Orlando, an inuyasha fanfic

Kagome takes a bit of blood each day. Just three drops, a single teaspoon here and there kept in jars around her bedroom were Sota nor her mother could find them. Sota, her perfectly normal little brother who could never really understand the sheer amount of things she'd been forced to encounter whenever she went back to the past. she ponders far too often about how everything started, simply falling down a well three years ago would lead to everything she is now, what she lacks now and it pains her, more-so than the injuries she places upon her flesh to take the blood. For her acclaimed 'madness' was always believed in the Feudal Era, even if it took a bit of convincing and luck on her part. Daemons and magic and spiritually powered shrine maidens it was normal, commonplace, acceptable. it was home.

Though, its just another reminder that no one in this era feels as real as things did in the past, and although Kagome can take her history books and countless google searches to make all the connections in the universe connecting these modern times to the past. She can't bring herself to settle any longer. Tokyo, Japan is not the excitement of the Feudal Era, can never be, and it only took three years but she can no longer call this time period home, for the one her very soul aches for has locked itself from her grasp. Kagome longs for that place were the only 'impossible' is the very word itself and were ancient miko magic sings in her spirit instead of these aches of total anguish and grief.

So this nineteen year-old young women saves blood whenever she can, just a bit, three small drops, because the only thing in this era that's still of the one she now longs for is flowing in her veins and on a deeper level a simple blade cannot reach: the depths of her soul. her friendships, her familiarity, her happiness, and her beloved. everything was taken from her. her eyes rage again when she recalls all that she lost due to no fault of her own and makes a tiny cut on her thigh. the lighting in her room a single candle using the last of its wick to cast its embers upon the all-consuming darkness that sounds her, physically and mentally.

"I did everything right. i saw... i miss... i wish," but her soft whispers are broken up by her sobs not like anyone is there to hear.

And who is she to care anymore if Sota sometimes gives her strange looks at the breakfast table when Kagome comes down all bright smiles and words of 'good mornings': but everyone can tell, of course they can when fingers and arms and legs are covered in small wrappings and bandages and her eyes are merely a dull color. Again, Sota wouldn't know about the time when Kagome in-fact did have her very soul stripped from her flesh and bones. For as much as she had once shared with her family she no longer could. Words would get caught in her throat and fail to escape past chattering teeth and body shakes, unsteady like when she first shot an arrow and ended up shattering the shikon jewel. Everything has left the ink haired women in her current state. a /now/ welcomed hollowness at the memory, a seemingly dream now that the gateway to her everything had allowed itself to close its miracle passage and fall to nothing but rust and cover those once heavenly green grasses in dust.

Religiously, she cursed it, spat at it, threw punches at the well once upon a time. Voice became horse from overuse and her knuckles bloody from brute force she was never used to exerting upon the old wood. However, it was then she felt it, when she saw it. When her small droplets of blood had first fell down into the well and she saw it! she knows it was not hysterics or delusions or false hope- the well had shined with the light it used too when she traveled to the past! the power was still there but so weak (much like Kagome herself).

Thus, is how her three drops into a jar a day routine started. It became her new beginning and perhaps, it would become her ending.

So much time had passed. She had amassed so much jars and blood and reemits of magic that Sota's in junior high now and he won't ask anymore. It's simply another difference between the eras for Kagome to keep inside the archives of her mind. For the people who are of the past would've asked would've questioned everything from the very moment the first harms had manifested on her skin, in her eyes, in her voice and heart.

Kagome could blame herself though, she was not so innocent. He used too enquire and but Kagome made sure he stopped. She made them all stop.

It felt like pandering. It felt like pity and she did not want nor desire pity. Was it so wrong she was sick of answering that she was okay when she and they knew she wasn't? Was she meant to just forget everything? About Sango and Miroku and Shippo and Kikyo and InuYasha? Pretend it was all a fantasy out of a dream or manga and reassemble to boring modern day Tokyo, Japan? Truly, this isn't to say she hates this modern era, no. This time period was her home, her one true place of belonging for fifteen years. She doesn't harbor any ill-will towards it or the people who are now living in it, she's far moved past those feelings now. But Kagome in that final battle with Naraku it took so much of her in those moments to wish the jewel into nonexistence and she's stuck here. Being denied the right to know if everything ended alright or not.

And fuck it just: Was. Not. Fair.

InuYasha was her everything, a bond and love that transcended time itself. As much as he had once said that it was Kagome who taught him how to smile and laugh and lean on others... he had done that and so much more for her. Even if he didn't understand the concepts behind her long forgotten modern problems. He was there and he listened and he never judged her. Her love never made her feel less he would cuddle and kiss and hymn to her the old lullaby his own mother used to sing to him. InuYasha was all spitfired and diamond teeth. He was her protector and beloved and...

he was gone...

Her room is dark from night, with only the small glimmers of moonlight escaping through the slits of window blinds and her mouth forms a melancholy smile, while her eyes follow the knife tracing her arm with more life than Kagome has had in a long time. Then, those same bright blue eyes that remind her so much of the unpolluted skies of the past flash in a rage all akin to him, when his demonic blood would over flow into his more human than demon heart and she cannot dare to think of him when she's like this and rips the sharp edge through her flesh and as always three more drops of blood into another jar /finally/ full and Kagome is another step closer to finding out.

Cutting used to hurt. She used to weep from the pain. Now, it only serves as a reminder of her goal. None of them would approve of her hurting, much less doing it to herself but they weren't here now and truth be told Kagome Higurashi would rather be chastised and worried over a hundred times over if it meant she could see her friends again.

Wrapping her arm in a bit of cloth she cannot help but mourn at its color: red. The same color as her everything in the flesh, the one whom had given him all of his life and who perhaps resented Kagome /now/ for through their all she'd barely given him a half, not even a mere fraction in her eyes. Putting the lid on the jar, she twists it closed and puts it among the others. Not a thing would be found out of place if after all these years someone dared to come into her room and search for something

But if you asked Kagome you'd be met with one answer: nothing.

She gets out the house once or twice a week. Higurashi shrine can be suffering. Far too real and far too close to what could be. Her steps are slow and calculated day in and day out. Nowadays, she finds herself wearing lots of red, white, and black. Leggings and hoodies and pullovers- anything to keep judgmental eyes off her, because the time tossed miko knew that people where more nosey than actually care.

During her weekly walks for the past six months, when Kagome is headed home, it's always when she'd been crossing the street when her eyes spot him and rationally she knows that it cannot be him because his hair may be silver but his ears are those only found when its black. Even so, his eyes are that same honey gold she had always found herself getting lost, wanting to drown in until her breath was caught from forgetting how to inhale. She knew those are just colored contacts. They had to be, Kagome didn't know if she could mentally handle any other course of action. She knows Kagome has to tell herself to keep her feet from moving and her legs running for something logically she knows cannot be there.

Though, someday's Kagome can't control what she's been missing been longing for and finds her legs moving towards him before her mind can even register what is happening. It ruins her, this endless pattern so much like her taking of three drops of blood. His phantom follows her and his undying ghost doesn't allow her peaceful slumbers because she was the lover who left without ever meaning too, without even a single word of goodbye. She hopes. She wants. She needs. It takes everything in her to approach and even more to speak; voice barely above an inaudible whisper, "Hi... would you mind giving me directions, I seem to have gotten a bit lost," desperation laces her words for all the wrong and right reasons. Kagome starts praying to what God she doesn't know nor does she can but if a higher power exists... just please please please

The lookalike turns towards her, his smile, while warming, doesn't have the slight show of fangs as her beloved, "'m not much familiar with the area, my apologizes."

She watches as he bows towards her and his form goes off into the distance. "Ahhhhhhh," she screams, uncaring of the eyes gazing in her direction.

The way the lookalike him had spoken had been all fucking wrong as well. Far too soft and polite. It had lacked that confidence and proud nature that was sometimes met cute stubbornness. His tone was wrong as hell. Too hell, she thought. Why did she have to suffer day in and day out, why did he have to look like InuYasha? Why couldn't it have actually been him.

Why

Why?!

Her legs start running again but this time towards the shrine and her sealed gateway. He might be all wrong but from a distance he was okay, he was almost right. It was something to give her aching heart some peace. It wasn't perfect ( nothing in this era was ): but maybe it could be enough. Maybe the young women could make it enough.

So she thinks she could be happy here. In this place were she was born, were everyone is sure to say she belongs and she believes it works. So why, has she upped her daily blood take from three drops to twenty and oh why does it hurt her so much when her mother says she's glad that Kagome is enjoying life and getting out and about again. That she cannot help but spend the nights with a classic knife and jar before creating her own retched melody of tears and more thoughts atop of restless sleep. She is eating more though. No rhyme, logic, or reason but Kagome can just feel like she's getting closer to them again, to him again and she wants to look better, to feel as best as she can when they meet again.

Thus, when her mother comes to her side one night after dinner she doesn't flinch away when she cups her cheek, "My sweet girl, welcome back." The words stung in the teenager's heart. She had never left, that was her exact problem. But she had promised grandpa no more meltdowns. Had talked to her father at his grave and assured him she would be okay in the twenty-first century that she found herself now bound too. It was why she swallowed the rage and sadness and grief and any emotion besides fake happy.

"Glad to be back, Mama."

Her mind, however, says all the words she dare not utter aloud: 'me, happy? not at all... this isn't my home and can't ever be again...'

She smiles brightly at her mother and even more when grandpa and Sota look at her. Its okay for it to be like this, she reassures herself. This is their belonging, their story. The same soil that birthed them and the same soil they'd lay to rest in. That Sota would fall in love and find a family within. She prayed absentmindedly that her family could always be like this. All happy and blessed and carefree. For Kagome knew she'd be like them again one day. Soon.

So again, as ancient as that feudal era, twenty drops of blood are taken to be sealed in a jar carefully stored until its one drop from overflowing and there's a spark that ignites to the reaches of her soul that feels like that all consuming pure energy and in this moment all Kagome can do is cry because this is it. It's another step, a closer attempt, and /for once/ its enough.

This world is going to hell, or is on the brick of it at the very least and Kagome has seen horrors far more worse than humanity's ideology of hell so she knows what she is talking about. She's a women now, no longer a child who's told to keep quiet and listen twice as much as she speaks. Talk of the government, of big brother going to greater lengths to keep tabs on this ever growing population of people that is becoming nothing more than smart phones and God forsaken dumb people. Not her though, she knew too much of history, had lived it to become slip into the masses of large. Textbooks lie and men in all black suits lied more.

The news only tells half of the truth and the newspaper the other and with intelligence on her side Kagome knows what is becoming of this era, this world's future and it is one she does not want to live in, die in. Kagome could do without all the modern advances and day to day comforts, after all, her home had no such things and she'd rather that than this.

Blue eyes have seen the men in those too dark black suits leaving those small private owned businesses with cases of what Kagome can only assume to be filled with green, what some call the root of all evil in this world and well, Kagome knows there is no true evil in this age. Demons are nothing more than fantasy. Like magic, like fairytales. For, the only evil which is spoken comes from the people and not the currency on which all business is done. She knew the evil of this time period lurked inside the heart's of fellow men.

Ears are always perked to listen in on the whispers of another World War. The third in this time-period's already stained history of bloodbaths, shackled africans, and the rise of a man who held so much hate for a group of people who'd never done wrong to deserve the massacre of their entire race. But demons, vampires, and hanyou where lesser than, where condomed? It made her sick to her stomach and chuckle in disgust.

Truly, the more Kagome thinks of this the more she wishes to again touch the unaltered grasses of her beloved's age.

This new war is a battle of what it means to be a human with rights. What it means to make one a man or a women, what it means to be free and one can relate: what can be considered love? Too much focusing on the unimportant, on the trivial. Used to hide the shady practices going on right in the least expected places. Social media, latest dance trends, fantasy novels ( none could compare, she had lived and was still living the greatest story that would never be told ).

Weeping, she spills her tears onto the red wrapping of her arm for hers is a battle that cannot be won in this era either. Kagome's is a battle all alone, an internal struggle against whatever force has turned her life into a never ending nightmare; a bad dream. At war with herself and a war with /again/ making the seemingly impossible possible. Even in this place of scientifically ruled facts and were memories of childhood wonders are mere falsehoods.

Still, there are those days when Kagome cannot help but walk past her old primary school and volunteer with the children who know of no worries and no waking dreams of lovers chained by the flow of time. They speak with so much wanderlust of what they wish to become and do in this world. All they can talk about is being a ninja, doctor, musician, a demon tamer, a magical girl like from one of those popular manga's that Kagome had read so much of in her youth until her life had become one, and one girl had said she'd wished to be a priestess and her reasoning? The outfit was pretty.

Kagome hadn't visited her old primary school after that.

It made her thoughts all flow onto thinking about the feudal era, about herself being a Miko and Lady Kaede and Kikyo, and the many many priestesses of that time. Made her think of the caring villages of the people who lived a life of happiness without all of the things that most people in this era claim they could not function without. Still, she hopes that these children won't lose what makes them them in a world that wishes for everyone to grow up and leave all those dreams in their youth. These ideals, Kagome thinks, will help this world far more than what is going to take place soon. For such good is sure to stand firm and corrupted unlike so much else people wish to turn into a murderous weapon

As always, Kagome /now/ walks the streets looking for that cherished link between this world and the next in that bottle dyed silver and dollar store brand honey gold contacts. However, all she can do is glance in his direction and follow. Follow for as long as she can before nothing more can be done except turn in the opposite direction and walk up those eroding steps of the Higurashi Shrine. She can't do anything but look because she had vowed to always be by InuYasha's side and now she doesn't know what else to do. Everything ruins this shell of a girl now. Before, she'd wish his ghost to leave but now its her only comfort. Her only sanity in knowing that everything that once was, was real and something that she can /one day/ claim back. It's beginning... to not be enough anymore.

Twenty drops, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, and she's almost got enough of it now. Always so close but still too damn far.

That unnamed lookalike doesn't come around much anymore or maybe it's her that changed her routine. She can't recall but Kagome's looked and searched but after a month he has vanished, perhaps she changed his hair color or found new contacts... but there's nothing wrong with that. It isn't nothing that Kagome isn't familiar with, nothing she can't get past because he wasn't really him anyway, after all. She's become used to people becoming distant, then leaving her. Yuka, Ayumi, and Eri had all moved on with there lives, because like her family, this was where they belonged. Yuka went to America to study fashion. Ayumi was at university as a double major; one in chemistry and the other mathematics, and Eri was the only one that Kagome still saw from time to time but nothing was the same. They'd lost the spark they once shared in their days at school, maybe it was due to no longer seeing one another six days a week or maybe it was because Kagome was so depressed. But It was always a quick hello and how have things been going and she'd be gone back to her own life once again.

Honestly, Kagome was okay with it.

After-all, in her mind its better this way. She no longer belongs to this world and she wonders if she ever really did so she gathers the liquidized life easily and with a renewed energy because she just wants to be home and saves each one with care. Another jar full and then another and another. 'Thank you' but to whom she whispers she not knows.

Kagome's never been the smartest or the most beautiful (her beloved would argue this): but she's Kagome Higurashi and that damn well means something. Even so, she's been studying everything she learned from Lady Kaede and in the feudal era in general. Reading modern books on magic and ancient cultures from that time. In-fact, when it comes to getting what she wants, in terms of living surviving Kagome has never just managed. She fucking excelled at besting the odds; taking her life in her hands. She doesn't need scared arrows and spiritual powers or jewel shards to get the job done. If that was the case than she and her friends would've been dead a long time ago.

Instead, she does things with her own undocumented methods, her own normal (maybe it is madness, maybe it is resentment), using that ancient magic in her blood in more unique ways than she's sure have ever been attempted before. Pouring those years and years worth of blood down into that portal less pathway that had once promised so much, that had bestowed upon her a living and breathing: everything. Her ability's, had manifested into something greater than the need of being conducted by the way of holding a bow. It had barely been four years now and in this time. Magic crafted into something truly free of any remits from any existence of lifetimes that predeceased hers. Only giving the bare basis to what was /now/ completely Kagome Higurashi, all living and breathing and bleeding ivory skin and bones.

The final jar of her life is not poured down into nothingness. Instead, it is used to draw creations so much like the Shikon Jewel that had once led to her originally decent into that wondrous all real and livable feudal fairytales around the wooden bars of the well, with that forgotten energy of this world that still created supernovas to ignite that spark inside her. It was all consuming and all controlling. A special kind of determination that had allowed to see all she had seen and still manage to come out alright while others might've become lost in the sheer thought of it all. She wrote the name's of her friends, of the women who's soul she used to be, of her love and life and the likeness of a red string.

And, perhaps that is why Kagome fairs so well there instead of here. She doesn't think as she simply does. For, there is never enough time to think when its life or death and that's probably the reason why she likes the feudal era best.

She draws that Jewel of Four Souls in her blood, again and again until you can hardly tell what /once/ lay underneath that mass of hand given art. She thinks of nothing but him and the way his honey gold eyes would light up whenever she brought back raman from this shrine or told him all about the stars and how there were consolations that you could see so clearly here but back home the sky was usually to foggy with gray smoke. Kagome could see his natural silver hair and those adorable ears that were softer than anything she'd ever felt before. More supernovas, more sparks and the feeling of being drawn into that well, back onto the place were she /truly/ belonged. She needed this, if she didn't succeed then perhaps she'd be better off dead. Kagome didn't know if she could live another year hell another day without them, without him.

That last jar is empty and she throws it to the ground.

That last jar is empty and her gateway is /nearly/ open now.

That last jar is shattered like Kanna's mirror had once been.

That last damn jar leaves glass shards akin to jewels scattered across the grass and Kagome doesn't care. Nobody comes here but her because it's taken her nearly four years to get here, four years of agony and screaming and depression and grief and rage and being followed around by InuYasha's ghost like an illness that'll never heal. Four years of blood and jars. Four years of old habits that'll surly die easily instead of hard for in a few moments she'll no longer possess the reasons to take from her body because what so tightly holds her soul will be in her embrace in the flesh and all this work will be fucking done.

As she did originally she picks up a glass shard and cuts a finger, which signal three drops of red to which, she hopes will be the last to ever be forced from her body by her own hand. And with that. This girl who'd been caught between present and past makes her choice: she jumps.

As she grew near, the buzzing in his stomach intensified but it wasn't akin to the mutterings of butterflies he'd heard about all his life, no. It was instead like a swarm of bees in thick swamp air that had gathered together in a blazing rage to protect their home from an unwanted self-dubbed invitations. InuYasha was with Shippo and Miroku and Sango and their children. Idly talking and laughing... what was understood didn't need to be said but he felt it. He felt her.

It was not his mind playing tricks like so many times before. It was not his dreams giving him false promises and hope and agony. It was real. He fucking knew it.

Hanyou appeared as a silver streak, franticly yelling her name like he had done so many times in the past, "K-Kagome!" He dare not stop, no time to explain to the looks of question he was sure his friends where giving him. His light, his love, his reason- God, his everything. Was here, as coming back it had been far to long, far too much. InuYasha was not a crying man but his eyes showed his heart: all the hurt and confusion and anguish.

Ten more steps, nine more steps, eight more steps, and he kept counting in his head until he reached the fabled magical three. He was so damn close to the well, so damn close to his love. He was breaking, the half-demon didn't know he was still capable of breaking anymore. He was sure everything inside of him left with her but fucking dammit seeing her, feeling her, loving her would make him whole again.

Kagome was in pace with her protector. Their steps in sync with one another. At first she had sat at the bottom of the well, unmoving, wanting to cry but she knew that sky. She knew the smell and the sounds all of it. It gave her vigor even though her body was weak, unrefined, nervous. Nine, eight, seven, six... she pulled herself up through the well little by little, bit by bit her confidence and longing increased. The finish line lay at her feet, within the grasp of bandaged fingertips.

( but its formation has found itself in the mere steps of a mere girl ): simple flesh embodied womenhood.

Two more steps…

One more step…

And InuYasha has found himself stuck between a failed past and uncertain future. This girl who before was his everything, even with losing it. She was still all of him, his very heartbeat. As it stood, was InuYasha willing to make that same decision again? What if she left again... he might be physically stronger than a human but emotionally... mentally... he was far weaker and didn't want to be, couldn't be any other way towards Kagome. Not that he would ever wish to be any different.

Kagome, once straight inky locks now a combination between a curly-wavy to create a curtain that framed her so perfectly. The contrast between black and the oceanic blue of her eyes. A blue pattered skirt blew in the gentle breeze while yellow and blue were stuck in a transfix that spoke more than any words could, than any words can.

Now, the buzzing of nature's honey bees inside InuYasha's stomach had moved to his throat and had become demonic hell-hounds ripping and clawing to be unleashed from their cage. Unconsciously a fanged tooth dug into his bottom lip leaving a miniature trail of blood in its wake. His eyes puffy from the tears he'd shed while running here with all of his might. Mere inches between them, his body froze. In his vision was her and everything in him cried out to hug and kiss and hold but he feared. The silver haired man was terrified if he held her, she'd vanish again. So he was stuck between his head and his heart, fact and fiction, day and night.

So Kagome is the one to make the first steps ( a reminder to their first meeting: girl meets boy ): and she makes the remaining space between them far too real ( it was more truth than he'd been granted in four years. ) and the way her words flowed should've been like sacrilege upon his world. How could words be so holy and so sinful? So full and empty? A place that was riddled with unholy grounds and twisted men who laughed that the prospect of countless sin.

Her body allows him to speak, even if he's still stuck, "I missed yo " He cannot even choke it all out as tears flow unrestricted like a river being freed from a damn.

Hell-hounds having turned ballistic broke from their damnable cage and clawed fingers flexed reaching out and hoping praying that her form didn't fade from the moment he touched her. People had never known him to be desperate but a man could change faster than the seasons when all he knew fell apart. She was solid! She was real! She was his!

Arms became like towers as they reached out to held onto Kagome and InuYasha held distaste for himself in this moment because he'd told Shippo all those years ago that men don't show their tears but how could one not? When everything he did not deserve was right in front of him. Kagome, all flesh flesh, and real…

"Never leave me again, please."

please

i cannot lose you again please...

He is begging. He does not care that his words are a weakened cry, legs long given up supporting a hanyou and he hugged tighter and tighter until InuYasha thought his very arms would shatter from the sheer force of it all. 'Don't fade away' kept replaying in his mind. Over and over that he silently he could've used the Shikon no Tama to wish all his uneasy demons away. A demon wishing for peace. A demon wishing for soundless slumbers.

His eyes stayed shut fast. This time, not knowing what he'd do and find himself holding onto nothing than himself and he spoke in a chocked whisper, "Tell me that this is real and that your always going to be here, with me. Always."

Smaller hands went up and gently petted the top of white locks and five-uncooked dumpling feeling soft ears. Her words not having been needed. She had more than enough time to cry, more than enough time to having gone through all the steps of grieving and acceptance once again but InuYasha? Kagome could only imagine all the hurt and sufferings he'd kept bottled up until now. She had her own troubles and she knew he had his. They could overcome them together. They'd have a lifetime to work through it together. Kagome refused to let their red string carry so much distance between the two of them again.

Kagome, a head and a half smaller than her red clad hero, stood on her tip-toes to plant the smallest kiss on his lips. She felt the same sparks as when she took blood, as she she'd shoot an arrow brimming with power. It was too real and her own eyes released tears as silent prayers. Arms locked around his neck and God she didn't know if it was her skin or his skin that was on fire... probably both.

InuYasha's body found strength, finally and he pulled his Kagome closer to him by her waist and deepened their kiss, letting his tongue into her mouth, she accepted happily. Keeping one arm on her waist and the other went to explore all that was her and all that he missed. He could feel every injury along her body and immediately had noticed every bruise and blemish on his beloved. He could rage later, he had felt anger enough. All that mattered was that Kagome was back here in his arms and he was never letting her go again.