30 Shards

Title: Revolving
Character/theme: Kagome/revenge
Rating: PG
Squicks: Gloom, "adultery", pairing screwiness
Summary: Kag/Inu


Revolving

The very moment of Naraku’s death and in the very still instant after, Kagome started to hold her breath.

What would he do?

Unfortunately, despite the happiness he had known in the company of Kagome, Inuyasha was apparently unable to give up the past. He was as incapable of doing so as his late enemy had been and as his undead “wife” was still.

No one knew how he had convinced Kikyou to remain in her shadowed existence, but they did not descend into hell. Rather, they withdrew themselves apart and took up a lonely existence in the wild. Some whispered that Inuyasha was not wholly willing to give up his ties to the mortal earth, even if it were for his long lost love. And Kagome waited.

She showed no signs of worry. She had made a man of him. While he was still cocooned in his childish solitude, his head full of the dream of himself made by others, she alone had drawn him out and given him a place in the world. Nature had made him aggressively isolated and self-centered, and she had molded an opposite character in him, one that was actually open, expansive and grateful. Kagome had given Inuyasha a palpable joy of living and converted him from hot anger to warm passion.

And then he left, as all sons leave the nest sooner or later.

Inuyasha sincerely felt that it was the only right thing to do. He believed that, with Kikyou, he could find the peaceful repose he had known before Naraku had shattered everything. But the most truthful reason was that he could not bear to retreat, to do anything other than what he said he would do, so long ago. He’d sooner die than have others say of him that he was faithless, or even wishy-washy. Inuyasha had made the decision before the death of his enemy. Kagome knew she would have to be more patient than she had expected because he seemed ready to sacrifice himself for appearances and conscience. To those who pitied her fate she simply said: “Don’t worry, some other mikos run errands for me.”

And it so happened that Inuyasha did return. He wondered into her hut on a languid June night almost as soon as the “honeymoon” was over. Now Inuyasha was no longer certain which past he was unable to give up and at one in the morning Kagome received him in bed, without the slightest prick of conscience. She was still young but could see straight away that Kikyou could not change her cold and ashy nature, and she relished the taste of the sweetest vengeance. It was so sweet and secret that she did not mind sending him back the next day, just as somewhere Kikyou, who sustained herself on her own private sense of fulfilled vengeance, pretended to not know where he went. Thus is was that they all convinced themselves that they were truly the ones who had come out on top in the situation and that, all things considered, they should really be grateful.