Bingo, Prompt: Dawn "Tattoo"
Songfic written for inusongfics
Prompt: Dawn
Song: Tattoo by Jordin Sparks
Pairing: Inu/Kags
Warnings: None
No matter what you say about love,
I keep coming back for more,
Keep my hand in the fire,
Sooner or later I get what I'm asking for
No matter what you say about life,
I learn every time I bleed the truth is a
Stranger soul is in danger
I gotta let my spirit be free to...
Admit that I'm wrong and then change my mind
Sorry but I have to move on and leave you behind
She was growing into a beautiful young lady and she knew it. Kagome was eighteen now and well on her way to becoming her own person. Her mother had watched on with pride at first as she had taken those first stumbling steps towards adulthood, but then a cloud of worry had passed over the proceedings and had stuck around for longer than her mother had expected it to.
The years had sped by since that first time her daughter had fallen down the well on their property and discovered the ancient past in which she was destined to play a key role. Mrs. Higurashi has allowed her daughter to go on with words of warning and wishes of luck, knowing that there was nothing she could so to stop the wheels of fate once they were spinning away. It had hurt her to let her baby go into certain danger, but she had been able to bear it because she knew that someday her baby would come home and then they could be a family again and all those times she had missed wouldn’t make a difference because Kagome was going to be here to stay and to make new memories to replace the ones they should have had.
She smiled softly as she looked out at the great sleeping tree that christened their shrine and watched its branches sway in the breeze. The tree had been with them from the very beginning and it was still here with them now, watching over Kagome in that other time just as well as it did when she was home. And as she stared at it, she remembered.
Kagome was five and it was New Year’s Eve. Against her better judgment she had allowed her young daughter to stay up with the adults in order to say goodbye to the old and welcome in the new, but after the fireworks had waned and the champagne had been drunk the little girl hadn’t wanted to go to bed. In fact, she had thrown a tantrum when they had tried to put her in her bed and, in lieu of being able to get her to drift off into sleep they had stayed up with her, curious as to why she refused slumber when it was painfully obvious that she was exhausted. It wasn’t until the sun’s rays reached out from the Eastern horizon that Kagome finally smiled, and she turned to her mother then whispering about how beautiful the sky looked when it was on fire.
That had been her first dawn.
And then when she was eleven, Mrs. Higurashi had come down the stairs in the dark in order to make her children’s lunches for the first day of school only to find that her daughter had beaten her to it. Kagome was up and dressed in her new junior high school uniform, the green pleated skirt perfectly pressed from the night before with the crisp white shirt and red kerchief discretely pinned because they had not had the time to finish hemming it. She had smiled at her mother as the sun began leaking into the kitchen, informing her mother that she was more than old enough to help out with the lunches, and that she wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyways. A new school was more exciting than dreams.
And Mrs. Higurashi had watched her baby take off with the sun rise as a burning background in the sky as she made her way down the steps to begin a stage in her life.
It hadn’t take long before Kagome had reached the age of fifteen and then Mrs. Higurashi had to stand back and let her daughter make some tough choices all on her own. There was a world of magic and wonder that awaited her though a pathway in the well. There was also a world of uncertainty and danger and every last bit of the older woman wanted to reach out and hold her baby back. It was a mother’s job to protect their child and how could she do that when she didn’t know when or if her baby was going to return. She stood under the protection of the great tree as the sun rose up behind her after the first night of not having her child close enough to reach out and touch and she smiled.
Her baby was going to be a great hero.
And now her eldest was eighteen and the evil she had been fighting for three years was now gone and she was about to make a decision that was going to change her life. Mrs. Higurashi had argued with her daughter more and more as the years had progressed and her devotion to a man that was not of her world stole her heart and made her glow with a light that only true love could bring. Kagome had very politely told her that she was more than capable of making her own mistakes and that she would never be able to learn if she wasn’t allowed to fail.
Mrs. Higurashi had never known how mature her daughter had become.
I can't waste time so give it a moment
I realize nothing's broken
No need to worry ‘bout everything I done
Live every second like it was my last one
Don't look back got a new direction
I loved you once
Needed protection
You're still a part of everything I do
You're on my heart just like a tattoo
Just like a tattoo I'll always have you
I'll always have you
I'll always have you
“I’m going to miss you.” Mrs. Higurashi had known even before this day what was going to happen. She had watched as her daughter drifted further and further away from the life she had been born into as she embraced a life that should have belonged to someone else, but still she had hoped that things would be different when the time finally came.
“What are you talking about?” Her question was a lie. She knew exactly what he baby was talking about. She was going to leave and never turn back. Once the well was sealed behind her there would be no going back. Whatever side she chose to stay on was the side she was going to live and die on and Mrs. Higurashi had been praying for weeks that she would choose to stay with her family. “Kagome, is there something you would like to tell me?”
“Mom, you know what I’m talking about.” Who was this stranger? This was not her daughter. This was not the little girl who had clung to her skirts on their first visit to the mall. This was not the child who had cried at her first haircut, not because she had been afraid it was going to hurt, but because she was so attached to her raven curls that she couldn’t bear to see them stranded on the floor. “I have to go soon or it will be too late. Kaede said that the well would close with the rising of the sun and the sun’s gonna be up in about half an hour.”
“You can’t go.” She had been practicing for this moment for the past few weeks. She’d had a number of highly articulate speeches prepared with all kinds of reasons as to why her daughter could not leave her like this. Besides, she was only eighteen and everyone knows that at that age young adults are more like the teenagers they have been for years than they are like the adults they are working on becoming. She couldn’t know what a decision like this could do to her if it was made wrongly. But all those practiced words had been blown away on the wind as though they had never been there. “Please… Just don’t go.”
She chuckled lightly and Mrs. Higurashi once again was forced to wonder where her little girl had gone and when this strange woman had taken her place. “I have to go. I may have been born in this world, but I don’t belong here anymore. I’m way too far behind in school to get into a good college. I have no friends because of all those times when I missed dances and first dates and slumber parties. I don’t even know my own family because I haven’t had the chance to be here. Face it, Mom, the feudal era is the only place where I belong.”
“Have you stopped to think that this might be the biggest mistake of your life?” Mrs. Higurashi’s voice was strained and she knew that she wanted to cry, but she refused to give in to the urge. She had to be strong. She was not going to allow her daughter to be the only one with convictions. “Once you go there and you see the sunrise on that side you can’t come back here, you’ve told me that much. If you get in a fight with your boyfriend, if something happens and you’re hurt and frightened, you can’t come back. You’ll never be able to spend another Christmas with us and we’ll never get to see you on your birthday. You’ll miss your brother’s graduation and his wedding and everything else.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe I am making a big mistake, but this is my mistake to make, not yours and if things go south I’m going to be the one to fix them, not you.” She shrugged lightly. “I have to do this. I can’t explain it, but I just have to.”
“And you’re right about one thing: I’m not coming back.”
I'm sick of playing all of these games
It's not ‘bout taking sides
When I looked in the mirror,
It didn't deliver, it hurt enough to think that I could stop
Admit that I'm wrong and then change my mind
Sorry but I got to be strong and leave you behind
“I’m running out of time.” They had been standing silently for what felt like forever, but what had really only been about five minutes. “You don’t like what I’m doing.”
That had been more a statement than a question and so her mother neglected to answer, instead choosing to stare up at the thick branches of the tree above them.
“Fine, don’t talk to me, but at least listen to what I have to say.” Kagome took a deep breath and her mother found her eyes drawn to the perfectly pale face of her first child. “Mom, I can’t live in both worlds forever, we knew this from the beginning. I didn’t expect for all that’s happened to happen. I didn’t want to fall in love with Inuyasha, and I probably shouldn’t have, but I did and you and I both know that this isn’t about him. You know that he’ll take care of me with all his strength. This is about me going away to a place that you can’t reach.”
“I’m tired of living a double life. I’m tired of lying to people who have been my friends and to stranger who could be my friends. I’m not sick all the time; I’m off saving the world. I’m not an idiot, but I’m last in my class. There are people who have spent tons of their time waiting for me on both sides, but the only ones still waiting are those who have been through everything I have for the last three years. I don’t belong here in this era anymore than I belonged in that one when I was fifteen.”
“I know…” And she did know, but that didn’t make the pain any less. “I just… Want you to stay….”
“I know…”
I can't waste time so give it a moment
I realize nothing's broken no need to worry ‘bout everything I done
Live every second like it was my last one
Don't look back got a new direction
I love you once
Needed protection
You're still a part of everything I do
You're on my heart just like a tattoo
Just like a tattoo
I'll always have you
I'll always have you
I'll always have you
“I love you.” Her voice sounded broken in the morning air and Mrs. Higurashi once more fought back the tears that were threatening to spill out.
“I love you, too.” Kagome whispered back. “And I’m never going to forget you, or Grandpa, or Souta. All those memories we made together aren’t just going to go away because I’m taking a different path than what we’d always thought I’d take. You’re still going to be my mother and, who knows, maybe someday we’ll meet again.”
Mrs. Higurashi sniffed quietly. “Thank you for saying that.”
“Hey, I can’t just get rid of the first fifteen years of my life, and even after I discovered this new world you were still there with advice and bandages and food and whatever else I would need.” Kagome wrapped an arm around her mother’s shoulder as a sign of the equals they had suddenly become. “You’ve given me everything I need to survive in either world, and I love you.”
“I’m going to miss you.” A single tear escaped despite her best efforts and her daughter reached out to wipe it away while trying to hide the mist that had settled over her own eyes. “And if you ever find a way to make it home again we’re still going to be here. We’re not going to give up on you.”
“You’ll always be with me.” Kagome assured her. “Even if you can’t be there physically, I’m not about to forget my own mother just because five hundred years separates us.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
If I live every moment,
Won't change any moment,
There's still a part of me in you
I will never regret you
Still the memory of you
Marks everything I do.
Two years later Mrs. Higurashi stood under the tree that had protected her shrine for years as the sun rose up from behind the trees. For two years she had lived with the ghost of her daughter, but it was a happy ghost for the most part.
It was this memory of her daughter standing in the glowing morning sun that urged her to put one foot in front of the other and live her life as if there wasn’t a gaping hole where her heart should be. As if she hadn’t buried an empty coffin so that the world would stop asking its questions. As if she didn’t spend most of her nights tossing and turning and longing for the daughter that was so far beyond her reach that she might as well have been dead.
In two years she had moved on and had begun to live her life the way it was meant to be lived. She watched her son grow up and turn into a man, and this time she was there for every step, for every stumble and for every fall. She had been there for him in a way she had not been able to be for Kagome. She had been there for his first love, for his first heartbreak, and for every broken heart thereafter. She’d helped him study for exams and she’d laughed with him when he made silly mistakes. She had known ever since she was little that she was meant to be a mother, and now she was being the mother she had dreamed of.
And she only regretted the loss of her daughter once or twice, when no one was looking.
It should have been strange jumping back into normal life so soon after losing her eldest daughter, but when she thought about it, she hadn’t really lost her. She knew that somewhere lost in the depths of time, Kagome was living her life the way she wanted to live and that she was happy wherever she was. There was no use reliving moments she could not change.
Her only regret was that she had not been there to witness it as Kagome has gone from girl to woman. She had just woken up one morning to find that her baby girl had left her behind in a way she hadn’t been expecting. But in the end, perhaps it was for the best.
Besides, the lessons Kagome had taught her still lived on within her the same way that the lessons she had been able to pass on to the younger generation still lived on somewhere five hundred years in the past just as much as they lived on in the here and now with her son. They would never forget Kagome and she would never forget them, but the pain was no longer a stabbing burn that couldn’t be ignored. It was now a gentle trickle that allowed them to remember, but that didn’t stop them from being who they were supposed to be.
And so finally, the mother was able to let go.
Just like a tattoo
I'll always have you...
Prompt: Dawn
Song: Tattoo by Jordin Sparks
Pairing: Inu/Kags
Warnings: None
No matter what you say about love,
I keep coming back for more,
Keep my hand in the fire,
Sooner or later I get what I'm asking for
No matter what you say about life,
I learn every time I bleed the truth is a
Stranger soul is in danger
I gotta let my spirit be free to...
Admit that I'm wrong and then change my mind
Sorry but I have to move on and leave you behind
She was growing into a beautiful young lady and she knew it. Kagome was eighteen now and well on her way to becoming her own person. Her mother had watched on with pride at first as she had taken those first stumbling steps towards adulthood, but then a cloud of worry had passed over the proceedings and had stuck around for longer than her mother had expected it to.
The years had sped by since that first time her daughter had fallen down the well on their property and discovered the ancient past in which she was destined to play a key role. Mrs. Higurashi has allowed her daughter to go on with words of warning and wishes of luck, knowing that there was nothing she could so to stop the wheels of fate once they were spinning away. It had hurt her to let her baby go into certain danger, but she had been able to bear it because she knew that someday her baby would come home and then they could be a family again and all those times she had missed wouldn’t make a difference because Kagome was going to be here to stay and to make new memories to replace the ones they should have had.
She smiled softly as she looked out at the great sleeping tree that christened their shrine and watched its branches sway in the breeze. The tree had been with them from the very beginning and it was still here with them now, watching over Kagome in that other time just as well as it did when she was home. And as she stared at it, she remembered.
Kagome was five and it was New Year’s Eve. Against her better judgment she had allowed her young daughter to stay up with the adults in order to say goodbye to the old and welcome in the new, but after the fireworks had waned and the champagne had been drunk the little girl hadn’t wanted to go to bed. In fact, she had thrown a tantrum when they had tried to put her in her bed and, in lieu of being able to get her to drift off into sleep they had stayed up with her, curious as to why she refused slumber when it was painfully obvious that she was exhausted. It wasn’t until the sun’s rays reached out from the Eastern horizon that Kagome finally smiled, and she turned to her mother then whispering about how beautiful the sky looked when it was on fire.
That had been her first dawn.
And then when she was eleven, Mrs. Higurashi had come down the stairs in the dark in order to make her children’s lunches for the first day of school only to find that her daughter had beaten her to it. Kagome was up and dressed in her new junior high school uniform, the green pleated skirt perfectly pressed from the night before with the crisp white shirt and red kerchief discretely pinned because they had not had the time to finish hemming it. She had smiled at her mother as the sun began leaking into the kitchen, informing her mother that she was more than old enough to help out with the lunches, and that she wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyways. A new school was more exciting than dreams.
And Mrs. Higurashi had watched her baby take off with the sun rise as a burning background in the sky as she made her way down the steps to begin a stage in her life.
It hadn’t take long before Kagome had reached the age of fifteen and then Mrs. Higurashi had to stand back and let her daughter make some tough choices all on her own. There was a world of magic and wonder that awaited her though a pathway in the well. There was also a world of uncertainty and danger and every last bit of the older woman wanted to reach out and hold her baby back. It was a mother’s job to protect their child and how could she do that when she didn’t know when or if her baby was going to return. She stood under the protection of the great tree as the sun rose up behind her after the first night of not having her child close enough to reach out and touch and she smiled.
Her baby was going to be a great hero.
And now her eldest was eighteen and the evil she had been fighting for three years was now gone and she was about to make a decision that was going to change her life. Mrs. Higurashi had argued with her daughter more and more as the years had progressed and her devotion to a man that was not of her world stole her heart and made her glow with a light that only true love could bring. Kagome had very politely told her that she was more than capable of making her own mistakes and that she would never be able to learn if she wasn’t allowed to fail.
Mrs. Higurashi had never known how mature her daughter had become.
I can't waste time so give it a moment
I realize nothing's broken
No need to worry ‘bout everything I done
Live every second like it was my last one
Don't look back got a new direction
I loved you once
Needed protection
You're still a part of everything I do
You're on my heart just like a tattoo
Just like a tattoo I'll always have you
I'll always have you
I'll always have you
“I’m going to miss you.” Mrs. Higurashi had known even before this day what was going to happen. She had watched as her daughter drifted further and further away from the life she had been born into as she embraced a life that should have belonged to someone else, but still she had hoped that things would be different when the time finally came.
“What are you talking about?” Her question was a lie. She knew exactly what he baby was talking about. She was going to leave and never turn back. Once the well was sealed behind her there would be no going back. Whatever side she chose to stay on was the side she was going to live and die on and Mrs. Higurashi had been praying for weeks that she would choose to stay with her family. “Kagome, is there something you would like to tell me?”
“Mom, you know what I’m talking about.” Who was this stranger? This was not her daughter. This was not the little girl who had clung to her skirts on their first visit to the mall. This was not the child who had cried at her first haircut, not because she had been afraid it was going to hurt, but because she was so attached to her raven curls that she couldn’t bear to see them stranded on the floor. “I have to go soon or it will be too late. Kaede said that the well would close with the rising of the sun and the sun’s gonna be up in about half an hour.”
“You can’t go.” She had been practicing for this moment for the past few weeks. She’d had a number of highly articulate speeches prepared with all kinds of reasons as to why her daughter could not leave her like this. Besides, she was only eighteen and everyone knows that at that age young adults are more like the teenagers they have been for years than they are like the adults they are working on becoming. She couldn’t know what a decision like this could do to her if it was made wrongly. But all those practiced words had been blown away on the wind as though they had never been there. “Please… Just don’t go.”
She chuckled lightly and Mrs. Higurashi once again was forced to wonder where her little girl had gone and when this strange woman had taken her place. “I have to go. I may have been born in this world, but I don’t belong here anymore. I’m way too far behind in school to get into a good college. I have no friends because of all those times when I missed dances and first dates and slumber parties. I don’t even know my own family because I haven’t had the chance to be here. Face it, Mom, the feudal era is the only place where I belong.”
“Have you stopped to think that this might be the biggest mistake of your life?” Mrs. Higurashi’s voice was strained and she knew that she wanted to cry, but she refused to give in to the urge. She had to be strong. She was not going to allow her daughter to be the only one with convictions. “Once you go there and you see the sunrise on that side you can’t come back here, you’ve told me that much. If you get in a fight with your boyfriend, if something happens and you’re hurt and frightened, you can’t come back. You’ll never be able to spend another Christmas with us and we’ll never get to see you on your birthday. You’ll miss your brother’s graduation and his wedding and everything else.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe I am making a big mistake, but this is my mistake to make, not yours and if things go south I’m going to be the one to fix them, not you.” She shrugged lightly. “I have to do this. I can’t explain it, but I just have to.”
“And you’re right about one thing: I’m not coming back.”
I'm sick of playing all of these games
It's not ‘bout taking sides
When I looked in the mirror,
It didn't deliver, it hurt enough to think that I could stop
Admit that I'm wrong and then change my mind
Sorry but I got to be strong and leave you behind
“I’m running out of time.” They had been standing silently for what felt like forever, but what had really only been about five minutes. “You don’t like what I’m doing.”
That had been more a statement than a question and so her mother neglected to answer, instead choosing to stare up at the thick branches of the tree above them.
“Fine, don’t talk to me, but at least listen to what I have to say.” Kagome took a deep breath and her mother found her eyes drawn to the perfectly pale face of her first child. “Mom, I can’t live in both worlds forever, we knew this from the beginning. I didn’t expect for all that’s happened to happen. I didn’t want to fall in love with Inuyasha, and I probably shouldn’t have, but I did and you and I both know that this isn’t about him. You know that he’ll take care of me with all his strength. This is about me going away to a place that you can’t reach.”
“I’m tired of living a double life. I’m tired of lying to people who have been my friends and to stranger who could be my friends. I’m not sick all the time; I’m off saving the world. I’m not an idiot, but I’m last in my class. There are people who have spent tons of their time waiting for me on both sides, but the only ones still waiting are those who have been through everything I have for the last three years. I don’t belong here in this era anymore than I belonged in that one when I was fifteen.”
“I know…” And she did know, but that didn’t make the pain any less. “I just… Want you to stay….”
“I know…”
I can't waste time so give it a moment
I realize nothing's broken no need to worry ‘bout everything I done
Live every second like it was my last one
Don't look back got a new direction
I love you once
Needed protection
You're still a part of everything I do
You're on my heart just like a tattoo
Just like a tattoo
I'll always have you
I'll always have you
I'll always have you
“I love you.” Her voice sounded broken in the morning air and Mrs. Higurashi once more fought back the tears that were threatening to spill out.
“I love you, too.” Kagome whispered back. “And I’m never going to forget you, or Grandpa, or Souta. All those memories we made together aren’t just going to go away because I’m taking a different path than what we’d always thought I’d take. You’re still going to be my mother and, who knows, maybe someday we’ll meet again.”
Mrs. Higurashi sniffed quietly. “Thank you for saying that.”
“Hey, I can’t just get rid of the first fifteen years of my life, and even after I discovered this new world you were still there with advice and bandages and food and whatever else I would need.” Kagome wrapped an arm around her mother’s shoulder as a sign of the equals they had suddenly become. “You’ve given me everything I need to survive in either world, and I love you.”
“I’m going to miss you.” A single tear escaped despite her best efforts and her daughter reached out to wipe it away while trying to hide the mist that had settled over her own eyes. “And if you ever find a way to make it home again we’re still going to be here. We’re not going to give up on you.”
“You’ll always be with me.” Kagome assured her. “Even if you can’t be there physically, I’m not about to forget my own mother just because five hundred years separates us.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
If I live every moment,
Won't change any moment,
There's still a part of me in you
I will never regret you
Still the memory of you
Marks everything I do.
Two years later Mrs. Higurashi stood under the tree that had protected her shrine for years as the sun rose up from behind the trees. For two years she had lived with the ghost of her daughter, but it was a happy ghost for the most part.
It was this memory of her daughter standing in the glowing morning sun that urged her to put one foot in front of the other and live her life as if there wasn’t a gaping hole where her heart should be. As if she hadn’t buried an empty coffin so that the world would stop asking its questions. As if she didn’t spend most of her nights tossing and turning and longing for the daughter that was so far beyond her reach that she might as well have been dead.
In two years she had moved on and had begun to live her life the way it was meant to be lived. She watched her son grow up and turn into a man, and this time she was there for every step, for every stumble and for every fall. She had been there for him in a way she had not been able to be for Kagome. She had been there for his first love, for his first heartbreak, and for every broken heart thereafter. She’d helped him study for exams and she’d laughed with him when he made silly mistakes. She had known ever since she was little that she was meant to be a mother, and now she was being the mother she had dreamed of.
And she only regretted the loss of her daughter once or twice, when no one was looking.
It should have been strange jumping back into normal life so soon after losing her eldest daughter, but when she thought about it, she hadn’t really lost her. She knew that somewhere lost in the depths of time, Kagome was living her life the way she wanted to live and that she was happy wherever she was. There was no use reliving moments she could not change.
Her only regret was that she had not been there to witness it as Kagome has gone from girl to woman. She had just woken up one morning to find that her baby girl had left her behind in a way she hadn’t been expecting. But in the end, perhaps it was for the best.
Besides, the lessons Kagome had taught her still lived on within her the same way that the lessons she had been able to pass on to the younger generation still lived on somewhere five hundred years in the past just as much as they lived on in the here and now with her son. They would never forget Kagome and she would never forget them, but the pain was no longer a stabbing burn that couldn’t be ignored. It was now a gentle trickle that allowed them to remember, but that didn’t stop them from being who they were supposed to be.
And so finally, the mother was able to let go.
Just like a tattoo
I'll always have you...