Disclaimed as always: I do not own, I merely borrow.
Different
by Lynn Gregg
"What was she like?"
Kagome's voice, barely audible, wisped into the silence between them. Her eyes were fixed on a distant point beyond the edge of the forest, anywhere but on him. Beside her, Inuyasha shifted slightly, tightening his hold on the Tetsusaiga as a nervous child might reflexively grasp a talismanic toy. Quiet held and stretched for so long that Kagome almost thought he hadn't heard her; but he had, and eventually he chuffed out a breath and spoke, his own voice barely a whisper.
"Different. Not like--not like what you know of her."
"When she was alive."
"When she was alive," he repeated, his gaze following hers into the darkness. "She was...different. Quiet, you know? And serious. She had to be; she was younger than you when she took over the shrine as miko. Plus she was responsible for her little sister; her mother died when Kaede was born, and their father'd been gone a long time..."
"That's so sad."
"Yeah. But she wasn't...she was different. She was...good. Responsible. The villagers loved her. I--" He broke off abruptly, remembering to whom he spoke. "It was the damned shikon no tama. It fucking poisons everything it touches."
"Not everything."
He considered, seeing the pink glint of the shards she wore contained in their tiny glass vial. "No," he agreed, "not everything."
"Was she kind? Was she loving?"
"Kagome--"
"I want to know. I want to know her, Inuyasha. Please?"
"Keh. She was kind, yeah. She never turned anyone away that needed her help. She raised Kaede and she never complained. But...that wasn't what she wanted. Her powers, and her responsibilities. It wasn't what she wanted."
"What did she want?"
"Just...to be normal."
"Like you."
"What?"
"She wanted what you wanted, right? To be normal, to not be--"
"Alone," he finished, looking down at his clawed hands folded tightly around Tetsusaiga's saya. "She didn't want to be alone anymore. Bound by things that weren't her choice. She wanted to escape herself. So did I."
"Do you still?"
He looked at her now, firelight reflecting in his clear golden eyes. "Not anymore."
"You loved her. Did she love you?"
"Kagome--"
"Did she?"
"She was--different, Kagome. She wasn't like you."
"Did she?"
"Maybe. But it doesn't matter."
"It's different now?"
"I'm different now."
She nodded, still staring into the deep wood where she imagined she saw the faint reflection of a dead girl's aura, and when a rough hand closed over hers and tightened, she did not flinch, because things were different now.