Alone-Again
by vexatively

Alone-again. She is tired of being alone-again. Whole, with laughter and a family and a life, but always, always alone-again.

She waits impatiently for the water to boil, if only to have something warm to wrap her hands around. Mama has no idea why she had brought out this particular mug today— the Anniversary had come and passed a week or two again. And yet, it is whipped out for the first time since her… her…

Kagome’s not dead.

The grip around the yellow pottery tightens, her knuckles whitening almost dramatically. Why can’t it boil faster? Her hands start to tremble slightly and she needs an anchor to the reality that seems to flee from her consciousness more and more every day. (I need—)

“Ma— Higurashi-sama?” Her eyes flicker to where the sound came from. Before (too long ago), she would have sworn that she had locked the door. Now, however, reality blurs with memory blurs with fantasy. Kagome?

“It’s me… Inuyasha,” he says sheepishly, sliding the hat he constantly wore down. She must have voiced her query aloud, or he must have read the emotions that chased each other across her face. He had been getting better than that.

Mama manages a weak smile. She had called herself Mama for so long, ever since she was pregnant at a young age, that she was hard pressed to remember being called anything else. “Mama,” she corrects him breathily. “Mama.”

She has the strangest urge to tear his ears from his head, to see if they were as sensitive as he would loudly protest at times. Make him cry. Make him suffer. Make him bleed. He’s not Kagome… Kagome, the girl that she had raised for 15 years, who fell down a well. Who never came back. Another person (imposter) who said she was Ka-go-me came but she didn’t have Kagome’s eyes, full of innocence and quiet wonder.

“Mama,” he echoes weakly. “I just… I was in the neighborhood…”

It’s strange how quickly he picked things up sometimes, equally strange how slow he could be. She presses her palms flat against her thighs and manages a strangled grimace. “It’s been so long. Nearly three years since I’ve last seen you.” Why couldn’t you leave me alone?

He shrugs noncommittally. “H-Higurashi-sama, I never wanted to stay.” He makes a startled noise as he realizes what he’s implied. “I… I mean—” He winces and abruptly quiets as she waves the apology away. “How’s... where’s...”

“Dead,” she bites out. “Jii-chan’s dead. Souta is too.” Souta might as well have been. Abandonment was a harsher slap in the face than the cold clutches of the kami.

“I’m so—”

“Why are you really here, Inuyasha?”

He blinks owlishly and visibly reins in the furious retort. “I…” Hesitation, picking his words carefully… he has grown. The bitter monster within her breast that resembles jealousy (why should she see him grow when her own daughter was stuck in his time and had been dead for a good five centuries?) rears its head. “I had no one else to turn to.”

“You felt alone?” She asks incredulously, maniacally, and throws her arms to gesture wildly at the dust-covered house. Against all odds, the mug stays in her hands, even when it seemed a hair’s breadth away from careening into a doorpost or a sink. “You felt alone?” They had to strain to hear her hiss— Inuyasha and the thousands of shadow-demons that stayed in the darkness to taunt her when she was alone and vulnerable once again.

“Yes.” His eyes are downcast and in his stance, she sees the routine of three years, every moment stretching out to an eternity. She can see how his hopes rise from its ashes, hearing the traces of delight in a stranger’s voice. Hoping, always hoping, for what might be, impossibly, life again. That it might be her delight, instead of someone else’s. That it might be her voice, instead of someone else’s. That it might be her, and salvation for his bleak un-life instead of finding his days stretched out in front of him and never finding light. And yet… disappointment in every step, with every time he lifts his eyes and he can’t find her.

Not now, not ever.

The sigh of relief comes in a violent exhale as the timer rings. The tea was done. “Would you like to stay? Tea?”

“I can’t. Thank you, Mama.”

He turns around and she sees the muscles on his back ripple from the movement. He was alone, too. The reality of that struck her as stealthily as a snake, realization as lethal as poison. And she trembled in want. Want for a family, for a companion, for an acquaintance instead of the echoes of her own voice. Talk to me… about my Kagome?

“Inuyasha?” He pauses, and she swallows hard. “If we’re both alone… then at least we’re together in that. Right?”

His eyes meet hers and she was young and unsure and very much expecting once more, looking into safety and security and dependability… only… only… I can’t be alone-again. He nods gravely and finally leaves and her heart finally stops palpitating frantically.

Her trembling hands are (finally) wrapped around the fragile porcelain of a mug filled with steaming tea. It had been given to her a lifetime ago. Her ‘comfort cup’, she continues to insist. But they all know that it was anything but, continuing to drive its shards deeper into her heart.

Shattered? Where are you? Are you cold? Are you hungry? Are you alone?

Now the cup is… d r o p p i n g? Slowly, as if the gods had slipped their hands into the cavity that was her chest and squeezed her heart (only it seemed like she had lost it a long time ago), time trickles by. Water through her fingertips.

Shattered? Pieces on the floor, small, as though her hopes themselves have manifested…

Another lifetime ago. You’re pregnant at the age of 18. Drink tea, you’ll feel better. Your husband’s died in a fire and you’re a single mother again. Drink tea, you’ll feel better. Your daughter’s fallen into a well and was whisked away 500 years into the past. Drink tea, you’ll feel better. Your son’s grades have been slipping. Drink tea, you’ll feel better. Your daughter is dead.

Shattered? Fragments of my heart?

And, as she watches the tea bleed into the floor and her hands continue to tremble without the warmth, she wonders if she’ll ever feel better again.

Disclaimer: Inuyasha has yet to be mine. The rights of claiming this little slice of genius goes to Rumiko Takahashi-sama alone. But, I do enjoy playing with the odd character to satisfy my possums.

E/N: Originally posted for firsttweak's 'Three Years Later' challenge on June, 17, 2008.