Blame It on the Changes.
Chapter One:
"Gome, wake up."
Kagome opened her eyes and gave herself a couple of moments to let them adjust to the darkness. Eri sat on her bed, by her side, her hands on the younger girl's shoulders. She looked concerned… and tired. "You look like hell," Kagome told her in a raspy, early-morning voice. She must've just gotten in, Kagome thought as she took in the other girl's appearance, sitting up a little. Eri was still scantily clad in whatever formfitting, revealing outfit she had worn to work tonight. Her hair was still teased and curly and big, and she was even still wearing her makeup, bright blue eyeshadow included.
"You were yelling for him in your sleep as I was coming in the front door," she let Kagome know, standing.
Kagome twisted in the bed and looked down at her friend's feet – bare. She'd already ditched the stilettos, probably close to the front door.
Kagome couldn't blame her; those things were torture devices that were more than likely made my men. Selfish, selfish men.
Eri held her face in her hands, sighing in exhaustion, as Kagome sat up. The dream was so vivid; even three years later, she could still remember that morning… like it was yesterday.
When Kagome was sixteen years old and came upon Inuyasha, dead in that meadow, she had just about lost her mind with grief. Kouga had no idea what to do with her after he ripped her away from Inuyasha's lifeless body. She sobbed and screamed and fought against him, nearly purifying Kouga, but he got her back to the village, back to Kaede, who just held her until she quieted. She didn't stick around to see her friends buried. Somehow, the well allowed Shippo through with her, into the modern world. Kagome held onto the poor, little kitsune boy fiercely after that day; she'd lost so much already – a sister, a brother… a lover. Shippo was like a son to her, and she was like a mother to him. It was right, the two of them being together.
Once Shippo and Kagome had gotten settled in with Mama Higurashi, Souta, and Jii-chan, she waited one night until her little kitsune was fast asleep before recombining her little Jewel shards with the nearly completed portion she'd taken from Naraku upon his defeat. Kohaku had been among the various casualties of the final battle, so she had made sure to purify his shard and reconnect it with Naraku's part of the Jewel. Before she and Shippo left, Kouga had made sure to give his pieces to Kagome as well.
She lay in her bed, her small body curled almost helplessly around Shippo's sleeping form, and she cried again. Clutching the completed and purified Jewel in her small hand, Kagome sobbed as she thought of her fallen friends, making silent wishes to trade the damned Jewel in her hand for their lives back. Shippo woke and laid one tiny, clawed hand on her cheek. His bright, normally mischievous green eyes watched Kagome with undue sympathy, and she'd never forget what he whispered to her right then:
"Don't cry anymore, Mama. Papa wouldn't want you to cry anymore."
She sobbed harder at that, hugging Shippo tighter. That's who she and Inuyasha had become to him: Mama and Papa.
Now he was missing his papa… again.
As Kagome held her boy in her arms, crying herself to sleep, she murmured, "I wish I could have you back, Inuyasha. I wish you could come back to us."
When Kagome and Shippo woke in the morning, the Jewel was gone.
Kagome sighed, rubbing her eyes, and Eri left the room. She got up, readjusting herself to the present day and shaking the dark memories and vivid nightmares from her head. Making her way down the hall to the bathroom for a little midnight call of nature, Kagome stopped in Shippo's doorway. He was snoring soundly. She smirked and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
They had only stayed at the shrine a couple of months before moving to a Tokyo apartment with Eri. She had gotten pregnant and the father left; she'd told her parents, and, dishonored, they'd kicked her out. She dropped out of college and found a job at a small strip club. Kagome couldn't go to college at all; her family just didn't have the money to send her and Souta, and Kagome had spent so much of her time traveling back and forth through the well that her grades had been ruined and she hadn't been able to finish school at all. She'd told Mama to save up and just send Souta; she could support herself and Shippo on her own. It was nice to have Eri there to help, though.
Eri lost her baby when she was just four months along; the father had come around for some reason or another, and they argued, as always. Eri "fell" down the stairs. The result was obvious.
Now it was just the three of them, living in a small, two-bedroom, one-bath place smack in the middle of Tokyo. Eri and Kagome shared one of the bedrooms so that Shippo could have his own room. The miko had told Eri what had happened in the shrine and in the Warring States era when the girls had moved in together at sixteen. She helped her friend and Shippo out a lot after Inuyasha died.
After her trip to the bathroom, Kagome shuffled back to her room in the dark. Eri was exiting the bedroom wrapped in a gnarly yellow towel, and she was carrying a giant, hot pink night shirt in the crook of her right arm. She flashed her roommate a tired smile before the girl disappeared into the bedroom. Kagome practically dove into the bed, hiding herself under the covers and relishing the warmth. She fell back asleep quickly; she didn't even hear Eri come back into the bedroom after her shower.
The alarm woke Kagome around dawn, and she trudged into Shippo's room to get him up for school. He had grown somewhat in the last three years; he looked much like a human eight-year-old would these day. He grumbled as she urged him gently out of the bed; three years spent in the lazy modern time had made him forget his and Inuyasha's habit of getting up every morning with the sun. Running her thin fingers through his shaggy, thick, fire-red hair, Kagome mused in her head about when to schedule him an appointment to get his hair cut; it was getting way too long again. And we just got it cute… she sat there, thinking.
He batted her hand away with his small fist, growling at her a little. "K'gome! Let me get dressed, Mama!" She smiled down at him and walked out his bedroom to give him a little privacy. Eri was still snoring away in her twin bed, which was positioned directly across the small bedroom from Kagome's. Still smiling, the miko snuck back into the bedroom and grabbed a clean, bright blue towel from the pile in the laundry basket. She popped her head into Shippo's room just to check on him; he was pulling on a pair of blue jeans. She decided to jump in the shower for a quickie before walking Shippo to school.
Once she was out, smelling like strawberries and creams, grapefruit, oranges, and mangoes, she checked up on her son before she went to her own bedroom to get dressed. He looked so adorable, pulling a green and white striped polo shirt on over his head, his fluffy, reddish hair sticking right up through the neckhole.
Stifling a giggle that she knew would surely offend him, Kagome dashed into the other bedroom, shutting the door quietly and ignoring Eri's loud, constant snoring. She yanked on a pair of tall, black bootcut jeans and a white tanktop with pink sakura blossoms painted falling across the front of it. She brushed her curly black hair and gathered it into a high, bouncy ponytail. Padding quietly around the small bedroom, it took Kagome just a minute to find her favorite pair of black boots. She put them on over a pair of white socks before making her way down the hall to Shippo's closed bedroom door. She knocked before entering this time and walked in on the boy sitting on the side of his twin storage bed, putting on socks and white and navy blue Nike sneakers.
"You ready for school?" Kagome asked him, plopping down on the small bed beside him; the springs creaked beneath her added weight. She smiled at him, brushing his thick mane out of his face.
"Mama, why are you always touching my hair?" he asked, pushing her hand away once more. Kagome sighed, putting her arm around his shoulders, pulling him flush against her and hugging him close. He settled very nicely into the fold of her arms, and she crushed him to her, suddenly very afraid of losing him as well.
Shippo shifted somewhat in her arms, and Kagome could tell that he was a little uncomfortable. She released him quickly; the miko didn't want to smother her boy.
He turned his head and looked up at her, smiling gently as he said in a small voice, "We're all right, Kagome." Then he looked at the clock behind her and jumped to his feet. "Mama! It's time for school!"
Kagome turned and saw that he was right. Together, they hurried out of the rundown apartment, Shippo nearly forgetting his bookbag and Kagome nearly forgetting to lock the front door.
She and Eri couldn't afford to send him to a nice private school like they'd gone to, but they lived near a very good public school, in a very good, clean neighborhood. It wasn't the best education in Japan, but it wasn't bad either. Besides, Shippo'd already made friends there, a couple of boys named Ryouka and Ken'ichi. They were good boys and good friends for the boy. As Kagome and Shippo walked side by side down the sidewalk, they talked about what they were going to go do the next weekend. Shippo wanted to invite Ken'ichi over to stay the night. Kagome told him that she'd have to call up Ken'ichi's mom before she left for work that night.
The school was about two blocks from the apartment; it was a fairly long walk. They talked about what Kagome and Eri were going to make for dinner that evening. Both women heading to work that night, so they would need to call the babysitter to confirm. She was a very nice young girl named Sachi, and Shippo absolutely adored her. He looked eight years old, but he was, in fact, ten; he was reaching adolescence, and Kagome just knew that he would start to look at girls in that certain way very soon.
She sighed silently when that thought crossed her mind. Shippo was still going on about what he wanted to eat that night. She shoved her hands into her pockets and weaved a little on the sidewalk. Shippo watched her with his bright, inquisitive eyes, smiling faintly at his mother's antics as he joined in. As Kagome watched her son follow in her deranged footsteps, she knew, with absolutely no uncertainty, that the birds and the bees talk was fastly approaching.
A few minutes later, they entered the school; Kagome left Shippo in the very capable hands of his teacher, Yamasaki-sensei, and headed back to the apartment alone.