The Wayfarer And The Way by Lyra

Beginnings and Endings

The Wayfarer and the Way

- XXI -

Beginnings and Endings, or

The Last Goodbye

Five hundred years from the moment Kagome had last seen him, Inuyasha still wore the fire-rat robe his father had left him, a garment as out of place – and time – as Inuyasha himself. For a moment Kagome swayed in place, half-gasping, half-laughing. Then she rushed forward and toppled into his arms.

“Inuyasha – Inuyasha – I'm so sorry, I couldn't get back, I couldn't – I tried, I tried so many times -”

“It's alright, Kagome. We always knew you would come back if you could -”

Kagome stepped back, and wiped her eyes on her sleeves, and then looked at him, really looked, and felt a trembling go through her whole body. Age had claimed him, changed him. The ever-moving hands of time had darkened his skin and wrinkled it, set sags into muscles that she remembered taut with youth.

Inuyasha – my Inuyasha is gone. He's gone – he's gone, time stole him, he's gone -

A grief that she had repressed for eighteenth months came welling out of her. Sesshomaru was a constant – the same in his appearance, his manner, even in new clothes, even in new kindness - but Inuyasha was not; Inuyasha was gone.

In his place was an old man who had lived a life she did not know.

Tears burst from her eyes in a flood, washing out her vision; she was grateful, could not bear to look at Inuyasha, at the seams in his ancient face, at wisdom and a well of memory in eyes that had once gleamed golden with brash confidence.

Inuyasha smiled sadly and moved to tighten his hold on her...only to find her slipping away, out of his arms, out of his hands. He stood still, only half surprised; mostly he was angry with himself for not expecting this reaction. Of course she was shocked and upset! He had experienced the same feeling himself more than once; whenever he looked in the mirror, and remembered who he had been.

I've always been grateful that I could live long enough to see her again – and yet the longer I lived, the older I grew, the more I hated my human half; the incurable curse of my mortality.

He took a step toward her and was frustrated in his attempt to comfort her when she took a step back, shaking her head, holding her face in her hands.

Cool and careful fingers closed on Kagome's shoulders, drawing her back toward a protective embrace. It was with relief on her face that Kagome turned and saw Sesshomaru, standing immobile and unchanged behind her. Inuyasha had never envied his brother more than in that moment – when he was nothing but an accomplice to Kagome's despair; when he was forced to watch her turn to Sesshomaru with pleading eyes.

This was not the reunion he had imagined; not the the moment of meeting for which he had waited, and hoped, and planned.

She was already closer to his brother that he had ever imagined, simply because Sesshomaru was the one who had gone to her first; the one who had remained the same.

Had he told her he had waited?

Had he told her how?

Inuyasha looked at his brother, holding Kagome against his body, soothing her sobs with the slow movement of his hands, and clenched his fists tightly, feeling the weakness of his ancient flesh even then.

He remembered three hundred years of blood rage and madness, the darkness of denial in his brother's eyes, and resigned himself to a fact that he had never before been able to accept.

He wants her; and so he shall have her. Or he will reign in fury and fire over the world; and the world will become Hell.

Inuyasha looked up and saw Sesshomaru's eyes on him, and wondered what had been showing on his face – because on Sesshomaru's -

On Sesshomaru's face, there was pity, and possession, and triumph.

Kagome was his, even if she didn't know it yet.

~~~~

A/N: Another opening, another show....but I'm not in philly OR baltimore.  How sad....

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