More Last than Star
by
Anaphalis
Rating: PG/K+

Summary: Mama. Grandpa. Love is the thing that's left when like's too hard and hate's too easy. One Shot.
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Distribution: My site and Green Tea Forums. All others please ask before taking.

Feedback: Much appreciated at [email protected]

Disclaimer: Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi and Shonen Jump. Brushes on this page courtesy of Pure Anodyne.

A/N: I seem to be working through a Mama Higurashi obsession. But I will run out of plot bunnies eventually, right? For this fairly short character sketchy kind of thing, I'm trying a reversion to an older writing style of mine (more something I normally use with orig fic), so any style adjustment comments are especially welcome.
More Last than Star

Love is the truth more first than sun, more last than star
-e. e. cummings, "being to timelessness as it's to time"
He is dying.

She doesn't need the rhythmic noises of machines, the harsh rasp of his breaths to tell her this. There is a... waiting in the air, heavy in the scent of sick and bleach, and she needs no magic to know its final resolution.

In the night of a hospital ward, the dark and silence are almost another presence, joining her, shadowed fingers ghosting her shoulders. Or maybe it is just the heavy guilt pressing down. She should never have forced her friend to let her stay beyond visiting hours. She knows she would have felt worse for walking away from this, but guilt is an old friend and she would be empty in its absence. She shivers slightly and turns to the window, eager for air, distraction.

One can only see the brightest stars in the city and only on the clearest of clear nights. They are buried, like so much else, by the artificial brightness of the many million shields against the exposing dark. She wonders once again what Kagome sees at night in that other Edo, in that time when the dark was more dangerous but less separated. She is not sure whether the sudden stab of pain for her daughter is fear, guilt or envy. Probably better not to know.

She does recognize that other low simmer of anger for her daughter who hasn�t even come back in the length of time it took her father-in-law to pass from deluded but vital grandfather to-

The machines' slow beeping and humming are answer enough. It is maybe ironic that, in the end, it is her who waits out this last watch. Mama and Grandfather- they have not always worn these faces. Those earlier, rougher masks grated against each other more than these smooth, even-surfaced replacements. It is silly that she sometimes misses those more honest interactions. It is even sillier that she thinks the smoothing of her and this man is just a long preparation for this final stillness where one can no longer cause offense, even with effort.

Her mouth twitches as she turns back to the bed. This man who loves history
-memories-- he was not always a caricature. She does not want to think of her own old age, all her most ridiculous qualities expanded and exaggerated with such loving detail. But she hopes -prays- that she will still have someone to sit with her then as she sits here now.

She wants to hate him for the illness, for outliving his son, for forcing her to once again sit beside a hospital bed and wait, but she�s always known that love is the thing that�s left when like�s too hard and hate's too easy.

She absently strokes the back of his hand, watching the blue veins jump under paperskin. He looks up at her then, a brief clearing of his eyes before he sinks back to the slow fade.

"We will... We will
remember."

There is a faint
�so very faint- squeeze of her hand. It is probably the best they have ever understood one another- she has always known that love is the thing that's left by the words not said.

His hand falls from hers as the light changes and she glances to the window.
-Stars fade, dark recedes-

She smiles to greet the sun.

-The End-
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