A/N: Just a little short I thought of. Tell me if you like it, you know where the review box is :)
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It had been a promise.
Staring down at the teenager's bedroom window, the youkai sucked in a deep breath, pulled together all of his resolve, and settled his nerves.
He had promised. He had promised he wouldn't interfere, wouldn't stop the things from happening that needed to happen, wouldn't interrupt the flow of time. He'd destroy everything that had come from the future after she had died...
Yet here she was. Alive again. Just like he remembered her, just like he-
He'd gone away for awhile, travelled the world to remove himself from temptation once he realized that the Higurashi Shrine he visited once in a while bore the scent of a newborn girl...he'd gone to Europe, the Americas, Africa, went everywhere, studied languages, did everything he could to avoid Japan for eighteen years.
He had returned just a little early, it seemed, because Kagome hadn't gone back through her side into the Feudal Era yet. He was off, he guessed now, by just a Little bit of time. A few days or weeks, maybe as much as months. Not long, he knew, before she would be back.
How he missed her.
Staring through the window from where he hid himself in the shroud of shadows, he pined for a moment of her presence, he ached for a touch, just the briefest of words, for a smile or a hug...
He'd never realized just how powerful this urge would be. She looked just like she had on that day she came back. The memory was as clear in his mind as if it had just happened; in a way, he scoffed to himself as he sniffed back an emotion, it hasn't even happened Yet.
Hadn't happened yet. If he did anything now, would that change? He shuddered at the thought and drew his hand back from the window where he'd been about to slip in to draw close to her while she slept. Which would have probably been Creepy, he realized with a sigh.
He watched for another hour. Time crawled by with a billion thoughts bouncing in his mind. He should have left. He should have just taken off and booked a flight to another country and toured around for awhile to keep himself busy until-
His hand hovered near the window again. There was a lock on it, but she didn't bother latching it. She's on the second story near a peaceful shrine anyways; why should she?
He slid the window open. One foot softly touched the floor, then the other. He paused and took in a deep whiff of her scent, and caught himself feeling a strange swell in his chest. He wanted to laugh; he wanted to cry. He refused to do either-if he lost it now, he'd mess up everything.
It had been a promise.
Yet thinking it over, he decided, there was just One Thing he could do.
He couldn't reveal himself to her, not like he was. He couldn't let her know it was him, or she would ask a million questions, she would change history, and this was Kagome, he couldn't Help it, if she started to-
She was asleep now. If he did it right, he could make her think it was a dream. He could say this one thing to her, from the guise of a dream, he could speak to her something that would be meaningful, that would ease the suffering in his own heart. Even if he had to do it like this, he'd be able to finally say the one thing he hadn't been there in time to say...before.
Kagome felt the jyaki settle near her, subconsciously shifting herself towards it, clutching at the familiarity of it after having missed-
Shippou sucked in a harsh breath, shifted his currently human disguise, and spoke soft words into the air in a deep but familiar voice. Not his own though, he couldn't let her know...
"Little Sister, I love you. Don't keep my brother waiting forever," he whispered.
Kagome's eyes flew open, and there he was, looking just like she remembered, tall, regal, Fluffy-
"Sesshoumaru?" she whispered, and Shippou's centuries of experience were all that held him together and stopped his outcry, stopped himself from revealing himself, dropping his disguise of the old taiyoukai in his old familiar attire-
"You heard me," he tilted his head slightly in that doggish way Sesshoumaru occasionally tilted his head, and with a whisk of the illusion of the fluff on his shoulder, Shippou wrapped himself up, activated his Hidden Cloud, and vanished, masking all sense of him, even the jyaki.
Kagome blinked. She stared. She looked at the spot in her room where he'd stood, and then shivered as a breeze touched her shoulders.
"Did I..." she asked herself out loud, staring at the open window, "leave that Open?"
Shippou swore at himself from the Goshinboku as he watched her approach the window and peer out it for a long time, looking slowly in every way and every direction. She looked at the Sacred Tree for a long time; but he'd chosen it for a reason, for her gaze would fall on it naturally of course, he knew that from the way she'd look at it even in their time. It was the link between these two times...she would perhaps sense him if he was there, but maybe she'd feel it was just the echoes through the roots of the tree calling to her.
Kagome stared at the tree for a long time, her eyes roving up and down the branches.
Then she sighed and shook her head and shut her window, and rolled her eyes at herself.
"Yah sure Kagome, Sesshoumaru drops by in the middle of the night callin' you Little Sister, great dream," she tried to laugh at herself, but in truth the vision stung more than amused. It reminded her of just how badly she wanted to go back, just how drowned she had been in modern concerns, swimming in studies and throwing herself into her academics and the drone of her daily life...
Just to try and forget...
She'd been depressed. She'd been fighting it, but she had been depressed. She missed her life on the other side of the well. She missed the fun and the adventure and the danger and the excitement and the stories.
She missed her friends. She missed Sango and Miroku and Kohaku and Kirara.
She missed Shippou.
She missed Inuyasha.
And apparently, now her mind was tricking her into thinking...into thinking that Sesshoumaru would say something That Ridiculous-
She heard the echo of his voice sneering that word into her mind. 'Ridiculous.' She let herself let out a chuckle and silently agreed.
Walking over to her bed, Kagome felt a tiny crunch of something unfamiliar under her foot. Frowning, she lifted her foot and looked at the leaf she'd just stepped on.
Had it blown in from outside?
Something felt familiar about this leaf. She picked it up slowly and examined it, and she swore, she Swore that a faint touch of something...
This leaf doesn't look like it came from any of the foliage just outside the house. The wind could not have carried it in here.
She smiled and opened the window again, and she stared at the Goshinboku for a long time before making up her mind.
She would have made everyone promise, just like before, that they wouldn't change the future. She understood now.
She kissed the leaf gently as tears rolled down her cheek. One from each side touched the leaf that she pressed to her trembling lips.
"I love you too. All of you. Thank you," she whispered, and with a very clear gesture, she let the slightly-wettened leaf slip from her hand and drift on the breeze out to the yard, settling between herself and the Goshinboku. She paused to watch it settle, then sniffed and turned her head, shut her window, turned off her light and went to bed.
Shippou slipped out of the tree and picked up the leaf. He spirited off to the other side of the shrine-house that had been built over the well and wept tears of both happiness and bitterness.
But now, he was okay with that. He had finally gotten to say those words he had missed being there for at the end...
"I love you too," he repeated to the cool night air, and his tears fell in the soil near the old Bone-Eater's Well.
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In a week she was gone. He returned out of curiousity and found her mother weeping in her room. Of course it was hard on her; she knew that her daughter had to do what made her happy, but she was sure they'd never see her again in this lifetime.
Shippou walked up to the door in a human guise. Today he was not in his usual form that he wore for his Human Identity; today he was some kid that looked an awful lot like the brat he used to be, except about the height of a ten-year-old and without any fox legs or tails of course.
"Hey, are you Kagome's mom? Miss Higurashi?" he asked her brightly, already knowing the answer as she opened the door.
"Why yes, but you see, she's out now and...well she Moved Out," Kagome's mom murmured softly, sniffing back a tear, "and I'm afraid that to get ahold of her might be complicated, you see she took up missionary work in an area where there's no real technology and mail is hard to-"
"I wasn't here to see if I could talk to her," Shippou said gently, and his ancient eyes behind this childlike exterior sought hers with green pools of wisdom and knowing far beyond her comprehension.
Those old jade orbs caught Kagome's mother in a stare, and she slowly blinked at him as her posture shifted attentively.
"What is your name?" she asked, and Shippou debated with himself for a moment.
"Can I come in?"
She eyed him up and down briefly, then opened the door for him. He walked in and gave a polite nod, and she shut it behind him.
"My name," he said quietly after a moment, "is Shippou."
Kagome's mother gasped, and tears sprung to her cheeks. She knelt down to be level with his childlike form and swept him into a tight hug.
They both cried. She had heard his name before, she recognized from Kagome's tales who he was. They embraced and wept for almost an hour, and then, finally composing themselves and wiping their tears away, Shippou smiled up at her and gave a wink.
"I'm gonna get in a more comfortable form and treat you to some fancy cookin' while we wait for Grandpa and Souta to come back from whatever it is they're doin' right now, and then...I'll tell you everything I can remember. I hope you don't mind if it takes awhile and I have to come back over and over again...I have her whole lifetime to tell you about, it's not gonna be over in just one night."
"Oh, Shippou!" Kagome's mother hugged him again, and he chuckled and patted her shoulder.
"Okay, okay. Lemme cook you up something first while we wait for Souta and Grandpa. Let's see, what've you got layin' around here?"
When Souta and Grandpa got home, at first they were slightly confused, but as soon as they found out who this stranger really was, they too were overjoyed, and the night was spent in their mirth as they eased the grief of having let go of Kagome...by getting back Her Stories.
It was a promise he had made, that if he'd lived long enough to see them again, he'd wait for after she was gone...to let them know how she had lived. And Shippou always kept his promises. Well...if he could.
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"BBIIIIGGGG BRRROOOTTTTHHHEEEERRRR!" Kagome called cheerfully, chuckling at Shippou's prank. She wasn't sure what reaction she'd get, but the way his face looked even from down here on the ground, and how Jaken squawked and reprimanded her, and how Sesshoumaru told him to shut up-
Priceless.
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Please review and tell me what you think! :)