(A/N: Hey ya'll… demonwings737 here… I'm back with a new story. I hope all ya'll like it!)

Disclaimer: THIS DISCLAIMER GOES FOR ALL CHAPPIES FROM HERE ON OUT OK?! I do not own the Inuyasha characters… Rumiko Takahashi does.

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Interlude I

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There was nothing but the roar of fire bearing down upon him. The heat was suffocating; choking his senses until he was sure he was deaf, dumb, and blind.

Everything had gone so horribly wrong.

His tattered clothes felt sticky to his skin, as they always did. He pulled them vainly off his tortured flesh, his blood a haunting scream within his ears.

Why him?

He coughed violently, the smoke within his lungs refusing to ease away. Cursing, he coughed again and again until he was dizzy with air loss and he thought his head would explode with pain.

Why wasn't she here with him?

Kikyo.

That was the woman he thought he loved, the woman who had captured his heart, the woman who had been the undead.

The woman who, quite literally, had dragged him into Hell.

Where was she?

Who cares?

He had been alone before, this was no different.

The thing was though, he wasn't really alone.

Not anymore.

High above him, something moved about, making strange, ghostlike sounds that only he could hear, but instead of feeling alarmed, he stood up and held out his hand for it. A small ball of twisting silver waves of earth air floated down onto his outstretched palm. Pulling it closer to his body, he spoke softly to it, as though speaking to a frightened child, and smiled as it suddenly brightened and grew.

His golden eyes fixated themselves into the globe's center then closed, his body stilling as he reached deep within himself.

After months of practice, he had finally got it right.

He opened his eyes and concentrated once more on the orb, every ounce of his very being thundering his wishes into it. He pulled every memory, every feeling, and every thought he possessed into one emotion and let it spill into the watery sphere.

He had to see her again.

He ran her name through his mind, over and over again, gazing into the globe with fiery determination equal to the hell blaze around him. The airs within it stirred and spun, threatening to make him sick and dizzy, but he held firm, every muscle tense, every part of him waiting.

An image slowly appeared within the wraithlike glow, and then suddenly he was staring down at a girl sound asleep at her desk, her beautiful head pillowed on her text books. The bright pink of her room stood in complete contrast to her dark navy pajamas, the girl's thick raven hair covering up most of the silken fabric.

An astonished smile played across his lips.

He had found her.

He concentrated harder on her face, urging the orb to bring him closer, the longing feeling within him refusing to give sway.

She was close enough to touch.

Caught in a trance, he reached out with his free hand, his sanity the only thing keeping him from jumping headfirst into the globe.

No. If I touch, then… then I lose her… again…

His hand dropped in despair, and he cried out her name, his heart beating rapidly as he painfully kept his concentration.

No. She just has to hear me. I have to hear her voice.

She moaned in her sleep then her eyes slowly opened, leaving him breathless as he gazed into her familiar chocolate orbs.

Inu… Yasha…

His heart stopped.

A sad smile lit her face as she sat up, a lone tear falling onto her lap.

"Inu… Yasha…"

He cried out as the globe suddenly sputtered and grew dim, her lovely face disintegrating before his very eyes.

No!

He fell to his knees as the orb flew back to the fiery ceiling, its slow progress proof of the power it had lost in his desperate attempt to reach her.

But he had, hadn't he?

She heard me… I know she did…

He fell back, his body propped up in the corner he mostly occupied.

Kagome…

He covered his burning eyes with a shaking hand, knowing the hot rivers flowing from them were not from the fires around him.

…forgive me…

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