Work Text:
The rain stopped twenty minutes ago, and the whole world smells like wet pavement. Inuyasha would hate it; Kagome sort of likes the smell. It’s nostalgic in a way. The overcast sky fades to a pale yellow close to the horizon, the puddles the same heavenly hue. The entire atmosphere feels like it’s dripping. Five hundred years in the past all the greenery would be so vibrant against the dark clouds it would hurt her eyes. Still could, if she dared look at the tree, but she’s too busy taking in the city to pay notice.
From the top of the shrine stairs, she feels like she can see all of Tokyo, even if she knows that’s ridiculous; it’s a hold over from childhood, that way the whole world is everything in front of you and nothing more. She shifts against the steps, propping her head in hand, eyes half-closed. The street noise lulls her into drowsiness. The modern world lies in wait at the bottom of these steps, its presence wrapping around her like a blanket or something equally (if not more) comforting and bright red. A faint smile graces her lips at the thought.
She’s been home for a few days, has a few more left. She’s not sure if she’s counting down or not. She’s not sure about much these days.
It’s not like she’s having a bad time at home. It’s just that lately she gets the sense that she’s…drifting.
At the start of this new life, things were chaotic but stable in a weird, twisted way, like no matter which side of the well went to shit, the other would catch her and soothe her and run its hands through her hair all gentle like and say it’ll be okay, she’s doing so well, things could be worse. Then it’d teeter the other direction and the other side would catch her, etc. She never hit the ground.
She still hasn’t hit the ground, but it’s less like the quiet reprieve of being caught and more like a game of volleyball where she’s getting bounced around, always in the air, and she’s waiting for the moment she gets set and spiked straight through the earth’s crust—she’d really hit the ground then. Maybe the metaphor got away from her because that’s not really drifting, is it? But it still applies, she thinks, because this feels like so many different, conflicting things, and besides she misses too much school to really grasp the intricacies of metaphors anyway.
Every time she’s home, she’s even more out of the loop. Gossip, school, tv shows—things she’d like to be in the loop on, things she used to be. She’s so many months behind on the simple things, she doesn’t want to think about the important ones.
She misses milestones. She misses birthdays. She misses everything.
She misses home.
She’s here now and she misses it. She’ll be leaving all too soon.
And it’s stupid because traveling with her friends is home, too. She misses that as well. She misses it mid stride sometimes, her step turning stuttering as she stares at their faces, trying to commit them to memory.
She doesn’t get why she’s like this now; there’s plenty of time still. She idly fingers the half-finished jewel on her neck (she never leaves it alone in her own time anymore, not since the noh mask incident); there’s still time. She doesn’t have to miss anything or anyone.
But she does.
She considers going into town, entrenching herself in the life that’s almost hers, but there’s, like, fifty-thousand stairs to the bottom. Way more work than sitting here, staring wistfully. All those stairs used to leave her panting. After the kilometers she’s walked, they’re child’s play. The continuous sowing of sore muscles after vigorous biking or hiking sessions (especially when her life’s on the line) and thus she reaps: she can walk home without getting winded.
Once Ayumi did a double-take at her legs and exclaimed, “Holy shit, Kagome! When’d you Hulk up?” She didn’t have a good answer. Her “rock-hard” thighs have become a joke between her friends, and for some reason, she’s embarrassed by it. She wouldn’t be embarrassed if her friends from the past commented on her meager muscle, but it’s weird when her future friends do. Something to do with not having an explanation; something to do with it being a joke; a lot to do with it not being deemed feminine. Just this week she was changing in the locker room, and someone said, “Y’know for such a sickly girl, you sure are toned, Kagome.” She turned bright red, laughed awkwardly, and finished changing like an impatient hanyou was waiting on her. Her arms aren’t even that impressive! Yeah, drawing a bow quit aching ages ago, but it’s not like she’s some body-builder or whatever they’re implying. These people would shit if they saw Sango.
And the weight they put on sickly. Before everything, she was decently popular, well-liked. Now either people want nothing to do with her for fear of contracting whatever her latest illness was or they give her this look. Nasty rumors have surfaced over what she’s really doing when she’s not at school, and she doubts she even knows the worst of them. Apparently people’s suspension of disbelief can handle delinquent boyfriends and drug running but snaps at prion disease (thanks for that one, Gramps!).
Still, despite it all, she likes being home, sitting on the stone steps, next to the wooden beams of the gate with the flaking paint like dried blood, one good tumble away from civilization and all its quirks. She likes going to class and seeing her friends even if it’s sometimes tedious and stressful. She likes the smell of wet pavement, the sound of cars and sirens and people, and the way the city twinkles and flashes like lightning bugs. She likes when Inuyasha’s here and suddenly she’s the one in the know; she’s the fish in the water; she gets to demonstrate commonplace knowledge and be seen as the smartest woman in the world because she knows how to use a crosswalk or something equally mundane. Not that Inuyasha really sees her that way, but like, she likes feeling competent is all. That’s her point. She doesn’t get to feel that way often.
Even with all the time she spends in the past, she doesn’t quite belong. She can’t shuck her era, and she doesn’t want to. But when she’s here, she’s too disconnected from the everyday to ever really feel here. She doesn’t quite belong here either. It’s confusing.
She just feels in-between, like her home should be the liminal void of the time slip itself. The weightlessness welcoming, a single serene moment of nothingness and everythingness before her feet touch the bottom of the world and the cold seeps into her skin. Sometimes she fears she'll wake up down there, shivering and damp and surrounded by bones, this whole thing a distant, half-remembered dream. Sometimes she thinks the afterlife is going to look like the bottom of the well, regardless of how good or evil she is: the well can be both.
There’s the soft thunk of the door closing and then her brother calls her name.
“Yeah?” she replies without turning around. Footsteps and then his presence slightly behind her.
“Dinner’s ready.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t move. Souta plops down next to her, and she glances over. He got taller. She doesn’t know when. She missed it. They sit in silence for a minute.
“What’re you thinking about?” he asks. His voice hasn’t changed. She hasn’t missed that yet. She shrugs.
“Nothing. Everything.” With a sigh, she pulls her knees in, scraping the bottom of her shoes against the stone horrendously, angled slightly his way. “How it might be nice to hunt jewel shards here, on my home turf, y’know.”
He scrunches his nose. “I guess. It was really scary the few times you have.”
She grimaces. Yeah. That’s why this is nothing more than a passing fantasy; it’s not actually fun when her family’s in danger.
“Is it always that scary?” he asks. She opens her mouth, closes it.
“It’s less scary when Inuyasha’s there,” is what she settles on, which isn’t strictly true—seeing Inuyasha flirt with death is always terrifying—but it’s not not true. Inuyasha would do anything to keep her safe. She trusts him with her life.
“I bet.” It’s said with a smile so Kagome thinks she nailed the answer nonetheless. But then Souta bites his lip, glances at and away and at again. “Sometimes I get scared you won’t come home.”
Kagome’s mind whites out at that. Nothing behind her eyes. Her kid brother is scared she won’t come home sometimes. Somehow she misses everything and people still miss her. She sucks in a deep breath and smiles, hopefully convincingly, and pulls him in for a side hug. He leans against her for a moment, and she’s so terribly aware that yeah, he did get taller.
“I’ll always come home. I like it here too much.” It’s another one of those statements that is a weird blend of true and not. Of course she’ll always choose to come home, but the choice could be taken away from her in the worst way. She knows this intimately.
Once, when it was just the two of them, they fought this awful lizard demon. Globs of drool dripped from its jaw, a jaw lined with wicked serrated teeth, teeth that glinted golden when the sun hit them just so, and the sum of its parts snapped quicker than expected. It made them too hesitant, carefulness bleeding into carelessness. Kagome was on the sidelines, debating the merits of taking a shot that was sure to miss despite its size; Inuyasha was busy dancing around, avoiding and looking for an opening; they were arguing over something decidedly petty, distracted by their own self-righteousness and cracking voices.
When the demon lashed its meter-long claws at Kagome, it caught them both by surprise.
She dropped to her knees with a cry, arm on fire. Distantly she could hear the fight reach its end, but she couldn’t focus on anything except the gash on her forearm, placed in just the right way for dread to pool heavily in her gut. She stared, woozy as blood poured. She flexed her hand and didn’t feel it. Someone shook her shoulders. Her vision swam as she looked up. Inuyasha’s eyes were huge, terror-filled, but her own were stuck on the demon drool dripping from his hair, her mouth hanging open but nothing coming out.
From there it’s a bit of a blur. Inuyasha must’ve wrapped her arm, must’ve tried keeping it above her heart only for it to flop back comically, dead weight. There was cussing, she’s positive, and Inuyasha carrying her bridal style and that bit of weightlessness that comes with leaping between treetops. She might have called for her mom.
The next thing she clearly remembers is waking up at Kaede’s with a monster headache and heavily bandaged arm. Inuyasha hovered and avoided in tandem, ears pinned to his skull, as they hung around Kaede’s for longer than usual. The guilt was tangible.
It was the closest call she’s ever had. Sure, she gets banged up on occasion, but never again has she felt that pure, unshakeable I’m going to die dread with such crystal clarity. Inuyasha hasn’t let her.
Shaking away that memory, she leans in conspiratorially, and there’s a light in Souta’s eyes, a smile on his face at the movement.
“Wanna get ice cream after dinner? Me and you?”
He nods vigorously.
“Okay, we will. Go tell mom I’ll be in in a second.” Souta leans against her harder in place of a hug before getting up and heading inside.
The door clicks shut and she sighs, facing the city again. It’s starting to light up now, neon and pockets of warm lights that contain lives she’ll never be privy to, lives that must be more…real than hers. More grounded.
She picks at her nail polish. The yellow flakes and flutters onto her lap. She can’t help comparing it to certain eyes; she’s certain it doesn’t match, not rich enough, but maybe she’s misremembering. Memory’s a fickle thing.
She promised to paint Sango’s nails a while ago and keeps forgetting. The bottles of pink, green, and black polish (she needs options!) were the first things she put in her bag this trip. It’ll be fun. They’ll have to wait until they bathe to hopefully minimize the smell for Inuyasha because there’s no way it won’t bother him, but sometimes things aren’t about him, okay? She’s not heartless—she picked the least offensive-smelling brand, she’ll do it away from him, she’ll wait until it’s dry to come back—but Sango wants her nails painted, and by god, Kagome will fucking do it. Sango does so much for her, she can do this one little thing in return.
He always comes back. It was something Sango said one of the many times he’d gone to meet Kikyo. They’d been sitting in tense silence around the fire, the absence the very presence, silence stretched near tearing, when Sango abruptly announced she and Kagome were going to bathe and if that idiot had a problem with it, he could take it up with her.
“Tell him I said that. Exactly.” She jabbed her finger in Miruko’s face, who raised his hands as if to remind her he was not the idiot, but her glare and imposing stance didn’t waver. “Tell him how I said it, too. I don’t want it getting twisted.”
There was a hot spring nearby. It was something Inuyasha mentioned when he picked out their camping spot, and Kagome had been so grateful after the days-long trip they were on, excited to wash away the grime, that she pulled him in for a quick, bone-crushing hug, much to his embarrassment. It was thoughtful. He could be so thoughtful. And then he…
Whiplash, to say the least.
She floated on her back, legs propped on the rocky ledge like she had a bum ankle. The position was totally weird and made her a little dizzy, but she didn’t want to move. She wanted to dunk her head under the water and scream, but it was over dramatic and she didn’t want to find out if brain-eating amoeba were real and there was a non-zero chance Inuyasha would hear it—that was a can of worms she didn’t want to open.
So she floated there, water lapping at her skin gently enough she could cry. She didn’t care how exposed she was floating like that: it was just her, Sango, and the elephant in the room. The water rippled with Sango’s jerky, sharp washing, distaste rolling off her in droves, faint mutterings about how Miruko better have threatened him or he’s getting his ass kicked, too. Kagome rolled her head back a little to watch with a light smile. Her offer to fight Inuyasha for her was sweet. She liked having someone on her side.
They caught each other’s eye and Sango breathed out her nose before reaching out to wash Kagome’s hair with far gentler moves than she used on her own, nearly as gentle as the lapping water. It was sweet. She could cry.
Her eyes slipped closed as Sango worked. Sango broke the silence.
“He’s an idiot, y’know?” Her voice had a bite to it. Kagome hummed her agreement. The fingers in her hair were making her sleepy. “Wouldn’t know a good thing if it hit him in the face.”
“It’s fine, Sango,” she murmured. There was a strangled sound and a bit of pressure on her scalp that lightened immediately.
“It’s not. He’s an idiot.”
“I can’t make him choose.” She left the me off the end of that sentence, but it clung anyway. Sango sighed, rinsing Kagome’s hair free of the residual desperation.
“I know. Some dogs are loyal to a fault.” She hummed again. Sango’s hands suddenly cupped her face, upside down and weird, calloused fingertips resting along her jaw. She opened her eyes. It was hard to tell if Sango was still angry from this angle, water dripping from her nose onto Kagome’s cheek. “He always comes back, though, right?”
She blinked, slowly pulling her legs into the water and sitting upright. It left her a little light-headed. “Yeah. He always comes back.”
“Well,” Sango said, drawing it out and flashing this kind little smile, “that’s gotta count for something,” and Kagome could seriously cry. It changed how she thought about things.
She wishes she could do that, say the right thing at the right time. She wishes she could do more than paint Sango’s nails, wishes she could repay her in any meaningful way. She wishes she could take Sango to the mall.
She sighs, and with one last longing look at the city, she goes inside.
After dinner, she and Souta head to a nearby shop for ice cream. She’s not as nervous walking through the city at night after Sango taught her how to throw a punch (“just in case,” she said and, “go for the nose, Kagome, always break their nose”), but the phantom weight of her bow leaves her itchy. If she wanted to look like a weirdo, she could carry it. She doesn’t.
The bow she has on this side of the well she doesn’t like that much anyway; she leaves the good bow, her bow at Kaede’s while she’s gone. The one here Gramps found in the store room. It’s not quite the same shape, the draw a touch off, but still, it’s a bow and it was sweet of him to dig it out for her. On one of her very first trips home, guilty guilty guilty about being dead weight, all it took was light prodding from her mom and she cried big, hot, frustrated tears at dinner over her uselessness. The next time she came home, an old bow was slapped into her hands, and she was pointed towards a crudely set-up target at the back of the shrine, dappled light from the trees swimming over it and drowning her in gratitude and determination.
She’s definitely a better shot now. Every time she thought of her latest missed arrow, how Kikyo wouldn’t have missed such an easy shot, how she’s dragging the team down with her inconsistency, how proud everyone looks when she does hit something, how powerful she feels when she lands one in flesh that quickly burns away; every time she would march out there and practice until her arms hurt or she lost light or she calmed down. She steadily improved. It’s harder to hit a moving target in the heat of a battle, but boy, give her someone monologuing and she’s set.
Mostly. Give or take. Really if she misses the meaty part of their body, she can claim the arrow was only meant to distract. She’s sent out a lot of distractions.
She’s a better shot now, yeah, but not good enough.
Souta shovels away mint chip ice cream across from her. She swirls her own melting strawberry around in its container. A fan hums softly in the corner and a screen plays a reality show in another, murmured conversation all around. Neon puddles outside. Happy faces inside. It’s dream-like. The urge to reach out and brush a hand through Souta’s hair to prove this is real hits, but for the same reason she won’t carry a bow through Tokyo, she won’t do that either.
She’s missing this already. Her time here is coming to a close. She goes home on Saturday. She always goes home on Saturdays.
Routine. They have a routine. After a couple weeks in the past, so long as they’ve accomplished something, she tells Inuyasha she’s leaving, and the argument commences. Not over if she can go at all—that stopped being an argument the time she’d been in the past over a month, freshly on her period and longing for a heat pad, ibuprofen, and a break, and instead of getting mad at Inuyasha’s curt no like normal, she burst into mortifying tears. Well and truly sobbing. Panicked, Inuyasha folded and took her home that day and has not outright refused since, likely scared of the waterworks.
No, now their argument is for how long she’s gone. She wants a week; he wants max three days. He always starts the argument at just one day, and then they’d reach three days as a compromise, and Kagome would be seething. Lately, she starts the argument at two weeks, and then they reach a week compromise. She acts upset like it isn’t exactly what she wanted because she has tact, unlike Inuyasha who’d be smug as all hell when she’d finally spit “fine, three days is fine.”
Occasionally, she comes home from school to find Inuyasha sitting on the well house steps or up in the tree, impatient as ever. If her mom spots him, she’ll invite him in, but he must prefer waiting outdoors to accost Kagome as soon as she arrives. She’ll sigh but invite him in for dinner (not before reminding him it’s not time to go back yet). The rest of the evening will be clouded with his air of impatience until she gets fed up and yells at him to go back already, oh my god, I’ll be there soon. He’ll begrudgingly leave her room, but it’s fifty-fifty on if he actually listens: he might just be sitting on her roof or in the tree again. If she yells at him any more, he’ll act like a kicked puppy, but a kicked puppy stuck on guard duty, taking it way too seriously considering there are hardly any threats in her demon-less era. It grates her nerves.
And she feels bad about being annoyed since he’s only doing it because he cares.
It’s so obvious that she can’t believe she missed it for so long. Everything he does is because he cares: letting her ride on his back when she’s tired, how gently he handles her injuries, how he fights harder when she’s in danger. He cares and he cares and he cares.
It’s suffocating. It’s never enough: Kagome’s so greedy, she wants more from him. She wants him to care like she cares, care so much it hurts.
Souta’s voice draws her from her thoughts. He’s asking for a story, ice cream finished. Kagome swirls hers around as she tries to come up with one that won’t make him scared of her dying. She takes a bite as she thinks. Oh, she missed ice cream.
She settles on their first encounter with Kouga, snipping off the rough edges, sanding away the mates talk. It’s one she never told her family, since she came home in a rancid mood, only saying Inuyasha was a jerk and wishing she could say worse (his influence, she never swore before). It’s less irritating now, time softening the hurt, but if she thinks about it too long, she will get pissed all over again. So she keeps it as short yet interesting as possible; Souta doesn’t seem to notice, delight palpable, always Inuyasha’s number one cheerleader.
Her ice cream is soup at this point. She swirls it around one last time, the motion, the color, the everything about it enchanting. She puts the spoon down and knocks it back like a shot. It doesn’t imbue her with anything.
On the way home, they race up the shrine stairs, and sure, Kagome’s being nice tonight because she misses misses misses, but she’s not gonna lose a race to a kid. She leans against the gate, arms crossed and smiling, teasing Souta as he struggles up the last section. All of Tokyo twinkles in front of her and it still smells like wet pavement and she’s home and she misses home and it’s—she’s—
She tries studying, Buyo curled in her lap, her hand absently petting him, but she can tell none of it will stick. Crack her head open and there will be no brain, only more of that strawberry ice cream soup. She gives up eventually, accepts her fate of academic failure, and takes a shower.
Her scars join her under the warm spray. She isn’t bothered by them until she is—then it’s all she can think about. She feels littered with them, though she knows she isn’t. It’s not like she was a clean slate beforehand: one decorated the length of her finger from a kitchen incident involving knives and onions; one on her knee from a bike tumble from a couple years ago; one along her hairline from when she and Souta were little and stupidly running through the house for some game she doesn’t remember, and she tripped, clipping her head against the corner of a table, and wailed and writhed, clutching her head like she’d been shot. She got more from the past, though. Most are miniscule, barely visible on her legs, the consequence of not wearing pants in an era that necessitates pants. No one would notice them besides her. The one on her forearm is fainter than it should be thanks to the foul goop Kaede lathered on it. Still, she hates it. It looks like she tried to kill herself. She doesn’t know how she’d explain it to anyone here. Would they believe it was some medical procedure?
And of course, the knot of scar tissue on her abdomen is truly ugly. Lost a chunk of flesh and received the grossest scar known to mankind. She presses her hand against it, presses presses presses. It doesn’t hurt, but it does feel weird. Tingly. It expands with the pressure until it covers her entire stomach. She stops, lets the water glide over her a moment more, turns it off, and gets out.
She wipes away the steam and stares into the mirror for a long time, squishing the skin of her face, messing with her wet hair, tilting her head back and forth and back and forth, but she still can’t see what Inuyasha saw that first time. Or Kaede. Or Tsubaki. Or or or.
It’s impossible not to compare herself to Kikyo when everyone else is doing it too.
She can’t compare, anyway. Kikyo’s this husk, body of clay, dirt, and death, existing on spite alone, yet Kagome’s the one who feels hollow. Breakable. Like one good blow could crumble her, reduce her to dust. How could such a powerful priestess be reincarnated into nothing more than a stumbling fawn? Shouldn’t Kagome be something?
When she came to in that stinky soup after wrangling her soul back in her body (most of it anyway), she felt like she ran a marathon to steal a spot in this world that wasn’t even hers. Not that she regrets keeping her soul, not at all, but maybe Kikyo could’ve made more use of it. Kikyo has a place there; she was a priestess then, she’s a priestess now, she’ll be a priestess until the earth takes her once more. She moves with this cool, deft grace, this sense of discipline radiating off her. She’s otherworldly. Tragically, poetically beautiful. People admire, revere, love her. And here Kagome is, naked in a tiled bathroom after the convenience of a hot shower, squinting, hand maintaining a low ponytail, trying to stand taller, trying to look down her nose with a poise she doesn’t possess, trying to see what everyone else sees.
She drops her hair; it sticks to her skin where it lands. She doesn’t know why she bothers. She’s not Kikyo, couldn’t be her even if she wanted to—and she doesn’t want to.
She doesn’t want to, but everyone else does. They look at her and see a ghost, not the horribly modern outsider. They want her to know things and say things and do things she’s never known, said, or did. They call her a priestess because she can shoot some fancy arrows, but there’s more to being a priestess than that, and she knows it and they know it and everyone knows it—so why? Why does this woman’s nails dig into the soft flesh near her neck? Why can’t she shake her? Why does she have to be her if she’s back from the grave anyway?
She has a temporary place with Inuyasha. How depressing. Temporary. Contingent on another person. Shouldn’t she strive for more? Shouldn’t she be something?
If she were to die, would Kikyo get the soul? Maybe they’d reincarnate ad nauseam, for all eternity. Doesn’t that make the afterlife well impossible? A priestess would know. Kikyo would, but she can’t ask Kikyo, and she can’t ask anyone else without it being weird. Morbid. She doesn’t want to die, and she doesn’t want to be thinking about any of this.
She closes her eyes and breathes in two, three, four through her nose, out two, three, four. Tension eases. Water drips from her bangs, drips from her jaw, drips from her fingertips, barely-there patters against the tile. Her hand gravitates to the scar, but she doesn’t press this time, merely rests it there.
She might not have a place in the past, but she has a purpose, thanks to her colossal mistake that she’s been trying to fix for months now. What is she gonna do, not go back? It doesn’t matter if she feels like nothing and no one and unbearably in-between. She has a job to do. She can’t leave everyone high and dry.
Besides, she’d miss it. She misses it already.
When she opens her eyes, the mirror shows her and no one else. Out of place in her own bathroom.
The bottom of the well is the same as it always is. She waits a moment, feeling the chill, feeling the uncertainty of if anything’s real, feeling in-between. Breathes in, breathes out. Then she puts her hair up and gets a move on, grabbing nearby vines and starting to pull herself up and out (how have they not put a ladder on this side yet?). Her pack weighs her down, over-stuffed as it is, but she’s used to it at this point. She still fumbles with it when she reaches the top, straining to roll it over the edge when it’s suddenly out of her hands. A rough hand grabs her bare bicep and pulls her over the lip of the well.
“Idiot, why didn’t you wait for me?”
She blows her bangs out of her face (ugh, she should’ve gotten a haircut while she was home), fisting his haori to steady herself.
“I’m perfectly capable of getting out myself.”
He scoffs but doesn’t actually disagree. The conversation is familiar, one they have often when Inuyasha isn’t hovering directly over the well to help her as soon as her feet touch down, and Kagome doesn’t necessarily need his help carrying anything and decides to get it over with.
He gives her the standard once over, making sure she didn’t come back broken or somehow injure herself on a climb she made no problem ages ago, before blushing and looking away—also standard. Ever since she started coming back already dressed for bed—tank top, fuzzy pajama bottoms (these ones have bunnies on them!), tennis shoes (she needs to replace her loafers and there’s no way she’s landing in that cold, dank, bone-covered well barefoot)—he’s been a little more pink in the face. It’s cute. Honestly, the first time she did it because she was too tired to bother with actual clothes, but every time after was an excuse to milk this reaction out of him (besides, it is more comfortable since they aren’t leaving yet). It’s a good start to her time here.
He shoulders her bag, and they start walking. Everything’s wet and alive like it rained not long ago. The setting sun bathes the world in gold, enormous melting strawberry ice cream clouds cover the sky. The first of the evening’s lightning bugs blink in the distance. Throaty croaks fill the silence. It’s warmer, more humid here than back in her time, and thank god for tank tops.
“How was school?” he asks in that way that implies he only cares because she cares—but he does care. She smiles to herself.
“It was okay. I feel like I got really caught up this time. My grades might make the cut for once. And listen to this—”
She precedes to tell him about some juicy gossip that made her squeal when her friends told her, but he just nods along silently. It’s probably not very interesting, but any time she’s trailed off in the past, he prompts her to continue, letting her talk his ear off about things he doesn’t care about and has no context for. The hopeless romantic in her wants to believe he just likes listening to her talk, but there’s probably a pragmatic reason—not wanting her distracted on the road maybe?
But whatever the case, she likes the little yap sesh they do now. They’re never in a rush to get to the village, and the forest feels like it belongs to them: it’s where they met, where they continue to meet. It has that same in-between quality as the well. She doesn’t feel like she’s drifting while she animatedly spills her school’s secrets, gesturing wildly, tugging on his sleeve, and sort of dancing around him at her most excited. He’s always his softest here on this walk back, the way he watches her goofiness fondly, and she wonders if he feels the same way, the same in-between, drifting, lonely way she feels, missing everything and everyone, like they’re running on borrowed time. She doesn’t ask, but she wonders.
The first day back she’s always a giddy mess. Maybe it’s the pajamas talking, but it reminds her of the wee hours of a slumber party, slap-happy and stupid. Sure, there’s been a couple somber returns, but usually it’s this: smiling so much her cheeks hurt, a warm, tingly feeling lighting her nerves, and her feet on the ground.
A slick patch of grass appears out of nowhere to trip her up, and she only takes one stumbling step before an arm catches her around the middle and pulls her into his side. The tingly feeling reaches a fever pitch. She’s breathing heavily from talking so much or her almost tumble or Inuyasha’s warm arm cradling her—or all of the above. They stare at each other for what can only be seconds but feels like forever.
“Klutz,” he mutters, eyes still locked on hers and arm still locked around her. A breathless laugh bubbles out of her as she swats at his chest in admonishment. The restless energy in her forces her to pull away and keep walking, and he follows suit, naturally.
She clears her throat and bumps their shoulders together (like bumping a brick wall, he allows no give—the jerk). “What did you do all week?”
He shrugs. “Helped Kaede.”
“Helped with what?” she asks, practically skipping. She needs to chill out, but she’s, like, drunk off being home and won’t chill until tomorrow when they’re on the road.
“Finding stuff.”
“Finding what?”
He gives her the stink-eye, and she smiles, unfazed by his attitude. She just wants him to talk, but it’s like pulling freaking teeth. She’s yet to get more than short, gruff answers about what he does while she’s away, but she is resilient. Eventually, this will be part of the routine, too, and she’ll cherish the day Inuyasha finally deems her worthy of mundane reportings.
“Just stuff.”
She huffs. Apparently it’s not today.
“Well, what did everyone else do?”
“You’re gonna see ‘em in five minutes, woman. Wait and they’ll tell you themselves.”
“But Inuyasha,” she fake-whines, laughs, twirls around to walk backwards. He watches deadpan as she crosses her arms with a pout that wants to be a smile so bad. A light dusting of pink across his face that might just be the lighting. “You’ve gotta talk about something. I’ve missed you.”
It’s him that stumbles this time, and she tries to catch him, really, but the combined weight of him and the bag have them toppling to the slightly damp earth. He catches himself before he can land on her, somehow manages to get a hand under her head to save her from braining herself, but the tumble still knocks her breath away.
When she opens her eyes with a light groan, he’s staring wide-eyed, nervous, and she can’t help the laughter. She brings one hand up to cover half her face and the other over her heart, and she laughs, breathless and giddy, and she can’t even say why. Her hand flops onto her forehead and her skin is already tacky from the humidity and she can’t stop laughing. Inuyasha appears even more concerned.
“Are you okay?”
She nods as she tries to get herself under control, a few stray giggles escaping. “Didn’t even hurt.”
Cool beads of the rosary rise and fall with her breath, clinking softly. It’s a comfortable weight. She can’t remember the last time she used it. Inuyasha swallows.
“You miss me?”
Her eyebrows draw together. “Duh. I miss you all the time.”
It’s possibly more than she’d admit any other day, but right here, right now, things have that surreal drippy feel to them and she doesn’t see a reason to couch how much she cares. People don’t tell him enough, and unfortunately she’s people. She really should tell him more, if only to see this look in his eye again.
“Oh,” he breathes.
His hair is like a curtain around them, blocking off the rest of the world. Their breaths up the humidity in this closed off space. The dampness has soaked into the back of her clothes. Almost out-of-body, she reaches out and cups his face in hand and simply holds it. He’s wide-eyed again. She brushes a thumb under his eye with the faintest smile; as suspected, the yellow polish doesn’t match. His eyes flutter and he leans into her touch for a beautiful half second before pulling away abruptly.
Silky silver slips through her fingers, making her shiver, as she lets her hands fall so she can raise onto her elbows. Inuyasha’s back on his haunches, staring intensely at some lichen-covered bark, brows furrowed, ears doing a little jive atop his head. The dying light cuts his silhouette, and suddenly she’s thrust back to a construction site in her pajamas after spending her entire night running, him having come to her rescue again, asking if she was okay like he cared—and she realizes just now that he did care. That was the first time she saw him as something other than rude and arrogant, the first time she really saw him for what he is. A slow grin creeps onto her face. She’s seeing him now.
He shakes his head and stands, offering his hand. She takes it of course. Straightening her clothes, she sighs internally at how damp they are. Oh well, the moment was worth a little discomfort. She goes to start walking again, but Inuyasha halts her with a hand on her elbow, grip so light it’s almost like he isn’t touching her at all. He’s staring at the bark still.
“I miss you, too,” he says.
And she really can’t help it with as light and in awe as she feels, that same slumber party, slap-happy energy bubbling within her, she giggles. And of course his ears immediately flatten out, but before this can become a genuine disastrous misunderstanding as so much of their communication does, she grabs his arm and pulls him into a hug, lightning fast.
“Sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—you know how I get when I come home,” she fumbles through her words, muffled as they are by his haori, she knows he hears them. His arms hover. He’s still bad at hugs; she should do this more, too. He’s warm. She tightens her hands in the fabric for a second before stepping away. Suddenly, she’s the shy one, finding the lichen as utterly fascinating as he did. She hugs one arm around herself, fiddles with the bracelet she meant to leave at home but forgot. “It’s sweet, Inuyasha. You’re sweet.”
It’s silent for a good few seconds. She chances a glance at him to find him watching her in this unreadable way. Then he does his signature scoff and shoulders her bag.
“C’mon, it’s getting dark.”
And with that they continue their walk. She still has that bounce in her step, full to bursting with emotions she can’t rightly name, but she feels sure of herself for once—sure that she’ll miss moments like this with him like an acute pain in her chest until the day she dies.