Guess who's back and better than ever?

Not me. What's good. I've recently read stories that have fucked me up so I wanted to contribute to the Inuyasha fandom. There'll be more, I love this concept so much.

First oneshot: the night after Kikyo's resurrection.

The story behind Todd's non-Japanese name will come out, no worries. I'm sure someone can guess what it is. A painful amount of research went into it.

She couldn't feel him. It was so strange to feel his warmth and not hers reflected back. To feel his coat, so soft and comforting, and not his pleasure or happiness at being held. His wet nose was snuggled against her collarbone, his little paws tightly gripping her shirt, and his heartbeat was fluttery against her hand on his back. But she couldn't feel anything else; couldn't catch the whiff of her own scent, couldn't feel the faint texture of her shirt rasping against her palms, couldn't feel the heaviness in every heartbeat…

There was a sense of shallowness about her, now, too. Words could hardly describe what it felt like, how her essence had been scooped out and shattered. To feel it stuffed into something hard, to feel Todd under her skin instead of hers under his (as it should be, almost like it is now but it's not the same… not anymore), to hear his pained gasps as they melded together… to see, through eyes that felt less like eyes and more like glass (she keeps trying to forget the sound Kikyo's eyelids made as they rolled over her stone eyeballs).

It was impossible to describe how broken she feels now that she and Todd are separated. When she forced control back to her body, when she wrestled her soul away from the hollow pot that had cursed and screamed at her new friend, why the sensation of Todd breaking away had been relieving, like soothing gel on a sunburn… she knew she could never explain it to anybody. But then the distance had grown greater, had torn and stretched and she'd felt a lurch in her heart when their bond had snapped.

Her fingers curled in his fur. Todd gripped her arms tighter.

She'd never forget his screech. It had raised every hair on her body, had mirrored the pain perfectly in her mind, and she knew it would be a very long time before she stopped crying without it echoing in her ears.

"What are you thinking?" Came a small, horrified whisper in her arms.

Oh, that's right. They couldn't think together anymore. Talking had to be a thing.

"That I miss you," Kagome immediately said, curling her body around her little dæmon, "and that I'm sorry."

"For what?"

Kagome felt the sides of her mouth pull down as she fought her sobs. It took longer for her to respond, and halfway through her battle she felt Todd begin to pet her.

"For everything." She managed.

A tiny purr began to trill against her chest. "You couldn't control it. Only one person could, and he failed."

Kagome frowned. "That's not fair. You can't blame him, either."

The hair under her palm began to stiffen as Todd raised his hackles. "I can and I will. He did this. Why did he say her name? Why does he care so much?" Todd's voice, already a hoarse thing, trailed off as his anger rose.

Kagome stared into the dying fire, suddenly hyper aware of the silence in old Kaede's hut. She hoped Inuyasha, wherever he was, couldn't hear them. A small part of her, one she hoped was a remnant of her and Todd's bond, fervently wished he could.

"I don't know," she eventually said. "But it's not fair. He didn't know this would happen."

Todd didn't respond for the rest of the night, trying to ignore the guilt that ate at him. He'd told her that the half-demon had been bad news from the start – that he didn't like his attitude or his dæmon's, that she deserved better than a mean boy with a chip on his shoulder a mile wide, whose dæmon still growled at her if she moved too fast.

And yet he could feel his own attachment to the lonely, hurting boy. One he knew that, come morning, would be waiting for them on the porch. He thought of Inuyasha's face blushing every time Kagome made him food (which was often), and he thought of Cho's wagging tail whenever he'd make a particularly funny joke. He remembered his deep thoughts just days previous, wondering at how such an abused soul could be any sort of kind. He remembered pale, spindly legs standing over him, loud, vicious snarls vibrating through the air, and Kagome's relief from across the meadow as Inuyasha fought his brother Sesshomaru.

No, it wasn't fair. But Todd was still angry. He knew, with the sort of deep wisdom he didn't know he possessed, that Kagome would always be second to a dead woman.

For now, though, he clung to Kagome as tight as he could, and ignored the sound of bare feet thumping on the wooden porch outside.