Disclaimer: NO I do not own Inuyasha. That awesome privilege belongs to Romiko Takahashi. Thank you!

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Chapter 14: Gone

Kagome didn't remember much about the next few hours. Time seemed to have blurred together. A distant part of her mind knew she was out of solitary but another part, a part driven by fear, kept hearing rat squeaks and feeling the bites of tiny teeth. Voices were all around her, whispering reassurances, telling her she was going to be okay.

"Drink this. Come one, Kagome, drink it." Whoever spoke had a nice voice. It was soothing, deep and calm. It was female but it was deep.

"Is she going to be okay?" another voice asked. Of course she wasn't going to be okay. The rats-

She shuddered.

The rats.

"It's play, Kagome. You're here now. They aren't here anymore." that calming voice told her. "I know what you went through, and it's going to be okay."

Kagome cried out in pain as her bites were suddenly lit on fire.

"It's okay, Kagome, it's okay!" the voice, her last grip on sanity, told her. "It's just an anti-septic. We have to clean the bites. It's okay. It will only hurt for a little bit."

She had no choice but to trust the voice. She whimpered and wiggled as they lit her bites on fire but somehow, after they were done, she felt almost clean. Purified somehow.

"Open your eyes, Kagome." the voice told her.

Kagome shook her head. The light burned. Her eyes hurt.

"Open them, Kagome. Listen to me. The lights aren't bright here, and the windows are blocked. Just open your eyes."

Trusting the voice, she did so.

The first thing she saw was Sango, the voice, smiling gently down at her in the half darkness.

Ayame and Miroku were putting the last of the bandages on her legs and Kouga was covering her fingers.

"Inuyasha?" she pleaded. Oh, kami why wasn't he here?

"Shh. It's okay." Sango said. "We're going to fix you up."

Sango reached to the side and grabbed a rag, it was old and stained and wet, and she gently dabbed Kagome's skin, clearing off the ooze that covered her body.

"Inuyasha..." Kagome said again. Her chest felt cold. Where was he?

"It's okay. It's okay." Sango said wiping tears Kagome hadn't realized she had shed away. "I'm here. Nothings going to happen."

Kagome looked around, searching for that silver head of hair. That place she was sitting in was a floor of a burned out building The windows were covered in soot and grime but it no longer smelled of ash so the fire must have burned out long ago.

The fourth floor, the only sane part of her brain whispered to her. The fourth floor of the dorm.

"There you go, Kagome." Miroku smiled up at her, his eyes filled with sadness, after applying the last of the bandages.

"Where is he?" Kagome asked him.

"Kagome." Kouga said gently, then he hesitated.

"Where?" Kagome demanded tears falling unchecked down her face. She was still so scared and she was still in so much pain and she wanted him here!

Sango and Miroku exchanged a look and she began crying harder. "Where?" she asked, her voice breaking.

"Kagome..." Ayame paused and bit her lip. "He's...Kagome, he's gone."

"Gone? Gone where?" Kagome asked desperately. Gone. What did that word even mean?

"Well, after you were taken away," Ayame said, "there was a riot in the cafeteria. Inuyasha...Well, he kind of lost it."

"He went crazy." Miroku said, his eyes downcast. "He even killed one of the guards. Sliced his guts out."

"They took him to solitary." Sango said. "But he was only gone for about 10 minutes."

"Demon solitary isn't like human solitary." Kouga took over. "They have demon rats there. They're hard to kill and even harder to fight off."

"10 minutes after he was gone we heard something like an explosion." Miroku said.

"He busted through the metal door and left campus." Sango continued still cleaning Kagome's face.

"He was here earlier." Ayame said trying to bring Kagome some comfort. "He had a camera. He took pictures. Of the campus of you and Sango. He left for an hour or so and took pictures of the school. Then he left again."

"We think he's up to something." Sango said petting her head. "We think he's trying to do something. He escaped so things will be harder on all of us now but if those pictures he took are going to get us out of here then the extra trouble is worth it."

"He'll come back." Miroku promised her. "He wouldn't abandon us."

Kagome nodded. She needed to believe that. She had to have something to hold onto.

"I'll stay with you tonight." Sango promised. "Ayame can you make up my bed?"

Ayame nodded. "I will."

"I'll stay with you." she said to Kagome again.

Kagome's lip trembled and threw her arms around her, needing any comfort she could get.

Inuyasha sat on the edge of the bed in a pay by the hour motel. The lights were off and the sun was down and the only source of illumination came from the red and blue police light flashing outside his window. They were there to pick up some drug dealer a couple of rooms over. Judging by the gunfire, the man was putting up one hell of a fight.

Inuyasha should have left with the others who ran when the shoot out started but this cheap motel was the only place he could afford and he needed a place to wait while his film was developed.

So he pretended he wasn't there and waited for the man to escape or the cops to catch him.

Kagome was on his mind.

He saw what had happened to her, smelled her blood with his own nose, and even now it made him mad enough to kill.

That pathetic guard back at Hell wasn't enough. He wanted to kill them all, rip their guts from their bodies and decorate the halls of Hinazuka with them. The he wanted to stick Satan's head on a stick and put it on a plate to present to Kagome.

Kagome.

Her body had been ripped and torn by those rats. She had been whimpering, babbling incoherently when he had seen her. Unable to do anything else for her, he took pictures of her before his friends started cleaning her up. Took pictures of her, of the kitchen, of the cells, of the cages, of solitary, of Sango's scares from the very same rats Kagome had been fed to.

He could do nothing else for her. While killing the guards would have been fun and unbelievably satisfying it would change nothing. He had to do something more, he had to get them out of Hell. That left him with only one place to go.

His father.