Title: Divided Loyalty, Demonic Love
Author: c2t2
Part: 1/(?)
Warnings: None yet
Universe: Not AU, exactly, but not-quite-canon either. Let's call it divergence fic.
Disclaimer: Rumiko Takahashi created these characters and this world. I am merely borrowing them without permission or monetary gain.
Chapter Summary: Several years after the well closes with Kagome trapped on the wrong side, she finally seems to be getting on with her life, but a few mysterious details don't quite fit, and it seems there's more going on than meets the eye…

Chapter 1 Intro – To Victory

Kagome gasped desperately for air. Her legs felt like they were filled with broken glass and acid, her lungs burned and her heart pounded in the thin mountain air as sweat poured down her body in shining rivulets. She could no longer tell if she was running or climbing; it was usually a combination of the two. There had been no sign of civilization for miles; not a trail, building, or piece of trash visible until this very moment. Lightweight navigation materials felt like thousands of pounds, her water at least having run out long before. And finally, there it was; she was so close… she could really make it…

Kagome Higurashi stumbled across the finish line to a chorus of cheers from her friends who had arrived hours earlier to wait for her at the finish line. She had just broken the course record in off-trail long-distance running.

Not paying attention to the people buzzing excitedly around her, Kagome found herself wrapped in a foil-blanket and handed something wonderfully cool to drink as she tried to catch her breath. She had actually done it! Not one single other competitor in the race was in sight, and they wouldn't be for some minutes yet. Walking aimlessly to prevent her legs from seizing up, Kagome tried to smile at her friends while the world was blurring and darkening around her. She was blacking out, had she pushed too hard? She heard her time announced to the small, enthusiastic crowd. Her thoughts were jagged, fragmented shards that had once been a mind.

Slow. She was too slow. She KNEW she was faster than this. If they were here, even without any aid, they would have finished in a quarter of the time! Once, she could almost… Why couldn't she reclaim that ability, that exhilarating speed and excitement, of the days of unblemished landscape quickly eaten away beneath her feet, and the nights of…

Kagome shook her head, trying to stifle her thoughts and sending glittering beads of sweat flying through the air to fall to the earth around her. The sudden pain in her chest having little to do with exertion from the race she had just won.

She would not think about that. Not today.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

After collecting the modest prize money, Kagome headed back to the city with her friends, where they parted ways. Her friends had all either gone on to university or gotten married and settled down, but Kagome hadn't even finished high school. She was amazed she had managed to stay in school as long as she did, but eventually she couldn't keep up, and she'd had to choose: save the world… or go to school.

It wasn't much of a choice really.

She made do, somehow. She won modest fame and a little money through racing, and a little more money from occasional sponsors. Kagome was also her district's leading archery champion, and she worked whenever she could as a shrine-maiden-for-hire. Not that there was much business. A Miko in the modern world was called to work as a healer or exorcise demons very rarely, if ever. She mainly did festivals, celebrations, and holiday rituals. Traditional dances and such were still in demand. She took a couple of night classes and sometime next year she should finish her high school education, although what she was going to do with it was anyone's guess. For now she mostly helped run the shrine and took care of her increasingly-senile grandfather. Her dog and running partner, Ash, was her best friend and the only thing that could always lift her spirits. The snowy Akita had broken her perilous downward spiral after her final journey through the well. He had literally saved her life... in more ways than one.

Her family pretended not to notice when she slipped and called him by the wrong name.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Kagome sighed in contentment. A book in her lap, its pages dappled with the occasional spots of sunlight piercing Goshinboku's shade; her dog draped across her legs; the warm summer breeze trailing sensuous fingers through her hair as she sat curled into the roots of the tree. Her tree. Their tree.

Once, there had been a scar on the side of Goshinboku directly above where she now sat. That scar had vanished, but the jewel-scar on her side, in her flesh, still remained.

Kagome ignored the faint ringing of the phone, drifting in and out of dreams of silver hair and of flying at speeds faster than the wind itself.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Despite Ash and her relatively normal life, Kagome was lonely. Her friends had their own, separate, lives of course, but more than that, they had been cool and distant to her for years now. They still hadn't forgiven her, and she didn't really blame them, but they wouldn't believe her if she told them…

It had been gradual. The changes so slow that, with the chaos of life on the other side of Time, Kagome hadn't noticed until it was far, far too late.

Gradually, her friends came around less and less, and she hadn't noticed. They slowly ceased inquiring about her health, their remaining questions acquiring a cool, sarcastic undercurrent. They started doing things without bothering to invite her, and she still didn't notice. She should have known she couldn't keep the farce up forever. Her friends would get suspicious eventually.

She didn't know when it started, but when she was supposedly sick, "hospitalized" for weeks on end, her friends were unable to visit due to increasingly flimsy excuses dreamed up by her grandfather. Her apparent exhaustion and anxiety whenever she returned for a few days helped support her story for awhile, but eventually it became too obvious.

Kagome wasn't sick.

Her friends couldn't help but notice. Graceful, smooth muscle formed under the skin of her legs, arms, and body. Her skin darkened wherever her clothing exposed it to the sun. Calluses formed on her hands and fingers from her bow and the miscellany of an outdoor life. At some point, she had ceased looking like the Kagome everyone knew, and eventually she got to a point where no one who saw her would believe that she was an ordinary city girl, much less a sickly one.

Her friends weren't entirely stupid. Every time she returned from a prolonged "illness," Kagome appeared even stronger, more fit, and practically glowing with health than before. The more she was "sick," the stronger and healthier she got. Her trips into the past had transformed her and caused her to bloom from an ordinary Tokyo schoolgirl into an extraordinary woman, powerful and capable.

Kagome had changed inside as well. Her trials and experiences had matured her, and she had grown past her friends, so that they felt like strangers, like children whenever she was with them. And they in turn regarded her with suspicion. No one with even one fraction of her horrible diseases had ever gone straight from critical condition in the hospital to breaking mountain, trail, and off-road marathon records, much less simultaneously winning archery tournaments and acquiring a sudden expertise with herbs and an uncanny ability with canines, with her almost unnatural love for Ash.

She had only really looked sick once, after a months-long absence. They had finally been invited to visit Kagome in the hospital, to find her bone-thin and near death. Then, she never disappeared again.

They had only seen it from the outside. When Kagome suddenly stopped 'getting sick' she immediately seemed to slide into a deep despair, frightening everyone who knew her. Until one day, when her brother discovered a half-starved white puppy nestled in the roots of Goshinboku. The only thing her friends knew was that Kagome suddenly came back to life, unaware that her family was now even more worried than before.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Kagome's childhood friends were trying to reconnect with her.

"Come on Kagome, we don't want to hear your thousand excuses. We are going to celebrate one way or the other, and since we know you like outdoor hiking stuff, this is how we are going to do it!" Eri said, matter-of-factly. The others nodded.

Finally, several years after the well trapped her in the modern age, her friends had forgiven her. But right now, she almost wished they hadn't. They were currently trying to talk her into a weekend getaway at a resort so remote that they would have to travel through the wildest parts of the mountains to reach it. It was supposed to be very zen, despite being the only sign of the modern world, including electricity and running water, for miles around.

"Psh, you guys just want to use my car for the trip," Kagome wisely assumed, citing the First Rule of Wilderness Adventure: Use Someone Else's Vehicle. Kagome was not risking her family's car just so her friends could have a wilderness retreat without risking their families' cars.

"Nope!" Ayumi said, shocking Kagome, "My cousin works at a car rental place, and she can get us a rental car for free!"

"…Have you asked her yet?"

"Yes! And she said yes, but it'll be a major piece of junk. As long as it goes, right? Are you in, Kagome? And before you ask, yes your dog can come!"

"Well, I suppose…"

The others gave a collective squeal of glee and before she knew it, Kagome was in the midst of planning the getaway the coming weekend. Ash flattened his ears at the high-pitched noises and slunk away under the bed.

Her friends had insisted on the most secluded, innermost reaches of the mountains they could find. She knew that in their route the "roads" would be more accurately described as "game trails." And even some of the better roads would have sheer drops and no guardrails!

Well, what's a little danger to the one and only Higurashi Kagome? Kagome eats, sleeps, and breathes mortal peril! … or has in the past.

Or something.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

It seemed to Kagome as if she had barely blinked and the weekend was upon her. Dragging out the old yellow backpack sent horrible pangs of nostalgia through her heart. The familiarity of the items she was packing was just as bad.

"Well," she grumbled in the general direction of Ash, who was half-sleeping on her bed, "at least I won't forget anything really important, right? What would I need in the middle of nowhere in the modern era that I wouldn't in the Sengoku Jidai?" Her only answer was the flick of one fluffy ear.

Another half-hour of packing and she finally got around to adding treats for the road, which perked Ash's interest.

"Aargh!" She lunged and just missed as Ash grabbed the freshly packed doggy treats in his mouth and gleefully danced out of the room

"Yasha!" Kagome roared as she sprinted to her door as Ash's tail disappeared through it. "You bring that back right now!" The white dog turned at the end of the hall and looked over his shoulder, golden eyes laughing at her. "Ooh!" you asked for it… "Osuwari!"

The Akita flinched, as if expecting a blow, but then reluctantly sat down as Kagome stormed up and snatched the offending item out of his mouth. "Dumb dog…" she muttered, only a fraction as annoyed as she was acting, stooping briefly to scratch behind his ears.

"Kagome…"

Kagome froze, instantly immersed in guilt and shame. She looked up through her bangs, feeling a sharp pang followed by another wash of shame when she saw her mother standing at the top of the stairs, the older woman's pale face turned to the wall, unable to even look at her.

"I made onigiri for you and your friends. I hope you girls have fun." Her mother's smile was forced as her worry lines suddenly seemed to deepen.

"Thank you, Mama," Kagome stammered. "Come on… Ash," she mumbled, urging the silver-white Akita back to her room. The contrast of the name that passed her lips from a moment ago was painfully obvious, and she could swear she saw her mother suppress a cringe.

Kagome closed the door to her room and sank to the floor with her back to the solid barrier between her and the rest of the house. "I'm sorry Mama," she whispered, barely loud enough for even Ash to hear.

Her mother thought she was deluded, insane, warped with grief. Every time Kagome slipped into saying the more-familiar name, she had to endure seeing the fresh pain in her mother's eyes.

"I'm not crazy, Mama. I'm not… you just wouldn't understand."

TBC

Author Notes:

(1) I've had this fic started for a LONG time, and after not one but three separate computers randomly exploding, on top of losing internet access over and over again… I seem to be delay-prone. A common affliction, I hear, but annoying nonetheless, since it means that updates will be… sparse.

(2) I have promised to never beg or threaten for reviews, but anyone who generously provides feedback will have my unending gratitude.