The dusk had settled in, stretching across the abyss above, blanketing the world with darkness and mist, stars twinkling as gentle and subtle as night lamps, a lone moon singing the softest lullaby to lull this half of the world in to a peaceful sleep. With every soul swimming in the ocean of tranquillity, there was one that refused to buy any notion of solace. Her thoughts were drowning in to the grey arms of misery and all she could do was to stare at the crescent silver that bathed the night, silver, that had haunted her dreams and resided in her heart.

How ridiculously unyielding was the idea of happily ever after? A falsified facade that was so well drafted and defined, and the reality came in crawling to ruin the smiles, laughs and quirked up edges of the lips, a lone streak of saline pelted down in a clearest trail falling just the way her dreams were reduced to annihilated phantoms as blur as the moist that drips in the curves of her lashes.

The definition of pain seemed too incomplete; a far off from what the words could do justice. A truly unworthy meaning to the density it holds. The silent screams that get devoured in to the dark meaningless whimpers could perhaps retell the magnitude of the word. How much it is sought after with no intent of enduring it is a mystery of all time and it plagues till the last of sanity is squeezed. The twinge lurked in her, mocking, digging her grave to lie within.

She raised her fingers to wipe away the drops that were strikingly pearl in the swell of her visage. The salt tingled in the waft and prodded the hanyou clad in red robe. His sensory overload painted her distress and his puppy ears twitched towards her. His golden topaz shining under the moon's shy glimmered out to her.

"Kagome?" He called for her, a silent plea was well masqueraded in his tone, subdued in a single word with enough enormity to hope that her brooding would cease. He hated when she cried, it was as if tearing his insides with a rusted knife. He crawled next to her, joining her line of vision, seeing the flickers curl and the dance of golden flame preying on the broken woods with a soft hiss.

"I'm sorry that she had to die, I'm sorry that I can never be her. I'm sorry that you had to let go of her" She whispered. It was a week since Kikiyo had left the living with a promise that she would protect them always. The whines and sulking were initially from the jaded silver haired dog, his days were passed with artful blinks to swallow those true willed tears in an attempt to thwart all the sympathy gazes and unwanted spotlight. But he knew that Kagome watched him every night, watched him struggle to breathe and watched him being consumed with numbness. His breathings were too hard, laboured as an exchange through nostrils to just exist, it seemed like such a trivial act but she knew how much his lungs pushed out the air credit as a tactful measure to stop existing and as a heart's plea to cease beating. Cruelty didn't end and thereby it drew a line of scrimmage with his soul, along with the tyrant of uncanny pain that leached in to his very fibres.

It was Kouga who pulled him back to the continuum of living, but of course, Inuyasha would rather roll over and die than to admit that the wolf actually had helped him. And soon it was his turn to watch Kagome writhe with encased guilt, a framed remorse and it took everyone's reasoning in convincing her that it wasn't her doing.

"Don't be. It's not your fault. Maybe everything happens for a reason" He said, his voice was no longer bratty and it was matured with a tint of wise-ness. Her whimpers increased a notch and she suddenly wept out loud, tugging his arms. He took her in his laps and rocked her, whispering consoling words, all the while praying that the fox and the monk shouldn't wake up. Her dreadful tears darkened his robe, seeping in to pores of his skin and it burnt him like the licks of inferno. His words were her pill, her healing factor to clean the wounds that had a sheer determination to break her. He tucked her head under his chin willing her to listen to his heart's rhythm; her warm soft weight was almost like an insignia on his robe, tangible and real. He held her close, blending in to one.

Her eyes were drooping, and his heart was at ease when he realised that she would fall asleep in a minute or two. She needed a dreamless night and this time he intended to keep his promise, a promise to keep her safe and happy. Losing Kikiyo made him realise his heart was made of flesh and blood, not with stone as once he believed so. It was a much needed lesson with a high price. He was tired and emotionally bankrupt and if he happened to lose Kagome, he would turn red and wouldn't stop until the world is soaked in crimson flow of every living being. And somehow, he didn't want that to happen and the very thought made him still, chocking him and his throat heavily closing with an odd lump.

"Inuyasha.." She trailed, twirling the strands of silver in her lone finger and his drumming heart danced for that composed symphony, yearning for her voice that seemed to be dipped in folds of glowing honey.

"Hmm?"

"Don't ever leave me" She said and nodded off to a realm of oblivion leaving a startled hanyou to stare at her for god knows how long.

His chest ached from within, his cheeks turned scarlet and he pulled her closer and more, her sublimed locks teasing his skin, her breath warming his nape, caressing him, writing love notes on his bronze pelt and he never ever wanted to leave her. She came for an unfathomable reason in to his life as a fate's play, she fights for him leaving her abode in the future and her arms always took him in, him, a filthy half demon, cradling and baking him in the cocoon of purest love. Their bond was ageless, branding her as his and no vows were necessary to say so. She knew that he would lay down his pride for her and he already knew that she would fight for him till the last ounce of light residing in her heart.

"Never" He promised to her soul and wiped away the remains of dried up pearls.

~.~.~

"So Inuyasha, why were you sleeping next to Kagome today morning?" The kitsune asked, his emerald eyes wide and glossy, spewed with sprouts of mischief. The half demon faltered in his path and almost kissed the hard earth.

"Shut your trap, brat" He yelled profanities till the monk had to intervened. The girls had gone to pamper their aching muscles in the hot spring.

" Oh, Inuyasha, my my, you slept with kagome?" Miroku turned on to him with a sly smirk stretched across his face.

"Feh. Shut up you pervert" Inuyasha yelled back and stormed off in a speed to put up a distance between him and the vile males. He had dozed off last night almost cuddling her and by the time the rays of Sun had mercifully decided to wake him up, the kitsune had woken up to witness his flee. What the hell was he thinking? Whispering with her in the night, he must have had a fever or something, because never in his wildest dreams he would ever murmur syllables of drenching sweetness in her ear!

'Stupid girl with stupid tears'

His legs slowed down to rest under the shade of luscious green tree. He could almost hear her breath of content last night, the cheer in his blood, the ether was filled with bittersweet reminiscence that bundled them up together.

'Everything happens for a reason' he had told her. There was no one to take the blame and no one to be blamed except for the unintentional messed up words of fate and time that came in a binding wedlock.

Maybe it was a destiny's game. He didn't care, he wouldn't try to reason out on 'why's and if's'. Her girlish giggle danced in the waft from a distant corner as a reassurance that she wouldn't try reasoning the fate's play either. She was his to love and protect and damn, he would die doing so.

"Shut your incessant blabber and hurry your ass, you lazy good for nothing girl!" He yelled.

"SIT"

'Feh, maybe I should stop calling her names'.

~The End~