"… then you begin to make it better. And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain, don't…" A crash at Kagome's window interrupted the old song, and the CD skipped when Inuyasha landed heavily beside the player. Kagome sighed.
"Is it that time already?" she groaned, casting a dejected look at the two textbooks she hadn't yet managed to crack. She'd saved math for last, of course, hoping to catch up on the stuff she could actually understand before attempting to solve the frighteningly long equations assigned by her teacher.
"You said two days," Inuyasha growled. He crossed his arms and stuck his nose in the air. "I gave you three."
She groaned again and buried her face in her arms. He stood quietly for a minute before adding, "Sango needs your medicines. She got hurt."
"What?" Suddenly the unopened texts didn't seem quite so important.
"We were attacked last night," he admitted, scowling. "And it was the night of the new moon." His scowl darkened further, and he didn't say anything more.
"Inuyasha!" Kagome gasped. That's why she'd told him two days in the first place, even though she had needed more time than that. She'd forgotten. Feeling guilty, "Is she okay?"
He didn't say anything for a moment. Then, "One of the demons speared her through the chest."
"Oh my God."
"Get your stuff. And hurry up about it," he told her shortly. He leapt up onto her windowsill and down to the ground below, quick and graceful. Watching him from the window, she saw him drop cross-legged on the grass before the shrine, waiting. Throwing a change of clothes and her books into her never-completely-unpacked bag, she rushed to the bathroom to collect extra antiseptic, bandages, and painkillers. At the last minute, she threw a box of tampons into the kit as well, not sure how long it would be before she was able to return.
She ran out to the well, lugging her heavy yellow bag behind her, pleased that she had been so fast. Inuyasha did not comment on her haste, but took the bag from her and hoisted it over his shoulder before dropping into the well. He's worried, Kagome realized. Very worried.
"Sango?" Kagome asked uncertainly. Deep, regular breathing from the floor assured her that her friend only slept. Miroku sat beside the demon-slayer's slender form, eyes closed in meditation, or possibly prayer. Inuyasha stood in the doorway, turned away from the three.
"She lost a lot of blood," Miroku said, opening his eyes. His expression was grim. "It was a difficult battle." There was no accusation in his voice, but Kagome was assaulted by a painful stab of guilt regardless. The one night they really had needed her, she had been studying for a test, because her grades were in danger. Their lives had been in danger, and she hadn't been there. Shippo had met her and Inuyasha at the well, and told her all about the hordes of demons that had attacked them. In a situation like that, her purifying arrows would have been a big help. Especially since Inuyasha had more or less been out of commission. Especially since she'd promised to be back for that one, vulnerable night.
"I'm sorry," Kagome whispered, looking at the sleeping girl on the floor. "I should have been here."
Miroku sighed heavily. "You have another life, Kagome. We understand that."
"It wasn't as important as this," she replied. Self-loathing wound around her chest, caught in her throat. That Miroku did not answer her informed her that no matter how he protested or how often they forgave her absences, he knew as well as she did that Sango's injury might have been avoided if she had taken her responsibilities here more seriously.
Kagome slipped up to the Sango and gently tugged her blanket down. Her chest was bared, covered only in bandages, and blood had soaked through the linen cloth a few inches below her right shoulder. That shoulder lay exposed, bruised a mottled green and blue, cruelly jarred by the impact of whatever demonic appendage had pierced the flesh beneath. Beside her, she felt rather than saw Miroku tense.
"I'm going to change the bandage," Kagome announced pointedly. Inuyasha silently disappeared from the doorway, and Miroku rose to follow him, casting a last, worried look at Sango.
Swallowing down her guilt, Kagome tried to pull the bandages free. Blood had crusted along the white weave, however, and Sango cried out in her sleep as Kagome attempted to loosen the dressing. Fighting back tears, she continued to gently work the cloth, racking her brain for someway to free the fabric without tearing the damaged skin adhered to it. Finally she decided to pour purified water over the dressing. It worked; the water softened the encrusted blood and allowed her to remove the binding. Because the – had Shippo said it was a tail? – had pierced Sango all the way through, the cloth had also clung to the exit wound in her back, and Kagome had to repeat the process after carefully turning her friend over onto her side. Small whimpers escaped Sango's throat; her sleep was not deep enough to shield her from the pain of her injuries.
"This is all my fault," Kagome whispered to Sango as she brushed the punctured flesh with antibiotic ointment. "I'm so sorry, Sango. I won't let you down again." Just to be safe, she soaked the bandages in antiseptic before laying them across the wounds. Then she pulled Sango up into her arms to wind the long strips cloth around her chest to protect her friend's modesty before the lecherous monk. She laid her back down and covered her carefully with the blanket, wishing she had access to more effective pain medicines than Tylenol. For a moment, she stared at her friend, struggling. Then she quietly left the hut, to find Miroku and Inuyasha watching the sun go down in the distance.
"Well?" Inuyasha demanded, not looking at her.
"I think she's going to be okay," Kagome answered softly. "But it was close. A few inches more…"
She drew a deep breath. "Inuyasha, do you think things will be alright here for an hour or two? I need to go home." He stared at her, and even Miroku looked astonished that she would leave right after having seen what her absence had allowed to happen. She smiled ruefully at the two of them. "I need to do something that I ought to have done a long time ago. Then I'll be back, I promise. This isn't going to happen again," she assured them.
Miroku still looked stunned, but Inuyasha just nodded. Wordlessly, he offered her his back and picked up her backpack for her. She climbed on, and he headed for the well at a ground-eating lope. When they arrived, he set her down and started to return to the village.
"Come with me?" Kagome asked in a small voice, catching hold of his sleeve.
"Why?" he asked curiously.
"I won't be very long, and I don't want to have to walk back to the village by myself after dark."
"Feh." But he threw an arm about her and lifted her into the air as he leapt into the gateway. He didn't release her until they were standing in the shrine that surrounded the Bone Eaters' well in her era.
"Thank you, Inuyasha." She smiled gently at him.
"Feh," he repeated.
"Mom?" Kagome called. Her mother's silhouetted figure waved from the kitchen window enthusiastically. Kagome's answering wave was much more subdued. She entered the back door and made her way to the kitchen, Inuyasha following a few paces behind.
Her mother smiled warmly at them both. "I want to talk to you about school," Kagome began.
Inuyasha took that as his cue to leave. He made his way upstairs, leaving the two women talking in low tones. Kagome's room always attracted him; it smelled good and it felt like her, sweet and innocent and unselfconsciously silly, with its pink frills and stuffed animals. He settled himself next to the bed on the floor, cradling Tetsusaiga against his breast and hoping that whatever Kagome had to do didn't take very long. Comfortable or not, he was anxious to check in on Sango. She was the one he felt he could usually understand, a warrior with a need for vengeance. She thought things through better than he did, usually, and she was probably a better leader, able to coordinate everyone's attacks at once, but he could understand her point of view better than anyone else's. And she understood his.
Not that Kagome didn't. But she hadn't experienced loss like he and the demon-slayer had; she couldn't be expected to understand revenge, or how the guilt and the grief could eat away at your soul until vengeance had been achieved. Her purpose in chasing Naraku had begun only as a penance for having shattered the jewel of four souls in the first place; he and Sango, and Miroku too, come to think of it, had all lost something irreplaceable to Naraku and felt the need to punish him. The strange girl from the future only tagged along for them. Because they needed vengeance and the closure it could bring.
Somehow, she'd become the glue in their little group, the one who smoothed things out between Miroku and Sango, who protected the little kitsune brat even when he needed a good thrashing. The one who had somehow parted the darkness and shown him a brighter kind of life, who dared him to trust her and opened his soul to new friends. That was an interesting word, friend. It hadn't had any meaning before Kikyou, and its meaning had changed as Kagome had collected new companions in their hunt for the shards. Now the word meant Miroku, who had guarded him in the weblike cocoon the moth demon had set around him minutes before his first transformation, who had bound him up and forced him to rest his battered body after he had – or so he had believed – trapped Kagome in her own world. It meant Sango, who had the good grace to stay out of the complex emotions that had been Kikyou and Kagome, who threw herself into battle to protect him and the others just as quickly as he was wont to do, who had just the night before taken a terrible injury meant for him. It meant Kirara, who caught him when he fell and swooped into danger as fearlessly as her companion. It even meant the little runt, who not-so-secretly admired him and whom he secretly genuinely liked. Most of the time.
Maybe it was a weakness, to care about them like he did. But not having to be alone anymore, that was worth whatever minor vulnerability their friendship meant, and for good or for ill, it was Kagome who had been responsible for whatever change in himself allowed them to experience that friendship. And he was grateful.
Ah, his own sentimentality was getting cloying. It was her room, he decided irritably, that brought this funny change on him. It was like being surrounded by her, and she made him weak and squishy inside. Maybe she'd enchanted it, he thought darkly.
"Inuyasha?"
He opened his eyes, wondering when he had closed them. Settling his gaze on her, he waited for an explanation.
"Good, I was afraid you'd left without me. That took a little longer than I thought it would."
"Keh. You asked me to stay." He glared at her. "You realize you're not making back here for a month after all this trouble, right?
"That's why I had to come back." She looked at her hands, and Inuyasha could smell "sad" on her as easily as he could hear the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. She looked up at him defiantly.
"Sango got hurt because I wasn't there," she told him, as if daring him to deny it.
"Sango got hurt because she got in front of me, and I wasn't fast enough to push her away," he corrected her, realizing belatedly that no one had told Kagome Sango had probably saved his life by taking that scorpion tail through the chest.
Her eyes got big, and she was quiet for a moment, taking that in. "Still."
"You have a life here, too. I don't like it, but nobody could ask you to give it up. You didn't ask to be involved with Naraku and the jewel anymore than I did."
"But you're always right there," she argued. "I've disappeared all year, made you all wait around when we could have been hunting jewel shards, leaving you vulnerable…"
"Is that what this is about?" he demanded. "Look, Kagome, nobody blames you for what happened to Sango. You had things to do here."
"Stupid things! Unimportant things!" she challenged heatedly. "Tests and homework, while the rest of you were fighting for your lives. Somebody does blame me, Inuyasha. I blame me."
Inuyasha kept his mouth shut, not really sure what to say. Comforting guilt-stricken people wasn't exactly something he was good at. Usually he was battling with his own guilty conscience over Kikyou's death.
Kagome's eyes narrowed. "It isn't going to be like that anymore, though," she told him emphatically. "I just talked to mom. I'm dropping out this semester, and maybe next year, if I have to. I can't keep leaving you guys alone. Naraku is only getting stronger, and I've been so worried about things that don't even matter that Sango got really hurt. It could have been you!" she blurted, then turned away, obviously mortified.
Me? he thought, shocked. Were you afraid of that, Kagome? She started to cry.
"Oi, don't do that! Kagome!" She flung herself into his arms, and he could feel a slow heat rise in his face.
"Kagome," he murmured, still stunned. Her hair smelled good. "Don't."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know it's awkward, it's all wrong," she sobbed. "I just feel so guilty, and nobody will blame me for it when it's all my fault for worrying about stupid, petty things, and she was so badly hurt, Inuyasha, she could have been killed and it was my fault!" she wailed. He patted her back self-consciously, not knowing what to do or how to make her stop crying. She managed to collect her wits after a few minutes and pulled away from him.
"I'm sorry," she sniffed, refusing to look at him, wiping at her eyes with a sleeve.
"Keh. Don't worry about it," he answered in what he hoped was a gruff tone.
"Let's go back, okay, Inuyasha?" she offered, trying to smile. She smelled salty. She smelled good. He rose.
"But first," she said, and she unzipped her bag to rummage inside. Pulling out the two heavy books, she threw them across the room and zipped the backpack again. He picked it up, picked her up and enjoyed her startled gasp, and jumped out the window. Shifting her to his back, he raced for the well and headed back for the feudal era with new resolve. Kagome had just decided to get serious. Maybe she was finally growing up. Maybe the fact that he allowed himself to know her well enough to recognize how serious she was meant he too was growing. He could tell already that it wasn't going to be easy growth for either of them. But at least they were doing it together.