A QUESTION OF INCARNATION

CHAPTER 3 Frustration

A/N: I really tried to make Adrian in charecter, I did, but it's harder when there's no one around for him to be argumentative with for most of the chapter... Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, any of the shows charecters or any of the plot lines.

Kagome eventually fell asleep, and he carried her to her bedroom across the hall. Adrian set her gently onto her bed, and straightened. Just like her presence, the room also made him feel calm. It also felt rather familiar. He could see her studying in the desk across from him, or sleeping on the bed as she was now. He also saw himself getting beaned in the head by the trashcan sitting in the corner, but that didn't make near as much sense. He glanced at her one last time, and noticed the bottle hanging around her neck. He was curious, it was pulling at him, but at the same time some instinct was telling him to leave it alone.

Adrian was tired as well, but he stubbornly stayed up until Mrs. Higurashi and Kagomes' younger brother returned from her younger siblings field trip. He then explained that Kagome had said he could board here in exchange for doing work around the shrine. The woman nodded in agreement, but she was looking at him curiously, trying to place him it seemed. He made his escape soon after.

Adrian lay in his new bed, tired, but his mind going around in circles far too fast for him to have any hope of sleeping. Not one to think too far ahead, he simply lived in the present, and took things as they were. Some people called it lazy, he just called it simple. When you can't change something, thinking about it only makes you wish you could, so there is little use for it. But this. This called for some major meditation. It was all too weird. This house, this girl, her mother, he had seen it all before. He knew the phrase "deja vu" was quite overused, but it was made for this sort of thing.

He eventually narrowed it down to several key questions.

1.Who as this girl, and why did she offer to let him stay? She didn't have to afterall, nobody really cared about him in the past, and she hadn't even run a background check. He could have been some druggie, or an escaped convict for all she knew (he was none of these things, but still).

2.Why did everything seem so familiar? Because Kagome was about his age, there was a chance he had run into her somewhere, but for him to have run into her mother too was highly unlikely in a city this big.

3.What was that bottle around her neck?

He figured if he could get answers to these questions, a lot more would make sense. It was a good starting point at the very least. He resolved to do some more exploring tommorow while he was working. Thus, at least a goal in mind, he drifted to sleep.

He awoke the next morning to a nice sunny day. Perfect for working outside. He walked downstairs to look for some signs of life. Adrian passed through the living room, noting the urn on the mantle, with the picture of an old man in a white shirt glaring at him next to it. Kagome's grandfather he presumed. He found a note on the kitchen table, telling him that the usual inhabitants of the house had gone out clothes shopping for him, and asking him if he could get started on the vegetable garden out front, and that the tools were in a shed in the backyard. That was nice of them. He really hadn't had any new clothes in a while, and he couldn't remember the last time he had owned a real pair of pajamas. He would need to find some way to pay back their generosity. However, the vegetable garden could wait. He needed to do some exploring.

He decided to start with Kagome's room, as it had seemed so familiar the previous night. It really didn't seem all that interesting upon first entering, just like any teenage girls room would probably look like. Not that he had really ever been in any, but still. Light, airy, the occasional touch of pink or clothing item on the floor here and there, it was decidedly her. However, the kinds of things he was looking for would not be found on the surface. Judgeing from her breakdown the previous night, something had happened to or with some guy about his age. Because she hadn't been willing to throw out his clothes, she wouldn't have been willing to through out any letters or photographs either. He was quite proud of having figured this all out, so, without further adieu, he began sorting through her stuff.

It didn't take him long to find a small, unmarked photo album underneath her bed, only with enough room for 20 or so photographs. It was filled though, and some unfamiliar flowers were pressed in between the pages, and there was even a few drawings in there, carefully folded. He looked at these first. One looked as though it was done by a small child, beyond the stick figure stage, but still not willing to give up the crayons for more grown-up drawing instruments. It showed a man in purple robes, his cheek red, smiling at a lady clothed in a black and pink suit who also looked to be barely containing a grin with her mock anger. Next to them was another lady, this one in a school girl outfit, waving, riding piggyback on a man with red robes and long white hair who was also smiling. In between them stood a child, a self-portrait of the artist, he assumed, petting a small yellow cat. But as he looked at it longer, small details began to dawn on him. Both the lady in black and the man in red carried swords. The child had a large, bushy tail. The man in purple was wearing the robes of a buddhist monk. And the red on his face was a slap mark. The cat had two tails. And the man in red had dog ears. Although these things could easily be disregarded as a flight of fancy by a young child, something about them felt real. He decided to move on to the photos, and look at the second drawing later.

It scared the bejesus out of him. There was only one roll of film contained in the album, but each picture brought something new. The man in purple was shown first. He was right in thinking he was a buddhist monk, he had done a report on them several years ago, and he recognized his staff. The lady in black appeared to be a fighter, and also the girlfriend of the monk. The subsequent pictures showed him hugging her, and then him groping her, and then him getting slapped. Neither appeared to be all that mad though. Then Kagome showed up. And the young child, who did indeed have a tail and unusually skinny legs, and the cat with red eyes and two tails. And the man in red. There was something about him. It gnawed at the edges of his mind, something fighting fiercely to be remembered, but not quite dawning on him. It was frustrating as hell. Why this all of a sudden? Why? It was important, he knew that, was that was unfortunately all he knew. It was infuriating. Yeah, these people could have just all dressed up for some costume party, but their tan lines matched up with what they were wearing (don't ask him how he noticed these things, he couldn't tell you), and he had had a cat once. No cat came with red eyes and two tails, he knew that, but you would NEVER get a cat to wear contact lenses and a prostethic willingly. And without tearing you to pieces in the process. The apocalypse would come sooner than that happened. And the man with dog ears didn't seem to even have normal human ones at all. Every logical part of his mind was telling him it made no sense and yet it seemed so familiar, so real. So maddening.

But there was still several pictures left. The first was a wider shot, of all 4 teenagers and the child, in front of a tree. But not just any tree, it was the tree outside Kagome's window. They had the same large bald spot, midway up the trunk. But there was no fence surrounding it in the picture, nor was there any shrine built behind it. Kagome only appeared to be a few years younger in the photo at most, but the shrine that you should have been able to see behind the tree was at least 40 years old, it's roof falling in with age. It it had been built after the picture was taken it would be much newer. Surely it wasn't the same tree they were standing in front of- right? Then, picture after picture of the guy in red. With an impossibly large sword drawn, smirking. Scrowling. Face down in the dirt. He went to close the album when one last one fell out. Obviously taken by an amateur, a fingertip just showing in the corner and the camera slightly crooked, taken at night without the flash. It was the man in red, sleeping, sitting up against a tree, Kagome in his arms, just barely illuminated by the campfire in front of them, both with smiles on their sleeping faces. The edges of the photo were frayed, the corner was bent, and it was obviously treasured by this room's inhabitant.

The last drawing he found was of the man in red as well. This one was done by someone much older than the first drawing, with a practiced hand. He was sitting in the crook of a tree, staring out over the horizon, one leg dangling below him. The artist had obviously put much time into it. He carefully placed the album back in it's former position (he was good about remembering that kind of thing), it contents back in place. Kagome's breakdown was beginning to make sense. Something had happened between her and the guy in red, who had been her boyfriend once. What happened- that he didn't know.

He decided he needed a closer look at that tree and the grounds. He walked out the back door, intent at at least finding a trowel and hoe for the garden. The tree caught his eye first, it's leafy head seeming to touch the sky, and it stood with an ancient, noble grace. As he got closer he noticed that there was a fence around it. 'It must be that "Sacred Tree" I've heard about, then.' But that didn't matter much. He ran his hand along the spot where bark refused to grow, a scar where something sharp had once pierced the trunk. Then, he saw things

fire

fire

blood

arrow

pain

betrayal

sleep

loneliness

redemption

joy

the girl

so similar

Figments, pieces of a fragmented vision yet to be put together. He saw the man in red, pinned to this very tree, eyes closed, an arrow protruding from his chest, as completely and utterly alone as anyone could ever hope not to be. A name popped in his head. Inuyasha. Dog demon. Somehow he knew that was the red man's name. But instead of seeing the arrow penetrate the man's chest, like he had before, he felt a pain in his own. He jerked his hand away from the trunk, as though burned, and it instantly resided, to the point where he was left questioning if it had simply been all in his mind. But he knew one thing, and that was that something important had happened here. He plunked his butt down, intent upon not moving before he sorted this whole thing out, leaning his back against the inside of the corner post of the fence.

At first he directed his gaze heavenward. Gazing at the whispering leaves, he felt a strange peace settle over him. A solid acceptance. These visions, they were all real. As were the pictures he had seen, and the man in red, and the drawing had been of him sitting in this very tree. Impossible, but real. The leaves rustled, seemingly trying to tell him of what the ancient tree had paid witness to, but he was unable to understand. Frustrated, he looked to the base in front of him.

The first thing that caught his eye was a bouquet of flowers, placed on the ground in front of the tree. Red. He never could really tell one flower from another, but they were fresh. But something glinted, catching his eye as a small ray of sun fell upon it. It disappeared just as quickly, but that nagging in the back of his head was telling him it was important. 'Just SHUT UP already back there, yor're driving me slowly insane.' He told it, but waited impatiently for another break to show him it once more. There- another glint. He dug around it frantically, tossing the flowers aside. It was a lost cause without tools though, so he made an X over it, ignoring the dirt as it dug under his fingernails. "I really need to trim these," he muttered, "but it's time to do some gardening."

Adrian returned with the tools. It was a long object, caked in mud and ash, about4 feet in length. He eventually succeeded in freeing it, and carefully filled in the hole, stomping on it a few times and smoothing it with his hand so as not to be suspicious, replacing the flowers on top of the mark. He carried his prize over to the hose and proceeded to clean it.

He started at the bottom first, and it revealed wood of the deepest ebony, a long hollow tube of it. There was a large crack about half way down, but it was patched with wax of some kind. He continued to clear away, showing a handle of some sort, covered in a half rotten cloth wrap, falling away from it, and a golden tip, the glint that had caught his eye. He held out the now clean object in front of him, and it became clear. He had just found a sword. A very old sword.

A/N: Voila! Review or I'll have my fat, furry, 1200 pound horse"accendentally" snap his head up and catch you in the chin! Just kidding- or am I? Maybe I'll just have Fluffy (yes, that is actually my dad's cat's name) do my dirty work.

Glances at cat out of corner of eye

Flames surround it and horns and fangs adorn it's head.

Looks at it directly.

"Mew."

Pink sparkles dance around it now.

I'm onto you... "Fluffy." If that's really your name... More like- Satan!

Fluffy: "Mwahaha! I shall kill you all!"

P.S. Thank you for all the reviews! Sorry for missing my deadline starts swearing under brath about relatives and computers so I'll post an extra chapter to make up for it. Sorry!I have 20 reviews now! Wow! O.O I can't mention you all, but special thanks to Miko no Kaze and firyfeline for being there for me since the VERY beginning.