Chapter One – Feeling Alone
Yes this is another story I thought of while I was supposed to be sleeping… stupid ideas that come at the wrong time! Especially in the middle of the night! Especially when I had a job interview early the next morning! No I didn't stay up that night and write this, I'm not crazy! Lol, I did it the next afternoon. I warn ahead of time that this story is a little depressive at the beginning and involves attempted suicide. This story has now been re-written since I started it back a couple years ago, hopefully I can get back into the flow and write more.
Dreams and Flash backs are in italics.
"Inuyasha…what's wrong?" Kagome asked softly as she turned her head and looked up at him, her brown eyes pensive as she watched his handsome profile. He had been acting increasingly protective yet kind of distant as if he was thinking seriously about something – that in itself was strange enough. It had been going on the last couple days and she wasn't sure what was going on, not that Inuyasha was the kind of guy that came out and told you what he was feeling. No, he kept a lot of it all to himself and you were left to guess and try to work out what was wrong. Actually it had probably started when she had been injured in a minor scuffle between their group and one of Naraku's incarnations, it had only increased when they had begun their journey back to the well.
"Nothing…there is nothing wrong," he replied softly though there was a touch of gruffness in his tone. His ears twitched slightly this way and that as they caught the night sounds surrounding the village before he turned his golden gaze down to her. His gaze was gentle and loving as he stared down into her own chocolate brown eyes for a few moments before he looked away and pulled her onto his lap abruptly before stating, "You should get some rest Kagome…it's getting late."
"Mm…I guess I am kind of tired," she said softly with a soft yawn though she continued to struggle against the strong pull of sleep, which was hard since it was so comfortable on his lap with his chest as her pillow, though she somehow managed to force her eyes to stay open. "But I wanted to talk to you about why you're acting so strange…you haven't been yourself since we left to come to Kaede's village…"
"Sleep Kagome," Inuyasha told her in a firm tone which announced quite firmly that he wouldn't tell her anything tonight. With a soft huff Kagome crossed her arms over her chest and looked ready to get into a fight with him so Inuyasha wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer to him so she was now snuggled against his chest with his head on top of her. After a few moments she gave in and with a muttered fine and goodnight she fell asleep quite quickly and comfortably.
Once she was asleep Inuyasha sighed softly and gazed down at the girl in his arms, the girl that had become his very life. He gently nuzzled the side of her neck taking in her scent as she slept. The sight of Kagome made his heart swell with pride and love. That such a beautiful and wonderful woman would want to be his... he had never had something so precious and special before. His ears twitched again and he pulled her closer as he listened to the second heartbeat from within, so soft that most wouldn't have noticed but he was part inu youkai. Their hearing and smell was superior to most youkai, his and Kagome's baby nestled safely inside her, he couldn't have been happier except Naraku was still alive and the fight wasn't over. He had already taken Kikyo away and he didn't want to lose Kagome and their unborn child. It would hurt even more.
"Mm…" Kagome said drowsily as she shifted in his arms, the silver strands tickling her neck as he sniffed at her and she giggled softly when she realised it was Inuyasha. "Inuyasha!" she said in a mock scolding tone as she opened her eyes to look at him with sleepy brown eyes. "I am trying to sleep you know…you should sleep too."
"What?" he said gruffly as he shifted in his place and nuzzled his face against her neck. "I wasn't doing nothing…so go back to sleep." Kagome rolled her eyes, sometimes he acted just like her little brother she thought before falling back to sleep once more without any other interruptions until the morning dawned.
After breakfast Inuyasha told her that he wanted to go for a walk with her and she agreed. They wandered through the forest together holding hands as they talked about this and that while they walked but the majority of it was in pleasant, companionable silence that didn't need words. Eventually finding their way to the well, the magical portal that had brought Kagome to him at the beginning, "I love you Kagome," Inuyasha said softly as he lowered his head and kissed her gently on the lips, causing her to melt against his chest.
"Mm…love you too," she said with a contented sigh as she snuggled into him. It was nice to see this loving and caring side of Inuyasha that she had always known was there it had just been hidden under the rough exterior, but it just made these moments all the more precious. She loved him faults and all though when Inuyasha whispered something too soft for her to hear Kagome looked up to see tears shimmer in the golden depths. She reached up and cupped his cheeks, "What's wrong Inuyasha?"
Inuyasha grabbed her around the waist and held her to him for a few moments as he savoured the feeling of her against him and nuzzled her neck, taking in her sent for as long as possible before he looked down into her eyes and whispered, "I…I'm so sorry Kagome…I just want to keep you safe from harm… please...forgive me."
With those final words he pushed her down the well like he had done already once to her before many years before and the reason was almost the same as back then. It was…to keep her safe and out of danger even though it broke his heart to see those wide shocked and hurt eyes looking up at him as she fell backwards, reaching out to him as she attempted to grab onto him as she cried, "Inuyasha!"
And then she was gone, he wiped his tears away holding their part of the jewel in his palm. He couldn't let her or their child get hurt, when it was safe he would go and get her again he promised himself. It wouldn't be that long and he would let her yell at him as much as she wanted…as long as she was safe.
Three years later...
"No! Inuyasha!" she cried out loud when she reached the bottom of the well, the smooth hard ground under her body. "Don't make me go! Don't leave me! Inuyasha!" she cried, tears streamed down her cheeks unchecked as she slammed her fists onto the walls that surrounded her until her flesh was raw and bleeding. Still crying she pulled herself up the ladder and out of the well before she jumped back down again, but nothing happened. No flash of blue, no magical portal to take her back to the feudal era and a small whimper escaped her lips. With shaking hands she felt at her neck for the Shikon jewel but it wasn't there any more…it was gone.
She looked around frantically and her gaze was caught by a shimmery blue sphere that floated above her. It was almost like a mirror and in it she could see a tall, red-clad figure walking away from her, leaving her behind. "Inuyasha! Don't go!" she yelled despite the fact she knew that he couldn't hear her, voice breaking full of pain and misery.
Kagome started awake. Dark brown eyes flashed open to find that she was lying in bed with her damp sheets tangled around her long limbs. She could feel the wetness upon her cheeks as she pushed the thick ebony hair out of her face with slightly shaking hands and heart beating erratically in her chest as her chest heaved as she attempted to calm down from the familiar dream that tormented her. With a deep and calming breath she kicked the sheets away from her legs and slipped out of bed, she had to check whether her nightmares had woken him as well. Using the heel of her palm she wiped away the damp trails on her cheeks and walked over to the other bed, he was where she had put him to sleep earlier except that large golden brown eyes were staring at her worried worriedly and Kagome was aware that he could smell her freshly shed tears.
"Are you okay Mummy?" Taishi asked softly.
"Yes baby," she said with a loving smile as she leaned against the side of his bed and pushed his ashen blonde hair away from his sleepy but worried face. "Mummy just had a nightmare, that's all. Go back to sleep sweetie," she told him softly as she kissed his forehead and Taishi closed his eyes again. She knew it wouldn't be long before sleep would claim him once more, though she couldn't say the same for herself.
Kagome padded silently out of the room and into the kitchen, she moved around the small room, sighing softly as her past caught up with her. The sound barely audible as she walked over to the kitchen window, staring out of the window at the dark moonless sky, dawn was still a few hours away. Inuyasha would be human right now...
She put her head in her hands as the memories assaulted her senses - it had been three years since she had seen him and time seemed to drag on in his absence. She had jumped down the well every day for two months before her mother padlocked the door in an attempt to keep her out and from injuring herself with her obsession - she had managed to sprain and twist her ankles a number of times as well as a number of other small injuries. But after her mother had locked it she had fallen deeper into depression, becoming despondent and uninterested in everything to do with the present.
She didn't want to be in the present and didn't pretend otherwise and her family couldn't pull her out of it no matter what they tried, however they hadn't even realised the severity of her emotional state until it was too late and she got to the point where she didn't even want to live without Inuyasha. It was too hard to be without him and killing herself seemed like the best option, the only option. She was content in the idea of death, she wanted the pain and misery that was her current existence to all stop.
"If I can't be with him then I don't want to be alive at all, I don't want to be here and feel all this pain and sadness that I feel daily. He dead in this time and I can't get back to him without the jewel…it's hopeless." She said to herself as the dark-haired girl walked into the bathroom, a long silver knife glinting in her hand as she closed and locked the bathroom door behind her. As she walked further inside she glanced at the vanity mirror only to pause and cock her head to the side in wonder at the person that looked back at her from the depths. The girl looked like her but couldn't be her. The person in the mirror looked so haunted, sad and hopeless while her eyes glinted a little too brightly with an unknown emotion. This other girl looked like someone who had nothing left to loose and no hope.
She shook her head to get rid of the image, though her action only caused her dark hair to slip off her right shoulder and she froze, there it was - his mating mark that covered an inch sized area between her shoulder and neck. The mark looked like a dark indigo lightning bolt and similar to the markings he got himself on his cheeks when in his demon form, a constant reminder of him and an ever present symbol of the love they shared. Finally after two years of searching for the shards he had realised that it was Kagome that he loved and they had become serious. A year later they reached the point where she gave her virginity away and he took her as a mate, with plans for them to marry in the human custom when they got a chance. But then...he...
Tears blurred her vision and her grip on the knife tightened and she turned away from the mirror she slipped off her clothes before replacing them with a fluffy pink robe that she didn't really like. She didn't want to get any of her good ones all bloody and ruined. No, there was no logic in that but it didn't matter. She lay against the white porcelain bath and ran the sharp blade over one of her wrists, wincing she closed her eyes at the sharp pain and a few tears trickled down her cheeks. Thinking about whether to cut the other wrist too when there was a sensation like someone was watching her so her she opened her eyes. Someone was leaning over her and a look of disbelief appeared on her face as she watched the apparition, he had to be a figment of her imagination because he couldn't be real.
"Inu…yasha?" Kagome asked softly, but no his eyes were browner than Inuyasha's bright gold and his hair wasn't silver…more of an ashen colour.
"No Mummy I'm not him," the apparition said softly with what looked like tears in his large golden brown eyes as he looked down at her bleeding in the bathtub. "Don't you want me Mummy? Don't you love me? You're leaving me...killing me."
"Who…who are you?" she asked staring up at him, now very unsure who this child was that looked so similar to Inuyasha and a moment of clarity snapping her out of her daze. Kagome sat up in the bath, the movement causing her to feel dizzy and light headed for a moment before she climbed out of the bathtub. Grabbing one of the towels hanging on the rack she wrapped it tightly around her wrist though she knew she had lost a lot of blood already and couldn't be sure how much, not to mention the fact her blood was already turning the towel crimson as well.
Shaking off the woozy feeling she continued trying to put pressure on her wrist as she ran to the phone and dialed her mother's mobile, when she heard her mother's voice there was an overwhelming sense of relief filled her and tears slipped down her cheeks. A sob escaped her lips with her rushed words, "Mum! I…help me mum…I don't want to…die anymore. I don't want to…die." Her words faded off at the end and she slipped into unconsciousness the phone falling from her grip.
After her attempted suicide they had put her on depressant medication and had made her see a psychiatrist until she eventually refused. After all how could she explain to anyone about going into the feudal era? They would just think she was crazy instead and want to put her into a loony bin. After she explained her reasoning her family backed her up and she stopped seeing the psychiatrist, though it seemed that after the suicide attempt she slowly lost her listlessness and regained some of her energy and life back. She had gained back her will to live because she was fairly certain she was pregnant, but she didn't want to say anything encase she was wrong so she got the courage to go to the chemist and buy a pregnancy test while the rest of her family was out and her mother found her sitting on the bath tub staring at the positive test in her hand.
Her mother had been supportive but for the first time she breached the subject of Inuyasha and why it was that she couldn't go back. She told her Inuyasha had left her and told her to go back home where she belonged, that she couldn't get back anymore because he'd taken her part of the jewel away. She didn't want to get more into it than that, it was private and she didn't want to voice out loud her fears and worries because it would make them too real. She didn't want to believe that Inuyasha had abandoned her…and each day she had hoped that he would come for her but it was getting harder to believe.
After Taishi was born she knew he was the apparition that had snapped her out of her hopelessness. The idea had crossed her mind once or twice during the pregnancy but that could have just been a delusion, something that her subconscious had managed to conjure up to get her to keep on living. She had thought that her mother would think she was crazy but she hadn't thought it was all that strange that Tai would try to contact his dying mother in an attempt to snap her into self preservation mode so that they both didn't die.
Kagome never knew how it was that her mum got back to the house in time to save her, even if she had broken the speed limit. Maybe she hadn't been that far away from home at the time or she hadn't cut deep enough with the knife. Maybe the fact that she put pressure on her wrist, or that she hadn't actually cut her second wrist. There was any number of reasons why she had managed to hang on long enough for her mother to save her but there were just as many reasons for her not lasting that long. She couldn't be sure but she always wondered if maybe it was her mate's mark that made it possible for her cling to life, that Inuyasha wasn't willing to let her go and neither was the life that was growing inside her.
Combined the two were too strong even then to let her go…