Disclaimer: Last night I had a dream that I owned it, but twas all but a fleeting fantasy.
...The Wait...
Sometimes days and weeks flew by. Other times the hours crawled by at a snail's pace. Inuyasha watched as Sango and Miroku married, had eleven children, grew old together, and finally died. He never saw Sesshomaru again, though Rin came on Ah-Un to visit him once, to tell him that Sesshomaru had formally adopted her. Koga led his pack well for over a century, but was mortally wounded in battle. Inuyasha and Shippo went to see him before he died.
"Well, mutt," he said, "it's been fun. Shippo, make sure he treats my woman right." Those were Koga's last words.
Shippo cried some more, and he and Inuyasha left to continue their wait for Kagome.
ooOoo
The human uprising came and went, and demons were driven into hiding. Inuyasha managed to lay low during this time, offering his services as a mercenary whenever he needed money, then purchasing a spell from a sorceress to keep his ears hidden from human view. Shippo practiced his kitsune illusion spells, and was soon able to conceal his tail and other demon features without help. Inuyasha taught him some fighting skills as he grew, and soon Shippo could hold his own in battle almost as well as the hanyou.
Throughout all of this, Inuyasha did not age a day, and people noticed this. Loathe as they were to leave the vicinity of the Well, the Inuyasha and Shippo were forced to keep moving around the countryside to keep their identities hidden. Tales of their deeds during the hunt for the Shikon shards faded into legend, legend into myth, and myth into bedtime fairytale. People forgot that youkai ever existed. Territories were eventually given new names, and villages grew into cities as entire forests were torn down. Technology quickly grew to achieve what only magic could do previously, and people forgot about that too.
And the years passed.
Inuyasha came to understand more and more of Kagome's world. Schools were set up all over the country, and Shippo was very excited on his first day there. But again, the fact that Shippo grew so much more slowly than the other children forced them to move every couple of years, and transfer to a new school under a different name. After a while, Inuyasha got curious and started looking at the things the kitsune was bringing home. It was in this manner that he taught himself to read, write, and all those other essentials of the modern world. For essential they were, and for the first time, he understood some of what Kagome went through in her double life.
Kagome... Every once in a while, Inuyasha was tempted to give up his vigil--just renounce the wish and die already. It was these times that he traveled however many miles it took back to the Goshinboku, where he had last seen her. He often stood there for hours on end, fingering his Subjugation Beads (which still refused to come off his neck!) and thinking. With the wars ending, that was really all there was to do to pass the time: think.
"Hey kid," a man shouted behind him, "you gotta get off the construction site; we've been commissioned to build a Shinto shrine here." For a moment, Inuyasha just stared wide-eyed at the man. Then he grinned and left. For the first time, he realized how far he had come. He couldn't quit now, not when he was so close!
Besides...Kagome never quit on him.
ooOooOooOoo
Sorry all you Sesshy fans, but this is an Inu/Kag fic. And there really wasn't much else I could do with Koga, so I ended him in a spirit I thought was appropriate. Hope you all approve.
Next up...The Answer
Don't worry. It's longer than this one.