Author: Stoicstella E-mail:
Rating: R (definitely)
Summary: Since her mother married Naraku, Kagome bears the cross of her violent home life in silence. To whom could she turn anyway?
Author Notes:I hated writing this chapter so please excuse the wait. I never, and I put the emphasis on never, want to finish things that I write. I fall in love with my characters, fall in love with my concepts, throughly begin to enjoy the process of it all, and I can't bring myself to take the final bow. Luckily I was feeling a lot of pressure from my readers and I took the hint. So here it is in all it's glory, The closing act!
[""] Spoken
[''] thought
[] indicates a change of point of view within individual sections. (these will be pretty apparent though -- at least I should think)
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi. Song lyrics belong to Fuel.
Shimmer
"'She calls me from the cold
Just when I was low, feeling short of stable
And all that she intends
And all she keeps inside, isn't on the label
She says that she's ashamed
And can she take me for awhile
And can I be a friend, we'll forget the past
But maybe I'm not able"
Chapter 9: All That Shimmers
"It's not as difficult as you try to make it, Kagome" Her Counselor soothed calmly watching the agitated teen look out the window into the outside world. "You put one foot in front of the other..."
"But I can't go out There" Kagome finished with an exaggerated flourish, waving a hand at the window leading to the sunny outside street, before sitting back down smiling halfheartedly at her own ridiculousness.
She could see her mom striding confidently up the walkway, having long since buried the horror of their shared past. Her hair was bobbed in a popular cut, her clothes were new, though Kagome knew she really couldn't afford them, and even from this distance she could see the smile etched into her mothers face. Mama always, Seemed to be happy, even before.
"I forgot what it was like to live out there, Angel. How can I wake up in the morning, like nothing happened, go to school everyday, look strangers in the eyes? I don't think I'm ready... Send her away."
Angel smiled brightly at Kagome's nervous proclamation. It had taken a long time to pry Kagome out of her shell even a little bit, for months she was in a perfect denial admitting only facts that could be irrefutably proven. Kagome was a lost ship, not looking for a port. The fact that she could so readily claim her reluctance to go back to that life was proof that she was ready to leave the secluded hospital world she'd been living in.
"Come on honey," Angel whispered soothingly "You have my number, and you'll have your grandfather, and your mother, we'll all make sure that you get through this. I know your strong." She knelt down and hugged Kagome gently helping her stand just as her mother got to the doorway.
"Ms. Higurashi! You look well" Angel exclaimed with a smile. Reaching out to shake hands with Kagome's apparently ecstatic mother.
"I am, thank-you" Kagome's mom announced, with slightly more fervor than was at all necessary. "You ready, sweetheart?" She added, to her daughter, who was shuffling her feet and looking at the floor.
"You're gonna do great!" Angel informed her squeezing her shoulders in a little half hug.
'It must be true' Kagome thought Sarcastically 'Everyone is so sure but me.'
A large black bird was circling the sky above, though Inuyasha could only see it every quarter of it's cycle. This was supposed to be a bad omen of sorts, and he had mentally already decided to cancel his trip. He let his eyes drift casually over to the girl across the table from him, watching the bird out the window as well. For some reason he couldn't help but think of the first time he'd ever saw Kagome. She was stubbornly trying to carry a huge box by herself across the front lawn, and later he found out up three flights of stairs. Her long black hair had been blowing carelessly in the breeze, covering her eyes and tripping her up occasionally. This had been the girl from a distance he thought had been Kikyou... but no, Kagome was always Kagome.
"What are you thinking about, Inu-chan" he wrinkled his nose in distaste at her pet name but didn't respond right away.
"Bad Omens" he admitted finally letting out a little sigh and standing from the breakfast table.
"hmmm" she replied, half knowingly and half questioningly. Though Inuyasha was sure she knew what he meant, he also knew she wouldn't let him off without an explanation.
"How can I walk up to her... Face her? All that time I was supposed to be her friend and I never knew... I never even guessed, and my stupid brother, who has a heart made out of asphalt... he's the one that Comforts her. She hates me." He finished his ashamed babble by banging his forehead against the windowpane, and didn't even flinch when he felt Kikyou's comforting hand touch his shoulder. She was humming soothingly as she leaned her head against his back and hugged him from behind.
"She didn't want you to know, and at the time she was probably relived that you didn't. And now she more than likely blames herself." she paused lifting her head from his shoulder blade and badeing him to turn around with a silent pull of his arm. "Inuyasha." She continued sternly "If you don't go to see her today, she'll probably blame herself too, but it will be your own fault."
Inuyasha would come today, sit across the table with guilt swimming behind his concerned eyes. He would try to make amends, he would try to pretend everything was the same, and he would fail. Kagome could feel his imminent failure like a knife to her heart, and she wanted to pull it out and bleed to death, only it was yet to even stab her.
Her legs were crossed at the ankles in a semi dainty pose in front of her chair, and she appeared to be looking at them, but really she was looking through them, and beyond them. Her tired eyes longed only to see a lame movie, a bag of popcorn, and her easy going, bad tempered, ill mannered best friend. But if Kagome knew one thing for sure through any of this, it was that nothing, no matter how much she sought it to be could ever go back to the way it was... before.
A ratty looking car was puttering up the drive of the shrine, and she knew without looking up from her sightless stare, that it was Inuyasha. Inuyasha hated that car, he had insisted on buying Kikyou a new one time and time again... even before the accident, but she always refused. He had spoken of it fondly once, when Kikyou was still asleep. He had told Kagome how, he had gone to a dealership signed the paperwork, got the keys, and brought them in a ring box to her door. Kikyou never liked extravagant gifts, and she refused to take it.
"She said 'her cars got Personality'" he had scoffed, but Kagome knew that it was just those kind of things that made him love her so much. The things in her personality that his up bringing just wouldn't allow him to understand.
Kagome found herself smiling at her feet that Kikyou had convinced him to ride in it. He always said he wouldn't and when it came to Kikyou, he usually lied.
When she finally let her eyes glide across the front walk to the four feet walking up it, Kagome's smile only widened. Despite her previous anxiety, and fear, and dread heavy as a brick in her stomach she suddenly felt like if she didn't tether herself down she might float away. Before she could talk herself into changing her mind she had thrown caution to the wind, bounded down the walk and thrown her arms around Inuyasha's neck.
"I almost didn't realize how much I missed you, until I saw your face, just now." she whispered into his shoulder not breaking the hug for several seconds. He was long past uncomfortable by then, but she felt light and happy. Kagome was sure that if she looked in the mirror right then and there her smile would be bright enough to blind her.
"Come on!" she commanded, taking both Inuyasha and Kikyou by a hand and pulling them firmly down the walk, toward the little table at which she had previously been sitting.
"Tell me everything," she continued, for once feeling as chipper as she was behaving. "I hear the two of you are engaged now?"
Kikyou smiled abashedly, holding up her hand to show off the shimmering ring upon her finger, Inuyasha grinned a self satisfied little grin but didn't speak until he could wipe it away.
"She didn't want such an expensive ring of course, but when I threatened to crazy glue it to her finger in her sleep, she finally agreed." He lavished, ending the sentence with a half admiring half frustrated little 'feh'.
"I only thought something smaller might..." Kikyou started to explain.
"I think it's perfect." Kagome interrupted assuringly taking her hand and eyeing the medium sized diamond engagement ring. "It's beautiful!"
"I heard about you and my brother..." Inuyasha, announced briskly changing the subject as he looked at his toes for approval.
"oh?" Kagome goaded, with apparent nonchalance, "Anything, I should know about?" Kikyou cracked a little smile at this, as she pulled her hand back into her lap.
Kagome kept the smile on her face, even when Inuyasha chanced a look, up at her and she saw the dreaded emotion in his eyes. She smiled, even though it hurt, and she told herself she could wish the pain away.
"I hear, your relationship has turned cold." he stated, letting his eyes speak the rest of his concerns. He wanted her to explain why she couldn't indulge Sesshoumaru's Knight in Shimmering armor routine. He wanted so badly to understand how a relationship steeped in tragedy could be ruined by good fortune. And she wanted to be able to explain it to him, but she couldn't find the words. So she just looked at her hands.
"I have never seen him so sullen before, Kag" he continued in earnest "You were the one thing in his life, that might have put bounce in his step, might've induced a smile. Everything else was for the good of progression. You were tying him to the here and now."
"Well, now he's un-tethered" Kagome interjected, halfheartedly playing with her hands on the table.
"Well, if you ask me he belonged here on earth with the rest of us." Inuyasha said, with a sense of finality that signaled the end of the conversation, and Kagome let it drop. She knew that Inuyasha would never understand, all that shimmers in this world was sure to fade.
The phone rang three times before he even glanced at it. Term papers used to write themselves, now he put everything into them, he thought about things that he never used to think about before: the variety of ways he could phrase things, the extent of research for each paragraph, the credentials of every single source. Sesshoumaru's free thoughts weren't really his own anymore, so in the back of his mind, he wanted another project to always be lurking, circumventing his path to thinking about her.
At the fourth ring he dropped his pencil near the keyboard and padded across the carpet to the receiver.
"Yamamoto" he replied calmly, still thinking about whether or not Dr. so and so really had any business in commenting on the subject to begin with. He secretly suspected the lot of them were just blowing hot air.
"Sesshoumaru?" a breathy voice, erupted from the speaker. "I... I..." it stuttered and then fell silent.
"Higurashi?" he asked blindly, fearing he had imagined the voice was her, and not daring to sound too hopeful.
"I..." the girl began with a stutter again before simply replying "Yes."
"What's the matter?" he asked suddenly, a new sense of worry entering his mind. Calls from Kagome in the middle of the night, concern, comforting, and in the end powerlessness. This was all too familiar.
"I want you to know." She said finally, after several seconds had ticked painfully by. "That I'm sorry. The things I said... that was my insecurity... I understand if you hate me... but" her last word flitted hopefully on the dead receiver.
"but?" he prodded finally unable to take the suspense.
"I want us to be friends again." She finished boldly, obviously having exhausted herself, trying to say just the right thing. But it was not right... not to him anyway. He'd rather not have ever seen her again at all the way he had been anticipating, then hear this side of the story.
"I forgive you." he stated plainly. "As for being your friend... I just don't think I want to. Nothing personal..." he wanted to go on, make her taste the feeling of rejection she had just spoon fed him. But the line cut out, and he didn't feel like talking to dead air.
Kagome thought that he could be her Inuyasha. That he could forget the past, all of it. And be a friend. He knew he was being selfish. Knew she needed to move forward, needed people to dedicate time to making her better.
But at this point he didn't think he was able.
The phone felt like a rock in the palm of her hand, and she couldn't figure out why she had lifted it from the phone booth in the first place. The Rain outside the Plexiglas, poured and streaked, but inside her little booth, she could stay safe and sound. Nothing, but the words of the man she kept telling herself she didn't love, could hurt her here.
Somehow though that was enough.
Kagome's head swum with distant thoughts of love and life, all the things she had fought for, 'recovered' for. She felt them washing away with the warm summer rain.
"I can't leave it like this." A steady voice declared within the small room. A voice that Kagome often kept deep inside, a voice that believed in hope and happy endings and in the general goodness of people. Kagome had almost forgotten that voice was there, had thought that it was destroyed completely, had forgotten how much she had been holding it back.
Her hand shakily went to her damp bangs pushing them over her forehead and flattening them against her skull. She was suddenly determined not to let him go, not to let everything in her life be ruined by that stretching painful silence and the explosion in it's wake.
The warm rain soaked her already dampened hair, and trickled through the hole in her collar sticking the material fast to her back like wallpaper paste. She fought to keep her eyes parted against the insistent downpour, the water burned and stung but she didn't pause to wipe at her eyes. She was searching street signs, counting buildings that didn't have their number in plain sight, trying to remember the exact address from the phone book directory. From the corner she could see a man standing in a window, looking down at the street below, and for a second she was filled with a sort of hollow hope in the pit of her stomach. Sesshoumaru was watching her, waiting for her to come.
Kagome held her breath and passed that building without pausing, counting doors, leaning on stoops to try to see addresses, and wading through what was quickly becoming a flood. Just when she was about to quash that delicate hope she had fought to build up, she saw him. Coming out of a building with a casual elegance, not noticing her, nor looking for her. His eyes were turned in the opposite direction, and his head almost completely obscured by an umbrella. And for a moment Kagome's voice froze, the way it had on the phone. Her tongue was tripping over all the syllables, her voice wouldn't rise above a whisper, and Sesshoumaru was walking away.
And Suddenly the hopeful voice was desperate. "Wait!" Kagome yelled, feeling him slip away forever the further he glid in the opposite direction.
Sesshoumaru stopped in his tracks, not turning around at first, he seemed to have just paused, waiting until his next foot decided to move forward again. Time was still slipping away like sand through her hands.
"Wait!" Kagome demanded again, this time in a quieter voice. "I want to... to talk to you"
She could see his heels begin to turn, his calves, his waist, his shoulders. Everything seemed to be running in a painfully slow, slow-motion. She could feel the shaking of her knee's sending tremors through the ground. Soon the street around her would be rubble.
"What is it." he replied calmly. His voice cool, unmarred by emotion, and his face apathetic. There was no more room in his heart for emotion anymore, Kagome realized, she had destroyed his capacity to love her.
"I..." She started, stumbling suddenly forward with the lurching movement of her knees, and falling into his arm beneath the sudden dry warmth of the umbrella.
"I..." Kagome whispered again, feeling suddenly naked without the cover of rain hiding her streaming tears, feeling suddenly foolish, and also slightly faint. A fine panic was rising inside her head, as she realized all the bad responses he could give to the questions she had wanted to pose him. Suddenly she didn't think she was strong enough to fight for his affection. Kagome held her breath and let her eyes drift closed as her body gave in to her knees and slumped to the ground.
It had been so similar, so familiar, he almost forgot that things had changed so much between them. Her body had been frail, and freezing, and she had shivered in her sleep in his arms. And when he wrapped her snugly in a towel, carefully removing her wet clothing while trying to leave her with her decency, his fingertips seemed to remember all the right moves on their own.
Kagome curled into his body, and the warm clothes he had dressed her in, sleeping off the emotional fatigue and the sickness from the rain. And Sesshoumaru just held her there, pressing her head gently to his chest and smoothing her hair with his free hand, all other engagements forgotten. This was the side of Kagome he had been missing the most, the innocent, vulnerable, girl who he had to protect, no matter how selfish that made him.
"Why do you keep running away from me?" he whispered, his hand resting gently, on her forehead, beneath her drying bangs. But she only responded with a whimper, as she curled farther into his embrace and away from whatever dream assailant ailed her.
Sesshoumaru slowly bent his head foreword, while pulling her higher in his embrace, so that his lips were less than an inch from the curve of her earlobe.
"You're safe now." he whispered, turning his head to trace the line of her neck with his breath and leave a single, feather light kiss upon her hairline.
"I love you, Sesshoumaru" she responded with a small smile as she snuggled deeper in his chest, with no sign of waking.
"I love you too." was his whispered reply, so quiet that she probably wouldn't have heard it had she been awake, though he needn't have worried of that.
They sat across the breakfast table from each other, the events of the previous night a distant memory. One riddled with embarrassment and self ridicule for Kagome, but not a topic of conversation. Kagome poked an egg with her fork disinterestedly, as she spoke.
"Mama wants us to be a family again" she relished "she wants us to forget about the past, pretend it never happened. Mama wants us to move forward and she thinks my recovery is holding us back."
"I think" Sesshoumaru, replied quietly setting his hand upon her own to stop her fork from moving anymore "that your mother is ashamed, and your suffering is a constant reminder of her guilt. I don't think she wants to forget, I think she wants to be forgiven."
"That's what Angel said." Kagome blurted, looking at Sesshoumaru suddenly as if it was the first time she laid eyes on him.
"Smart woman." he replied with a little quirk of his lip, before standing from the table.
"Gather your things, and I'll drive you home." He added in a much firmer tone of voice.
"Wait." Kagome demanded, her mind, suddenly filled with panic as she remembered why she was here.
"I need to talk to you, I need to understand." She pleaded looking up at him like a lost child who never thought they would see home again.
"What is it?" he asked with a sigh that spoke of imaginary impatience and feigned disgust.
"You..." she stuttered, "you said you didn't want to be my friend now you're sending me away and I know it's all my fault and I want to make it right but I can't turn back time and I can't take back the things I've put you through" The words burst from her in one desperate strain, for she dared not even pause for a breath, in case she found she couldn't start speaking again.
"Kagome," he whispered, getting down on his knees in an uncharacteristically submissive pose in front of her. "I lied to you all those months ago... at the hospital." he continued in the same soft tone taking her face into his hands and wiping away the tears with his thumbs as they formed.
"what... what..." she stuttered, choking on her repressed sobs.
"I told you that I thought I loved you, but that was a lie." He said, his voice hinting at emotions Kagome somehow couldn't make her mind decipher.
"I knew... and I still do. It isn't fair to you I realize, but I can't forget that all and just be your loyal friend. I can't do that, because... Because I love you." he said kissing the hands that had reached up and clasped his own.
"I... I..." she began the words escaping her as they had done so often recently. "I was so scared," she finished burying her head in his shoulder and wrapping her arms tightly around his neck.
"I thought... I thought you hated me." she whispered into his hair refusing to release the embrace.
"never" he replied letting his fingers entwine in her hair, and making no move to escape the position.
Kagome crossed and uncrossed her legs, running her upper teeth along her bottom lip, but not biting down. Her eyes were focused on the window although she didn't really see it, she was deep in thought about the question that had been posed to her.
"Kagome" Angel persisted. "Do you think, the love you feel for him is real, that it's not a misplaced emotion between the two of you."
Kagome was giving her question fair thought, because she learned that Angel's questions couldn't be dismissed. And in fact shouldn't be.
"I think" Kagome replied meeting Angel's eyes and displaying a god honest smile "that we are going to be very happy together for a long time to come!"
Final Post Chapter Author's Note:So that's it, Happy enough ending for ya'll. I think I am going to be putting out a chapter after this with bonus features on it. You know like when you buy A dvd, and it has deleted scenes, and director's commentary, and such. Well at any rate send me your comments, and possibly your questions, and if I do put that chapter out I can address them there. But for all intents and purposes this story is over, case closed, move along there's nothing to see here. See you when I someday update one of my other stories, S.c.