Cracked
"Inuyasha?" Keade came out of the hut, smiling and wiping her hands on a rag. "You can go in now."
Inuyasha jumped off the ground and ran inside. "Kagome?" he called.
His beautiful mate turned her head.
She was laying an a futon, propped up by a stack of hay covered with a blanket to soften it. Her hair was damp with sweat and her skin was pale. She was wearing a white kimono and was covered from the waist down. She was obviously tired but her eyes shined with happiness.
And, cradled in her arms, was the tiny figure she had just spent so many hour struggling to bring into the world.
"It's a girl, Inuyasha." Kagome smiled as he dropped to his knees beside them and looked at her.
She tilted the tiny creature so he could so her flawless face, tiny and peaceful in sleep. Her hair was was shiny black, her face so cute.
"Oh, Kagome..." Inuyasha said in wonder. "She's perfect."
"Isn't she?" Kagome smiled. "What do you want to name her?"
"I don't know yet." he admitted. He still couldn't quite believe that he had a daughter now.
Kagome laughed a little bit. "Do you want to hold her?"
"Can I?" Inuyasha asked, eager.
Kagome nodded and offered him to tiny bundle. "Careful, she's very delicate."
Inuyasha reached out with shaky hands and pulled his daughter close.
Her adorable face squished a bit and she writhed a bit as Inuyasha smiled at her.
"Kagome, she's beautiful." he said to his mate. When he got no reply, he lifted his head but Kagome wasn't lying on the futon. "Kagome?"
His daughter opened her eyes and the tiny brown orbs looked at him.
He looked down at her and smiled a bit. "Hi, little one."
Her face folded in on itself, then she opened her tiny, toothless mouth and emitted a loud scream.
"Sh, sh." he cradled her close and rocked her a bit. "It's okay. Daddy's here."
Her screams got louder. And louder. And louder. The screeching began hurting his ears and he got scared. His daughter's precious face was turning red and she looked like she was in horrible pain.
"Kagome?" he looked around but his mate was still gone. "Keade!"
He ran out of the hut, trying to calm his daughter, but Keade wasn't around either.
"Some one?" He called as he turned round. "Any one?"
The village was empty.
His daughter's screams got louder and tears poured down her face.
"It's okay. It's okay." he tried to say soothingly.
He kissed her forehead gently.
But when he pulled back he saw a big bruise right where his lips had been.
He gasped in fear.
He looked around again but he was all alone in the darkness. There was nobody to save his little girl from him. "Please!" he called out and his voice echoed back to him in the darkness. "Help me!"
The baby kept screaming and screaming in agony.
He looked down at her, terrified.
And as he watched, she suddenly crumbled to dust in his hands and was gone.
"No!" he dropped to his knees and looked at the dust that littered the ground. "No!"
His baby, his precious baby!
He began trying to gather the dust but no sooner than he started that a wind came through the darkness and blew all of it away.
"NO!" he begged. Not his daughter. No!
XXXXXXXXXX
"Inuyasha! Wake up!" Kagome shook him desperately. "Wake up!"
Inuyasha shot up screaming.
"Inuyasha." Kagome was there, turning his face towards her. "What's wrong?"
It was almost completely dark. The sun was still rising outside just barely illuminating the inside of the cave. But it was enough to see the tears that poured down her love's face as he looked at her with the haunted look of a man who had seen Hell.
"It was just a dream." she soothed him automatically as she pulled him close and embraced him. "It was just a dream."
"No, no..." he shook his head. "It was...the baby she..."
"The baby?" Kagome repeated. "The baby is fine, Inuyasha."
"No!" he backed up and looked around. "I saw her...she...she..."
"She or he is just fine." Kagome promised, picking up his hand and placing it over her belly.
He flinched when she did so but he didn't remove his hand.
Instead, he took a deep breath of their combined scents. He let out a staggered breath, seeming to release some kind of burden as he did so.
"The baby is okay." he said.
Kagome nodded.
He laid down and put his head against her stomach, getting as close to his pup as he could.
"See, the baby is just fine." Kagome stroked his hair.
"I...I hurt her." he confessed.
"No, you didn't." Kagome said firmly.
"I did." he insisted. "I held her too hard. I broke her and you weren't there and...and..."
"I will always be there." Kagome promised. "And you aren't going to break her. Babies are delicate but this is going to be your child. It'll be stronger than your average baby. You wont hurt her."
"But I..." he seemed confused about the difference between reality and the dream.
"You're very strong." Kagome agreed. "And you have the ability to kill pretty much anyone. But you don't. You've never hurt me, have you?"
He shook his head, nuzzling her belly at the same time.
"See?" Kagome smiled. "Just be gentle with the baby as you are with me and I promise it will all be fine."
He nodded as he took another deep breath of their scents, so wrapped together it was getting hard to distinguish them anymore.
XXXXXXXXXX
"Where's the body?" Sango asked as she and Miroku picked their way across the destroyed ground of the blast sight.
"The villagers took it to the nearest village." Miroku said as he looked around. "They don't know if they know her or not, they want to bury her properly though.
"That's nice." Sango smiled a bit as they observed their surroundings.
There was a river right through the blast sight. It was still running though it probably curved a bit more than than it had before. The tree line was bent back away from the center and all the plant life in the circle was dead and gone leaving only the disturbed dirt.
"Hey, what's that?" Miroku pointed.
XXXXXXXXXX
"Are you sure you're alright?" Kagome asked as Inuyasha adjusted the fire rat robe on her shoulders. She didn't know whether she was referring to the blast or the dream.
Either way, Inuyasha smiled a bit and said, "I'm fine. It's better we get moving again and soon."
He gave her one last kiss before they left the cave, Tetsaiga's sheath in his hands and his robe back around her.
XXXXXXXXXX
"Isn't that...Tetsaiga?" Sango asked as they observed the sword.
It certainly looked like Tetsaiga. The blade was rusted and dented, same as usual, and the hilt certainly looked like Tetsaiga. It had been driven into the ground and was tilted back so far it almost touched the ground, probably from the force of the explosion.
"Oh, no..." Sango gasped. "If this is Tetsaiga, you don't think that that woman was..."
"No." Miroku said firmly. "The only way anything gets to Kagome is through Inuyasha first, Sango my dear. If that was her, we would have heard about a male right beside her."
Sango seemed a bit comforted by that.
"Besides, if the Tetsaiga is like this," the monk continued to reason as he observed the scene, "it must be because Inuyasha drove it into the ground to protect them."
He stood beside the sword, grabbed an imaginary blade, and drove it into the ground so it was acting as a shield.
Sango watched on as he worked out the scenario in his mind.
"So, if they were standing behind Tetsaiga like this, then..." Miroku looked behind himself.
"The body was found over there." Sango pointed to an area about twenty steps from Miroku's immediate right.
"The blast originated from over there." Miroku pointed across the river. They could clearly see the outward force that spread from the central point. They could draw a straight line from that point to the sword.
"So if Inuyasha and Kagome were here," Sango said standing behind Miroku and his imaginary blade, "the explosion would have thrown us back that way."
XXXXXXXXXX
Inuyasha took a deep breath and lifted up the sheath of his sword, pointing it towards the spot on the river that they had been thrown from.
He sort of...reached with his mind, calling his beloved blade back to him.
He felt the sheath pulse in his hands in time with his own heart beat.
His heart, his sheath, his sword were all connected and it was with that he could summon the Tetsaiga to him.
XXXXXXXXXX
"We should go that way." Miroku pointed into the trees. "Keep going until we see a sign of them."
"It's been days since this explosion took place." Sango said, looking around. "I don't think they'll still be around."
"Just in case." Miroku sort of agreed with her. "It just depends on how much got past Tetsaiga, how powerful the explosion-"
He stopped when a strange rattling broke the silence of the air.
They both looked towards the sound.
Tetsaiga was shaking in the ground, struggling its way out of the ground it had been so firmly planted in for the past week.
Kirara jumped onto Sango's shoulder and three pairs of eyes watched in fascination as it jerked and struggled in the ground.
Suddenly, it shot out of the ground, turned in mid-air so the point was pointing towards the forest.
Then it shot away.
"Follow it!" Miroku cried uselessly as they both already started running after the sword.
They watched it swerve around trees as they tried to avoid avoid those same trees with mixed results.
When the Tetsaiga left the trees into a second clearing, they followed it with various cuts and bruises from branches and thorns on passing plants.
And everyone involved was surprised when Tetsaiga shot down the barrel of it's own sheath and Inuyasha saw his friends bursting from the tree line.
"Sango." Kagome, who was standing behind Inuyasha looked shocked. "Miroku?"
"Kagome!" Sango ran forward and hugged her friend. She was fiercely glad that it wasn't Kagome that was the burned body.
"What are you two still doing here?" Miroku asked as Inuyasha drew Tetsaiga again to look over the blade.
"We got caught in an explosion." Inuyasha explained.
"Is the baby-" Sango looked at Kagome's belly as if she could see the baby through her.
"The baby is fine." Inuyasha assured her. "We had to rest for a while."
"But you're both okay?" Sango asked.
"Where's your kosode?" Miroku asked, looking at Inuyasha's bare chest.
"The explosion destroyed it." Kagome said.
Suddenly Inuyasha cried out.
"What?" Kagome asked as the three of them looked at him.
"What's wrong?" Sango asked.
"Tetsaiga." Inuyasha, with a simple force of will, transformed Tetsaiga into its true fang form.
Kagome gasped as she saw what he had seen on the dented form.
There was a large crack going down the center.