A/N: Short epilogue to follow tomorrow, to wrap it all up. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share this story. It's been a blast. :)

Under the Same Blue Sky

-Present Time-

*I'm not letting go…*

"Sesshomaru," the voice message blared inside the empty mansion. "Are you home?" It echoed through the motionless dwelling, bounced against the cold marble walls.

*Even if I have to go through everything you did, I'll never let go….*

"Sesshomaru, please answer. We can't reach you on the phone… can't contact Kagome either. The whole clan is worried.

I'm worried.

Call me, son. As soon as possible."

*You fought for us until your hands bled, you hoped until all hope was exhausted.

I'm not letting go….

Because you never did.

Until your last breath.*

The golden-eyed Inu woke up that morning, highly elated, his soul, euphoric on what was to come.

Today was the day.

In a morning that was not quite like any other, he was awakened not by the gentle prodding of the morning sun, but by the sound of the pounding rain. He stretched out of bed, tried to ease the nervous tension in his muscles. He barely slept last night, he couldn't get the sound of her voice off his mind when she said goodnight.

There was something in her voice that unnerved him, something in that simple regard that alarmed his instincts.

When he tried to call her, when he tried to find her, he realized he was right.

He would find himself seated inside a train, bound to a place that had become a part of him throughout his hundreds of years of existence. Soaked to the bone, eyes bloodshot and raw from all his crying, his very soul, overwhelmed from the crushing pain.

He couldn't find her.

Today was the sixth day since she promised to be his mate. Summer solstice, just like the day she gave her body to him, and her heart, completely to him, with her promise that she would love him forever, until her very last breath.

"Young man, are you alright?" the old lady beside him asked.

He could only lift his weary eyes at her, and cast it back down.

His phone wouldn't stop ringing. His father had been trying to contact him the whole morning.

The phone rang again… he finally pressed the power button, effectively shutting it off.

"Young man?"

The signs were blatant. Her distance was stabbing at him, knives carving deeper and deeper in his chest. And she knew it, and it seemed as if she loved every minute of it, driving the knife deeper until it reached its limit.

Then it would shatter into pieces inside of him.

"I will be," he finally answered, "As long as she'll be by my side again." The train halted to a stop. He looked at the sign, "Bunkyo", it read. He gathered his disheveled form and stood as the doors opened, and walked out into the pouring rain.

"What if I told you that we met before, and you promised me you'd love me until your last breath?"

"Then I would say you're crazy."

Flashes of their time together filled her mind- of a golden afternoon where the maple fell like rain- where a little girl, slightly embarrassed and a little annoyed, confessed her undying love to a stubborn white-haired inu. He only laughed at her and walked away in vain.

"What if I told you that I loved you... and still love you,

and I'll do anything just to call you mine again?"

"Senpai," she looked at him, "Surely you would be aware by now, that I'm never gonna believe anything that you say?"

It puzzled her to no end. His tears when he held her so tight on the train, the unnecessary, absurd displays of his affection whenever people were around,

The excessive whispers of "I love you", uttered so suddenly out of the blue.

"I will love you until my bones grow brittle, I will love you until my last breath. If in this life we end up losing each other, I will find you in the next… "

She looked around her, at the photographs scattered all around her, like the memories fluttering back into her consciousness. Kagome slowly brought her hands to her face, and she wiped the tears on her cheeks. Tears she didn't even realize was there.

She knelt down and pushed the photos aside, and she ran her hands on the deep etch on her wooden floor- her last message to Sesshomaru- carved by her bloodied hands and longing tears.

She touched her womb, reminiscing the memory of the little red energy that once fluttered about.

"And then I will love you more, until my soul exhausts, until I am but a remnant of this fleeting world."

The blue-eyed shrine girl suddenly stood, and she looked out the window. Torrents of emotions, much like the cruel rain, fell in her mind, trickling into her soul. Cleansing…drowning,

Prayers for his safety in the quiet afternoons,

Flutters in her stomach whenever he called her name,

And heartbreak, so much heartbreak.

The sky was dark, the rain was pouring. Such was a morning like no other.

She suddenly dashed to her little bedside drawer. The girl rummaged madly, until her hands felt a familiar sensation, one that she could recognize, even with her eyes closed.

A silken case, containing broken brushes. And just below the drawer were vats of paint… saved by her deceased mother- her heart suddenly ached, when there was a little note scribbled on the side:

"I love you, my daughter. You deserve to be happy…

I love you."

Nightmares of her mother and father had haunted her at one point: she had dreamed of them driving at a cliffside road, on their way to Shinjuku, engaged in a violent argument inside the car. Her father was yelling, screaming to her mother- he will take her away, farther away from the "golden-eyed demon", and he would do anything to keep the lineage clean, even if he would kill her all over again.

And in her dreams, her mother, with tears in her eyes and a whispered "I'm sorry," jumped out of her seat and grabbed the wheel from him,

Spinning the car out of control,

Plunging them into a rocky, gruesome fate a hundred feet below.

"Mama," Kagome whispered, clutching the note close to her heart. Then she breathed deep, and she gathered her brushes, gathered herself, and she picked out only two bottles of colors- only two out of the twelve- because that was what she needed,

The only colors that she needed,

And she ran out of her room, down the creaking wooden mansion she once called her home for the past hundred and fifty years. She ran and ran, ignoring the burst of cold wind that greeted her when she found herself outside, the slush of wet earth underneath her feet,

The pouring rain on her shoulders, prickling like needles on her exhausted skin.

She didn't realize she had pushed heavy wooden doors to enter her destination. She didn't know she opened just one window, creating an eerie dim into the structure that was once filled with light.

The only light she needed was there, she only needed enough to do what she had meant to do.

And she stood before the giant wall, and she took her broken brush and dipped it into the vat of white ink…

She took the brush and started to paint,

The feeling oh so familiar in her hands.

*I can hear you, your cries echo into the drained chambers of my soul…*

"Then why don't you let me out?"

*I want to… god, I want to. I want a reprieve from all this pain.

And I'm exhausted…

Chasing, constantly chasing her… this never-ending chase…"

"Let me find her for you."

*The last time I let you out, it only ended in heartbreak.*

He remembered the night of the stupid party.

He remembered himself seeing her in the arms of that wolf youkai and blacking out, and the next thing he knew, she was bloody and crying in his arms.

And he remembered that little girl who looked like five years old, professing her undying love for him under the shower of golden maple leaves, the same girl he kissed underneath a million stars…

Sesshomaru paused, and he looked up at the gloomy, raincloud-riddled heavens.

*The sky… it gives me comfort… to know that Kagome and I… are underneath one sky.*

His beast fell silent, and they stayed that way for a long while, waiting for nothing, hoping for everything.

"We are," his beast finally said, "And that won't change this time. We will love her until our bones grow brittle, we will love her until our last breath. If in this life we end up losing each her, we will find her in the next…"

His clamped jaw relaxed, he loosened his fisted hand. He closed his eyes, and he allowed himself to breathe.

"And then we will love her more, until our soul exhausts, until we are but a remnant of this fleeting world."

Sesshomaru opened his eyes. Golden and scarlet had harmonized into one, just as he and his beast were one and the same. He breathed out, and a rush of steady energy flowed out, swallowing him in a field of red youki.

The smoke then cleared, the youki stabilized.

Underneath the rain stood a beautiful white dog with magenta markings, golden-red eyes fixated towards the sky. For a while it pondered, of distant memories of a blue summer sky and a familiar voice calling his name.

~~"Ah, I wish I could fly too!" she turned to him, blue eyes full and expecting.

He sighed. "I will have that ability when I reach a hundred and fifty. If you are patient I can take you with me-"~~

There was a harsh rush of the wind, and the white inu tore its gaze from the dark heavens. It tossed its head towards the other direction, trying to sense something,

Trying to reach her.

He couldn't count the many times he cried,

Since she was gone,

Since he had found her.

And he was exhausted, so very exhausted.

But she was, more so than him, and what she had gone through was nothing he could ever imagine. And so the weary fire in his soul grew, it grew until it was a full blaze. Strength surged into his muscles, it filled his bones.

The white inu sprinted away, deeper into the uncertainty of the pouring rain.

Before the giant mural she had never really finished in the sakura-den, Kagome stepped back, watching the beams of dim light hit the entirety of her work. Her hands were a mess of white paint, and she felt a tickle on her skin,

She was crying again, but it didn't really matter.

Kagome brought her hands to her face in attempts to wipe her tears, it only left a white streak on her cheek.

Then the crying Miko dipped her brush into her little vat of gold. She reached out, and she put in her final strokes.

Brush and golden paint fell from her hands, crashing on the wooden floor. The blue-eyed shrine girl reeled back, too much overwhelmed with emotion, and she buried her paint-smeared hands on her face and sobbed.

What to do now?

Now that she remembered everything?

The large wooden doors suddenly burst open behind her, and she spun around, blue eyes wide and startled.

By the doorway, drenched from the rain was the miserable form of a most familiar inu, golden-red eyes trained intently at her.

And at that very moment, she had her answer

from the question that so stalled her mind.

He rushed to her, morphing back into human form, seizing her wrists and baring his fangs. The strength of his tackle was too powerful he slammed her to the ground, pinning her with the weight of his body and the fall of his frustrated tears.

"You're leaving me again!" He screamed at her, his throat hoarse and raw, "You're leaving me again…you promised me you'd stay!"

His shoulders shook, his body shuddered. And he trembled, out of anger, out of frustration, but most of all, out of fear.

"You promised me forever," he broke down, "How could you leave me again… after you promised me…"

Pathetic.

Utterly pathetic.

Just like the long nights alone, curled up on the floor before the television as videos of their yuinou played,

calling out her name as he held on to the only picture of them left in desperate longing,

standing alone under the sakura tree, staring at the impossibly blue sky which was so very like the color of her eyes….

"You're not leaving me again," He whimpered, "I'm not losing you again…

not again… please,

not again…"

The exhausted inu looked at her, she was looking back at him with those blue eyes, keeping silent, muted,

As muted as how she probably felt towards him.

But her tears that were not stopping sparked a little hope in his heart. Could she at least consider? Will she, at least, listen?

He never took his eyes off her, his tears were shamelessly falling on her face. But he didn't care, gods, he didn't care. She was listening, and this was the only chance he probably had. "I'm sorry for what happened,

I'm sorry I didn't fight for our little one.

So many things I want to ask forgiveness for… and I don't deserve you, I know I don't deserve you…" He buried his face on her neck, "But I love you, and I try to envision myself giving way for you to move on. But I can't… I just can't.

I was going to court you again, it didn't matter if your memories never came back. But then that stupid party happened,"

She remained quiet, she laid still. Never moving, never reacting.

"It's so difficult," he sobbed, "So fucking frustrating, whenever you look at me with hatred in your eyes,

And I look at you,

And all I can remember is the hundred and fifty years we shared together."

He squeezed the flesh on her arms, so hard her knuckles turned white, still no response. Only her blue eyes were looking back at him, drowned in silent tears.

"I can't blame you for walking away from me, but just know that I will find you. I'll find you and I'll bring you back to my side where you truly belong.

And I won't care if you hate me, every fiber of me, every minute that we're together.

I'm not losing you again," he cried,

"You fucking hear that? I don't care if you hate me.

But I'm not losing you again, Kagome."

He shook, crying his heart out like a lost little child. The girl underneath him remained still. She will probably push him away. Curse at him, or maybe throw him a seething glance. Sesshomaru braced himself for the rejection that was to come. It had been that way for the past few days with her, after all. But he was prepared to face the consequence of his selfishness, he only needed her by his side.

Forever by his side.

Just as she promised.

The shrine girl shifted from underneath him. He buried his face on her neck, her hair, wrapped her desperately in his arms, knowing what was to come. He refused to let go, didn't she hear what he said?

His heart was beating so loud, her own heart was beating in synch with his. What was she thinking? What was making her heart beat as fast as his?

Fear? Hatred?

Then she breathed out, probably in exhaustion, and her heart was suddenly this calm, resolute steady that made his heartache in longing for the many nights they were together, naked and wrapped in each other's arms.

"I heard you," she softly said, "And I'm not walking away, Sesshomaru-sama,"

He stiffened, he pulled away in astonishment. He looked into her impossibly blue eyes and wept:

She was looking at him with such warmth it made it so hard for him to breathe.

"I'm not walking away," she continued, "And if I am ever going somewhere, I'm taking you with me. I'll love you until my last breath, didn't I promise? Until my soul exhausts,

until I am but a remnant of this fleeting world."

He pulled slightly away and he finally brought his gaze up, to the large mural before them, to where the filtered dim light of the sun hit.

Beside the painting of the little girl watching the clouds on the clear blue sky,

Was a white inu with golden eyes, sitting beside her, close beside her…

"Kagome," was all he could say.

"I remember everything, Sesshomaru-sama," she whispered. Kagome held her mate's exhausted face. He looked at her, robbed of speech and stunned out of breath.

She smiled amid her tears. "I'm here now, and you are too."

The daiyoukai sighed in disbelief, still so very utterly stunned. He threw his arms around her, unable to believe, so fucking confused and elated and fearful,

Was this all a play of cruel fate?

Or did she finally, truly remember?

"Kagome," he cried out, "Kagome…" He did not know how many times he uttered her name. His mind was a whirl of emotions and memories and disbelief. Sesshomaru held her tight, afraid that the moment would disappear, afraid that it was all a cruel dream.

But the shrine girl's soft lips kissed him,

She kissed him, and he tasted the sweetness of her lips and the salt of her tears. He sighed,

It was real… this was real!

He leaned down and received her yearning, responded to her lips he caught her with his own. And the kiss deepened, sighs and whispers of longing and regret and happiness poured into the torrid contact. He pushed her robes off, she tugged his drenched hakama down.

The feel of familiar warm skin,

The tickle of silky hair…

And life-giving breath, as their souls rejoiced in the beat of each other's hearts.

"Anata," The shrine girl whispered in between kisses, "I'm here now. We're going to be alright."