's hard to explain."
Miroku's hand traveled down her arm to her wrist, gripping it tightly as his other hand covered hers where his robes were still being pressed into his chest.
"Everything and everyone made you need to confiscate my clothes?"
Kagome's eyes snapped to the incriminating fabric and then up to his face where their eyes finally met.
"Well…no…"
"No?"
"No…"
When she tried to break the contact, Miroku's face came closer and moved with hers, keeping their eyes locked together.
"I was… Well. I." A warm gust of air left Kagome as she struggled against both his inquiry and herself; her embarrassment at being found in such a situation and her hesitancy to admit where most of her attention had been focused as she thought.
"Hm?"
"Well... I was mostly thinking about.." It caught in her throat and refused to come out, though. Her teeth came together with an audible click, still looking into Miroku's eyes.
"About me?" He asked.
A flood of adrenaline and nervous energy filled Kagome's body at the question and she was finally able to break the intense eye connection as her eyes pressed tightly together.
"About me?" He repeated the question, quieter, maybe closer but she couldn't tell because her eyes were still closed. She gave the tiniest nod and it made her overtaxed heart speed up impossibly for the thousandth time since her world had turned on its head.
The back of Kagome's head hit the wood behind her in defeat as she felt Miroku's fingers slide under hers and slowly pull the robes out from between her hand and his chest. She dropped her arm as her hand emptied, feeling his warmth slide away from her skin as she did, and she tugged at the bottom hem of her shirt.
"Please look at me, Kagome."
Her head shook rapidly and she pushed up on the balls of her feet, tilting her head further back and way from Miroku, pressing her back and shoulders into the wood of the wall as if it would suddenly come alive and engulf her and hide her away from this. This powerful, piercing, fervent, excruciating, impassioned, vivid, new reality that had crashed around her so subtly and so suddenly. It didn't make sense. It had happened so fast and so low and that didn't make sense.
But she was stilled by the feel of fingers on her cheek, and she did open her eyes. She opened hers and saw his and was lost in this new everything again and she whimpered as she was thrown back into the crashing seas of turmoil that she was trying so hard to escape from.
She lowered herself off of her toes and back onto the soles of her feet, a desperate laugh escaping her at the thought that even though she had found her footing here on the floor of this room, she didn't think she could find her footing anywhere else.
And yet, against this current of confusion and contorting perceptions of reality, Kagome pressed her cheek into Miroku's palm and fought to keep her fluttering lashes from closing and fought to wipe the pained smile from her face and wished that something would loosen this steel band that was squeezing her heart.
His thumb traced her cheekbone and she turned her face into him, her lips igniting as they barely touched his open hand with her heavy sigh.
"Why did you leave?" Kagome almost didn't hear him, lost as she was in the storm. She stared down the length of his wrist, his ar, and finally met those violet eyes once more. "Why did you leave, Kagome?" She could hear the strain in his voice as his face moved just a little bit closer.
"Leave?" Her blue eyes flicked back and forth, trying to grasp onto his train of thought. She registered the kesu and monsuke fall in a messy pile from his other hand. "I haven't- Oh!" The contact between her face and his hand broke as she stepped toward Miroku and laid her hand on him, the coolness of the white cotton yukata cooling her heated skin. "The bath house! I-" Her other hand came up to rest next to its twin. "That's hard to explain too."
"Try?"
"Its just… its just so much."
The feel of her lips on his hand had been torture enough, but this combination of her hands on his chest and her wild eyes and the closeness of her from that step she had taken forward, it was making Miroku feel like his heart was trying to escape his body; just to be with her.
"Everything's changed and everyone's changing and now you're changing too and it's all just so much." She said in a rush. She felt the brush of his arms as they came to rest on the wall to either side of her ribs.
"I'm still the same as I ever was, Kagome. I just want you to see more of who I am now. I want to see more of who you are now. We have seen more of each other, now."
"More what, Miroku? More what!?" Her voice broke at the last word, echoing her feeling that her whole world was breaking… had been breaking since the jewel broke… since her heart broke.
"More of what's in our hearts, Kagome. What we do and don't share with the rest of the world. More of the parts of the soul and the things that we can't explain and more of everything."
"My heart is already broken, Miroku."
Kagome watched his eyes and face soften. Watched him come closer and consume everything and it hurt her eyes to stare into his, co close, as his forehead touched hers but neither one of them wanted to lose the eye contact anymore.
"Kagome… I'll tell you one of the beautiful secrets of the world." Her hands clenched in the fabric they touched. "Hearts don't break. They hurt, but they don't break. They hurt so much that you feel shattered, but they don't really break. It's impossible. If they broke then there would be nowhere for you to be. Your memories and feelings and everything and everyone and your wants and your desires and your needs would have nowhere to live. So, you see, your heart hurts right now, but it's not broken."
Hearing her earlier words spun around in his voice just then stunned her.
Struck her somewhere deep in her soul. In her heart.
And she knew he was right.
She shifted.
And that realization fell into place.
And it clicked.
And the world stopped spinning and changing and it righted itself.
Kagome felt like she had finally touched her feet to the ground after spending too long hanging from the ceiling. It was disorienting but right. It was different but better. And she had survived it.
And he had shown her how.
"How do I make it stop hurting, then?"
"Just like any other wound, Kagome. You show everything to someone else and let them help you."
"Everything?" She whispered the question as she tilted her face to his; touching the tip of her nose to his.
"Everything." A rush of cold air hit them both as Miroku took a step backward, putting space between them.
Kagome felt a sense of loss as she felt his arms withdraw from her sides and his forehead leave hers and his body move from hers. Then he was moving the other foot backward, was going to take another step away from her, and she cursed herself for making him feel like he pushed her too much, too hard.
So she twisted his yukata in her fists and made him stay still. He was the epitome of shocked at her forceful action, watching her, searching for some sort of answer or hint that would clue him in to what she was thinking.
"Everything?" She whispered again.
Miroku opened his mouth to reassure her again. To let her know that he wanted to be that for her, to have that from her, but when he felt her hands flatten again and start to move… he knew that she understood. He hoped. For everything.
Something passed between them through their locked eyes. It wasn't words or thoughts, but something made of just pure emotion. Something that can't be communicated normally. It was lowered lids and parted lips and breath hitched.
"Please" She said.
"Please?"
"Please… don't move."
Then he felt her hands shyly, slowly sliding so intimately across his chest. Something between a moan of pleasure and a groan of frustration left him as his head fell forward, his eyes fell closed and he did his best to do as she asked.
His breath felt more like steam than air as his lungs emptied when her thumbs hooked in the collar of the after-bath attire he still wore, because they didn't stop and she was easing the fabric open where it met; excruciatingly slow.
Exposing his chest to her in the smallest amounts.
"Nnnghhh. Kagome…"
"Don't move. Please." She repeated.
Her palms were fully rested against his skin now. Softer than silk and hotter than fire and sliding under the cloth and across his shoulders.
"Kagome. What…"
"Don't move."
And the fabric fell from his shoulders, cascaded down and folded over the tie around his waist that had kept the garment closed. His chest heaved with his erratic breaths and he flung one arm out, his hand slamming against the wall beside her head as he caught himself.
Still those soft hands explored, spreading that heat over his bare flesh. Want crashed over him. He shook with the effort of doing as she had asked, unmoving. It was the touch of a feather moving over him, so light was her journey downward. Then pressure when her hands flattened under his navel and swept around and up, sliding across his back and around to his stomach again.
Up and up and he groaned in desperation as she moved over the sensitive pink flesh she had found. Softer than she had thought they would be. But she didn't stop; fingers curling over his shoulders and up his neck.
Then she tugged and he felt his hair fall around his neck until she caught it, twining her fingers into it at the base of his skull.
"Kagome. You have to stop. Do you have any idea what you're doing to me right now?"
His other arm came up, hand resting on the wall on the other side of her head.
She didn't feel trapped at all, though. Just safe. Safe like she had wanted in the first place. Because he had always made her feel safe.
"Everything." She said.
And they moved. His hands to her hips and he didn't have to pull because she came to him and molded herself to him. One arm around his back and the other slung over his head, his hair between her fingers, her elbow bringing him down and her up and his arms around her waist pressing them together closer more everything.
When their lips met it was a lifetime in a moment in a promise of forever. He didn't end and she didn't begin and they found perfection in a moment that stretched into eternity.
His teeth found her bottom lip and pulled it into his mouth so he could swipe his tongue over it and she tasted like hope and dreams and promises and her breath filled his lungs when she reclaimed her lip to follow his lead and steal his own lip, his own breath, his own sanity. He gave them to her readily, gave her everything, because it belonged to her now and forever, and he took the everything that she gave him, because it was his now and forever, and they belonged to each other. Belonged to that kiss. Belonged to this shuddering, simmering heat that they were engulfed in.
His fingers dug into her waist when her fingers tugged his hair and her nails scraped his back as he tried to pull her closer. Then they broke apart, clutching each other, gasping, heaving, swimming.
When Kagome found her footing on the floor this time, she knew that she had found her footing everywhere, now. This was right. This was it. This was him.
When Miroku found her hand and pushed his fingers between hers, he knew that he was holding his redemption, his life, and the spark of hope that he thought had died so long ago. This was right. This was it. This was her.
They smiled and didn't need to say anything.
Miroku stepped back and Kagome followed. She knelt down on his futon and he followed. She laid down and so did he, and they clung to each other. He tucked her head under his chin and she dragged herself close and they wrapped around and into each other, trailing fingertips and tiny kisses, settling into this new perfection. Forever, they had thought. Then the slept, knowing that tomorrow would be more than a new day, it would be a new life for them each and for them both.
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AN: Whew! Now you all know. Thoughts on whether or not I should put the pairing in the beginning of the story or not will now be contemplated _ carefully
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AndreaRei: I'm glad you liked the Kouga fluff! It was an awesome scene to write, and I think I went through a dozen descriptions until I finally settled on the steamy reiki for Kagome, I'm glad you approve.
Buzz97: The Kouga and Kagome with the flower scene will actually be popping up again later in the story. There's some between the lines stuff from the fairytale that pops up. Inuyasha's youkai half is sort of… struggling to come back, yes. It's going to get a little complicated in a few chapters. Thank you so much for your comments on my writing style and attention to detail. I've been criticized quite a bit for the intentional grammar exploitation and abundant detail before.
Mishi: I would say I'm sorry, buuuut… I'm nooot. _ Although…well you'll see!
Darkerthanthedarksideofthemoon: A minute of happiness is worth a lifetime of struggle and that anyone could find any amount of happiness from my efforts and words is inspiring and awe inducing. Thank you.