Revised 01/09/10

{ : Deceitful Time : }

{|: Prologue : |}

{...}

Immortality is something that no mortal can fully grasp. It can be explained a thousand times in a thousand different ways yet escapes their appreciation. They'd think they get it, weak humans, they think they can relate but they never can. A hundred years, at most is all a human has to look forward to. Few even make it that far. They measure time by the passing of days instead of that of generations.

Two hundred years after he made his choice he had completely forgone social attachments. In the end all they led to was pain. No mortal could live as long as he did and all demons faded into nothingness. Except him. He lived, for her, always for her. But did it even matter? She was a fading image in the back of his mind. Her smell could not longer be recalled or the warmth he felt when he held her in his arms—did he even really ever do such a thing? Or was that a figment of his fleeting mind's imagination?

Did he ever feel his lips against hers?

What did she look like? Ebony waves, hazel eyes, fair skin, but… those were simply descriptions that he had made himself memorize. Countless women held the same features. He never meant for her to turn into something as vague as a dream.

Did she ever exist?

No longer could he remember what was truth or fiction after three hundred years. There were other woman to keep his mind off of that one, but he didn't mean for that to happen, either. Their faces merged with the blur that he barely held onto. The foggy image of the beauty that his soul beckoned for him to recall, to seek out, to find… to have but…

Did she want him to find her?

Ebony waves, hazel eyes, fair skin… what else? Kagome. Kagome, Kagome, Ka-go-me, that was her name. He still remembered that but he wished he had listened when she told him her last name. With the passing of time humans took on those things, until in the era he first met her, and there were probably too many' Kagome's to find. What was the name of the place she lived in? The foreign land?

Did it exist yet?

It was Japan. She lived in Japan, which was why he never left there often. Five hundred years, he knew that was how long he had to wait so he would go travel around the globe when it became possible but never for that long, well, never for that long to him. His time passed completely differently than others. He was the only of his kind left, or so he thought.

Did he want to keep up the search?

Here and there he'd come across youkais but they were doing just what he was, hiding from time, hiding from humans, because they were nothing like they once were. They remembered the golden times together when there were thousands of them across the land until that happened and their numbers were cut again and again and again.

They gave him an odd comfort when he was around his own kind but he never stayed long and they never wanted to, either. They were solitude creatures that didn't dare to wonder in packs, but they did create order amongst themselves.

Four hundred years passed and her name was starting to die away just like her face but he couldn't forget it. Kagome, no matter how generic it was she was why he was enduring it all but why? He barely remembered her, he didn't know if what he did recall was real or dreams that his mind had altered into truth. He fixed the problem the only way he could, by tattooing it onto himself. He couldn't forget something that he had on his own body.

That brought questions from his momentary companions, who's Ka-go-me? He didn't know. That was often what he told them and if they knew him even a little bit they'd believe it. Sometimes, when he was in foreign countries, they'd ask what the symbols meant and he'd give a different answer each time 'hope', 'endless time, the lies went on and on.

Five hundred years and the world was nothing like it used to be. Cars spun by, buildings soared up high in the sky, and history had been written. The last hundred years were some of the hardest to get through. Two world wars, it was better when they didn't know about the other countries, he thought. Two wars that he had to endure, never did he fight in them because it was humans' problems. He was lucky, he guessed, since he left Hiroshima a few weeks before the A-bomb dropped. Perhaps that would have been able to kill him, at least it would have disfigured him for a while, but he doubted it.

Nothing could kill him. Believe him; he had tried to let death take him once or twice.

He didn't remember any of the places he had gone to in her world, the woman that he doubted even existed. The woman that no longer lingered on his mind even though her name was tattooed on his arm. The name that began to lose its' meaning. Was it just another drunken mistake he had made? Probably, after all he had made so many.

Tokyo eventually became his home. It was easier to live in a busy city where one persons' endless life wouldn't be noticed.

Inuyasha, the person that never died but a person who lost the meaning of life long ago.