Memory's Moon: Forgotten
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"Kagome-chan, you're going to be late!"
Higurashi Takako had never lamented her lot in life. Losing her loving husband, Shinta, in the very hour of Souta's birth, raising two children in a decrepit shrine with only her slightly fanatic father for emotional support, even watching her young daughter change from a carefree young girl to a deeply wounded young woman, had not been sufficient to destroy her unswerving trust in the inherent purpose of all things. And now that Kagome had returned, safe and sound, she counted her blessings and pronounced herself satisfied with her fortunes, as she had always been.
Well, except when Souta blew up the washing machine…
And when Grandpa had blown the week's marketing money on some monkey paw…
And…
When Kagome had returned… without any memory of her friends down the well.
The middle-aged woman stood at the foot of the stairs, waiting patiently and picking through her confused feelings like a heron hunting fish.
It wasn't as if Kagome had simply regressed to her fifteen year old state, although that might have been harder to bear. No, Kagome was well aware that she was eighteen, remembered all the things she had studied, all the people she had ever known in 'her' era (she still remembered Hojo's intentions toward her and her corresponding feelings toward him, which were, unsurprisingly, not quite reciprocal)… it was just that… she didn't know that she had once fallen through a well and met many people who would become closer, wiser friends than the giddy schoolgirls she had renewed her friendships with. She didn't remember the three years of questing she had very nearly dropped out of high school to accommodate, only that she had been a 'very sickly child'.
They'd made the great mistake of letting Kagome's friends visit her when she regained consciousness. Once the wide-eyed girls explained that she had been absent for two months with a serious case of nearly incurable meningitis, the reason had stuck in her head and become ingrained so deeply along with the other illnesses her friends had recollected to her, until none of Kagome's own family dared to disturb that beautiful delusion for fear of causing the girl's face to twist into that troubled, pinched look that had lined her forehead in that final fateful week before she had returned as she was now.
It was possibly the only time Higurashi Takako had had to quell certain homicidal urges toward her aged father.
He had thereafter burned his medical dictionary at her insistence.
But then, as long as she's happy… as long as things are over…
…as long as things are over… then maybe it's not so bad…?
"Mama!" Kagome pattered rapidly down the stairs, schoolbag slung carelessly over one shoulder and wavy black hair pulled haphazardly back into a messy bun. She looked harried but happy; the older woman firmly squashed all residual feelings of uneasiness as she smiled fondly at the vibrant young woman who was her beloved eldest child.
"Here, breakfast… I'll leave out lunch for you if you decide not to go out with Yuka and Eri today…?" Takako winced inwardly at the plaintive note in her voice. Okay, so maybe she didn't think staying around those two for very long was a great idea… Luckily, Kagome passed it off as normal motherly concern that she would be as boy-crazy as her two friends, and hastened to reassure her mother to the contrary even as she tugged her socks on, stuffed the proffered piece of toast between her jaws and rushed out at top speed.
…as long as she's happy, Takako reminded herself sternly, I WILL be happy too.
With that self-admonition in mind, she went upstairs to clean the bedrooms… and was almost instantly arrested by a loud claws-on-glass scratching noise coming from Kagome's room.
She broke into a sprint, knowing that there could be only one person who knew where Kagome's window was…
…and didn't know how to open the window from outside…
CRASH
"Oi, Kagome!" the familiar growling voice thundered, to the accompaniment of the sharp tinkling sound of falling glass shards. Takako ground to a halt by the open door of her daughter's bedroom, surveyed Inuyasha's suddenly guilty countenance against the backdrop of a shattered glass window, and let her forehead fall against the light wood with a soft thud.
----
He didn't want ramen, which was a surprise; the way Kagome had carried on about his pseudo-obsession, Takako had thought he would enjoy the cheap treat, but no.
Today, Inuyasha was different. He was focused, he was mature, and his face was imprinted with the bleak harsh marks of dawning despair as she folded her hands in her lap and quietly told him not to bother Kagome anymore. "She forgot…" he hesitated, voice dropping to a low rumble, "…she forgot everything?" He had been saying that for a while now, each time stressing a different word as if that would alter its meaning, its import.
She forgot everything?
She forgot everything?
She forgot everything?
"She's safe here, happy here," the mother said, the same defense she put up in response to his disbelieving echoes. The excuse seemed stale and just a little sad, and the hurt in his hunched shoulders- a flinch reaction she knew he had never shown Kagome no matter how sorry he had ever been- showed that he accepted the truth in her words. "Just go back down the well, Inuyasha-kun. It's better that way."
He seemed to shrink slightly under the understanding in her gaze. "I… I guess… but there are still shards…"
"Go back, Inuyasha-kun. I've never disapproved of you dragging my daughter around Japan before, so surely you understand my reasons now."
"I…"
"Inuyasha-kun, go."
White ears flattened as he rose and slunk silently out of the house. Takako stared at the low table in the wake of his beaten departure, knowing that she had just burned another of her daughter's bridges, and felt her chest twist. "I'm so sorry, Inuyasha-kun…"
----
"I told you not to seek out the miko."
Leaping out of the well, Inuyasha leveled a dispirited glare upon his pale tormentor. "Piss off and get the hell out of my forest."
Slitted golden eyes narrowed. "Her time here is over, you stupid half-breed."
They growled at each other.
"Sesshoumaru-sama, isn't the nice lady going to come back?"
The Lord of the Western Lands did not stop glaring at his half-brother. "No."
Rin's eyes grew large and shiny with a child's easy tears. "Why?"
An elegantly clawed hand came down to rest on Rin's dark head. "Higurashi has returned to her home far away. She will not be returning again."
"Did you say something to 'Kaasan?" The young male voice was shrill with bitter disappointment and unreasoning accusation, the verbal barbs sinking deep as Inuyasha flinched and flattened his ears. "I bet you made her angry- she should have given you enough 'sit's to break your dumb head, you-!"
Sesshoumaru's one hand moved in a blur, grabbing the upset kitsune firmly out of the air before he could do something unfortunate. "Be quiet, brat," the lord hissed softly, a hint of venom creeping into his voice. "You speak of things you do not understand-"
"Everything would be bloody wonderful if she could 'sit' me!" Inuyasha roared angrily and stalked off into his forest in a fury, leaving behind a bewildered Shippou, a crying Rin and a silent, expressionless Sesshoumaru to absorb the import of his puzzling words.
----
In the wake of Naraku's sudden inexplicable disappearance, the world continued much as it had always been; people lived, people loved, were born, and died. The forests still harbored their youkai cheek-to-jowl with the beasts of air and earth, and the humans still held them in respect and fear. As they should, and with reason. The predator/prey relationship demanded acknowledgment.
And then there were a few pockets here and there… places cursed enough that nothing ever grew there again, places still filled to each grain of dust with the lingering despair of their destruction. Dead places.
Mostly human places. Or ex-human places, to be exact.
The dirt whispered under his boots as he strode through the ghost village, looking neither to the right nor to the left though his senses tingled with the oppressive feel of multiple old deaths- a village full, perhaps. The bodies had long turned dry, the bones fallen to dust, but they had merely taken on a form no less piteous for its lack of coherence. It was as if each old scent in his nose was an ephemeral wail for attention, a last ditch effort to procure oneself a proper grave.
There had been no graves dug here since the final death of the human settlement.
If he cast his mind back, back, back, he could still envision the dead village fresh and raw, the stench of bodies rotting in their own skins because there had been no killing wound. They had died in their own sleep; a peaceful death, perhaps, but he had no use for a useless death such as this. Even in his reverie, his lip curled in an elegant gesture of disdain. Humans.
There was a deep narrow scar in the packed earth where the houses parted, a scar that had recently harbored a very special sword… a blade more closely connected to Higurashi Kagome than time or chance might dictate. He approached it calmly, feeling the wind pick up as he neared the scar. It reminded him of days long gone- the first time he had approached the sword, mere minutes after its being planted in this human village. But then his father had towered beside him, the warm prickling shield of a taiyoukai's youki shielding his young self from the worst effects of the cursed blade's power; now, he stood firm on his own power and pushed forward inexorably, clearing the barrier around the scar with only a harder step than usual to show the effort it took.
If the Inu-taishou could have seen his son now, Sesshoumaru thought with grim humor, there would be no doubt about his approval. His son had remembered the father's promises honorably, after all- even if it was to a human. Tenseiga itself had acknowledged its wielder's worthiness, though that approval was marked with the wind youkai's poisoned blood.
He frowned faintly and shoved the unfamiliar feeling of regret back where it belonged.
Drawing Tenseiga from its place of honor by his hip, Sesshoumaru angled it with the original crevice, letting the blade slide in like a stone into water. Instantly the blade's metal edge seethed with light, waves of pulsing power flowing down the sharp length and into the seal affixed into the very earth.
Like smoke gathering into a cloud, the flowing male lines of the shikigami took form, relaxing from a hunched posture as if awakening from a deep sleep. The very detail of this being showed that it had once been something human before being forced into this form… a long time ago.
The Lord flicked a thoughtful, unsurprised glance at Tenseiga. It had the power to reach beyond the grave, yes, but not even Tenseiga could bring something back to life, which did not have a body to return to. The only reason why its powers were useful in this situation was because the soul of this human still resided here, trapped by the seal and the sword which had only recently been taken away.
Sesshoumaru-sama.
The rich baritone was good-natured and familiar, though made slightly hollow with the weight of death and the ages. Unlike the shikigami which manifested when Oborezuki anchored the spell, this being was a true spirit; this was the ghostly form of the human who had had the unlucky fate of being made into a living sword.
"It is… pleasant… to speak with you again," the inuyoukai said slowly, working his tongue stiffly around the unfamiliar courtesies, a relic of his extreme youth. Once he'd hit the age of self-dependence, he had more or less relied on overwhelming displays of dominance to guide his relationships (if one could call them that) with his peers. "How… have you been?"
The years have been kind; I have found my daughter. Thank you, by the way.
"You owe me."
You haven't changed a bit, Sesshoumaru-sama.
The ghost's eyes crinkled in a slight squint, then the lines deepened into laugh lines of real humor as the inuyoukai brandished his claws in warning.
But you have truly grown since I saw you- how long ago? Five hundred?
"Give or take," Sesshoumaru conceded graciously, his long mane of hair shifting in the listless wind that eternally caressed this dead ground. "And if you begin sprouting foolish thoughts about yesteryear, Higurashi, you may consider your next nap an eternal nightmare."
Ah, there's no fun in that. After all, you were only this high-
"Higurashi-"
You have no sense of humor.
"We will not speak further on this," Sesshoumaru said ominously. "What of your daughter, that Kagome?"
The spirit's humor faded, leaving only a lonely sort of wisdom behind.
I sent my daughter home. She will be happy there.
At least she had the chance to return…
"Ah, your home… through that rickety well-portal, was it not?"
Yes, Sesshoumaru-sama. You should try as hard as you can to wait for its advent on this world… I daresay Tokyo, or Osaka, will leave you a few sights to remember…
The ghost's translucent face dimmed slightly in regret and wistful reminiscence.
The cherry blossom wind…
"Return to your rest, Higurashi," Sesshoumaru said, not unkindly, averting his keen gaze from the ghost's unseemly public display of sorrow. One clawed hand closed around Tenseiga's rarely used hilt, gripping firmly. "We shall speak of your daughter anon."
The ghost gracefully slid to one knee in midair, a courtly servant's gesture of allegiance and respect.
I would be honored, Sesshoumaru-sama. This Higurashi Shinta will await your return.
----
A/N: Hehehe. And now we see what exactly Kagome forgot about… and things start falling into place. Kagome's dad, Sesshoumaru and the well… as well as a few other things that required several arrows to explain to myself…
On a side note, the expected story length has gone from 'ten' to 'indefinite', because I finally sat down and hammered out the story skeleton. Argg. Reviews always appreciated!