The Kindness of Strangers
Disclaimer: (to the tune of "I know a song that gets on every body's nerves")
I don't own InuYasha and I know I never will.
I don't own InuYasha and I know I never will.
I don't own InuYasha and I know I never will,
So leave me alone lawyers!
Epilogue- The Kindness of Friends
Kagome saw the half recognized village ahead of them and stopped. In the last week, things had been slowly coming back to her, but she knew for a fact that she wasn't quite the same person. She wasn't as naïve or carefree, or as easy to trust, not even as eager to help strangers for what had strangers done for her in her time of need? Sold her and used her. She would not let it happen to her again.
She looked over at the silent hanyou beside her. He was deep in thought, she could tell. She had learnt, or maybe remembered, how to read him in the last week. He was worried that she wasn't ready for the others, for her family, and maybe she wasn't if what she remembered of her family was true, a different time and place, years, five hundred or so she somehow knew. She didn't want to see them yet. First, she'd deal with her friends.
A ball of red suddenly hit her in the stomach and she grinned. Shippo, her adopted son. She remembered him, not as well as InuYasha, but enough to know it was him.
"Hello Shippo. Did you miss me?"
The child nodded wildly. "I really did Kagome! Don't leave me like that again! I was so worried about you!"
"I'm sorry Shippo," she said softly, stroking the boy's hair. "I didn't mean to worry you."
"Kagome! InuYasha!"
She looked up and saw two people running up to them, a woman and a man, Sango and Miroku her mind told her. She could remember them about as well as Shippo, maybe a little more. InuYasha had spent long hours telling her about their adventures and their tragic pasts. She felt bad for them, but she knew there was still hope for them.
Sango came up to her and hugged her tight, nearly squishing Shippo in the process, but no one complained. Miroku gave her a smaller hug, hands, oddly, not wandering under the watchful gazes of InuYasha and Sango. They asked how she was, how she felt, but avoided the ordeal she had been through. Somehow, they already knew. Maybe Nobunaga had told them. InuYasha had said he would.
After nearly half an hour on the dirt road, InuYasha finally told them it was time to get her inside, to see Kaede for some remedy. The old woman inspected her, asked some general questions and gave her a few potions to drink, some for her head, some to prevent pregnancy. No one said that was what they were, but she knew. She had made some for herself under InuYasha's watchful gaze that first free day. She didn't complain about taking more. Shippo did not know the whole truth, was too young to understand and she couldn't be sure it had been the right mix.
After the potions, Shippo presented her with her bag, the large yellow contraption she vaguely remembered carrying around. She found her own clothing in there and dressed in it, returning InuYasha's haori to him finally. He had destroyed her kimono the first chance he had and she had been wearing it ever since. Night came a little too fast, but she was tired enough to fall asleep under InuYasha's watchful gaze, even with Shippo curled next to her and her friends close by. There was a sense of normality around that night that she had missed, had longed for without knowing what it was. In the morning, they'd go shard hunting, and life would return to normal, or as normal as life could be for a girl who crossed time.
The End.
I wrote this story because I've had the idea rolling around in different forms for over a year and I wanted to finally get it out there. Don't know if you liked it, but read and review any ways. I suppose i could have made it a long one shot-especially considering I'm only doing one authour's note, butI wanted it in chapters. Anyways, R&R!