***I posted this story to fanfiction.net but it hasn't been getting as many reviews as I have wanted. So, if you could, please read, review, and critique! Thanks so much, and enjoy.
Prologue
Kagome sat at the long table in her history class, taking notes. Well, actually, if doodling counted as taking notes, she was doing a pretty good job. She drowned out the droning on of her professor. It seemed he always managed to go off on tangents of gods know what. She typically listened. However, today,. She was rather tired. The nightmares had started back again. She tried so desperately to forget them. Thinking them to be remainders of her past. The well had closed. Why was the past continuously trying to haunt her? Hadn’t she been through enough? Or possibly, possibly the gods used her specifically as a way to find amusement in their boring existence. She mused, accepting that that was probably her fate.
Thinking back, she didn’t regret anything she had gone through. The trials and tribulations. She had grown considerably. But when was enough, enough? When would she get a break? The jewel, completed, she thought had completed her destiny. She was free, albeit not intentionally. It was just what fate had wanted from her, right? She chalked it up to be fate, anyways. She went on her mission, destroyed a foe, saved the world, in essence, and moved on. So why, why was she having nightmares of her past? If she was to move on, why was the universe so cruel to her?
Of course, she would never forget her friends. Sango, Miroku, Kaede, and hell, even Koga himself! And Inuyasha, she sighed, would always be in her mind. Even though she tried to push him to the back of it. She had decided later on on their travels that he was fit more as a companion, a friend. Possibly even as a close brother. As she grew and began to understand the world, and herself, her romantic feelings towards the hanyou grew into something rather platonic. It was love, but not the childish love she had known. And that was fine by her! It was childish, after all. However, it had taken several years to realize that fact. She chalked it up to his attitude. He had pushed her to make that understanding clear. His gruff behaviour, his anger issues, his jealousy, and everything that made him, well, Inuyasha. She would love him until the end of time, but not as more than a friend.
She missed them. All of them. But it couldn’t be helped and she wished not to dwell on it. The past was the past, right? And though she had visited it, physically, she needed to remind herself that she had a future. She was in college for gods sake! She barely made it out of high school, and she was even more surprised that she had been accepted into college. Her knowledge of the past was her key into the university. In fact, the professors and the board of trustees were thrilled to have someone with such expansive knowledge. Of course they didn’t know the real reason why she knew what she did. They chalked it up to be her being a fine student, someone who was ill most of the time, but studied in her spare time. She had studied as much as she could in the feudal era, reading by the light of the fire as the went on their excursions, but not as much as she needed to. Oh well, her future seemed to have at least a light to it, however small. She was thankful.
When she had come back home, to the future, she had ended up in the well, of all damn places. It was as if the gods were laughing at her. Planting her somewhere she couldn’t be. She cried and cried. Digging at the dirt until her fingers bled. That’s how her brother had found her; curled up on the bottom of the well, wishing for the past. But it wasn’t to be her future. She spent weeks, months, locked away in her room. Questioning why her life had to be this way. Why? Why couldn’t she have just stayed? No one here understood her. Her family, friends, how could they? When they were upset over such trivial things. They had never had to worry about much. Petty things. But she, she had been through so much as a young teenager and growing into adulthood. She had experienced, witnessed, done so many things that people in the future have never done. They couldn’t understand. Once a girl of the future, now an outsider. It was hell. And it complicated everything.
She picked herself up later on, but only because she resolved to the fact that she couldn’t live forever, hoping beyond hope, that her future would turn out, well, back to the past. She dejected the idea that she would go home. Back to the past, where her true home was. She loved her family, but she had worked up the notion that the gods wished her to be in that time. With her friends. The people who understood her. But, it was not meant to be, so she came to the resolve that this was how it was meant to be all along. She decided to start living again. It was hard at first. She had missed high school, so she was forced to take the GED, and passed, albeit barely. She decided that college would be a good idea, however, if only to keep her mind going. She thought it a good idea to study history. It’s what she knew most of, after all. It was something she was good at. Really, really good at. She got a full ride to Tokyo University, and was to major in history, minoring in journaling. She loved to write. In her free time she wrote stories, Fantasy, of course. But anything to keep her creative side flowing.
She decided to keep her body in shape as well. She knew she had grown stronger over the years, but she wanted to better her physical capabilities. She took kickboxing and taekwondo in her free time. Her sensei noted how easily she moved, so it wasn’t hard for her to bump up levels. While she had fought in the past, a young girl not knowing how to dress properly, she surmised her hair had become too long and she needed to wear it up. She also dressed accordingly. No longer would she wear skirts, which she agreed later on were way too short, and school shoes were just not cutting it anymore.
Changing her entire wardrobe when she came home was rather difficult, as she had grown out of most of her clothes while there, and not being in school anymore, she couldn’t very well walk around in a uniform. She ditched those clothes, and stocked up on tennis shoes, regular t-shirts, and jeans. She found it to be more comfortable, and she looked more like an adult, rather than a child. She had made up her mind to keep her hair long, only because it made her feel more at ease, like her past self. She was a woman now, 23, and growing older. She had filled out nicely, and she even agreed that she was rather attractive. Her childish face now had angles and she grew into her nose, which was rather small to begin with. Her blue eyes still glowing incandescently. She would often look in her mirror, noting as well, that as she got older she didn’t look much like Kikyo as she used to. This made her smile. She might be away from the past, but it wasn’t catching up with her anymore, well, besides her dreams.
As her professor droned on and on, she picked out few words from his many speeches. However, right as she was zoning in, she realized that he had begun speaking of the feudal era. This made her perk up a bit. Sighing, she wondered when she would ever quit hearing of it. Her family, the professors. But she wasn’t too surprised, considering this class was specifically for the past of Japan. They hadn’t spoken of that era yet, until now. What more had he said? She shrugged. Probably things he already knew.
“Today we will be learning of the Taisho clan. Or what they were known to be 400 years ago, The Clan of the Moon.”
Kagome stopped doodling. Taisho? Wasn’t that Inuyasha’s father? Weird, she thought. But she decided to keep on listening, curious what she’d learn that she already didn’t know.
“There have been many reported leaders of the Taisho clan. Inu No Taisho himself. His father before him, and Sesshomaru, the dog generals only son.”
Wait, what? That wasn’t right. Kagome frowned, irritated. He had two sons! Inuyasha and the overly aggressive Sesshomaru. They were completely different, except their aggressive and stubborn personalities were the same. Why was history always wrong?
“Today we will learn about the fate of the great dog general's son. He was a fierce ruler who ruled with an iron fist. Though he did treat his people well, he was selfish when it came to his land, which other neighboring lands believed he had too much of. Deciding that he was too stubborn and selfish, the Eastern lands waged war against him. Sesshomaru and his army fought hard for thirty days and thirty nights. But even the great dog lord of the West became tired. In a moment of exhaustion, he was caught off guard, and destroyed. The East claimed him land, and throughout time, all of the reigning territories merged together.”
Kagome balked. Sesshomaru died? That couldn’t be right. He was too powerful, even stating that death couldn’t claim him. It was rather irritating, or had been, when he would claim that he was the most powerful in all of Japan. She rolled her eyes. But at the same time, to learn that someone as powerful as he had perished in a war, was rather depressing. She had never been close to him. Had never even liked him, really. He had tried to kill her on several occasions for gods sake! But still, her was an ally, or had been, against Naraku. He had helped her and her friends destroy him. And because of that, she became suddenly depressed. She knew of the past, had been there, but was that really the case? Did someone as powerful as Sesshomaru really been wiped out by the past?