The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late.
"Once.. When I was very little, I remember being safe. Being loved. Being special, but only 'cause I was me. Not 'cause of what I was. Turns out that was a lie. He left. I'm over it."-- Kagome
Kagome was dawdling. She was lagging, dilly-dallying, dragging her feet, idling, lingering, straggling, and most of all... She was rebelling. 'Cause that's how bad she was.
It felt so good.
Thanks to another of Tokyo's roaming blackouts hitting her school, she had been let out a whole hour early, because all the power in the school had gone out.
And now, she could take as much time as she wanted getting back, possibly stopping to get a bubble-tea and window-shop, before she had to rush home. For once, Kagome was going to get to be one of those girls who got to.. You know, live.
And her grandfather would be none the wiser.
Even though a very small part of her was panicking at the newfound freedom (She may have also adopted agoraphobia, because all the open space and freedom was just shy of giving her a rash on her sensitive parts) and worrying about all the things that could go wrong, the rest of her was feeling distinctly bad-ass.
She blew the bangs out of her eyes and stopped to gawk at the display of pocky set up in a store window. She had to stop when she realized she had pressed her nose against the glass to the point of pain in her sugar-craving. Not to mention she couldn't see through the fog her breath had made.
How much allowance did she have on her?
Kagome could no longer feel her face. She had ingested so much glucose that she could taste colors. And those colors were so, so, so very sweet.
She twitched and smoothed out the almost indecent length of skirt over her knees.
Although a part of her felt that deep down twinge of guilt for misleading her mother and grandfather, she beat it into submission with a silent growl. She deserved this.
She needed, just for one day, to be a normal girl. To be selfish and silly, to be frivolous and unimportant. She wanted to gawk at clothing and groan at price tags. She wanted to cleanse her mind, at least temporarily, of duty, of morals, of repercussions.
Kagome wanted to be seventeen.
And she wasn't going to feel guilty about it.
Besides, the ofuda, the paste, paper and thick scrawls of kanji smeared all over her abdomen would keep her safe. Just like they had every other day of her life.
There wasn't a rain cloud in sight, and she had her umbrella with her if the weather took a turn for the worse. So the wards weren't about to wash off.
All in all, she was in for a few boring hours of hot, sweet joy.
And then she'd bury it in the recesses of her memory and go back to her strict regiment of mindless, soul-sucking monotony. She would continue dying slowly on the inside.
Right now, though. I'm going to nance about on my sugar high, followed by possible frolicking under the sun, and finally I'm going to be sick from all the sweet sugary bliss of normalcy.
Kagome grinned beatifically, saluting the businessman who gave her a sideways glance, and took a kiddy-corner randomly, hopping onto another street.
The sidewalk was suddenly less crowded, and she felt some of the tension ease off her shoulders. After all the years of staying in and rarely straying downtown, she wasn't quite as thick-skinned as the rest of the city to the discomfort of crowds.
She ran her fingers along the streaky glass of a shop window, happily thoughtless, and moved to skirt past the alleyway that bisected the two stores. She had a city girl's distrust of Tokyo's dark places, because everyone knew that what hid in the darkness was not friendly.
Especially for her, being what she was. Because Kagome was always a what, not a who.
Argh, why am I thinking dark thoughts? I'm footloose, fancyfree… I'm a young girl with money in her pocket. Admittedly not much, but money all the same.
There was a slight hiccupping noise to her left. She paused in mid-step. Her head turned of its own accord, and she scanned the alley frenetically.
I imagined that, right?
A slight sniffle issued from somewhere in the dark recesses, she narrowed her focus to the large dumpster locked tight against the left wall.
So she wasn't imagining it. She bit her lip and furrowed her brow with indecision. Should she see if she could figure out what was cowering behind the dumpster, or keep on a'walking?
Common sense was screaming at her to walk her ass on out of there like a good little girl, but Kagome had the common sense of a lemming.As a rule.
She took a step forward, not entering the alleyway, but hovering at the mouth.
I will not go into the dark alley. I will not go into the dark alley. I will not--
The whimper sent a shiver through her heart, and she took an involuntary step forward, the shadow the buildings cast reaching out to enfold her.
Symbolic…
"Hello? Is someone there?" she hissed, suddenly very self-conscious.
When she realized what she was doing, she groaned. Smart, Kagome. Real freaking intelligent. I can see the headlines; young schoolgirl dies after being lured into a dark alleyway like a lamb to the slaughter. This is the part of the horror movie where everyone yells 'don't go into the alley, you stupid girl. Run, bitch, run!'
She fidgeted with the straps of her backpack and made a decision. She was not going to be murdered today. Kagome made to turn when a sudden movement drew her attention back to the alley with an audible snap of the vertebrae in her neck.
A slight rasping noise, and then a small, tousled boy stepped into her line of sight. His school uniform was smudged randomly with dirt, his school tie askew and his shaggy raven hair hanging in her face.
A face she knew.
"Sota?!" she growled, her voice tinted with that exact shade of older sister tone mixed with bewilderment. "What the hell are you doing downtown all by yourself?! Does Mama know-- Of course not. She would never.. You're so dead."
Her mind whirled and ticked with thoughts of what could happen to a ten year old boy all on his own in urban Tokyo, especially a boy who was farting about in an alleyway for the love of--
Sota's shoulders hunched forward, and his head dropped, shaggy bangs shading his eyes from her intense gaze.
"Don't pull that look on me! I can't believe you. This is serious Sota, I mean it. You could have been-- bad stuff." she fisted her hands against her hips and stamped into the alley until she was only a few feet from him.
His head dropped even further, until his chin was nearly resting on the collar of his mussed school shirt. He took a shuffle-step forward, drawing Kagome's furious attention down to his left foot.
She immediately lost the strand of her angry tirade when she noticed how his foot hung limply, parallel to the pavement, twisted awkwardly.
"Sota..?" She faltered.
He wobbled dangerously on his good foot, and she realized that he was holding all his weight on the right one.
Oh God..
She threw herself at him, landing on her knees in front of him and taking most of the skin off her knees in the process. She barely noticed.
Kagome grabbed his shoulders and dug her fingers into the muscle there as her eyes danced over his small frame frenetically. When she failed to notice another injury on the skin she could see, she pulled him into her arms desperately, crushing him to her chest protectively.
"Sota, Sota, Sota…" she murmured frantically. Please be okay.
The muscles in her abdomen tightened as something unfamiliar twanged through her suddenly. She stopped running her fingers through Sota's hair to check for lumps or scalp wounds.
In fact, she froze. Something in the back of her mind was whispering to her fiercely.
That isn't--
"You aren't my little brother," she pulled back from the embrace and stared at the boy in her arms.
Bright green eyes met hers sadly and she was sure. Sota didn't have green eyes. "Sorry." he agreed.
Something thumped behind her, and she half-turned, spurred on by another pang of wrongness in her belly.
"What'd I tell you? Make 'em think one of their pack is injured, and they lose all sense." the tall, slim youth gestured at her vaguely.
No! This was all because she had decided to be footloose and fancy-free for the first time in her whole freakin' life! Why did fate hate her so very much?!
"Yeah, whatever. Where's my money?" the boy in her arms shook, like a wet dog coming in from the rain, and suddenly he wasn't wearing her brother's face anymore. Green eyes glared over her shoulder from a pointed face.
Kagome stared at the telltale lengthened, pointed ears, the faint glint of pointed canines, the shaggy auburn hair, and came to the bright conclusion that the boy wasn't human.
Clever gal.
Then she craned her head back to study the teen behind her. He also had that glaring not-quite-human look to him, with, under any other circumstance pretty freakin' amazing silver-white hair that fell to down his back even longer than her own.
Gold eyes narrowed with bemusement met hers for a split second, like liquid amber (and she was trapped in them), before pulling back to the youkai faintly hissing at him from within her grip. His eyes flickered even still with something she couldn't identify.
He lifted his chin subtly and sniffed the air, then snapped his attention back to the young not-boy.
And.. Oh my.
Twitching dog ears perched on top of his head.
And so what if a small part of her squee'd with tremulous joy?
The rest of her was still very firm in its declaration of being so very screwed. She teetered on her knees.
They found me.
This would teach her to rebel. Although, it was hard to learn a valuable lesson when you were in meaty chunks on the sidewalk after being torn to pieces. Her grandfather would probably yell at her chunks. 'I told you so!' and so forth.
The youkai gently tugged her numb fingers from his 'asthma is sexy!' t-shirt and patted her hand reassuringly, like she wasn't at least seven years older than him and about to be murdered in a dark alley.
The teen made a vague snorting noise and dug two fingers into his jeans pocket, making a face, and dug out a handful of bills.
"Little bastard." he grumbled, tossing the wad with surprising accuracy at the young boy.
"Thank you kindly." the youkai child grinned, exposing some nasty fangs, and the money disappeared with little warning.
"Now scamper off, little fuck-face. I have business with the little lady."
Kagome didn't like the sound of that. Don't leave. Leaving is bad.