Rifts Of Fire, an inuyasha fanfic

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Alas.

AN: My first Inuyasha fic. I'm feeling a little apocalyptic.

Days passed, (that was all it would take, his mother had said, just a few days), days and then months. Summer faded into winter then back again and every day he would come home and check, just pop his head around the door to see if she'd snapped out of it. Winter had come and gone three times now, but still he looked.

She'd be sitting by the window, as ever, with a geometry book on her lap (the same book, years since the exam had passed). Her hands would be clasped loosely on the spine and she'd stare intently out the window (still waiting) (just days, his mother had said).

She'd been running. Running and running while the darkness hung thick like a living, seething fog. She'd run left then ducked right, skipping over tree roots and swinging under branches, fuelled by an instinct more direct than thought.

Her brain screamed at her to fight but her feet would have none of it, the heavy breathing of her pursuer clogging her ears from any other sound.

Left then right then left again. She cursed herself again for never having learnt to climb trees.

Branches swung like leering spiders and she thought of the Naraku and shuddered. She could feel the wind but could not hear it. Too focused. Too afraid.

Behind her animal jaws gnashed.

Each day he comes home from school and glances through her door. Each day she doesn't see him and each day he sighs (maybe tomorrow). He brings her food because if he didn't she wouldn't eat and he sits on her bed to do his homework (because the company might do her good, they said),

He doesn't mind. If it helps her then what's he to lose?

There were youkai left and right, all teeth and claws while she fought and fought – with Inuyasha battling Naraku there was no alternative, even Shippo fought for his life. Hurling herself to the ground she groaned at a pain in her shoulder as the tree she hid behind was uprooted, earth and grit from the newly bared roots raining down on her back. Duck, parry, shoot! But it missed and she was back to running, skipping and dodging, stumbling over tree roots.

Roars echoed off of roars and it struck her how absurd the situation was. There were four of them, five if you counted the young fox, and countless hundreds of their enemy. That was the thing – the thing that was so hard to grasp – countless hundreds bore down on them but they had just one adversary. He was one and he was all. A thousand souls that did not belong to him, they were him. Every kill she made was a shard of Naraku broken, but each corpse would fall to reveal another seething mass of demonic flesh.

She could taste blackness on the air, taste the rank wake of their aura. It was like blood and rotting meat, coppery on the tongue as she breathed in again before hurling herself down, talons raking through air in which she had stood mere moments before.

"Miroku!"

The nearby shout distracted her opponent and she sagged against the earth, muscles aching and eyes stinging as she forced herself to clear her mind.

"Miroku! Look-"

There was a sickening crunch.

"-out…" Shippo trailed off. She almost smiled – like the monk would go down to an enemy as simple as a scorpion youkai. He winked at her, a wry smile as he turned to face his next foe.

And then the moment was over and the talons were back. Claws slashed at her clothing, jaws snatched for her legs and she staggered away, suddenly weak as blood rushed to her head. Left, right, left again. She ducked and parried and shot. It struck this time but in its place another rose, larger perhaps, darker and more blurred around the edges.

There were youkai left and right, all barbed tails and jaws while she fought and fought. It was unending.

He still goes to the well sometimes. He'll go there after school and talk, pretending he's telling Inuyasha about the guy he beat in gym or the ridiculous thing he read about dog demons in his schoolbook. He talks about the girl he likes and laughs at the thought of Kagome's face if she knew what he'd said to her. He talks about the appalling state of the school lunches and how if she'd come home on time she might have been able to witness the chaos that ensued when a passing storm blew the roof off the school.

He talks and he talks and sometimes he feels a little bit better for it. Sometimes it makes it a little easier to go to her then, to sit on her bed and do his homework while she stares on, oblivious.

There had been a crash. She remembers that. A huge crash and a wave of light that split her world in two, carving rifts of fire into the backs of her eyes. She had fallen.

The fog had been heavy, heavy and damp as it curled around her legs, cold fingers caressing bruises. The fog had been so thick she couldn't see and her body so weak she couldn't feel. She lifted her head but nothing changed – just swirling grey on black. There was no sound, only a ringing in her ears.

It had ached.

Doctors come and go sometimes. They talk to his mother in hushed voices before leaving. It's them that suggest he keeps her company; it's them who prescribe her medicine she never bothers to take. His mother says it's necessary and gets all teary-eyed before reminding him that she 'deserves a normal life!'

But then the outburst passes and they sit in awkward silence, no reminding necessary to point out how very far from ordinary her situation is.

"…Still five hundred years out of synch… too late… broken…something, it was lost…she misses them."

Her head swum. Her fingers had reached out tentatively, brushing the broken fragments of her weapon. It was over. Naraku was gone. She dragged herself to her feet, swaying as her consciousness threatened to topple.

The fog smelt arid and a few seconds of unsteady thought led her to realise it was smoke. The taste lay bitter on her tongue while all around ash fell like snow.

She shivered. It was beautiful.

A bank was robbed the other week. It reminds him of Inuyasha, that time when he came and took Kagome's lunch to school, but saved a kid from a burning building and caught a bank robber first. He tells her that, concluding that Inuyasha's venture had been far more exciting to hear about that the police's stupid 'suspicions'.

She just looks at him funny and goes back to her bowl of rice.

She stumbled forward.

"Miroku!" she called out, scared (so scared) she wouldn't get an answer.

She does that a lot. Blanks him. Or looks at him like he's grown a second head. Sometimes he thinks she doesn't understand, and in a way he knows that would make sense. (So much has happened, it's a miracle she understands anything at all.)

No answer came. No sound. Not even a breath of wind. It was so still and the air so heavy with soot that she felt her eyes sting with tears. (It's just the soot on the air, she told herself.) (I'll find him.)

She called again, "Miroku! Kagome!"

No reply.

Sometimes he asks her questions. Sometimes he gets no reply. Then sometimes she'll smile at him with dark and jaded eyes conveying her answer in whisper-soft tones,

Most times he regrets asking anything to begin with. (Her voice is too soft. Too fragile. Too foreign as it rushes past his ears.)

"Inuyasha! Kagome! Shippo!" the tears fell freely now and she was still walking, "Miroku!" Her voice cracked. "Where are you?"

The smoke thinned as she walked and with every step the smell of death grew stronger. Blood and demon flesh stung her senses and she blinked through the heavy twilight, searching for any sign of life.

He wanders past his sister's room and sees a dark form lying in the bed. He knows she's not asleep. He's never asked but he doesn't think she knows how to any more. It makes him wonder sometimes, what is it she thinks about? While she stares out the window, while she fingers that old textbook, what thoughts plague her to insomnia?

It was Inuyasha she found first. Bright red stood out stark against the greys and browns of ash and dry blood.

Beside him lay Kagome.

Hanyou and human girl, side by side. He curled around her as if to keep her warm, like they were only sleeping.

Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes he thinks he hates her when he does everything he can to make her comfortable and she ignores it all. He knows it's not out of spite but sometimes he just wishes she'd offer that little bit of recognition, after all, he's the closest thing she's got to a friend now, isn't he?

He tells himself again and again that she is not his sister, that he can't expect her to be and can't resent her for being anything else. But all the same he finds himself sitting by the well and wishing Kagome would come home.

She fell to her knees there. Saw Inuyasha clutching Kagome in the hopes that he might protect her from the blast. Saw his face broken with pain while the girl buried hers in his chest. There were tears on his cheeks. When did Inuyasha ever cry?

But then she thought she understood.

Kagome died first.

For all his efforts his demon blood kept him alive while the wave passed through him to kill her. She died in his arms.

That faraway look she has sometimes scares him. It's like her mind is running on a different plane to his, drifting through places he could never bring himself to imagine. There's fear there. She's seen more than he ever will, and none of it good.

There's fear, but also pity.

She stared at the pair until the smoke was all but gone.

Shippo was dead. She could see him now, just a few steps back; she'd missed him in all the smoke.

Pity for the way her hands shake when she opens that maths book. Pity for the pain on her features on the dark of the moon, or when his grandfather can be heard chanting sutras across the shrine. Pity for those dark rings around her sleep starved eyes.

And Miroku. She found him too.

Pity for the way she pretends she isn't living anymore. The way she acts like she can't see anyone in the hopes that one day they'll just forget and leave her to mourn in peace. (Undead. Her life reduced to existence. Watching the seasons blur into one in a world so similar yet so different to her own. It's like she's frozen out of time.)

Numb.

There had been pain first. Tears fell as the very edge of a knife. Bleeding and scoring and tearing her heart. She'd buried them. Buried her friends and left the demon corpses to rot. She felt no guilt as she left that place. Only cold.

Her eyes are dark. Dark and old with experiences he can't comprehend. Sometimes he watches her, distracted from algebra or verbs by the sound of a bird, or perhaps a gust of wind over by her window (her window; he's not sure when he gave up wishing for Kagome to return). Sometimes he watches her and thinks he can see heartbreak in her eyes. He thinks he can see her reliving it all, piece by piece, fragment by fragment; he sees jaw muscles tighten and fingers fist but then the light will change and everything will be as it was. He'll blink then, and wonder vaguely if it was all imagined.

She wandered. Crossed the country killing demons and saving villages. Like Kikyo she'd think sometimes and laugh. Like Kikyo. Alone and dead.

She wandered for days and then she'd see a monk or dog or fox or girl and something small inside her would break off and be lost forever. And then she'd stamp on spiders and kill demons while eternity stretched and she existed out of spite.

But somehow she ended back there, at Kaede's village.

Her pose is resigned, sitting on the window ledge. Her back is straight but her head bowed. Occasionally she'll look to the well but never for long. (Her eyes cloud but the tears haven't fallen for years). He thinks sometimes that she's waiting for something. (To wake up perhaps.)

She had the jewel. It was full, salvaged from Naraku's heart. She held it in her palm as she stood by Kagome's well. She held it in her palm the memories hit her like a wall.

She cried and cried and felt her soul break again and again. She saw faces she'd been blocking out for weeks. She saw their faces and wished to god she'd died there too. Sobs wracked her very bones and there was no one there to hear, so far into the forest. She shook and shook and fell to her knees and wanted nothing more than to curl up in the dark and stay that way forever.

She jumped into the well and felt herself fall forever.

He'd never forget her face when he found her there.

Stricken at first, she looked haggard, aged without years. But then something flickered and she whispered a name he didn't recognise. Kohaku? She'd thought he was her brother.

He'd clambered up the side of the well, running into the house, screaming for someone, anyone, to come and help.

When they hauled her up she was in a dead faint but the next morning she woke in Kagome's bed with a wry smile, like there was a big conspiracy she'd just cracked. And then she'd seen him.

Her face had fallen.

She didn't say anything. Just cried. When she handed him his sister's watch and a bright pink jewel he didn't understand, but the gesture made his mother sob harder than he'd ever seen her sob before.

(He understood later, when he stood by the well and whispered the news of his day to his sister; it hit him so suddenly he almost fell down the shaft.) (You're not coming back.)

Sango. Her name was Sango.

Kagome had a picture of her and her other friends from the past in a book by her bed.

(She'd cried when she found that picture. She'd cried and then she'd picked up the book and moved to sit by the window. 'Intermediate Geometry' the cover read.)

(She hadn't moved in years.)

Days passed, days and then months. Summer faded back into winter and every day he would come home and check, just pop his head around the door to see if she'd snapped out of it. Winter would come and go many times before he gave up hope.

She'd be sitting by the window, as ever, with a geometry book on her lap (the same book, though the photo grew creased and faded). Her hands would be clasped loosely on the spine and she'd stare intently out the window (still waiting) (though for what he never understood).

If you've read it please review it :)