Summary: Ten years later, Kagome has finally started to feel like the world is normal again, when someone from her past returns into her life...
The letter fluttered from her hand, and leant back on her car, her breath slipping away from her. Her eyes didn't follow it as it fell, though, preferring to rest on the neatly groomed (but not unrecognisable) man standing in front of her. He looked young, yeah, but he wasn't. She knew that much, at least. She'd come all this way, across oceans and continents, but it was true.
"It's really you... You haven't changed at all, have you?" She asked, smiling a little, pushing off from her car and standing facing him. He grinned, swishing off his sunglasses and pulling up his hair, with his hands, into a ponytail. Letting the hair fall, he stepped forwards across the empty parking lot's pavement and looked her in the eyes. It was really him.
"I'd never forget my woman, Kagome. Wolves mate for life, you know."
She smiled, looking down at the ground. He, in a gesture more romantic than the one she remembered would have ever done, lifted her face to meet his. Too many cheesy romance movies, she guessed, but this time it worked. Tears sprang to her eyes.
"He died, Kouga-kun. He died ten years ago, or a hundred years ago, or whenever, and I don't know what this is suppose to feel like..." Kagome took off her glasses and slipped them into her pocket. "We killed Naraku, but... It didn't change much. And to think Inuyasha, the great world-saving warrior, died of a freak disease..."
She was really crying now. "And I took those memories, and pushed them to the back of my mind, and seeing you now 's just..."
He pulled her closer, embracing her and stroking her hair. "S'alright, Kagome, everything's fine..."
She smiled between the sobs, looking at his back. "You know, the Kouga-kun I knew wouldn't have ever done something like this... It's so human."
"Well, would the Kouga you knew be wearing this crap? Humans are the big thing now, and I've learned to deal with it..." Kouga said, and Kagome could feel his grin even though she couldn't see it. "I'm older, wiser and know humans a damn lot better than I used to... Kagome, you look different, but you're still the same Kagome, right?"
"Well, yeah, I guess..." Kagome twisted the ring on her finger with only a small sob. "I've married once, you know, but it didn't last long. He was the mean kind... You'd think a miko would be a better judge of people than to let that happen, right?"
"He hit you? Just tell me where the bastard ran off to..." Kouga muttered, his face drawing closer to her ear. She smiled ruefully.
"Would the Kagome you know stand for that?" She smiled.
"Well, dog-breath was always all over you. I was always worried..." Kouga's voice sounded almost exactly like it had ten years ago, centuries ago... The amount of time for her was long, but for him...
"No, Inuyasha never hurt me.. Kouga-kun, when you said wolves mate for life... Do you mean..?" She asked quietly.
"I never touched another woman... You were my first, and will be my only..." Kouga said, burying his face in her hair. "You still smell wonderful, you know, even after all this time."
Kagome pulled, lightly, out of the embrace and actually studied Kouga. She was now twenty-five. She'd gone through school, college, her first job, her first kiss. These weren't just from one life, or the other, but intertwined... Her life story.
When Inuyasha had died, though, no amount of pleading, from Sango, Miroku, even Shippo, could convince her as she left to ever come back. She'd almost convinced herself that it had never even happened, though a small part of her mind (and most of her heart) had always told her otherwaise.
Now, though... Seeing Kouga again, and learning that he loved her and she wasn't just... a shard-finder. After finding out he'd waited centuries for her? And the feelings bubbling inside her were there, not conjured out of some feeling of duty...
Kouga was real, the same way her family was, Hojou was. After the well, nothing had seemed real but everything before it. His leather-jacket-biker feeling was Kouga, the one who loved the wind in his face and the thrill of finding her after centuries.
"Kagome... I'm not sure if I'm doing this right, because most of my lives," Here he grinned, "I've spent in America. So, I know how to do an American engagement, as well as a demon engagement, but not a traditional japanese. Besides, I have no family. How would it look for a well-paid, educated Japanese woman to marry a familyless (but fantastically rich) man who had spent his life in America?"
Kagome looked flustered, and Kouga smiled and got down on one knee.
"I know we've practically mated already, but to make it legal... Kagome, would you be my modern, legally-binding wife?" He asked, smiling and knowing the answer but pulling out a box just in case.
Kagome smiled at his choice of words, and looked at the box in surprise. She'd heard of American engagements... Was it really...?
"I accept," she grinned, and as Kouga stood to open it she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, her experience making her a better kisser now than before, and Kouga's passion making it even more wonderful. They stayed this way for a long time, stnading in an abandoned parking lot off the highway, kissing in the most passionate, Un-Japanese way possible.
"You know, I liked that school uniform better than those pants. They lengthen your legs, but they don't show much skin. Though, I can think of a few well-placed tears that could make them bearable..." Kouga murmured.
And as she stood there, Kouga's mouth on her neck and his hands in her hair and hers around him, and the world spinning because it had just turned upside down (which turned out to be right-side-up after all) and the two of them getting in her car to go make their bond legal and official (though their bond was much deeper than that), and the world makes sense again even though her thoughts and feelings are all just one big run-on sentence, not divided but all leading and flowing into one another.
And she knew, for the first time in ten years, she finally felt... real.
-End-