It was day seventeen. Seventeen days since he last saw Kagome, almost to the hour. The sun was setting, a fantastic explosion of warm color. But Inuyasha felt cold.
In his life, he had encountered much heartbreak. He was only twenty years old when his mother died, which was only about four in hanyou years. His first love, Kikyou, sealed him to a tree, died, was resurrected, betrayed him, and was still only walking the earth by stealing souls. And now, Kagome, whom he considered his best friend, and had recently begun to feel something a little deeper, was gone. Supposedly dead.
Inuyasha released a sardonic smile, "Supposedly? She is dead, idiot." Inuyasha kept no hope in his heart that Kagome had survived the last two weeks with Naraku. No one could. To keep any hope would just hurt him more. He had learned well from Kikyou.
Something tickled his knuckle. Lethargically, he turned his head to see that the breeze had blown a broken twig with green leaves attached up to his hand. Delicately, he picked up the plant in his claws.
"Seventeen days." He murmured, as if the forsaken part of a tree had asked how long she had been kidnapped, and he was giving it an answer.
Canine ears twitched, angling themselves to the approaching sound of swishing monk's robes and the jangling of metal rings. Miroku entered the clearing where Inuyasha sat beneath Goshinboku.
"Inuyasha. I am aware that you are a half demon, but you must eat." Sorrow and exhaustion permeated the tones of the monk's usually soothing voice. There were a few minutes of silence, in which Inuyasha gave no indication that he had heard Miroku, and let the twig slip from his grasp and drift back down to ground, to once again roll along with the breeze.
A loud chirping of a bird overhead broke the silence. Miroku released a longsuffering sigh, which might have broken into a quiet sob at the end. "Please, Inuyasha." The monk begged. If the hanyou had been looking at something other than the stars that were now becoming bright, he would have seen tears in violet eyes. "Kagome," his voice was strained and broke as he spoke her name, "won't want you to starve yourself."
Inuyasha noted that this friend still used present tense, as if there was still of possibility that she was coming back from the dead. Inuyasha pitied him. Physically, Inuyasha was younger than the man, but he was approaching the completion of a century of life, excluding the fifty years he had spent on a tree. He had seen people come and go. He mostly saw them going. Leaving. Never coming back.
But Inuyasha didn't have it in him to crush that hope in the monk. Finally, golden eyes appraised the monk, and saw the nearly defeated slope of his back. If he were to say that she was never coming back, it just might have been the last straw that broke him.
He didn't want to lose another friend. He didn't think he could. Slowly, and only half aware of what he was doing, he stood up and slowly walked to Kaede's hut, Miroku following at a sedate pace. Entering the structure, he smelled food, and the scent of blood and tears.
Kirara was resting in the corner, in her small kitten form. White bandages, spotted here and there with crimson of where she still bled, encased her small body. Sango was no further away than six inches from her feline companion, eyes bloodshot, body trembling, and gaze glassy. She had not spoken since she lost hope of finding Kagome, except for in her nightmares, where she screams "It should have been me!"
Shippo was the worst of all. Not only had he lost his mother, but his second mother as well. He did not sleep, bathe, eat, or speak. Anyone who tried to get him to do any of those was rewarded with either apathy, or incessant screaming and clawing. He sometimes mumbled to himself. But as soon as you caught him doing it, he would fall silent once again and retreated back into his catatonic state. You usually found him perched in the rafters, green eyes wide and bloodshot as the small fox looked at everything from on high.
Being a full demon, even a young one, he did not need the nourishment as often, or the sleep. But that did not detract from the fact that if something didn't change soon, he would die.
When they all woke up from that hellish night, they postponed their search for Kagome only as long to take care of the immediate injuries before spreading out across the country to call in all favors, IOUs, and venture into previously unexplored areas in order to find their friend. Inuyasha had even braved going to his half-brother to ask if he knew where she was. He even ventured into Kouga's pack to ask him to search for her.
Their search turned up nothing, and they all returned to the village to patch themselves up, and wonder what they were going to do without Kagome being the glue to hold them together, and the key to defeating Naraku and purifying the jewel.
The thing was, Sango would still pursue the defeat of Naraku, and Kagome's kidnapping was just another one of her family members that had been felled by the evil hanyou. Miroku would follow anywhere Sango went, also avenging his friend. Shippo might go with them. Kirara was a given. But where did that leave Inuyasha?
He could continue with his friends, vowing to kill Naraku for stealing yet another of his mikos. But what was the point? She would still be dead. The jewel would still just cause problems because no one would be there to purify it, and a wish on an unpurified Shikon would only wreak havoc.
Deftly, he took a bowl of some food offered by Kaede, and moved to sit in a corner. He stared at the chunks of meat floating in broth and rice, not thinking anything. Until a though snuck up on him. Why eat? Why not just die? It would solve most of his problems. Kagome wasn't coming back from the dead, so why can't he just join her? Kikyou would soon be there as well. Sango and Miroku were human, and led relatively short lives. He could wait for them. His mother would be there, along with his father. And by the looks of it, Shippo was well on his way to an early grave as well. The longer he thought about it, the more the idea appealed to him. Naraku would no longer be a problem, because who cared for the happenings in the realm of the living when you were no longer there?
"Eat." Miroku's voice carried from his seat near Sango.
In his palm, the once-warm bowl of food had gone chilly. Not that he cared anymore. He didn't need to eat; he was going to die soon. He was going to tell his friend so, but a whirlwind swept the words from his mouth and the bowl out of his hand to splash on the floor.
Kouga appeared, panting and blue eyes bright, and obviously fatigued. It was the most life the group had seen in days, and came as a slight shock, so no one moved but Shippo, who hopped to a different rafter to get a better vantage point to see the visitor.
"Naraku…dead. Kagome…not." Kouga passed out.
A/N: Wow. Most depressing thing I've ever written. I hadn't started this chapter with Inuyasha having suicidal thoughts, but it just sort of fell that way. But in all seriousness, suicide is never a solution to anything. EVER. Never Ever. Call the Suicide Hotline if you have thoughts, or know someone who has had those thoughts. Please.