"Sango, I want you to bring me to the well." Kagome said, "I need to go home for a few days."
Sango gave her a long look, but finally agreed.
Inuyasha said nothing as she and Sango climbed on Kirara's back, but Shippo did ask her to hurry back. She ruffled his hair and promised she would only be a few days.
Kagome slid the door back, calling out that she was home.
"Mama! Gramps! Souta!" she called again. "Anyone home?"
She walked into their kitchen, and a horrible chill crept up her spine.
There was blood everywhere.
Kagome walked through the kitchen, following the trail of blood into the living room.
Grandpa was crumpled by the stairs, she turned her head before she could look for too long.
She kept walking and she saw the main door wide open, with her mother laid out over the threshold. She was face down, but there was a pool of blood large enough to mean death beneath her.
She needed to find Souta.
He had to be alive.
She wandered the shrine for hours before she found him. She had finally forced herself to go back inside and check upstairs, where she found him at his desk, slumped forward so that his forehead rested on his textbook.
He almost looked like he was sleeping.
She didn't remember walking into the bathroom, but the next thing she knew, she was in the shower. The water was too hot, and she was still wearing her clothes, but she couldn't seem to lift her arms.
Eventually the water got cold, but she couldn't reach up to shut it off. Instead she slid to the bottom of the tub. If I just close my eyes, she thought, I might drown. So she did.
But instead of drowning, she woke up. She didn't know what time it was, but she couldn't remember why she cared. At some point the water became so cold that she started to shiver, but then she started to feel numb, and that felt better for a while. At some point the sun went back down, and she started to wonder how long she had been sitting there, but then she forgot why she was supposed to remember.
She fell asleep again, but she still didn't die.
When was she going to just die?
There was yelling. Why was there yelling when she was trying to die?
They were in the bathroom. Someone was touching her. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
"Kagome!"
Who was Kagome? She just wanted to die, why wouldn't he let her die?
"Kagome! Snap out of it!"
Kagome, Kagome, Kagome…..
"Kagome, please!"
He slapped her face, hard. Her ears were ringing, and her face stung after being numb for so long.
She looked at him, at his long hair and his yellow eyes.
Who in the world had yellow eyes…?
Inuyasha.
Realization came crashing down on her, and for a moment she felt suspended in time.
She felt herself start to scream, and Inuyasha crushed her to his chest.
He stripped her naked and toweled her off. He rubbed too hard against her skin, which was pink and chapped from sitting under the freezing water. Her fingers and toes were pure white, and he pressed them between his palms to warm them.
He went into her bedroom, and came back with leggings and a sweater, and her fluffy robe.
She sobbed while he dressed her, a horrible keening sound that made his ears lay flat against his head.
He took the belt from the robe and tied it around her eyes, and then he picked her up.
She shut her eyes so tight that lights danced behind her lids, and she didn't open them again until they landed on the other side of the well.
She remembered them walking for a while, and then voices. Kaede, and Miroku, and Sango.
"This will make her sleep." Kaede said, and she put a vile to Kagome's lips. She drank without really deciding to.
When she woke up, she was alone in Kaede's hut, but she heard Inuyasha talking to someone right outside.
"I went back to try and find her cat, but he was gone." he said.
"Do you have any idea what happened?" Kaede asked.
"The shrine was destroyed. I don't know what the purpose was, but...I buried them under the tree."
Kagome squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't want to hear this, how her cat was gone. How her home was destroyed.
How her whole family was dead.
A sob slipped out before she could catch herself, and Inuyasha was at her side instantly. He was crushing her to his chest so hard she could barely breathe, but he was the only thing keeping her from spinning apart into tiny pieces, so she let him crush her lungs while she hacked out broken sobs.
It continued for so long that she began to lose track of time; sometimes someone would feed her broth or give her sips of water, sometimes Shippo would sing her strange songs with a melancholy tone that continued even when she was dreaming.
Inuyasha was always there after that first night, with her head in his lap while he stroked her hair.
It was when he finally went to sleep that she snuck outside. The cool night air felt wonderful on her skin, and for the first time she noticed that she smelled awful. She found her backpack leaning up against the outside of the hut, and she was rummaging around for her little bottle of shampoo when Inuyasha burst through the door, his eyes wild until they landed on her.
He looked more lost in that moment than she had ever seen him. It made her wonder what she looked like.
"Hi," she tried. Her voice was raspy.
"Hey," he replied. He crouched down beside her, and she saw the dark circles under his eyes. It made her heart squeeze painfully.
"I was going to go wash up in the river." She said softly, with her brush and the shampoo bottle in hand.
"Okay," he said, and took her free hand. "Let's go."
She was going to tell him to stay, but the more she thought about it, the more she didn't want him to.
She was normally so modest about bathing around Inuyasha, but she found undressing him first, before leading him into the river with her. She had no idea what she was doing, but she ended up wrapped in his arms again, shaking and clinging to him like he was the only thing holding her to the ground.
Eventually, she calmed down, and he eased her into the water and washed her hair for her. He was so gentle, it was hard to imagine it was even Inuyasha. He washed her hair and smoothed the soap back from her eyes, and when he was done, he carefully dried and brushed her hair. Then he wrapped her in his cloak and washed her clothes in the river.
When he came back, she took the brush and carefully brushed his hair. She tried to remember how many days it had been since he carried her here, but she couldn't. He had sat by her this entire time, barely sleeping, feeding her and holding her. Tears slipped from her eyes as she slowly worked through the knots in his hair, and she let them fall freely down her face. When she finished, he smoothed the tears from her face with his thumbs and kissed her softly, just a brush against her lips before he swept her up in his arms and carried her back to the village.