Thanks for all your wonderful, encouraging words.
Tears ran rampant down her glittering cheeks as she dug desperately. She pounded the ground in frustration and cried out. This couldn't be happening to her, to them, not after everything they had been through.
It had been hours since her heartbreaking discovery and Kagome had yet to leave the bottom of the hollow well. She clawed at the hard packed earth with bare hands, unwilling to believe fate's cruel twist. After all the pain, the tears, the heated arguments, they had finally started a life together. They had fought for this – kept silent when their emotions could not interfere, turned a blind eye to heartache, only to finally wrench painfully self-conscious confessions from another – and for what? For this?
Kagome hit the side of the well in anger before collapsing. Their feelings had gone unspoken for so long, a quiet understanding between them that forbade their acknowledgment in light of the seriousness of their lives. Only three months had passed since they finally confessed their feelings to one another. The blur of wedding preparations and construction left them with little time to enjoy together, but like before, it was okay. Because it was just temporary. They just had to get everything in line, and then they could be together. Just a little more, they thought, and they'd be free to spend the rest of their lives making up for lost time.
Tears mingled with the parched dirt, smudging her once porcelain skin with dirty steaks of mud. Kagome heaved silently and clutched at the loose packed earth, trying to anchor herself to reality. She physically felt her stomach drop as she finally admitted what tore her so desperately. She had been trapped on her side numerous times, but never had it felt like this. The well was cold, stagnant.
The magic was gone.
One.
She just had to wait, just had to have faith. Inuyasha would come and get her soon enough, wouldn't he? Kagome shook her head and brushed her trailing bangs behind her ears – she just over reacted before. They always hit bumps here and there, and this would be no different. She just hoped he wouldn't take too long to find his way back.
The well was old – finicky. Towards the end of their journey, after the fusion of the entire Tama, she didn't even have to carry it to travel back and forth through time. That alone was a testament to its unreliability. Sure, it was a little strange that she couldn't detect any lingering magic, but it would be rectified soon enough. Inuyasha would find a way through, he always did. She just had to be patient.
Animatedly, life went on. Her family shot her curious looks, but she brushed them off. They had been through much worse and a small thing like time wasn't going to come between them now, not when they had finally found a reason to continue fighting after the battle. They had each other and that was all that mattered. Maybe Inuyasha had been called away in an emergency and had yet to even discover her impediment? Once he did, however, Kagome was confident he'd come grouching through the well to collect her, berating her for being so clumsily oblivious to the solution in which he'd found almost instantaneously.
Idly folding the seam to hem her new kimonos – she was sure Sango would appreciate the extras, and she herself needed quite a few – Kagome hummed absentmindedly and went about her tasks. Snacks were piled up in the far corner of her room, modern cutlery and other items she desired for her new home packed and ready to go. Additional reserves of medical supplies, as they were the very reason she even made this trip, were loaded in simple wooden chests. Inuyasha would whine about their weight, but she was sure he wouldn't really mind all that much.
Kagome sighed tiredly and stretched, cricking her neck to loosen it after looming over the sewing machine for the last couple hours. She had plenty to do - waiting wasn't so hard. They'd been through worse.
Two.
It just wasn't fair! Had she not sacrificed enough, had he not sacrificed enough? They put their very lives on the line to save the world from an unimaginable evil for years on end, and for what? They deserved a break. They deserved to be together.
Kagome couldn't find the energy to care that those around her, even her family, cringed at her very presence. So what if she was a little temperamental? She was allowed to be! Her husband was stuck half a millennia away. Growling in frustration she swiftly kicked her desk chair. The resulting crash barely registered through her muffled ears. All she could hear was the pounding in her own veins, all she could feel was the anger fuelling her very being.
Clutching the broken shards of her window she revelled in the hot blood that ran down her arm. The cut was minor, but it soothed her wounded heart. A wry smile pulled at her lips. Inuyasha would surely balk at the injury. Just as suddenly, fury swept through her. He'd have to be here to worry, but he wasn't.
Stifling a loud cry, she hit the side of her bed, oblivious to the unsettling smear of blood against the sheets. She hated him for not coming to get her, she hated the well for refusing her, but mostly, she hated herself for coming through in the first place.
Three.
She clutched the wooden rim weakly and begged – just let her go back to say goodbye, that's all she needed. She had to let Inuyasha know she didn't abandon him, she had to hug her precious Shippou one last time and wish her best friends a happy life. The guilt gnawed at her and made her own skin itch. She wanted to scratch her way out and get away from these horrible feelings – guilt, desperation, loneliness.
Gods, did Inuyasha hate her? Did he think she left on purpose, without even saying goodbye? She had to go back, if only to let him know that she loved him with every fibre of her being. He had to know, he had to know that she loved him and would never leave him! He'd been through so much...she couldn't be another disappointment.
Hours passed and the well continued to refuse her. Kagome sat at the bottom of the well, back against an unforgiving corner. It was cold here, but it was as close as she could get to Inuyasha, and it offered her a small feeling of bitter contentment. She didn't belong in that era, she understood that. The quest was over, the threat eliminated. She had completed her duty and now it was time for her to return to her own time. They shouldn't have fallen in love, but they did, and she needed to embrace him one last time. She could handle her own heartbreak, but she had to make Inuyasha understand. She didn't leave him, never would with the choice.
She had to go back, even if it was just to say goodbye.
Four.
She watched passively as rain splattered outside her window. Her eyes were dry, having emptied all her tears in the previous months. It was starting to set in, the reality of it all. He wasn't coming through to get her, and she couldn't go back.
The mystery of the well and the magic that allowed her to pass had disappeared. Simply gone – no warning, no apology, nothing out of the ordinary that would have signified the end of an era.
Pressing her forehead against the cool glass Kagome sighed. She felt weak and her head throbbed in anguish. Her mother had tenderly suggested that she go back to school, it would keep her busy if nothing else. Kagome brushed it off and hid under the darkness of her bedding. What was the point of living if her very reason was taken away from her? Textbooks and social clichés didn't interest her, in fact, they disgusted her. She craved the fresh, clean air of Sengoku Jidai and the simple yet demanding way of life. How was she supposed to readjust to the dirty, noisy city after nearly three constant years in the past? If she couldn't live there, she didn't particularly care to live at all.
Kagome grimly realized she was alive, but she was no longer among the living.
Five.
Her hand brushed tenderly against the scarred bark of the sacred tree. It was smooth under her fingers, the only physical testament belaying her journey, her undying love. It had been five months, five heart wrenching, tear filled months full of despair and desperation. Her emotions were still fragile and easily swayed by the day's mood, but she was healing, slowly.
With the realization that her life would never be the same, came the apathetic drive to go on – for the sake of her family and those that suffered along with her. Inuyasha would have come by now if he could, and none of her efforts were fruitful in her attempts to travel back in time. She loved him, and always would, but she had to find a way to live. She just hoped he would too.
In between days-long crying fits and lashing out at those who tried to calm her, Kagome found the strength to raise her head. After venturing out into the small thicket behind the house her family owned and spending the day in solitude, Kagome found a delicate sense of peace. Inuyasha wouldn't have wanted to see her like this, so broken and unlike her usual optimistic self. Her faith, he once blushingly claimed, was what pushed him to do his best.
It took her days, and multiple destroyed copies, to fill out the form. But in between her self-conscious doubts, anger at having to do such a thing in the first place, and guilt at even imagining another life without him, Kagome managed to complete the application. Eyeing the immaculate white paper and her simple, neat writing, a throb pulsated in her chest. She rubbed the constant soreness above her heart and flicked a few stray tears aside with her finger. She loved Inuyasha, and should the opportunity ever come, she'd leave everything behind to be with him again. But she lived in a viciously unforgiving world where paper credentials dictated the fate of billions.
Kagome was realistic, practical. Life would go on, no matter how much it hurt.
I had Kagome follow the classic five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Hopefully this was somewhat realistic... Thanks again!
*Oh! The allusion to the symbol with a dragon and yellow-red background in Chapter 1 is about Mortal Kombat. I know it's silly, but I figured a young boy like Souta would be all over that.