He would have waited forever. Everyone knew that.

It was true that by the end of those three years, he was checking the well every three days, but that was only because Kaede asked Sango and Shippo and Miroku to keep him busy so that he wouldn't lose his mind checking every few hours.

He would have checked every hour. Everyone knew that.

They had good intentions, he knew they did.

They knew that being on the other side of the well was awful punishment. There was only stone and damp soil and the threads of centuries separating them.


He once asked Kaede how long a hanyo would usually live.

She gave him a sad look. "I do not know, child. Your kind are uncommon enough that I have not heard."

He would have scoffed at her calling him 'child.' He'd known her when she was a child, before he had been stuck to that tree. But at least that old lady had lived all those years he was stuck to that tree. Time had cast its hands over her and turned her hair grey, her skin wrinkled, and her back hunched.

Time stood still forever for him. Because she wasn't there.

But he had to live a long time. He had to. Not for himself, but for her. Just in case she came back, she needed someone to protect her.

No one else had a Fire-Rat Robe or Tessaiga. Only he could protect her with his life.

Was she alive there? Was she safe? Was she happy?

How was he supposed to know if he wasn't even allowed to check? He could have ensured that she would want for nothing if she were here, at his side. But the well.

Just.

Wouldn't.

Open.


It was a gloomy, overcast day and a stray dog was hanging around the village, a group of girls giggling and stroking his glossy white fur and brushing his ears.

"Sit, boy!" a girl laughed.

His heart went from peak to valley to deep ocean trench in a split-second.

As much as he strained his ears, Kagome's voice didn't reach him through the well.


To his absolute horror, after two and a half years of waiting for her, her scent began fading from the bottom of the well.

It was such a distinct Kagome scent, those strange aromas from half a millennium in the future, smoke and exhaust fumes, fragrant soaps and herbal shampoo, clean linen, and otherwordly flavors of food. Something new and familiar all at once. The most irresistible scent in his life.

It was fading.

The rainy season had brought torrential showers and soaked the earth, bringing their rice fields the greatest harvest in fifty years. The villagers were thrilled.

The showers soaked the dirt within the well, washing Kagome away.

He was on his way to get some wooden boards to nail over the well so that it would never happen again, but then he stopped.

If she needed to get through, he couldn't have nailed the well shut. He needed to protect her.

He clenched his fists and resumed his sentry at the well's opening.

Just in case she needed him.

More like he needed her, but his back was facing any potential visitors.

This way, no one could see the hot tears streaming down his face, soaking the bottom of the well again.


He would have waited forever, until he outlived his friends and her friends and the village turned to dust.

Even if the well crumbled, he would have waited at the remains.

He would have waited for every single eye-blink she had been gone. Everyone knew that.

He hoped Kagome knew too, on the other side of the well.


Someone must have taken pity on him. Three years since he had since her last, he caught the whiff of that strange aromatic soap she used, and his heart climbed up a mountain peak and stayed there, in that place of happy warmth that was Kagome.


It turned out, he wasn't the only one who had been waiting.


A/N: And that's a wrap! Ten chapters of InuKag goodness, and I hope to write more! Let me know what you think. :)