Crescendo by Squash

Shadow of love

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha

AN: Chapter inspired by PJ Harvey: Shame

Kagome had not even broken a sweat as she passed Miroku in their laps for the second time that morning. Miroku watched her with both concern, confusion and a bit of pride but he did not say anything. The mind was a delicate thing during trance, after all. It wasn't really his place to stop her. So he did the only thing he could do and that was to try and keep up.

Her feet fell into a rhythm, her mind connected with her body and spirit that kept her in a calm, almost sedative state.

His indigo eyes widened in shock at her speed, knowing no mortal could accomplish such. Even the head monk at the temple in which he trained after he surpassed his mentor, Mushiin was not connected enough to his Chi to access such strength. Every day, the girl-become-woman before his eyes got stronger and stronger, surpassing every expectation they set for her. Every day he began to ask himself if she was, in fact, mortal at all.

Kagome was oblivious to the monk's queries as she ran, feeling so in tune with her body and the energies around her that her concentration would not, could not be broken. Her heart thundered in her chest in perfect rhythm with her steps, her breath lined to match it all. In her head, she let all the stress of her life melt away until she felt invincible.

In a way, she was glad that she and Inuyasha had not pursued a relationship together and that he had chosen Kikyo over her. In retrospect, there were a lot of things about the hanyou she didn't like, now that her perspective on the matter was extraneous enough to really look at the pros and cons.

Inuyasha was childish, immature, and jealous. She was very intelligent and their conversations lacked the depth she craved. She couldn't very well have a political debate with Inuyasha or a philosophical one, for that matter. She had told herself that he had a good heart and that was enough.

But now, she began to wonder if it was in fact enough to sustain a working relationship.

He almost never bathed and getting him to was like pulling teeth. She often wondered how he could go so long with his sensitive nose smelling the way he did until she caught him taking a long sniff of his armpits one day and came to the conclusion that he enjoyed his own potent scent. That had creeped her out a bit.

He was also very needy for attention. He hated it when she and Sango talked for longer than usual or he was left out of any conversation. Now that he had Kikyo, she was no longer his constant feed and she felt relieved that someone else had taken that place.

Her eyes caught the light of the rising sun and she gasped at the beauty before her. A sea of colors grew across the clear sky, from a dark purple to a deep red until the first lines of golden amber lined the horizon.

She breathed in the sight, loving it and felt another energy boost as her spirit connected with the energy in the universe. Her speed increased until her foot falls no longer registered and she felt as though she were flying across the landscape, her movements graceful.

There was no specific direction she was trained on and she had long ago left the usual running trail with Miroku far, far behind her. Still, she allowed the energy to fill her and lead her on, not wanting the feeling of connectivity to end.

Her heart was filled with love, love for the beauty of nature around her, love for the scent that came to her nose of the outside world, love for the people she traveled with, love for the world. It grew and grew inside her until she was practically glowing with energy, the energy of the universe, the energy of the Kami.

She thought of Inuyasha and what a silly, doe-eyed, dependent girl she had been. How she had fawned over him like a fool, never seeing beyond the boundaries of her own hopes for what could be to what actually was.

She blindly offered her love to him, content to accept nothing in return. Only now did she realize that it was her own wounded self worth that allowed her to do such a thing. She felt her love was worthless and expected nothing for it. She had told herself she was being selfless and she was to an extent. But only to the harm of herself.

Slowly, those feelings of insignificance began to change. She taught Inuyasha to open his heart to others and he, while not offering to return her feelings, gave her something much more valuable in return. He taught her to love herself by making her stronger.

All his pushing, his badgering, it had been for one goal: her protection. She needed to walk long distances every day so her body could get tougher. She needed to learn to fight so she could protect herself. She needed to learn to not be so quick to emotion so that her enemies could not distract her so easily. If she cried because he called her a wench, what would she do if her enemy called her something worse?

She could not hate Inuyasha. He had helped her grow, had sowed the seed that set her on the path she walked today.

Still, there were lingering feelings of upset regarding her own actions. In truth, she was ashamed of her feelings. Ashamed to admit the darkness in her heart that existed when she first realized Inuyasha's feelings for Kikyo. She had been jealous, she could not deny it. She felt Kikyo was much better than her and even Inuyasha had mentioned it a few times after she failed to accomplish something.

Her confidence waned in Kikyo's shadow and she distrusted and disliked her incarnation for many years, right up until they started working together and Kagome saw Kikyo fighting firsthand against Naraku. She had never felt such dark feelings for a person before that and now that they were gone, she couldn't help feeling that they could return.

She would do anything to help her friends. She would lay down her very life to protect them, as she had done on several occasions in the past.

Kouga. What was she going to do about him? He had always claimed her as 'his woman' but until that day by the river, she had honestly never given much thought to it. But now it was clear that the wolf prince really wanted her as a mate and she had led him to believe she was interested, if not with her words, than with her body language.

She had been in the position of giving love to someone that didn't return your feelings before and had no desire to put Kouga through a mess in any way similar to what she had gone through.

All through the triangle between she, Inuyasha and Kikyo, she had hoped and wished for his honesty. After years of traveling together, of promising to stay with each other, she realized it all meant nothing when the truth finally came in the form of his actions. She could not be blind to that.

She had foolishly told herself there was hope every time he went off to see her and lied about it. Foolishly admonished herself for being angry with him. Only now did she realize that she was worth more, that she deserved to be treated better.

Because what it all boiled down to in the end was that her love was not a weak thing, it was a powerful thing. The more she loved the more powerful it became. It had shown Inuyasha how to make friends and trust others, it had brought Sango from suicidal rage to the calm, resolved woman she was today, it had provided the love of a parent to an orphaned fox kit and it was her love for friends and her desire to protect them that would see Naraku to his end.

Kagome continued to run until all that remained of her was a tiny dot in the distance and then, nothing at all, her body hundreds of miles from Edo and showing no signs of stopping.

AN: Reviews are my fuel :)