The only thing I own from this story are the headaches I have received from sitting in front of a computer screen for too long writing it! Seriously folks, Inuyasha is not my puppy.

Chapter 1.

Kagome ran the flat square hat around and around in her hands. What now? She thought. High school was long gone; it had been so much easier when she didn't have to hop back in forth from the feudal era. Even so, school was so full of drama she almost wished some of the girls had been demons so she could shoot them. Seriously, a sacred arrow could have only improved matters, but she restrained herself. College was even easier; she'd double-majored in emergency medical training and medieval history, Kaede would have been proud. All of her friends were looking at graduate schools but something was missing for her that kept her unmotivated.

She looked up at the picture on her desk; Inuyasha was in it, and Sango, Miroku, and Shippou. It was taken in the blissful week after they had defeated Naraku. Kaede held the camera, Kagome was on Inuyasha's back, rubbing his ears and grinning wider than seemed possible, Inuyasha looked furious, one arm reaching back to get her off and the other holding Shippou's madly kicking little body away from him. Sango and Miroku stood arm-in-arm, her blushing madly, him with his hand hovering centimeters from her derriere.

All of her friends in the present thought that this picture was taken at a festival or costume party of some sort and she didn't bother to correct them. Despite that it made her smile every time she looked at it, it summed up how she felt. She didn't belong here. It wasn't just the usual depressed feeling of disjointedness either. She really didn't belong, she couldn't talk to any of her friends about some of the most important times of her life, and there was something else that kept her completely separate from them…

Inuyasha had asked how she had gotten rid of the Jewel of Four Souls but she just smiled and didn't tell him. It was better that he didn't know.

When they had been trapped in the well and she had to choose her wish of the jewel she had wished it to disappear. It had been the right wish and the jewel had disappeared but she had realized later, when she was stuck on her side of the well that it had disappeared back into her body. In their last battle she had cracked one of her ribs and had to get an xray. The jewel showed on it, a perfect sphere made of something that wasn't flesh or bone.

Oddly enough the jewel didn't bother her at all. In fact, it invigorated her; it also seemed to be slowing down the rate that she was aging. At twenty two she still looked seventeen. At bars this was an annoyance but it did make her friends jealous. It also meant that for every hour of studying she did she had to spend two hours working on her spiritual abilities just to keep the powers of the jewel contained. She could purify a city block in downtown Tokyo on a good day.

In addition to the jewel she had also brought some items back with her from the feudal era, specifically from Naraku's castle that were considered priceless artifacts in her time. Well, not entirely priceless to the right person. It paid for her college and Souta's… and let her mother be financially secure for life, but she didn't know about that part yet. It was all set aside in a fund for her.

There was a tap on her door that snapped Kagome out of her reverie. "May I come in?" Her mother asked.

"Yeah." She began packing again in earnest, ready to leave the dorm room behind.

Kun-Loon came in and looked around. "My goodness, you're almost ready to leave." She exclaimed. "I brought you something, a graduation present from Souta and me." She handed a long slender box with trembling hands to her daughter.

Why's she so nervous? Kagome wondered, taking it from her. She opened the glossy white package with interest; there was nothing she had asked for, nothing that she could think of that she wanted.

Wrapped in peach tissue inside was the most beautiful bow and quiver she had ever seen. The polished surface of the bow gleamed darkly and a coiled pile of bow strings were wrapped around the soft leather of the embroidered quiver.

"You'll need it when you go." Kun-Loon said simply.

"Mom…" She was momentarily speechless, then a little angry. Were they intentionally trying to remind her of what she could never be? Of the other half of her heart that she had left behind in the feudal era? She looked up at her mother with confused and hurt eyes.

"We want you to please visit on the holidays." Kagome saw tears in her mother's eyes but a smile on her face. "We love you so much and we're so proud of you."

Kagome shook her head slowly, trying to wrap her mind around the magnitude of what her mother was saying. "I can't mom. You know that, I belong here."

It was her mother's turn to shake her head. "No sweetheart, you belong in both places, it's been five years Kagome. It's time to go to your other home."

"But the well…"

"My darling, you know why the well stopped working." Her mother paused, hoping Kagome would realize. After a long minute she sighed. "You had to come home, you were too conflicted about where you belonged. I think you know where that is now."

Kagome was still speechless, it was true that over the years she felt that she had made the wrong decision, but damnit it had been her choice. Either way she left someone behind. She remembered the last conversation she had with Inuyasha five years ago, when she was seventeen and Naraku had been defeated.

"Will you stay with me now?" Inuyasha asked, caressing her cheek with one hand as they sat under the stars. "Do you want to?"

"Oh Inuyasha. I told you two years ago that I wanted to be with you. That hasn't changed." She blushed and looked away, embarrassed. "I told you in Kaguya's castle how I felt."

To her surprise he didn't blush but tilted her face to his with one clawed finger. "Ka… Gome…" He murmured and brought his lips to hers.

She closed her eyes in anticipation and a soul collector had flown overhead with a detached soul in its grasp.

He froze and tracked it with his eyes, she opened hers to see him looking down at her with a longing that was only comparable to a starved man presented with a banquet made in his honor. The look didn't embarrass her, but the slight sideways glance he gave the departing soul collector had shattered her.

"Oh Inuyasha." She touched his forehead with hers. When he moved forward to kiss her she had placed her finger against his lips. "When are you going to realize that you are in love with the idea of Kikyo? With her soul… which is in me."She stood then and placed her hand on his cheek. " I love you exactly as you are, alive and a half-demon. I am in love with your soul Inuyasha… But I can't compete with your memory of Kikyou anymore."

She'd shrugged into her backpack and left down the well, it didn't transport her back to the feudal era again.

Kun-Loon saw the stubborn resolve settle on her daughter's lovely features. She admired the resemblance to herself when she was younger, the softness of the eyes and mouth, but the bone structure and spirit were all from her father's side, angles and strength. "Don't make me disown you Kagome Higurashi."

This caused Kagome to stumble over the words she had been planning to say and glare at her mother. Two powerful forces of stubbornness met and with the already fractured resolve hindering her, Kagome caved. She felt a rueful smile spread on her face.

"We'll go home and talk about it Mom."

Sango stepped up to the shrine, the twin girls following mimicking her every move, flowers with missing petals gripped tightly in tiny hands.

The sacred tree shaded the small shelter where a man lay prone as he had for over six months. After Kikyou last visited and stabbed Inuyasha in the back… literally… Inuyasha had said one word and laid down at the base of the sacred tree, never intending to revive.

"Kagome…"

Miroku had been researching furiously since he went into a coma, the results hadn't been heartening. From what they had found the reaction Inuyasha was having only happened to mated demons, mated demons who had lost their partners. He had been fading for years, ever since Kagome left for good. But Kikyou had destroyed the last vistages of his strength. She had been his last real link to Kagome, but trying to kill him proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wasn't, and would never be, Kagome.

Every few weeks Kikyou had come to laugh at Inuyasha's body at the sacred tree until Sango tried to knock all of her teeth into her throat with her haraikotsu.

Now she and the girls were the only visitors.

"Ojisan, please get better now." The little girl with the serious blue eyes put her flowers on Inuyasha's chest.

Sango carefully knelt around her large rounded stomach and placed a kiss on the half-demon's forehead. "Oh Inuyasha, please wake up soon, the leaves are beginning to change colors and the girls want to play in them with you." She sighed and patted her stomach with a gentle smile. "I hoped to tell you about your next godchild before I started to show… Who's going to teach the children bad table manners now?"

A strong aura enveloped her as a hand slid slowly down her back towards her butt.

"Stop there monk if you know what's good for you."

Miroku chuckled and encircled her belly instead. "It's done Sango, now all we can do is wait."

"I believe that she will come for him. They were always there for each other." Sango entwined her fingers with Miroku's as their daughters contentedly braided Inuyasha's long silver hair. "She has to."

Kagome carefully turned her steaming tea cup in her hands, circling it over and over until the pads of her fingers felt scorched. She had been fighting a nearly fruitless internal battle for six months since her mother told her to go back to the feudal era. To go or not to go, that was the question. Inuyasha had never come for her, that was proof enough that he had made his choice.

But maybe the well didn't work for him because she had the jewel…

No, that didn't make sense. She'd always had the jewel when Inuyasha came to get her, for some reason he didn't need it to travel. Maybe she didn't need it either, maybe it didn't work when she thought he didn't want her with him anymore. Could the well function on something as simple as trust?

A handsome young man with an ancient chest stopped at the table and ruffled her bangs. "Hey Sis, why the long face? I thought you would be long gone by now."

"It's not as simple as that." Kagome sipped some of her tea and eyed the chest curiously. "What's in there?"

"No idea, there's tons of these in the storage house, just like that sword that Inuyasha took back through the well that one time." He put on a pair of latex gloves and carefully unlatched the lid.

"Ooh, a scroll. Never seen one of those before." Kagome grinned and finished her tea cup. "What's it say?"

"I dunno, it's got a seal on it, old Japanese but if I can just clean the dust off…" Souta gently rubbed a Q-tip along the seal, revealing the message underneath character by character. "Open by… Higorashi… only?" He looked up at his sister with a quirked eyebrow. "But the Higorashi's have lived here forever."

"Wait Souta, there's another character there at the end." Curious despite herself, Kagome leaned in. "Hey… That's…"

"Your name." He said, looking up slowly to meet her eyes.

"Inuyasha." A cold, smokey voice said slowly. A woman with all the beauty and life of a porcelain doll stepped from behind the sacred tree.

Air escaped the half-demon's lips in a sigh. "K… go… me."

Kikyou recoiled like she'd been slapped. He never mistook her for that girl, always the other way around. Kagome was supposed to be a painful reminder of her.

"Men are so typical, even you, a half man just want what you cannot have." She laughed, high and cold. "Still… it causes you pain to be reminded of her, so I will stay nearby so you can smell her on me."

The dead priestess pulled an arrow out of her quiver and threaded it through the messy braids in his silvered hair. "You shall never see her again. That causes me much satisfaction."

Kagome looked up slowly from the unfurled scroll. "Well… This is unexpected."

"What's it say?" Souta looked like a little kid again, jumping from foot to foot eagerly. "Is it about Inuyasha? Are you going back?"

She looked back down, sifting through to words numbly. It was weathered and the unreadable in places but what she could gather was that Inuyasha had chosen a mate, and now for some reason he was in a coma and Miroku wanted her to come back to the feudal era.

Her emotions warred, on one hand, her soul was decimated that he had taken a mate, on the other, he was in desperate trouble and needed her. She had never been able to stay away when he needed her before. God she was pathetic.

Kagome stood, tucking the scroll in her belt and went upstairs to pack.

It didn't take long, all of her essentials were still packed from moving and since her travels back and forth from the feudal era she always included camping basics as essentials. All she really needed to do was change.

Leaving Inuyasha had been a brutal wake-up call for her. Barely a month went by before she was attacked for the first time in her time. She'd been lucky and escaped before the thug could do more than slap her hard and get her clothes ripped and dirty from falling down. Still she had signed up for self-defense that night and started training.

For some reason trouble seemed to come to her, she suspected the jewel being back inside her body played no small part in that. Usually she could change someone's intentions by just touching them, purifying them, but not always. She'd learned to always be prepared for anything. Everyone had personal demons and a sacred arrow wasn't always the best answer.

She dressed in a tank top, jeans and what Souta called her "shit-kicker" boots, knee-high doc martins that had indeed kicked the shit out of several ill-intended individuals. Her demon-hide jacket went into her bag, the material was a last gift from Sango—the soft leather from a water demon was water-proof and extremely durable. The only tricky thing had been finding someone in her era to make the coat.

Before lacing up her right boot she strapped a slim dagger to her calf over her jeans, tucking them into the boots. In addition to protecting herself from thugs who were naturally drawn to her without even knowing it was the jewel that lured them, she had discovered that there were more demons lurking in her era than she ever thought possible. People just didn't believe in them anymore and what they perceived as impossible they simply couldn't see.

The amount of "accidents" were caused by demons was unbelievable; car wrecks, natural disasters, arson and old-fashioned murder. Almost all of the serial killers who weren't caught were demons who went on a killing spree before being taken down by someone like her, or occasionally by someone who had no idea that they slayed a demon when they thought they ran over a speed bump.

She'd told Souta on more than one occasion that she was convinced that the best weapon modern demon slayers had was a Volvo.

The last thing to go on was her bow and quiver. She never could bring herself to use a cross-bow, it felt too much like cheating.

"Tell mom where I went ok?" She yelled at Souta as she ran past with her new backpack—a high school graduation gift from her grandpa.

"Like I'd have to." Souta rolled his eyes and went back to the rest of the contents of the chest.