Sleepless by ink

Stuck

Despite popular opinion, Kagome was not dead. She couldn't remember much, and she didn't exactly know what it felt like to be dead, but she was absolutely certain that she wasn't.

There was a moment when her body just fell away, weighted down by a tentacle tearing through her chest. There was no bright light, no tunnel. She wasn't a floating being with no legs. She was just a little less herself than she normally was. Someone had screamed something. It sounded far away, or like she was underwater. The words got lost in the oppressing weight of not-death, sounds muffled and rounder and foreign.

So she stood there. Almost whole and almost healthy and minus one body. In the middle of a battle with people she didn't remember in a place that didn't seem like home. A boy with golden eyes held her body to himself and cried over her. He stroked her hair with bloody fingers and then shook her with helpless desperation when she didn't wake up, calling just one word. That was how she knew her name.

Kagome.

Was this boy important to her? Did she know him? She wanted to panic, but she couldn't quite muster up the energy.

Curious, tried to put her hand back into her body, but it left her with the feeling of something searing up through her veins, gripping at her heart and tearing it with great twisted claws. Kagome gasped and stumbled back. She didn't try it again.

Since there was no tunnel and no pearly gates, Kagome followed after the boy and his friends. She watched their lives for a great many years. Watched them live and die and wondered if they got stuck, too. If the boy with the golden eyes woke the morning after he passed away and sat up, forgetting to bring his body along with him. Maybe he moved on. She thought maybe she was supposed to have moved on too, but she was stuck.

Stuck, but not dead.

Kagome floated (figuratively. She couldn't levitate at all. She tried to fly once, leaping off of a cliff. Kagome dropped like a rock, crashing into the ground. It felt like missing a step at the top of the stairs.) along in a dreamy and dissatisfied existence. For many hundreds of years, she simply was. She lived in houses as an unknown guest. It made her feel a bit more alive to pretend to be part of the family. She spoke to them at breakfast, never minding that they couldn't hear her. Watched children graduate and get married and move along into their own houses. Sometimes she lived alone in closed up homes with sheets over the couches, waiting for someone new. Waiting for something to happen to start her life again.

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A/N: Hi there! I have little writing experience, and no experience at all with fanfiction. I'm hoping to ease myself into writing with characters not my own with the occasional drabble. Nice to see you, I hope you enjoy. If you don't, I'm a tough cookie and can take hearing complaints. C: