Disclaimer: No own InuYasha.

Large chunk of this chapter will be vocal introspection and Kagome's rantings about the jewel. Important chapter though, people! Can't promise it's interesting… but hey. I can't be good all the time, ne?

His Past, Her Present, Their Future

Chapter 34 - Musing

Kagome stood blinking back tears in the early afternoon sunshine, her eyes deceivingly bright. She stepped up to the somehow newer wood of the Bone Eater's Well and passed a hand inches above its surface. "My journey began here, you know," she said with a wan smile. "A little more than one thousand years from now, my cat had wandered into the structure that encloses this well, and Mistress Centipede rose from its depths and pulled me five hundred years back in time because the jewel was within my body."

Yumi and Kirara had kept on to the Exterminator's village, with a loving whisper to the feline before she went and an extracted promise to watch over Sango when she came about and to help keep watch over her original mistress's soul, since the village would keep the jewel for many more years to come. Now Sesshoumaru and Kagome stood alone in the well's clearing, Kagome's eyes lighted with unshed tears.

"I ran from her when I got to this side," she said, walking through the path she knew so well in silence, her companion following in his usual graceful manner behind. When she reached Goshinboku she stepped up on the gnarled roots and ran her fingers over the yet unmarred bark. "And I saw a puppy-eared boy pinned to this tree. In my time, youkai were thought to be only myth, so I thought I was dreaming…"

She trailed off, and when she continued her voice was choked. "We went through so much together. After the first few weeks when he was trying to kill me, we became so close. He was my protector, my hope. We gathered our strange band of allies, bonded by the evil that had affected us all, and my own duty to restore that which I started.

"This stupid thing," she said softly, gripping the Shikon Jewel and speaking more to herself than anything, "caused so much pain and heartache. When I shattered it, I became the reason for every human and youkai killed for possession of just a tiny piece. All for some trinket of false power. So many died to try and get it, or to try and keep it from the hands of the evil that wanted it.

"Lives ruined, love destroyed, families broken… and now it will all end. Though my wish was not the pure and selfless wish needed to win Midoriko's fight, the sacrifices I am going to make will give her the power she needs to defeat the monsters she was sealed with. But what was the cost? All the pain and hurt that revolved around this stupid thing!

"Naraku forced the betrayal between Kikyou and InuYasha into death and near-death to attain the wretched little bead, he cursed Miroku's grandfather and his male descendants to imminent death by their own palms, he forced an innocent little boy to slaughter most of his family then serve him as a zombie, then pit him against his sister in battle to eventually be killed in a need for the shard he possessed. He wrecked lives, he stomped hearts and dreams and hopes! He was slowly killing everyone around me and I could do nothing to stop it!

"All for what? Power? Acknowledgment? No. That isn't even how it started. Lust. He wanted Kikyou and couldn't have her, the burnt and mangled piece of shit he was, so instead of dying like a normal human he offered himself to demons. Just for revenge against a woman who he never had any claim to. So, he destroyed her life, InuYasha's life, my life by extension of both of them, and after getting a lust for that, he continued on ruining everything for everyone he could.

"Because of him I lost all my friends in my own time, not that they meant much to me after a year or so. He strained my relationships with my family, almost killed me countless times, succeeded in killing me once, tried to take over my mind, destroyed my self-confidence, and tried to rip away the only people who meant anything to me!

"But then, this all comes back to being my own fault. If I hadn't been so stupid, if I hadn't shattered the jewel… Shippou wouldn't have lost his father, Kohaku never would have been resurrected to torment Sango's already battered heart, villagers would have lived, youkai wouldn't have gone mad. It was all my own fault, I suppose. All of the problems I faced on my journeys… it was my doing. The pain, the hurt… I did it."

A soft caress across her jaw broke her from her ranting and she turned into the sympathetic eyes of her love. His eyes were so open to her, even more than they had been when she had first arrived. The gruffness she had compared to InuYasha's was gone, and his emotions shone through trusting that she would never use them against him. She reveled in that normally, but now she wanted to scream at him not to pity her, not to look at her with those eyes. He spoke in hardly above a whisper. "And if you hadn't shattered it?"

Kagome stopped and tilted her head. She really hadn't thought of that. "Well, I guess then that Naraku would have taken the whole jewel from me in the first place and made his wish to be unconquerable as High Ruler, or whatever in the hell he planned to do with it."

"Would that have led to more or less destruction?"

"More, much more."

"Then it seems it was by will of the gods themselves. They did not wish this Naraku to gain control of its power, and they needed to buy you and your friends time to be able to go against him."

The tears she had held back fell now and she stepped down off the roots, leaning her forehead into his chest. "But then, am I changing things now? We were not meant to love, and yet I could not stop myself from falling for you. Have I threatened even more lives for my own selfishness?"

"Don't you say that," he said roughly, pulling her back to meet his gaze. "This Sesshoumaru will not allow it. You may have changed things, but everything will still be right, I promise you. What are a couple extra years of waiting?"

"But what if things changed? There is something in my time, called the Chaos Theory. Basically it means if I swat a fly now, I could make myself not exist!"

"Why would an insect damage your lineage?"

"That's not the point, Sesshou! It means even the smallest most harmless change can rip things apart irrevocably!"

"I cannot comfort you about that, because I do not know. You have seen these futures, not I. But what is it you are truly worried about, Kagome?"

She sighed and pulled gently out of his embrace, walking back to Goshinboku. "InuYasha."

"Why?"

She flopped down gawkily on the roots and sighed. "His path crosses your own far too much before either of you meet me in that time. I am afraid… I am afraid you would harm him knowing that he will be your enemy one day. And I am afraid you'll take me from him too early, before I have fixed him, before our friendship is secure. I am afraid you will make me frightened of you instead of just indignant. I am afraid of… oh gods, I'm being selfish again."

"Continue, please," he said softly, dropping to his knees before the silently crying girl.

"I am afraid of losing all I had with InuYasha," she said softly. His breath hitched and she looked up to see the twinge of pain in his eyes. "No, you don't understand! All I went through with him… he made me what I am. He made me strong, he made me weak. He built me up just to send me crashing back down again. One moment I felt like I was flying, and the next I was drowning so deeply I couldn't see the light of the surface. It was him that showed me what love was, in his own way.

"True, most of the time he made me feel like absolute crap, but he gave me the wings I needed to take off. It was because of my need to prove myself to him that I honed my abilities, it was my hopes of gaining him that kept me coming back heartbreak after heartbreak. It was constantly being in Kikyou's shadow that finally made me rise above it all and be myself, show myself, and be stronger than she ever hoped to be.

"InuYasha was a lot of things to me… he was my first love, my first kiss, my first heartbreak, my first real loss… from the moment I met him to his death, he molded me from the babbling little girl I was at first to the still-babbling woman I am now. I am stronger for knowing him, for experiencing life with him. For putting my heart in his claws I am now who I am.

"In the first year, I changed the way I dressed. In the second, I developed my powers. In the third, I amended my speech. By the fourth I had somehow grown up without even realizing it. And it all started with InuYasha. He was the centerpiece in my life.

"Don't you see? A wise youkai once told me that it is the past which makes us, and I would be a fool to let go of my experiences. You were right when you said that. I would not be me without it all, I would not be so strong. I would not be able to truly appreciate all I have without having suffered so hard in the process of getting to this point."

Sesshoumaru pursed his lips in thought. "So, you are afraid I would kill InuYasha before you meet him? I would not be so foolish, knowing he plays a part in your future. You said that without him you would not be here, right?"

"Yes," she said softly.

"Then take me not for a fool. I am not so vicious and vengeful that I would allow any degree of hatred to blind me. I know you need him, so therefore I wouldn't do something so unwise."

"But… I… damnit, Sesshou!" she said, wrenching her eyes closed. "But every little thing could change things. If not for your attempts on his life, even, things would not be the same. He would never gain an item very important to our journey if not for you seeking it yourself! I can't lay out every encounter you've ever had with him just so you can duplicate them! Not to mention that you very much tried to kill me! Even just the absence of that could change it all."

"I would never attempt to kill my mate."

"That is my point! There's one thing at least that will surely change. I could be damning the future to some terrible demise all because I love you!"

He gripped her head forcefully in his hands and rose her gaze to meet his. "Do you regret your feelings for me, then?"

"No. I cannot."

"Then stop this foolishness. You cannot change which has already happened, and you cannot stop love. I know this, because honestly, it would be much easier for me not to love you as I do." Kagome's eyes went wide and tears spilled over the edges unchecked. He continued softly, still looking into her eyes. "But I would not trade that which I feel for you for anything. I would gladly give up anything you asked me to just to keep you here with me, to never have to lose you. But even though I know I must lose you, I would still have it no other way. I would rather live a thousand years in waiting for you than to live a million lifetimes that did not include you."

Her sob was choked as she flung herself into his arms and broke, her tears hot against his neck where she burrowed against him. Her voice was choked and muffled against him. "I just can't stand this! Am I just a pawn to the gods? Just some cheap sacrifice for their plans?"

"How could you be? Every living being tries its best under the circumstances it is dealt. Every life forms a link in the chain that eventually creates the future. With even a single missing link, that future will crumble and fall. Therefore, there is no useless life or pawn, we are all important in some way. If you did nothing in this time, would you be contented to just sit there and know your future was certainly doomed because of it?"

"No…"

"Then stop this foolishness about regrets about that which has already happened. You can no more change it than I could. Whatever will be, will be, and fate will take its course."

"You believe, then, that fate is linear?"

"Yes, I do. The gods lead us to whatever path they have chosen for us."

"Bullshit!" she suddenly exclaimed, extracting herself from his arms. She blazed down at her youkai, silent flames curling upon themselves in the cool recesses of her eyes.

Sesshoumaru was confused to her reaction, and his face showed it. "But it is true. The Gods have a path for us all, and without that path all would fall to ruin."

"I know that is the belief of this time period, but it's crap! Absolute crap! That is saying, mincing no words, that none of us have any control over our future. That is saying that any love we feel, any happiness, any anything is just predestined. What good is finding contentment and love if it was supposedly 'meant to be'? I want to know that I've earned my happiness!"

"Does that lessen the happiness to know it was destined?"

"Yes! To believe it was fate that make everything in my life happen… I can't accept that. I won't. I believe in luck and chance, no matter what they bring to me. I believe in the divine will of the gods, of course I do, but I think we simply have a purpose in life, not that every single move we make was laid out for us like some story!"

Sesshoumaru was silent, not wishing to anger her more. He contemplated her words but it was not an easy idea to accept. It was a frightening thought to believe things to be so unsure. Why would she relish in such an idea?

She crumpled once more, no longer seeming to have the energy to weep as her head fell limp in front of her. She looked despondent, morose. Sesshoumaru approached her again and cupped her face in his hands, staring deeply into her eyes. "None of these philosophies matter, Kagome. We are here, is that not enough?"

Her eyes slowly rose to his, and though dry-eyed he had the distinct impression that she was still sobbing in silence. She nodded and allowed herself to be gathered against his chest. She sighed and rubbed her cheek against the silk there, letting the scent and feel of her love relax her worries away - for now.

It was then, in the briefest moment of contentment, that the jewel began to glow.