Standard Disclaimers Apply.

I think, the way people say that children and teenagers don't know what love really 'is', isn't true. Just silly.

Because I've always known what love is, even when I was too young to walk - because I've always loved my mother, my grandfather, and my little brother. Love is that encompassing feeling that is indescribable, a little like what the movies and books say, but more not. It's not constricted to romance, and never has been - it's that special feeling beyond comprehension, because if we understood it, it wouldn't be love. And so, I've always been secure in that: knowing how much I loved my family, and how they loved me back. It kept me happy and well in both dark times and good ones.

But even with all that, it was still a surprise to me when I saw Kikyou and Inu Yasha, standing next to the Goshinboku, and I felt something break. That I had lost a race I didn't know I was running, that I had drowned when I hadn't been near water.

And it was then that I wondered when I began to love him so much, so much that it hurt when I thought he didn't love me.

But then I got over it. It was pretty simple, even though it was hell at the time - I love Inu Yasha, and I'll stay by his side as long as I can endure him not being by my side. And perhaps, one day he will. But not while Kikyou is wandering this earth, her shadow casting a dark gloom over my happiness.

But I won't be bitter, not ever, because bitterness is what Kikyou is, and I swear that I won't ever be her. That twisted, that sad, that drowning in despair; if there ever was a case to learn by example, she's one. By now, she's been so used to the despair, she welcomes it, and shies at happiness. Can't see it, can't imagine it.

After all, it has been long for her - a travel of five hundred and fifty years to reach my time, my body, and for her soul to become mine, only to be sucked back another five hundred and meet Inu Yasha again.

And so I can't be angry, I think, if at the end of this, he doesn't stay with me, and stays with Kikyou, for whom it would be a lie to say suffered less than me. And I'd surely be far sadder than I can ever imagine, even with what I've already dealt with. But the way I feel now, I could never love anyone but him, either.

Because a way people fall out of love is that their love is unreturned; unrequited love stings and hisses, and is, overall, quite unpleasant - but that's what I'm told. They can't take it, they leave; that pain, that they're in so much pain, it's easier to find another and make a new love.

But I haven't experienced that myself, because Inu Yasha loves me. It'll be a long time before he says it, if he ever will, but it's not something I need words to know. Because it shows, when he would have had me go home, and never come back to his side, even though that's what he wanted. When he said I smelled nice. When he threw me down the well, making me so furious and so sad. When he began to cry, that time, when he was so grateful that his friends hadn't died in that burning house because of the Shinichini-tai. By sleeping in the tree directly above my sleeping bag every night, where he's not really sleeping, just closing his eyes.

And so because he loves me, I can never stop loving him, because love is not about possession. I don't have to have him by my side to confirm that he loves me, or for me to continue loving him. Love is not 'out of sight, out of mind'.

Love is a devotion that never dies, never will die, never can die. It causes evil, it causes good, and it causes pain. I know this in my heart and in my mind, if, evidently, not in my soul - which is why I'll never be bitter, or angry, or vindictive if he does leave me, someday, for Kikyou or for anything else. Only aching sadness would fill me, which is an emotion completely removed from every other, sans happiness in its dearest forms.

Yet, it's because of that possession that love causes, that Kikyou is so bent on keeping him, and so because of his love he must stay by her, and care for her, and be by her side, even in the darkest depths of hell. He would endure it for the feeling they once shared, even if she has long hurried it away. And then I weep, and I curse, and I try desperately not to make wishes like, "I wish Kikyou would vanish," because then I would be so much like her, so much like what I strive not to be.

But then it all suddenly becomes all forgiven, only because I love him. Or not forgiven; perhaps it's part of the reasons for why he is the wonderful being that he is. Inu Yasha is devoted to the love he had - or has - for her; that loyalty was much earned to her, all those years ago, and even though she has forgotten it, he never will. And maybe it's one of the reasons why I can't let go of him, because it is the most saddening, devote type of loyalty that I think I will ever see. And so this love for him can never stop; it is with me when I breathe, when I walk, and when I feel the breeze pass me by, ruffling my hair, and I turn to look up, hoping that it's him. I live it, at every moment of my waking day and at every moment of my resting night. And if he leaves me, I'll weep, and I'll mourn, and I'll hope that he'll come back, more desperately than I've ever hoped for anything in my life.

But I'll never stop loving him. I could never go and find another love; maybe that's just my immature self speaking, my sixteen year old self that can't bear to think of having 'another love', but it's something I believe in, with all of my heart that loves him, which is all of it. The very thought is impossible; it could not come into existence when my world revolves around him, and even if he was gone from me, I never could forget - only aimlessly spin off into space, my center of balance lost forever until I crash into the walls of the universe.

And then, people ask my why I can't let go, why I love Inu Yasha, of all the ones I could love, in all the worlds I live in, in all the times I walk through. And then I wonder myself, why I love him so deeply, so strongly. That painful, trapping emotion, the place where I can't get out of, and have no wish to do so.

He's rude, he's obnoxious, he has no manners, he was never the type of person I imagined loving, our first meeting consisted of him calling me names and alternately trying to kill me, and he can't make up his mind between me and a walking sandbag.

But I've long resolved the last and strongest reason. So I still wonder - why do I love him? This love, the driving reason for this endless need for me to stay by his side, to be the one who makes him happy, who supports him, even if it makes me sad, even if he makes me cry.

When he looks at me in that way, that sad, hopeless way; 'I'm sorry, I can't stay by your side, I have a loyalty to somebody else…'

And then it seems as if my world grows dim, the curtains shadowing me away from the light.

But if he can't stay by my side, then I'll stay by his.

Because I love him, and it seems that I've always loved him, even though I know I haven't; and he is more important to me than nearly anything else in the world, that I'd go to hell alone for all eternity, if only for the blessed reason of him being happy.

But I don't love him for the way he smiles at me, or falls asleep on my bed. Or for when he saved those villages from bandits, or all the dozens of people who hate youkai and him alike, or how he couldn't kill that little girl-hanyou even though it was his last chance to win.

And I don't love him, either, for the way he hides his feelings so goofily, or for the way that he pampers Shippou when no one but me is looking, or for the way he tolerates my brother rather than throwing him out the window.

And I don't love him for the way he can't make up his mind between two different girls, because he's so devoted and loyal, or the way he tries to hide that he really, really wants to see his father, or the way he can't help but be so justice-driven even when no justice has ever been given him.

Because when you've been sitting in a dark room for thousands and thousands of years, and one random day, someone draws open the curtains that you didn't know were there, and you feel the sun's light for the first time, caressing your skin and filling up your eyes and drowning your mind and burning your soul, you don't need to answer when someone asks those inevitable questions.

Why do you love the sun?

And will you ever stop?