Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha.
A/N: WHERE? ARE? MY? PROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMPTS?
"How dare you?" Kagome ground out, all clenched jaw and clenched fists and clenched memories of ancient tragedies still fresh in her heart.
Naraku rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. "Oh, come off it, priestess. I've always dared. Being human doesn't imbue me with the same sense of suicidal morality – any more than it did when I was Onigumo."
Looking into his eyes, into the exhaustion of a relentless destroyer, Kagome felt the energy drain from her. The building, matching weariness that assailed him gripped her too, and it was a revelation both intuitive and tragic.
Once, she would have fired up at his undelivered plea for help. She would have fought her friends and her enemies alike to give this man a second chance at time.
That was the sort of person she had been. She had had the eyes of a fresh rose, eyes that coloured everything in broad smudges of "good" and "not-so-good" and "irretrievably-bad-but-let's-try-anyway." The vision had come with sparkling pink power, zipping up and down her limbs and giving her a confidence that slow money and an unreasonable grandparent and modern-day news had diffused, one bolt of purity at a time.
The daily grind of the modern world had jaded what had thrived in the rough heartbreak of a medieval era. And all Kagome could think now was, I don't have the energy for this.
All she could do was cross the space of her flat to the door and open it. Not because she was particularly courteous to guests, but because she calculated that the effort expended in walking those twenty steps and indicating the way out would be repaid amply in relief and a black sleep after he was gone.
He exited without protest and with a promise to return, leaving her to slump against the door and drift into the heavy state between sleep and unrest. I don't want to do this.
She was just so tired. There was the landlord to call and hand over the rent…and the groceries were still scattered in the kitchen, left to spoil. I should say, "Tomorrow is another day!"
"Tomorrow…mmmmbah…." She trailed off, thinking about making a good sale. One of the more expensive tea-sets, maybe some jeweled hairpins. Putting them on better display would be the first thing to do. And get rid of the TV. All those blowsy soap operas couldn't be good for a healthy young woman – she could see herself morphing into a dumpy cat lady, puttering about in her old age to Hello Kitty jungles because "Meow Pufferdinkles and Mr. Tomtom-Tippytoes like it so much!"
Urggh. So getting laid had to go on the calendar too. Urgently. She couldn't afford a vibrator right now and her own fingers just didn't have any jazz to them. Pasting a mean little smirk on her lips, she hauled upright and got to work clearing the kitchen. I bore myself, how wonderful. Should've stayed in the past instead of running back for piped water and Momma and the rest.
Because there was no rest. And Momma was too far removed from her life to make a real difference. And a bad boyfriend seemed better than no boyfriend. And she would have eventually outgrown being compared to Kikyo. And because it would have been some kind of meaningful life. And forget the rest, at least back in the past, Naraku was dead, gone, annihilated and some other poor future sod's problem.
But she'd closed the well herself. Two hands, a lot of reiki and enough sutras to bind ten tall demons.
It had seemed like such a good, furious, heartbroken idea. No more bad floors, no more bad boyfriend and no more, never more being called Kikyo by her beloved and random strangers alike.
It was just too bad that she had forgotten the first rule of fail-safe plans – make a back-up in case the plan fails. She had forgotten the way back; her life had gone from stuck-in-caveman-days to stuck-in-luxury-I-can't-afford-to-buy days.
I always was a thoughtless little bint, groused Kagome – the Kagome who hated being Kagome, possibly more than she had hated being Kagome-who-looks-like-Kikyo.
Naturally, she refused to admit to such a Kagome that she sorely needed the soul-work and havoc that her disconcertingly human nemesis was promising to bring to the table.
She would simply let it come as a surprise. A nasty surprise.
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