Fish Don't Sleep

Chapter One

Sometimes she wondered what the point was. After all, she had defeated a demon. She had saved the world. She was a hero! She was alive but, the God's being the Indian Givers that they were, had seen it fit to make her spend the rest of her life in the purgatory that was monotony.

"If you carry the two, the answer should be obvious." At least, it was to her math professor.

Kagome Higurashi sighed as she stared at the complicated equation written on the black board. She didn’t know why she had bothered to try to finish off the last year of high school after she had completely the jewel of four souls and left behind her life in the past; she knew all to well what a hopeless cause it was. She didn’t understand a single equation that was written on the board. It may have well been written in English – another class she was failing dismally.

She had completed the jewel almost two years prior, certainly long enough to gather her bearings and get better at math, but where she had once struggled and fought to get good grades, to beat the rest of her classmates and get in to a good college, she simply didn't see the point in straining herself anymore.

It didn't matter if she went to a good college and got a good job and married a good husband and had good kids - when her grandfather died, she would inherit the shrine, which didn't bother her as much as it should have. Her future was sealed, set in stone; what was the point of struggling to better herself if it was only going to bring her around again anyways? There was no need to suffer that same fate twice. . .

Kagome thought back – she often did – to the times when her problems had been so much greater than equations. In the feudal era of Japan, it had been life or death every day. She had often come home to see her mother crying, and she knew that she had been afraid for her as well. It had been more than a girl could bear!

Her thoughts drifted to Sango. Now, there was a girl who would have done well - probably much better then she had done - to transcend time. Her beauty was certainly timeless, and her courage and strength had made her a deadly foe. She certainly wasn't clumsy like Kagome, and some how she doubted that Sango would ever be so careless as to let a stray arrow strike her charge.

Then there was Miroku, the man that Sango had chosen to spend the rest of her life with. He had survived. . . a miracle in itself. The look on his face when they had killed Naraku – this time for sure, she thought with a grimace, remembering the time Naraku had gone in to a coma. The look on his face when they killed Naraku was enough to make her, if not glad, then grateful that she had trusted her instincts the first time and had gone back to the past.

Despite the dangers she knew about.

Despite the dangers that she knew would come.

But Inuyasha had always protected her. Kagome smiled as she cupped her chin in the palm of her hand, staring wistfully out the window and remembered.

He was dead now, though he hadn’t been when she left him. Half demon, he had informed her, full power. He had the power of a full demon, and after he had slaughtered Naraku, his brother had made sure that everyone knew it. But despite his unsurpassed strength and honor, he still only had the lifespan of a human – minus, of course, any time he might have spent pinned to a certain ancient god tree. Never the less, his prestige had been raised to that of a Lord, and Kagome left knowing that Inuyasha would never have to worry about being left out for his human heritage again.

The humans had adored him now, too. He had been treated as a hero by demons and humans alike, a God on earth. Well known, handsome, courageous (if not a bit short tempered) Inuyasha was the greatest catch anyone could have.

All because of the brother that had hated him.

It made a girl wonder about what went on inside the head of a certain stoic demon lord. . .

“Higurashi, answer the following question.” Her teacher commanded of her when he caught her staring out the window.

Kagome sighed. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand the question.” She replied lazily, not even bothering to look at the board. She knew she wouldn’t get it right anyways, and it wasn’t worth the effort to only end up giving herself a headache.

Her teacher inhaled an indignant breath. “Well, maybe if you weren’t day dreaming, you would have a chance to pass this class, Higurashi!” He informed her primly.

She was surprised that she had been tempted. A very Inuyasha – like phrase had ridden to the tip of her tongue, before she settled instead on doing a very Sesshoumaru–like thing. Kagome turned and gave him an even look, telling him with the one glance what she wasn’t allowed to utter on school grounds.

The teacher fumed but didn’t say anything – instead, he called on some boy that had, soon after he transferred, asked Kagome out on a date. She had promptly shot him down, something that she never would have done before she had been spoiled by the past - he was cute, charming, and nice - all the things that she had thought she wanted until she learned better.

With her teacher back to teaching the class and leaving his worst student – her – alone, Kagome allowed her thoughts to stray once more to Inuyasha and her time in the past. However, when she tried to summon her beloved’s face to mind, all she could see was white hair and golden eyes – a gold that hinted at amber, rather than Inuyasha’s bright eyes of crisp gold, making her aware that the person she was thinking of wasn’t Inuyasha – it was Sesshoumaru.

Kagome shrugged. None the less, Sesshoumaru definitely provided food for thought. A – seemingly – impassive demon, he sure had been awfully quick to leap to his half brother’s aid – something odd for some one who claimed to hate him. Kagome knew that he must have had his reasons - he often had. Perhaps he was trying to earn some prestige; maybe he felt the need to include Inuyasha’s forest in his domain. Maybe he was afraid of his half brother, now that he had beaten Naraku, or maybe he was trying to fill the void that had been formed between them the day Inuyasha took his first breath.

Kagome scoffed at that thought. Though it was a pleasant one, it would be too far out of character for Sesshoumaru to have honestly cared about forming a bond with his sibling.

The bell rang and her teacher started, shocked. He had obviously been as blissfully unaware of the passage of time as Kagome had been painfully attuned to it.

Oh well. It meant that he didn't have time to assign homework over Sunday, and that was always a plus. . .

"Miss Higurashi!" He tried to get her attention as she was leaving the classroom, but she just ignored him. It was probably about something she had no interest in anyway.

“Careful with this! It’s heavy!” Grandfather Higurashi screamed at the movers as they carried an ancient statue of a demon caught in a vicious battle up the stairs of the shrine.

The movers grumbled a bit, and muttered a few choice words, but got the artifact up the stairs despite it’s weight. Finally at the top, one of the movers stepped forward. “Where do you want this hunk of junk?” He asked callously.

Grandfather Higurashi gasped. “Hunk of junk! Hunk of junk! Why, I’ll have you know that this particular statue comes from ancient times! It’s been around for more than half a millennia, maybe even longer! It’s priceless! And you call it a hunk of junk!”

The other mover laughed. “Oh, c’mon old man! He was just teasing you a little bit! It’s a fine piece of art! Really!” He said, leaning against said piece. He knocked on the face, of the demon, who seemed to be a single figure in stark white marble. The setting on the ground was done in a soft, dark, malleable stone, making him seem the only thing that would last forever.

Grandfather Higurashi inhaled a quick breath when the statue tilted and rushed towards the earth, it’s balance thrown off by the mover’s weight when he leaned against it.

Both movers made a grab for it, and between the two of them, they managed to manipulate it to the grass where they laid it down carefully, as if the worst of the danger was in putting the heavy work on the ground.

Grandfather Higurashi let out a deep breath. “You need to be more careful! You have no idea what it would have meant if that statue were to break! It’s an important piece of our heritage! It’s probably a new artist, one who probably worked mainly in war inkings.” He guessed. “You can’t even begin to conceive of the problems it would make if you were to break this thing!”

The workers sighed at his chastening and rolled their eyes, unaware of the true dangers of breaking the statue. If they had known, they would have rewrapped the damnable thing and buried it - as it's last owner had - for good measure.

Kagome scaled the stairs to the shrine with a sigh. Why, after five hundred years, no one had bothered to install an elevator system was beyond her. 133 steps – not that she was counting or anything – was far too many steps for a high school student to have to climb.

Kagome grinned wryly. She was getting out of shape. It used to be that she could back pack across the country side with her friends, fight the strongest of demons, and still have the strength to argue with a certain hanyou.

But that, she reminded herself, was a long, long time ago. Kagome looked towards the well house – something she hadn’t done in a while, and took one step towards it, then another, before she stopped herself with a shake of her head. She couldn’t go back there. She shouldn’t have gone back there in the first place. Her existing in the past had very nearly changed history. . . if Naraku had succeeded, then it would have. She had been lucky that she hadn’t changed the world once, but it wasn’t safe to see if she could do it a second time.

But...

She walked up to the well house and touched her palm to the sealed doors. Kaede and Miroku had worked hard on these seals. . . it made it so that no demon could ever get past. It had made it so that no demon could ever repeat what Mistress Centipede had managed – to drag a frightened teenager in to a land that hadn’t existed in half a millennia.

She missed it there.

It was something that she could easily admit to herself, but she would rather die than to admit it to her family, who had been so happy to find out that she could come home. The jewel of four souls was right back where it belonged – housed beneath her rib cage. She touched it. It was her one link to the life she had left behind. . . her own link to the life she should have never had in the first place.

She turned and walked away, back towards the main house, feeling proud of herself.

She hadn’t even cried this time.

“Grandfather! Grandfather! I’m home!” Kagome cried out the customary greeting. Her mother was tending to the shrine store when Kagome got home, and she got out of school before her younger brother, Souta, so it was only her grandfather and her for at least an hour.

“I’m in the storage room, Kagome!” came her grandfather’s distant cry. Kagome tried to remember why he was back there – there must have been some reason, but it couldn’t have been that he was cleaning. . . he did that last week. She kicked off her shoes and donned a pair of slippers and went back to the porch, curling around the house to the storage rooms.

“Grandfather?” Kagome called out once more as she turned the last corner. “What are you doing in the storage room?”

Her grandfather – a young eighty seven – turned and gave her a smiling hello. “We had a delivery today. The Tokyo Museum had selected our shrine to house one of their statues until they had another display for it. I’m sure I told you about it - it is an honor to be protecting a display piece for such a prestigious museum.”

Kagome didn’t doubt that he had told her. . . she just doubted that she had been listening. Her grandfather had a tendency to ramble on about myth and legends, most of which had very little fact inside of them, and though she loved him dearly, she very rarely paid his speeches any heed.

He had probably told her after he had finished one of said speeches.

And though Kagome had no recollection of him ever mentioning a new statue, she smiled and nodded. “Oh yeah, I remember now.” She said, wishing that a sheet hadn’t been thrown over the sculpture so that she could form a good fabrication. As it was, she had no idea what the sculpture was of – and if he asked her questions about it, she would have to admit that she hadn’t been listening when he told her.

Luckily, any questions that he may have had were put on hold when the phone rang and her grandfather waddled out of the storage room to go and answer it.

Now was her chance. Kagome thought as she peeked outside of the door to be sure he was gone before heading back in to the storage room. As soon as her Grandfather had circled the first corner she hurried back inside the waiting sculpture.

She looked up at it, still covered by the sheet. It was large – a foot or more taller than her 5’ 4’’ stature. She grabbed the bottom of the sheet – she was just going to roll it up, so that she could drop it just as quickly when her grandfather came back.

Pulling the sheet up the sculpture, she mused that the feet and hakama on the sculpture looked vaguely familiar – but that couldn’t be right. She had only ever been to the Tokyo Museum once, and it hadn’t been in years. She rolled the sheet up higher, and caught sight of the tip of a sword – one that she knew she had seen before.

But it can’t be. . .

Suddenly desperate, Kagome gave up trying to roll the sheet up neatly – she simply ripped it off of the sculpture in one swift movement. She stared up in to the eyes of some one that she had once known – in a life that she hadn’t really lived. She fell silently to her knees – she couldn’t have made a sound if she had wanted to – and stared up in to the eyes of some one that she had never thought she would see again.

Sesshoumaru.

“Kagome, I’m back. It was your mother on the phone, says she needs some help up at the store.” Her grandfather said as he entered the storage room, only to see his grand daughter on her knees before the statue, wide eyed with shock. He looked from his granddaughter to the sculpture, then back to his granddaughter. “Kagome? What is it?” He knealed down next to her and tried to help her stand up.

But she couldn’t.

Kagome’s hand slowly raised to her mouth, and covered a smile, just before she did what would have made any girl worth her weight in lipstick proud – she fell silently to the floor in a dead faint.