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“Hey, Inuyasha…”
“Yeah?”
“Would you still love me if I was a worm?”
Inuyasha peeked one eye open to look at her from where he was leaning back against a tree, arms tucked behind his head. It was a perfect spring day, the sun warming the earth with a gentle breeze, which meant Inuyasha could indulge in his favorite activity of peacefully sitting outside next to his wife and just basking in her presence while they talked about everything and nothing.
Her arms were curled around the legs that she had folded into herself, her face turned up to the sun with a faint smile on her pretty pink lips and Inuyasha vaguely wondered to himself whether he had misheard the bizarre question even with his superior hearing.
“Wait, what?”
“You know, if for some reason I became a worm, would you still want to be married to me? Would you take care of me and keep me safe?”
One of his eyebrows raised as he huffed out a scoff.
“The hell kind of question is that?”
“It’s just a hypothetical. Like a ‘what-if’ scenario. It’s fun to theorize what you would do if our situation was different,” she looked over at him with a shrug, genuine amusement in her sparkling brown eyes.
“Well I think it’s stupid.”
“Inuyasha…” her expression immediately grew agitated, though she attempted to play it off with a roll of her eyes. “Just play along.”
“I don’t want to. It’s pointless because it’ll never happen. In no world are you ever going to be a worm. You’ll always be a human, Kagome. That isn’t going to change.”
“No, but if for some reason I did—”
“Why would I ever even marry you in the first place? You’d be a worm. How would I even know it was you?”
“You just would because we’re always destined to be together, right? I think you would be able to tell me apart from other worms.”
“But you aren’t a worm. They’re slimy and gross and live in the dirt. I’d probably just step on you anyways. Then some bird would eat you for breakfast.”
Her lips drew into a tight line, legs straightening out as she turned her body to him fully. “So you wouldn’t?”
“Wouldn’t what?” He didn’t entirely know what was going on, but somehow he felt like he had made some grave mistake, especially when her eyes began to brim with tears.
“Love me! You wouldn’t protect me or care for me even if I was an ugly bug? Our whole relationship is only conditional if I’m in this form?”
“I ain’t falling in love with a worm! You’re making no sense!”
“And all you had to do was say yes! God, Inuyasha, you’re so dense sometimes, but I at least thought you would always keep me safe!” She wiped at a falling tear before hauling herself to her feet, storming back in the direction of the village with stomping feet.
“W-what?” Inuyasha stammered as he followed suit. “I will! What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” Kagome ignored him to keep on walking, refusing to so much as look at him. He could only shuffle along beside her and made an attempt to grab at her wrist to stop her, but she only ripped it out of his grip.
“Just leave me alone, Inuyasha! I guess I’m going to have to learn how to fend for myself now since I just learned my husband would rather feed me to the birds instead of take care of me when I can’t fend for myself. I didn’t realize I was such a burden to you.”
“I never said that!”
“You might as well have. It’s the principle of it all. It shouldn’t matter what I look like or how small and vulnerable I am.”
“You’re being unreasonable, you stubborn woman. Stop jumping to conclusions over a stupid hypo-mental question that doesn’t matter anyway.”
“It’s hypothetical and you’re missing the point. I thought you would love me no matter what. You promised you would always protect me, but I guess that was a lie.”
Inuyasha could see her physically withdraw into herself, away from him. He wanted to reach out and shake some sense into her, but the gap between them suddenly felt too wide. It terrified him. If he were to lose her, especially over something so trivial that he didn’t even understand, then what had any of their promises to each other even meant?
“Kagome—”
“Sit, boy.”
All the fight had left her, even when his hadn’t, but no matter how hard he tried to pry himself off the ground after his face smashed into it, he was stuck with a mouthful of dirt when he yelled after her as she disappeared through the line of trees.
How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? And more importantly, what the hell?
There were many things Kagome was good at and holding a grudge was one of them. When she spoke the sit command, it had been filled with so much contempt that he was held down for much longer than usual. By the time the spell eventually wore off, the sun was high in the sky, beating down on him as if punishing him for not getting his head out of his ass soon enough.
But when he was finally released, the first thing he did was head straight home, following Kagome’s lingering scent to the hut that they shared on the outskirts of the village.
“That damn Kagome,” Inuyasha muttered to himself. “Sitting me over a bug. What does that have anything to do with us?”
Obviously he was going to protect her no matter what. If flat out telling her wasn’t enough, hadn’t he shown her time and time again? He thought she knew that and it stung a little that she had doubted him even for a second. So why spring a dumb question on him with a secret double meaning behind it and get mad at him when he didn’t catch on?
He wanted to blame her, stomped the rest of the way back cursing and complaining about it even though no one was around to hear. But upon seeing their little hut, his heart panged from the reminder of the life that they shared together. How it was Kagome that had embraced him unconditionally in every one of his forms. Hanyou, human, even as a full demon she had never run from him. He couldn’t help but think it was slightly hypocritical of him that he hadn’t immediately offered her the same, even as ridiculous as it was.
He was really going to have to make it up to her.
“Hey, Kagome?” he called out, pulling back the screen door, but there was no reply. The hut was completely empty, the ingredients for the balms that she had been crafting earlier that morning still spread out on the counter. Sniffing the air, he was easily able to detect her scent. She was definitely here recently but wasn’t anymore. “Must have gone to Sango’s,” he wondered out loud, trying to keep the panic that was threatening to rise up at bay.
Inuyasha walked back outside, nose to the ground so he could follow her trail leading out to the garden. But then it stopped. He kept sniffing around, trying to find where it might have picked up again, but it just disappeared. Like she vanished into thin air.
“Kagome!?” he called, knowing it was futile when no one answered, but he was starting to get desperate. He continued smelling the ground, growing more frantic for just one hint of where she may have gone until he rummaged through the flowering herbs and came face level with the last thing he wanted to see right now.
A worm.
“No,” Inuyasha spoke out of disbelief. “No freaking way.”
He stood up and made to stomp off back to the hut, resisting the urge to smush it underneath his foot. But just as he almost reached the grass, a thought made him stop in his tracks. That worm was in the exact spot where Kagome disappeared. It couldn’t be…
So carefully, Inuyasha made his way back to where he last saw the wiggly thing, walking on tiptoes to make sure he didn’t step on anything he didn’t mean to. He picked it up and cradled it in his hand, mindful of his claws. Though it was faceless and covered in dirt, he couldn’t help but feel like it was staring back at him.
“Kagome?” he asked again, his voice soft so anyone passing by wouldn’t think he was crazy for talking to a worm. “Is that really you?”
It curled into itself in his hand and Inuyasha honestly wasn’t sure if it was squirming or nuzzling him. Feeling entirely foolish, he hesitantly brought the worm closer to his face and his heart gave a panicked lurch when he could definitely smell Kagome’s distinct scent from it.
He sniffed the air again and to his horror, ever so faintly he could smell someone. Someone unfamiliar. They had been here. He could just barely make it out on the breeze.
Had this unknown person cast a spell on her to transform her into a worm? He breathed deeper, inhaling as hard as he could to try and learn more about the scent. It was a youkai’s, that much he could tell right away. It didn’t smell threatening, more along the lines of Shippo’s, but too faint to tell. Whatever it was, it had to be something that could easily mask its scent. Could it be a kitsune? Tanuki? They had the ability to shapeshift so he couldn’t rule out the possibility they could do the same on someone else.
His mind raced a mile a minute, but he currently had no other theories to go off of. Too many questions still remained and Inuyasha was no closer to finding them, but one thing had to come first: protecting his wife.
“I’ve lost my mind,” he muttered to himself as he ran back to the hut, throwing open the screen and dashing inside. “Um, wait right here.”
Inuyasha set down what might possibly be his worm wife on the counter before scrambling around in search of a container he could put her in. “There’s got to be something.”
He growled in frustration, rifling through Kagome’s priestess things. Bowls, scrolls, dried herbs that he had no clue what they were. Finally, he pulled out a small decorative box and dumped out the powder inside into one of her mortars. If she wanted to give him hell for making a mess later, he would gladly welcome it. In fact, he longed to hear her shrill voice as she scolded him. Maybe even a few sits for being a complete idiot and not being there for her when she needed him to protect her.
He washed out the box then Kagome in their water bowl before placing her inside. It was a perfect fit, small enough that he could easily carry but big enough that she could still move around.
“Ok, now what do worms eat?”
After racking his brain for what else would make her more comfortable, he made quick work of packing in dirt from the garden into the bottom of the box before plucking a few leaves and stuffing them inside, too. He pulled a persimmon down from a nearby tree and sliced off a few pieces with his claws to place on top of the small pile that Kagome was now working towards.
She looked happy, as happy as a worm can be, so he closed the lid, satisfied with his work. But what was he supposed to do now? Inuyasha was ready to defend this box with his life, but he couldn’t just leave her like this. If he could track down this mystery person, he could demand that he change Kagome back, no matter the cost.
Nestling the box safe within his robes right next to his heart, he made off to the one person he always could count on whenever he needed answers.
Inuyasha burst through Kaede’s door without warning, causing everyone gathered inside to jump at the sudden entrance. Sango, Miroku, their children, and Shippo were all sitting around the fire looking to have been in the middle of a pleasant discussion, but Inuyasha guaranteed whatever they were talking about wasn’t half as important as this.
“Inuyasha, what brings ye here so suddenly? I thought ye had taken the day off with Kagome,” Kaede spoke up first, always the mediator.
“Yeah, you scared us!” Shippo whined as he hopped up onto Miroku’s shoulder.
“Shuddap,” Inuyasha brushed him off with a wave of his hand. “I need your help with something. You haven’t seen Kagome recently have you?”
“No, not since last night. We all thought she was with you,” Sango chimed in, looking around at everyone else who nodded in agreement. “Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, she’s uh—” Inuyasha absentmindedly placed his hand over the box that was currently tucked inside his shirt. “She’s missing.”
No way in hell was he about to admit the likely possibility that his wife was now a worm.
“Inuyasha, you big idiot!” Shippo yelled while shaking his fist. “You made her mad, didn’t you? What did you say to chase Kagome off!?”
Miroku patted Shippo on the head. “Now, now Shippo. We mustn’t jump to conclusions. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened that doesn’t involve Inuyasha’s abrasive mouth.”
“No, she was pretty mad. She sat me and by the time I could get up, I couldn’t find her anywhere.”
Miroku released a sigh, adjusting the toddler currently sleeping in his lap. “Why do I even try?”
“I’m sure she’s just gone somewhere to be alone for a bit, Inuyasha,” Sango’s motherly voice soothed, but he was already so on edge that it had little effect.
“Doubt it,” he gruffed. If this worm that he now carried was actually Kagome, he was never about to let her out of his sight. “Has anyone new been through the village today? Someone you didn’t recognize?”
Kaede spoke up first. “None that I have seen. Why do ye ask?”
Inuyasha crossed his arms with a grumble.” I just smelled someone in the garden when I came back. And Kagome was there with them.”
“Tell me, Inuyasha, do ye believe that someone has taken Kagome?” The alarm in her voice sent a wave of panic among the others in the hut.
Inuyasha released a growl of frustration. “I don’t know, but if they did, I’m about to find them and kill ‘em. Fat lot of help you people are.” And with a flash, he was through the door, feet pounding underneath him as he ran. Past the village, past his hut, the smell of the unknown demon faint on the wind, and into the forest. If he was going to find the person who cast this spell on Kagome, he was going to have to do this the hard way. Using every one of his keen senses to track them down so they could reverse the spell on Kagome. He had no other option.
He was running aimlessly, desperate to catch some faint whiff of the unfamiliar scent. How long was he searching? Minutes? Hours? Time had a nasty habit of bending itself whenever Kagome wasn’t around but it didn’t matter. He would run around the edge of the earth if it meant getting his wife back. He didn’t want to stop, but luckily, fate was kind to him. Outside a village only a few miles from Kaede’s, he caught that unfamiliar scent that had burned into his memory. But not only that, the scent seemed to come spilling out from everywhere as if it was in multiple places at once, but he had yet to see the source.
Inuyasha slid to a stop in a clearing and pulled out the box from his haori and opened it, relieved that Kagome was still safe inside, wiggling around as she should.
“Don’t worry, Kagome. We’ll figure this out,” he promised her before closing the box and securing it in his robe again. He tentatively moved forward, eyes peeled for any sign of a creature that may leap out and attack him. But everything seemed calm in the now setting sun, almost eerily so as he trudged down a worn path through the woods.
“Oi,” he called out, “I know you’re here so reveal yourself and turn my wife back! I ain’t asking nicely!” There was no response, but a light breeze tousled his hair, the creak of the trees around him sounding almost as if the forest itself was alive. The path before him divulged and he chose the side where the scent was emanating the strongest, leading him to a tree much taller than those around it. Around its thick trunk was a shimenawa rope, similar to the one that was tied around the Goshinboku in Kagome’s era.
“This some kind of sacred tree or something? What does this have to do with Kagome?” He pondered aloud. As if in answer, the sound of thundering footsteps echoed across the forest, shaking the ground he stood on with each step. Inuyasha unsheathed Tetsusaiga, embuing the sword with his demonic energy to transform it into a fang. “Finally, something I can fight.”
Diving through the trees, Inuyasha was easily able to find the culprit, a monstrous purple oni tearing through the foliage wreaking havoc in its path, two misshapen horns growing out of his head and a kotodama around its neck, the purple beads giant in proportion to ones for a normal human. When it spotted Inuyasha, it unleashed a mighty roar that the half-demon simply chuckled at.
“Sure you sound tough,” Inuyasha teased, “But I bet you’re just as weak as any other pipsqueak around here. Allow me to put you out of your misery! Wind Scar!” And with a swing of his sword, Inuyasha unleashed the rush of energy, its path carving into the earth. But the oni was shockingly strong, taking on the full force of the Wind Scar with only a hand raised to shield its eyes from the light.
“Damn,” Inuyasha cursed to himself. “You may be able to take on my Wind Scar, but bet you can’t beat this!”
Faster than lightning, Inuyasha ran to the oni and with a swing of his sword, brought it down to slice the creature in half. But upon impact, the kotodama itself glowed and Inuyasha was thrown back, crashing to the ground so hard he left an imprint in the dirt. Without a thought for himself, he patted the spot where Kagome’s box sat against his chest, sighing with relief when it was still intact.
“So it’s not you that’s powerful, it’s that big ugly necklace you’re wearing!” Inuyasha taunted. “You don’t seem smart enough to have messed with Kagome so I have no problem ending you right now!” He stood despite his aching limbs and focused his energy into his sword, allowing the blade to darken into a deep red. “First I’ll take care of that barrier, you damn coward.”
He rushed toward the oni again, this time intent on landing his blow directly on the kotodama itself. But before he could strike, the oni simply swatted at Inuyasha as if he were no more than a bug. He went flying into a tree, the force of the blow knocking the wind out of him.
Gasping for breath, he tried refocusing his blurry vision, rallying his own body to get back up. It wasn’t until Inuyasha saw the massive monster reaching to pick up something from the ground that he realized the comforting weight of the box resting within his robes was missing. He patted the area, all over his chest, scrambled in the dirt around him before he realized that Kagome’s box was gone. Not just gone, but now in the clutches of the oni who was holding it up to his face to inspect it curiously.
“K—Kagome, no!” Inuyasha painstakingly pulled himself up to his feet, using the tree trunk behind him for support. Though his legs pumped underneath him to reach them as fast as he could, it wasn’t enough. After giving the box a sniff, the oni grimaced and crushed it in his hand, letting the remains fall to the ground in a small heap.
With a cry of rage, Inuyasha swung back his sword and cut through the kotodama’s barrier, severing the oni’s head from the rest of its body in a single slice. But though he was victorious, Inuyasha felt no joy as he landed nimbly on his feet, the earth rumbling around him as the now headless body fell.
He sheathed his sword, feeling almost numb as he fell to his knees before the pile of the shattered box that was supposed to have kept his wife safe. But it failed. He had failed in the worst of ways. Picking through the bits of wood, he clung to a fleeting sense of hope that maybe, just maybe, Kagome was still alive. That he would come across her tiny pink body and it would curl into him as if she recognized him. He should have known better because when he pulled out the head, the rest of the body wasn’t connected to it. She had been ripped into three different sections by the box’s jagged edges when it split, and he held them all in his hand, the growl tearing from his throat easing the tightening of his throat.
“Whatever bastard did this to Kagome show yourself right now!” He yelled out to the forest around him, the odd sense that he was being watched only driving on his rage. “Come out and face me! It’s your fault she—she…”
He couldn’t finish his sentence. This couldn’t be happening. Kagome couldn’t be—after everything that she had overcome, she couldn’t be—
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his fingers enclosing over her tiny form that he clutched close to his chest. “I’m so sorry. If I had been there, if I hadn’t been so stupid…” A strangled cry escaped his lips. “I failed you. In every possible way and now you’ve paid the price. I can’t do this without you, Kagome. I can’t live with myself knowing I was the cause of all this. I would take it all back if I could. You didn’t deserve any of this. You didn’t deserve a hanyou husband that was too stupid to realize what you needed to hear and too weak to keep you safe when it actually mattered.”
His teeth gritted together hard, letting the tears that he had been trying to hold in brim to the surface. He knew he needed to get up. He had to avenge her if he couldn’t save her. But the loss of Kagome and the shame of his failure weighed heavily in his gut. He would have to face their friends, his brother, the future knowing that he had messed up so inconceivably bad he would never forgive himself as long as he lived. Maybe he should just—
“Inuyasha?” A familiar voice more beautiful than the ringing of bells broke through his misery.
He thought he had imagined it at first, a small gasp falling out, but when he snapped his head in its direction, there was his wife just further down the path, completely unharmed and looking back at him with her head tilted to the side in confusion. “What are you doing here?”
“Kagome? Is that really you?” he asked, too terrified to allow himself to dare to hope just yet.
“Yeah, is everything ok?” she asked, her mouth turned down to a frown in concern.
Inuyasha was always happy to see Kagome. After she had returned from the well, after he came home from an exorcism with Miroku, her peacefully sleeping face the first thing he saw every morning when he woke up. Every time it was like a gift.
This time it was like an answered prayer.
“Kagome,” he rasped out her name as he crossed the distance in two leaps before crushing her to him, banishing any space that could come between them both in body and mind. Either she was still angry with him or just in shock because her arms still hung limply at her sides so he squeezed her tighter. It was fine. He would hold tight enough for the both of them.
This seemed to prompt something in Kagome because her arms finally found purchase around his waist, albeit hesitantly. He couldn’t help the sound that escaped his lips. Was it a cry? A laugh? Probably a little of both but all he felt was an immense relief. Relief that she wasn’t gone. She was here. And while he still had failed her, fate was kind enough to make it right.
“Inuyasha, what’s wrong?”
He buried his nose in her hair to fill his lungs with that sweet cherry blossom scent. “I’ll take care of you. When you’re a worm. I’ll feed you and hold you and keep you safe and yes, I’ll still marry you all over again. It doesn’t matter what shape or form you’re in, it’s just you I want. I’m so sorry I didn’t answer you sooner Can you ever forgive me?”
Inuyasha wanted to grovel at her feet but that would mean letting her go and he wasn’t ready to do that yet.
“Did you come all this way just to tell me that?” her muffled voice sounded out where he had pressed her face into his chest.
“No, I couldn’t find you and you were so mad so I got scared. Your scent disappeared and I thought—I thought—”
He thought she actually was a worm.
“Oh, Inuyasha, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry. I would never leave you like that.”
“You aren’t mad?”
“No, not anymore. I should have known better that you wouldn’t understand and I’m sorry I lost my temper. I’m really glad to see you now.”
Her arms were now the ones to pull tighter, cradling him as if to soothe every worry away just by drawing him close. And it was working. Inuyasha realized he still was clutching the remnants of Worm-gome so he released it and let it fall back to the earth. Let the poor guy finally rest after all he had been through today.
“What are you doing all the way out here then?” Inuyasha asked her. “What made your scent just vanish from the garden like that?”
Kagome pulled back enough for her to see his face. “Kirara picked me up.”
As if on cue, the nekomata swooped down to land next to the couple in her larger form. Inuyasha could have smacked his own forehead for immediately jumping to the conclusion that his wife was turned into a worm before thinking of their loyal companion who could actually fly. Inuyasha reached out a hand to scratch behind Kirara’s ears and she leaned into it, a rumble in her throat as she released a purr.
“I had an urgent request for help so I completely forgot to tell you before I left,” Kagome continued explaining.
“An urgent request from who? I smelled someone else but I didn’t recognize it anywhere.”
Her smile brightened almost like she had a secret that she was dying to tell. “Come and see.”
When her arms dropped, his gut reaction was to cling even closer, but before he could react, she was taking his hand in hers, lacing their fingers as she led him to the large tree wrapped in the shimenawa rope.
“It’s ok. Inuyasha is a dear friend who would never hurt you. You can come out now.”
She spoke to no one that he could see, looking into the branches of the tree even though there was no one there. Until there was.
A tiny figure, even smaller than Shippo, white in color with two blank holes for eyes and another for a mouth appeared out of nowhere sitting on a moss-covered limb. Then another. And another and another until the entire clearing was scattered with them, looking down at him in curiosity, or so he thought since he couldn’t make out any changing expressions. Their heads tilted this way and that, clicking when they bounced back into place.
“The hell are they?” Inuyasha asked.
Kagome smiled up at them in delight as dancing orbs of light filled the area, casting an ethereal glow around them. “These are Kodama. They are tree spirits who protect the forest. One came to me riding atop Kirara and I just had a feeling that I needed to go with it. When I arrived at the village nearby they informed me that this tree had become corrupted by an evil aura. I was able to purify it after some work, but I hadn’t realized when I finished that suddenly removing it so quickly might prompt any nearby youkai to swarm. I came to fight a group of oni that we could hear all the way from the headman’s house, but by the time I got to this place, the last one was already gone. I suppose you’re to thank for that.”
She leaned into his side, resting her cheek on his shoulder while she still gazed up at him.
“Keh, it was nothing.”
For a moment, even though they were completely surrounded, it was just the two of them. Then, Kagome’s smile turned mischievous, lips curling into a devilish grin.
“So if I was a worm, you would still love me?” She asked again and Inuyasha rolled his eyes, but this time he knew the answer sincerely.
“Yeah, I would.”
“Would you still kiss me?”
“I don’t know how that would work right this moment, but I’d figure it out.”
“Well, luckily I’m not a worm so it shouldn’t be that hard.”
He couldn’t help it when the corner of his own lips turned up, knowing exactly what she was implying she wanted.
“Nah, it’s the easiest thing in the world.”
And no matter what form Kagome was in, he knew that he would love kissing her, but when those soft pink lips met his, god was he glad she was in this one.