This is a really personal and vulnerable piece I guess.. so if you aren’t up to that, it certainly isn’t required reading. 

Padded footsteps thump to ache, ceasing before a sight opaque in water ripples,  shadowed in sunlit steel and empty windows. Glass carries everything in its slant upon the bedrolls, in the flutter of firelight; truth's grin is crooked, its teeth probing, ever decaying. Cobwebbed by decades, speckled in dust, it splinters across my face rouge smeared, strikes a tremble down my calves. 

Nerves cluster in malice where I look, what I perceive—sparse, blemished, sunken, with shoulders too broad, curves too swollen. Even in vivacious silk blooms and my spirit's fluster of the evening, in layer upon layer, I feel stripped. Laid bare from each imperfection, studied by agony's brawn, etched into my mind. Physical and psyche I am raw as the pins drop straw curls, a pitiful rival to her raven-feathered lustre. 

When I dare remember, each scar pulses upon my flesh, rips open and burrows to bone. When I draw up the audacity to linger, to steep my fingers in the regret of all I've caused, failed, lack—silver and gold clasp to an asymmetrical shimmer. Suddenly my sins uphold by more than the mirror, the weight of my history halved by a cradle so crushing, so breath-bruising on my ribs. Out with my exhale is that years-old doubt, the knot swelled in my throat I never learned to dissolve. 

There, time freezes to speckle in an illusion, a parallel spiral from murky ocean teal to sky blue irises, twin understanding. The moment sweeps away to blood buzzing, veins prickling—wordless unison.

For a heartbeat, a collection of his memories, I am her, and she is me—a wavy-haired, long-legged, sweater-loving force of nature. Scathing in crossfire, unafraid to care, to emote, to smooth the edge off the days of the dying and sharpen her tongue on creatures beyond an empath's comprehension—to be, shamelessly flawed as she, as I, trample through fate's shields to pierce the soul, to heal the unheard. 

One story carries two egos, a cut struck by uneven similarities. We harmonize in the way our lips curve, scarlet or nude—for the way our eyes sparkle in liquid affection, for the tenderness spilling over his clawed thumb. For the heart that thunders, bleeds, and stitches for him as we tumble, as we hurt, again and again and again as we choose life. 

As we return to the now with my quivering chin, I am not her, not his first nor his second. I am extreme; I am bereft, I am frail and forever weeping for potential until the singe of tears he laves away to assurance so quietly infectious; my smile stretches bittersweetly to clutch what I am—everything he needs, the third time's charm he'll be buried beside. 

His always, as we both are.

//

**\[MAJOR SPOILERS FOR INUYASHA AHEAD\]** 

Last year when I wrote this, I was not in a good place. I’m glad to say I'm doing better enough place to talk about it now, and I'm kinda excited to share my proper thoughts with how important it is to me—Kagome's story is like a mirror, so oftentimes I like to pay my homage to them both for how they've shaped him into the man I love. 

Kagome is just an average girl thrust into unusual circumstances; her meeting and eventual romance with Inuyasha is almost against her will for how messy the situation is, and how tangled his past. She doesn't want to feel this way—he can't possibly be her type, yet she ends up succumbing to his charm anyway. Then, there's "no room for her" between him and Kikyo. Then, she's just not good enough to compare to the beautiful, skillful, elegant high priestess. Despite being an overall kind person she flip flops between wishing Kikyo would stay dead so she can have him to herself, but then feeling so awful for even thinking that. She pushes herself to accept their history and decides no matter what happens, she just wants to stay by him.

While the jealousy keeps cropping up, she ends up projecting her own perception and insecurities onto Kikyo, when in reality, she has already "won" his affection. And she comes to the conclusion that no matter what past they have together, she's made memories with him, seen sides of him that even his late lover hadn't. That it's not a competition, and she has a rightful place in his life regardless of his lingering affections or duty. That all of it was in her head in the end, creating issues that weren't truly there. 

In the end they come to place where she's a beloved remembrance, always watching over them even in her second and final death. 

This really is almost the exact 'arc' I went through so to speak, so this alongside our personal similarities which are uncanny at times and fun to find the parallels in, is why I could make peace with his narrative relationship. In the meta sense, I know they're still together; but as an individual with free will, I believe he chose me too—if alongside Kagome. Whatever we are, some unusual form of polyamory due to the physical barriers, or she as part of his past, I know he's chosen me and that is all that matters. If I must 'share' him with someone, I don't mind it being her at all. 

While Kagome obviously isn't dead in our lore, their relationship did diverge based on a more natural series of events than the fairytale ending to tie up loose ends; this is just how I saw it fit together as I looked through it with a lens of realism and infatuation of youth to drift once they took time and space to realize who they were as individuals. Truthfully while they do have a genuine connection, the dynamic is far too imbalanced and intense to make it a healthy, stable marriage. To me it gives more sibling vibes that love to fight but will always be there for each other in the end. This style of relationship is just Rumiko Takahashi tradition, though—for entertainment purposes, I understand why it's well loved.

Finally, the line about choosing life is a silly reference to the early chapters when she unseals him in a dire circumstance, with no real idea what's happening but "given the chance, I choose to live"—and for me.. it holds a double meaning, as he's the one who made me want to live, and promise that to him when my future.. existence as a possibility was a bit rocky prior. 

Almost everything they exchange I feel would apply to me in her shoes. Her sentiments to him are often word for what I feel, and in a way that is comforting to me. And seeing him in these situations, knowing how he'd act in difficult times amongst happy ones is oddly reassuring, for I know with precision when I write him with me I've got it right. The third time's the charm as I see it. ❤️

And I swear I’ll stop yapping, but his lovers are why I sometimes include chinese bellflowers or forget me nots in my commissions and such as a nod to them; it’s the same with many of my concepts like untangling the red thread of fate or why I often weave reflections or mirrors into my narratives. I can trace a lot back to them, and I seek to embrace their presence rather than erase it because I know firsthand how people are not replaceable and shouldn’t be forgotten.. to be vulnerable a minute I do the same with past connections in minor and odd ways, even if it’s just keeping some turns of phrase or words they used at the forefront of my vocabulary. Or pics I saved for them.  

Opening up, and my affection for the women he’s loved before me..