Another Tomorrow

For Inuyasha, time was first a thief.

It stole his mother from him. And Inuyasha wasn't a fool—he knew all mortals died. But it wasn't simply her death that Inuyasha begrudged: it was the time he might have spent with her, the years she should have lived and seen him grow from a child to a man. Most of all, Inuyasha felt robbed of the time to grieve. In the very moments after Izayoi's death, he'd been forced to flee for his own life, thrown out into the wilds to survive. No time for tears, no time to touch her pale vacant face, no time even to think of what it all meant – in one moment she'd breathed her last, and in the next he'd felt rough hands grab his arms, heard the angry mutters of men swarming around him. He'd been yanked through castle hallways and courtyards, and finally shoved into the dirt outside the castle's high walls, its gate groaning closed behind him. Dirty hanyōs were allowed no time for grief, and his life in the wilderness provided him none.

Then time became a prison.

A literal prison, no less. If a childhood filled with scorn, persecution, and violence weren't prison enough, Inuyasha was then skewered to a tree—suspended within time itself—for fifty years. Time was laughing at him again, that merciless bastard. It was robbing Inuyasha again. He'd finally found something good, a safe harbor to shelter in. He'd finally found someone who didn't treat him like a dirty hanyō, who spoke to him with kindness, who looked at him with sad and solemn eyes. Kikyō. He'd sensed in her a lonely spirit that reached out to his. And just when he'd thought the course of his life would change, that he and Kikyō would share their burdens of loneliness... then he'd been betrayed. Then he'd been imprisoned. Fifty more years of solitude, an isolation that couldn't begin to compare to what he'd known before. His safe harbor turned into the hurricane he'd been running from.

Then, strangely, time became a portal.

In the midst of his greatest solitude, time sent Inuyasha the most baffling thing he'd ever met: Kagome. The girl who freed him from time's fetters, who looked at him with awe, who told him in no uncertain terms exactly who she was: "My name is Kagome! Ka-go-me! I'm not anyone else!" The girl from another world, another era; the girl who smiled at him and screamed at him by turns; the girl who always—whether in anger or affection or sadness—always treated him like her equal. She helped him even when she didn't want to. She believed in him even when she thought he was a jerk. She stayed with him even when she could have—should have—left. She baffled him. She often angered him. But mostly, she filled him.

Kagome brought him abundance when his life had been defined by deprivation. She did everything wholeheartedly: she laughed, cried, fought, loved, despaired with her whole heart. It was her great strength and her great weakness—just as she was his. That wholeheartedness was why, on the day he expected to say goodbye to her, she instead reached for his hand, threaded her fingers through his and smiled at him with aching warmth. He'd die with the image of that smile in his mind. And from that day, he prized each moment with her. She filled him with a peace he'd never even thought to hope for.

And then time took her away, too.

The great thief struck again. The portal closed. Time became a wall, a locked gate, confining them both to their separate worlds. Three years without her.

Three years — it sounded too small for what it was, too innocuous a label for that kind of wretched emptiness.

Time was a thief, a prison, a closed portal... but then it became something new again.

Time brought her back. After interminable years apart, she came to him again, as she'd always done before. He reached for her hand—just as she had once reached for his—and pulled her into his arms. He couldn't control their trembling around her, and he knew she could feel it when she squeezed him back.

"Inuyasha," she whispered, "I'm sorry. Have you been waiting for me?"

"Idiot," he choked into her ear. "What took you so long?"

The days and weeks and years that followed were full. Inuyasha held Kagome that night as she sobbed against his shoulder, telling him about her life during their years apart. He watched as Kagome integrated back into village life, and grew more confident in her new role as Kaede's trainee. Within weeks, he built her a hut on the edge of the village, and they married the day after its completion. He prized each new intimacy of married life, the quiet mornings, the meals together, their conversations about the smallest things. Each day he marveled at how fundamentally unchanged she was, how she still did everything wholeheartedly and how her smile still filled him with peace. And when their first child was born, and Inuyasha held Kagome as she hummed their baby to sleep, he finally realized exactly how time had changed.

Time had become a gift, the promise of another tomorrow with Kagome.

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Written for InuKag Week 2019, Day 7: Time.