"Sorrow" - InuKag Week 5
word count: 1600
Rated: M
The thing with death is that even when you think the pain is gone, something will trip it up- like waking, or bathing, or stirring a pot of ramen noodles- and then there's this irrevocable agony that takes it's time constricting around every organ in your body, starting with the esophagus and working its way down to your intestines.
And it hurts.
And it stays.
Until you forget long enough for it to surprise you when it jingles the door on the way in, paying another visit- although hopefully not while you're in front of people, because then you have to hold it in for as long as you can, and suppressing it only lengthens the ache when you finally have a moment to service it.
To think that this was how Kagome Higurashi would feel, only a few months after returning from the future, was unthinkable.
And now it has become a part of her life.
Because Inuyasha was gone.
Because Inuyasha was dead.
"I want you to take two cups of this, Kagome."
She stares listlessly at the corner of the room, because a giant pit now exists where her soul used to be.
"Kagome, please, I need you to-"
"Just leave it, Kaede."
There is no added politeness, no tacked on show of gratitude. There nothing pleasantry about Kagome any longer, there is just a yawning, terrible darkness that threatens to swallow her whole with each passing hour.
"Kagome," Kaede is stern as she reminds,"You may be with child."
Kagome twists into her sweat drenched sheets and hacks up a dry sob, feeling a crushing nothingness suck out all the lovely and pure things of the world. She just wants to sleep. She wants the old priestess to leave her alone so that she can close her eyes and escape to the only true place she could still see himagain.
The sound of wood landing solidly on her mat resonates in the tiny, abandoned looking hut. Kaede had put the cup down and she was going to depart now.
This isn't the first time Kagome has played this part; forcefully shutting her eyes in hopes that Kaede would take the message and fade away into the blackness.
This is about the sixth time since it happened.
And her visits are no longer farther and farther apart as they used to be; where between the first and the second, Kagome was granted two weeks, now she was only given two days.
"Child, I will not sit by idly and watch you wither away and kill your and Inuy-"
"Get out!" Kagome yelled suddenly, tucking her knees under her chin, rolling into a sideways ball, "Get out! Get out! Get out!" And with each repeated word she felt herself spiraling into a disorienting craziness, all her sanity replaced by an inescapable numbness. "Leave!"
Hands find their way to her shoulders and the next thing she knew she was being smothered in a warm unbreakable embrace.
"Oh, Kagome," the voice above her soothes as wet tears finally roll freely down her dry cheeks.
With each passing month, it was getting more and more difficult to avoid the gravity of her situation.
She was pregnant, she was in the Feudal Era, and she was depressed.
Funny enough, the first two- had there been a different outcome to the battle on the New Moon six months ago- would have been joined with nothing but smiles, laughter, pies, and passionate sex.
But being that the real world was what it was, they both only further instigated the third- depression. Depression, which was a constant nagging emotion that Kagome Higurashi was learning how to adapt to.
She'd go through the motions, tuning out voices, smiling when necessary, and making pretend that she was looking at the glass half full.
When she was not.
The child would have no father, the mother would have no happiness, and whether a she or a he, they would be cursed to this anti-biotic-less world.
(One of Shinichi's kids died yesterday due to what Kagome could only assume was meningitis.)
"Just stay safe," Kagome would whisper into the night, after Kaede would be long fast asleep. "Just don't come out, stay safe."
"Kagome, you have to eat better. For the baby."
Everyone thought they could tell her how to go about her life. The women in the village were insatiable with their constant tips, little tidbits of advice- when she wanted lemons, when she wanted paper, when she wanted to take a silent walk through the market- they would appear like unwanted dust and overwhelm her.
Like she didn't already know.
"Sango, not you too." She sighed.
The mother of three (soon to be four), reached for her shoulder to grip it tightly in an affectionate manner. "I don't say it to annoy you, Kagome. I say it because…"
Because she looked like a swollen corpse.
The circles under her eyes were glowing in the dark, and her arms were skin and bones hanging against her sides.
"I'm fine," A forced smile. "Really!"
"No you're not, Kagome. You don't have to pretend with me."
Then the barrier of false peace broke over the priestess's face. The veil evaporated, and suddenly she wasn't smiling at the demon slayer, she was expressionless.
Real.
"What would you know about it?" She finally laid out harshly. Not with intention to harm, more with intention to inform.
You with the husband that is still alive. You with the children dancing in the meadow. You with the life that she thought she would find here when she took a tumble down a well for the last time.
"What would I know?" Sango's whole face contorted into a frown, before pulling away into a wan smile. "What would I know about death right? About losing someone close to you? Being so deep into a depression that the idea of interacting with others makes you want to vomit? I couldn't possibly know anything about that."
Kagome felt like she had just been pulled from deep comatose state, and where previously she had felt nothing but a gut-wrenching numbness, now she felt guilt. And sadness. And emotion.
"I'm sorry, Sango." She gasped, wringing her hands on top of her belly, "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean-"
"Stop." The woman opposite her stood from her kneeling position and yanked Kagome into a hug.
It always ends with one of these hugs, Kagome thought to herself as she sobbed into the pink fabric of Sango's chest.
"Did you come to lecture me on eating too?"
Silence.
"Because I'm eating just fine, the baby just isn't letting me keep it down."
A bird falls on top of the gravestone in front of her and sings a tune.
"Are you just going to stand there, judging me? Because I wasn't really expecting visitors today- obviously I came to this secluded part of the forest because I wanted to be left alone."
The intimidating presence aside her places a flower that Kagome has never seen by her feet.
"Crush this into some milk." He gazes into her eyes and the intensity of his amber stare makes her look away. "It will keep the food down."
Before he departs, Kagome says, "Wait…Wait."
And when he does, it is almost as if the forest has decided to wait with him.
"Where were you?"
There is no need for context, and the demon's expression remains unreadable. The only telling evidence that he heard her: a fist tightening at his side.
"I was traveling. I was not close."
"When did you find out?"
"When it was too late."
Closure.
"Oh my god," Kagome rasps, after a tedious long night of contractions and pain and blood. "He's here. It's you. Oh my god."
And there is nothing in her heart but joy, and relief, and bliss.
The demons that have plagued her for the past nine months are lying seven feet under. Sorrow is just a term- no longer a living presence in her mind.
She's been given a moment alone with the newborn on her belly, and she scans him over like it will be her last, because if there's anything Kagome has learned from the past year- it's that it very well could be.
He's perfect. He's healthy, he's crying (loudly), and punching at the air already. Ready for a good fight.
"Just like your father," and she stops because now she's crying too. She leans her sweaty forehead onto his tiny white head and tries to hold back the hiccups that wrack her frame. "He'd love you so much!"
"He'd probably try to name you something samurai like. Something like Akechi. Or Hattori."
The infant's cries dribble into a garble of grunts and moans.
"But I like Kido. What do you think? Your dad isn't here to vote, so you have to agree with me, or we keep moving down the list. And I'm warning you," Kagome bops her son on the nose. "The next one on the list is Hojo. Make your move little man."
The baby's ears tremble as he moves to snuffle into his mother's chest. He takes a nipple into his mouth and starts to feed agreeably.
His two golden eyes blink up at her.
She feels a force take permanent hold of her heart.
Then Kagome does something she hasn't done in a very long time…something she never thought possible again.
Not since jumping into a well and emerging on the other side to tell a half-demon that she wished to stay with him.
Not since floating in a suffocating darkness, and watching a spot of red emerge like the birth of a universe in front of her.
Not since her wedding underneath the glow of cherry blossoms.
…
Kagome falls in love.
…
"Stupid," she could almost hear him in the distance with a ridiculous smirk. "Of course you would."
A/N: It's sad but I tried ending it well. She eventually gets over the depression because her son birth is almost like her rebirth. Hope ya'll enjoyed it. Or didn't enjoy it. Or whatever! HAPPY INUKAG WEEEK GUYS WE GOT TWO MORE DAYS. LET'S ENJOY IT TO THE FULLEST! Tagged it NSFW cause of the mention of sex; you never know right?