Disclaimer: I own nothing. Except some pudding. Because yum.

Kagome misses the feudal era.

This isn't an uncommon thought but it's not omnipresent either - except for her current situation.

"Ooh! Isn't this one so cute?" Yuka exclaims over a baby bikini with a palm tree beaded in silver on the left breast.

"Ooh." Ayumi agrees. "Very shiny - sure to get the guy's attention!" and with that the three girls burst into giggles. Kagome gives a forced smile before turning back to the racks. Who knew it was so hard to find a one-piece that fit right?

"Kagome, why do you insist on getting a one-piece?" Eri questions with one hand on her hip and the other holding the yellow strappy bikini she found an hour ago by her shoulder.

Kagome smiles and repeats her excuse from earlier. "I've just been so shut in that I don't want anything showy."

Eri gives a silent sigh and shakes her head. "Kags, you're gorgeous. You don't need to feel shy. And forget anything your stupid ex ever said to you." Kagome gives a small flinch and while Eri falters for a moment, she doesn't take it back.

She has great friends. Friends who believe that she's insecure because of Inu Yasha (her heart pangs) and want her to feel confident again. She lets them believe this even though she wants to tell them it has nothing to do with him (that he was wonderful and strong and brave) it's easier than explaining otherwise.

"I just wouldn't feel comfortable showing that much skin." She gives a small smile and smothers her guilt.

"Well how about a tankini?" Ayumi suggests. "They don't show your stomach and are really cute!"

Kagome considers and notices her friend brightening up that she's considering and so she thinks about it even more. It's not a bad idea. She could get boy shorts with it to hide more of her legs and (taking a glance over the rack across the aisle) they don't have nearly as many cut outs which were a major problem.

"Ok." She gives in and her friend brightens even more.

Kagome offers another small smile as they shuffle across the aisle and crunches down on another pang. She knows that she doesn't make things easy for her friends. She's been withdrawn and unhappy ever since she got back and her friends try their hardest. She doesn't know if she should feel happy that simply taking a suggestion gives her friend so much joy or shame that her being receptive is such a surprise.

After being saddled up with at least half the stock of tankinis, they finally ship her off to the dressing room with Yuka next to her to try on the baby blue bikini and a green one she's grabbed since.

Kagome takes a deep breath and swiftly undresses. She pulls on the first pair of boy shorts (another thing her friends tried to talk her out of but conceded) and pulls them up before she catches sight of herself in the mirror.

The black skin tight material goes almost to her belly button (the highest of all the pairs she's even seen today) and covers almost half the bite from Mistress Centipede. Her eyes trace over her torso and the many battle scars that lie there. She's proud of them. She doesn't think they disfigure her or make her ugly or ruin her complexion. Aside from that first bite mark, these are proud markers of the battles she's gone through. They're marks of her strength and everything she went through with her friends.

In the past, she and Sango had often looked at each other's scars and played 'name that battle' in the hot spring. Sango was the one who taught her that scars were a mark of bravery, not 'I messed up'. That was when Kagome finally understood why anyone would be into scars. She started thinking of what someone must have gone through to get such a scar instead of 'ew'.

But this was not the place and certainly not the time for such scars.

She knew that most of her scars could be brushed off as something mundane since she mostly got glancing blows. The burns on her forearm where a from demon's acidic tongue had latched onto her? Oven burn. Thin marks were written off as cat scratches. The mottled patch on the back of her right foreleg? Tripped while hiking. Some of the injuries matched up better than others but at least they could be reasonably explained.

Her torso was not so easy.

She had at least three sets of unnatural claw marks and acid marks peppered her lower back from a lizard demon with troublesome spit. She had matching sets of four puncture marks on both sides of her hips where Inu Yasha had once clung to her as he tried to regain his senses. Just above and to the right of her bellybutton she had a warped circle that slightly caved in about the circumference of a soda can. There was a matching exit wound on her back around the size of a quarter from when she had once been impaled by one of Naraku's tentacles.

She admired herself for a moment (all her strength, written on her body and on display to the world) before coming back to reality and pulling out a simply, purple tankini with dark purple swirls on the bottom. The color was flattering and it covered most everything.

The twin draglines running down her shoulder blades are unavoidable in a swimsuit. She suspects her friend's will think Inu Yasha had been a sadist in the bedroom. But though they are from him, the circumstances are vastly different.

Her hand travels to the back of her shoulder, tracing the top of those marks. Where Inu Yasha had grabbed in a last, almost embrace, and tried to stay standing even as he bled out. How he slid down her front as his claws sliced down her back...

Kagome shakes herself and puts her mind back in the present. She shuffles through the stack of tankinis forced on her and pulls out some of the most revealing and patterns she just didn't like before putting those aside as 'already tried'.

Waiting until her friends actually knock takes a while but that's good. It means they believe she's had time to try on that many. "Kagome? Did you find anything you like?" Yuka calls and Kagome puts on her game face.

"One moment." Adjusting her hair to cover her back (her friends haven't seen her shoulders yet and she'll avoid it till they hit the water) she steps out. "You guys gave me a lot to try, but I like this."

Yuka gives a small frown at the shorts before fawning over how beautiful Kagome looks and how she should have more confidence in herself. Her friend recognizes the high waist she's chosen but doesn't comment.

As Kagome models a few more sets - although she's set on the high waisted shorts - her friends give more praise to the slightly skimpier pieces she shows in a hope to boost her confidence. She starts having lots of fun with it and starts posing when Eri suddenly goes silent as she models a green top with white shorts. Following her friends line of vision all eyes come to rest on the matching sets of four puncture marks on Kagome's hips peeking out from the top of the shorts and the small slits on either side of the top.

No one says a word and Kagome looks away. She knows her friends are drawing their own conclusions and as much as she wants to tell them 'He didn't mean to hurt me.', she knows that just admitting he did it will give them that much more fuel. They've never seen a scar she couldn't explain away, even if only dubiously. They've never seen such plain proof that someone caused her physical harm.

She mumbles a short "They're from medical tests." but she knows none of them believe it. She walks back into the dressing room and changes back into her regular clothes - jeans and a stylish shirt - before coming back out with the high waisted boy shorts and a horizontally striped red and black top.

As she steps out her friends break away from whatever huddle they were having and Ayumi grabs her hands. "Kagome. We promise," Brown eyes hold blue unwaveringly. "No, we swear. We will never, ever, allow someone so cruel to take advantage of you again." On either side of her Yuka and Eri nod their agreement.

Kagome almost tears up but stops herself. Her friends have it all wrong. She loves her scars. She's proud of them. Inu Yasha never hurt her like that.

Instead she hangs her head for a moment and takes a deep breath. Her friends are amazing people. They are swearing to protect her and she knows they'll go through with it. They're supporting her and just want to help.

Even if it's misplaced.

Putting aside that terrible thought, she faces her friends. "Thank you. Thank you so much." she breathes out and her friends envelop her in a hug whispering how much they love her and how they'll never let some douche hurt her again and how beautiful and wonderful she is.

She clutches to them and tries not to cry. Her friends are all wrong. Their kindness is so strong yet so misplaced that it's hard to smother her guilt for all the things she can't tell them. For how badly she stains Inu Yasha's memory. For all the unnecessary and misplaced sympathy they give her. For having the wrong conclusions about what's making the giant hole in her heart.

Yes, Kagome misses the Feudal Era.

Where people understand who she is and what she does and what she's gone through. Where things are simple. Where she has friends that are closer to family who are now lost to her.

But, as she clings to the three who have known her longest, she reminds herself that she has to keep moving forward in this world.

So she lets her friends make their assumptions, and covers up the roadmap of her strength, and hugs them to comfort them as much as they try to comfort her because as much as she's lost, there's still so much she still has.

Wow that got intense at the end. Everything past describing some of her scars just took a whole mind of its own.

I really just wanted to do a short little piece on Kagome and her Modern friends since you see so little of them together so this was my idea of a world where Kagome has to live in the present because a whole bunch of people die in the past. Come to your own conclusions if the well works or not, because either way, Kagome doesn't use it.

Seriously, scars are something you should be proud of.

I could be convinced to continue. It really depends on reader response. A continuation would involve characters who have survived into modern day.