A/N: Oh wow guys. Thank you so much for still being around for me when i came back. I was like, blown away by how many of you are still around. i love you all so much. its so special to see some of my very first reviewers still sticking around even after i totally deserted forlike... half a year. lol. i love you guys.

Disclaimer: See... um... some other chapter.


Sit Boy...

She stumbled through the forest, dragging Sango behind her, turning over the scent of dead autumn in her wake.

"Somehow." Kagome breathed heavily, trying to look over her shoulder and keep moving forward at the same time. "I always end up doing this." – She meant running for her life.

Things were happening. She could feel all sorts of auras fogging the air, churning together … dizzying her. She didn't know what it meant – any of it. But it was violent. And it scared her to death.

Ironically, both of the two men she felt remotely safe with claimed that the other one was a murderer. And, she was starting to believe both of them. Geez, she had to get better taste in guys.

Cringing, she thought back to two days ago… when she'd had her first, civil conversation with the silver haired boy… Inuyasha. She one she had decided not to love. To stop herself from loving… if you could even call it love. If it was even real love. Or just something of the past. Maybe even… a false past.

(Two days ago… yes it's a flashback to the missing chapter 'Tell me about her pt. III squee!)

The river gurgled peacefully. Something that didn't really make that much sense in the middle of her chaotic world. They sat next to each other, their feet in the water, being silent and awkward.

It was getting a little too strange…

"So… are you going to say something?"

Of course he'd be the one to break the silence.

"Or are we just going to sit here like idiots all day?"

He was blatantly annoyed, and sensitive as ever.

She dared to try to look at him from out of the corner of her eye, and then sighed when she couldn't. "What… do you want me to say?" She asked quietly, looking at the water. "I'm a little freaked out."

"You're always-" He cut himself short, seeming to think better – for once – of what he was about to say.

He looked sideways at her, checking to see… if she was okay. Though he'd rather had his guts shredded out by Shippo and eaten raw then admit it. She seriously doubted that he was reassured… probably because she practically jumped into the water when she felt his hand, warm and crusted with calloused strength, gently slide over her own.

It was like he didn't know how to tell her, 'It's ok.' So he tried to do it without all words.

She fought the urge to look down at their hands… but she couldn't help it.

Something about the familiarity of seeing their fingers together hit her like a lead weight in the face. They'd done this before… hadn't they?

How screwed up could the world be?

An image started to come back… a feeling, but it was tightly wrapped in her fear. And, for the first time, instead of trying to coax the memory forward, Kagome tried to slam it back as hard as she could.

For the first time since she could remember, she didn't want to remember.

Because she was getting scared. The things she saw, her dreams, her own feelings, none of them were right. Why was she, after every "memory", left with feelings that were so strong, and so real but went against everything that she believed in? She couldn't understand them, couldn't understand herself. It was like she'd been violated with someone else's feelings, like she'd betrayed herself. And there was no one else to trust…

If she remembered one more thing that she had to fight with, she'd go insane.

But she couldn't make the feeling leave… not as long as his hand was closed over hers. It was too strong. And that made it scary as hell.

"Umm… Inuyasha? Could you… not?"

She'd tried to be polite about it. She really had. But the look on his face made her feel as if she'd done something totally horrible. Like shaved and drowned a starving kitten…. Or ended the world.

"I don't trust you." She said, deadpanning. She just needed someone to be honest with. And even if this was the completely wrong person… well… she'd have to deal with that later. "I can't. Even if I wanted to… I just… I've been having dreams."

"Dreams?" He echoed, his voice filled with embitterment. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"They're…" one more moment of hesitation… just one more. "The dreams are about you."

That shut him up for a few good seconds. But he recovered quickly.

"What do I do in these dreams?" He asked coldly. "Murder your family? Poison your friends? Kidnap you?" His voice was dripping with sarcasm.

"You call me by Kagome." She said. "And… I don't mind it. Not in the dreams anyway. Its… natural. We… were different then. Weren't we?"

A sharp pain pierced through his eyes, and, as if she'd slapped him, he turned his head away, a curtain of silver falling between them.

"I don't even know if they're real." Kagome admitted. "But I had to tell someone. This girl…. She… who is she?"

He was silent.

"Please. I need to know who she is."

His voice was impossibly tight. "I keep telling you the same damn thing over and over again." He forced out. "You – are – Kagome. So stop fucking asking me."

She felt her heart breaking. "You can't possibly think… that it's that easy for me, to believe you."

"… And why the hell shouldn't it be?" He still refused to look her in the eye. "Have I done something wrong? Have I hurt you? Have I ever done anything that even comes across as mean to you?"

She'd stared at him incredulously. 'I'm… not going to answer that one… for his sake.' She thought to herself.

"Exactly." Inuyasha said, his soft tone screaming. "So why the hell can't you bring yourself to believe in me?"

"I… I just can't." she said. "I'm sorry. These things I've been dreaming…" she noticed his ears tweak just a little. "Crazy things about me" 'and you' "my… past. Or her past… I can't even tell."

She put her fingers in the water, and he watched them, dip and swirl under the surface. "Every time I wake up I have no idea who I am anymore…" She took a breath, trying to express this… but it wasn't going to work. "I think I'm losing myself all over again." She said. "And whether that means that I'll find out who I am in the end, or who I'm not, or… who you are… I don't know. But I'm not ready for it. I don't want it. I can't…"

He was so quiet. She tilted her head towards him, just that little movement, took all the courage in the world. "I know you." She whispered.

The silence screamed.

BUmm bummm bummmm! LoL

He stared at her, his voice clear though he never had to say it out loud. 'what do you mean'.

"I know you." She said it again. "I know little things about you, that I just... shouldn't."

He seemed to think for a long, hard time. Then he took a breath, and looked her dead in the eyes. "Are you alright?" he asked. The viciousness was gone. It was just him… and her.

The question struck her to the bone.

Was she alright…? How could he even ask her that?

"No." She said, smiling a little. "I don't think I am." She admitted. "But I'm working on it. I want to be normal again." 'More than anything…' "Can't you just… tell me something about her?" Kagome… Kagome… 'Please convince me, Inuyasha.' "Just… say something. Anything. To make me stay here."

He looked at her frowning. "You're asking me to lie to you?" His eyes told her that he couldn't believe it.

Neither could she.

She opened her mouth to say no. "Maybe."

"I need something that I can hold onto." She said, in response to the look on his face. "Everything keeps falling apart." She looked at him. "And I'm scared. How would you feel? If you couldn't tell the difference between who was trying to help you, and who was trying to kill you? You can't tell what's real and what's a lie… and you can't trust anyone, even though you want to, sometimes. You can't depend on anything because they can hurt you if you do… Can you imagine it, Inuyasha?"

Inuyasha felt a dull ache flower inside his body from his chest. Yes. He knew exactly what she was talking about. It was being a hanyou. Now, at last, she knew what he had been talking about when he had told her about all those years alone. The way he had lived until he'd meet her. "Yeah." He answered quietly. "I think I've got a good idea."

"Multiply that by a thousand." Kagome said. "I can't even trust myself." She shifted uncomfortably beside him and finally looked at the ground. "So just… just pretend for a little while… that we aren't enemies. And that you're helping me."

'I am helping you.' He looked at her silently, not saying a word.

Her heart sank.

"I could have run away today." She said, trying again. "You know I could have. But I didn't. I want to hear your side. I need to know her, Inuyasha. And you're the only one who can help me find out."

He looked at her sullenly, and clenched his jaw before speaking. "She… she was the most stubborn girl I ever knew."

End Flashback

Now Kagome panted, trying to find some of that dumb stubbornness that he'd been talking about, dragging Sango along behind her, a dead weight. This was probably not the time to be going down memory lane.

She didn't know where she was, or if she was even going in the right direction. But at least she was doing something. She'd deal with the consequences later. Plus, there was no way she was standing still to think about it when she was pretty sure that some of the rustling leaves weren't the sound of Sango's dragging feet.

She'd give anything for the comatose girl to snap out of it.

"Aaare you losst?"

Kagome felt her heart fall as she whirled to her right. "Oh no…"

"Poor little girl… so losst… so alone… so vulnerable." Anther voice said, addressing the other one, knowing she could hear them. "Let us help her, loosen up."

Kagome tried to back away from the sound of the voices, but only jumped when another one came from behind her. Right behind her.

"Don't be scared little human girl… it only hurts if you can feel it."

"Yesss… only if you feels it."

"We'll make sure you can't." A voice sailed down from above her, in the trees.

"How many of you are there!" Kagome yelled, exasperated, realizing that she was completely cornered.

"It doesn't matter…"

She screamed as a body slithered up around her angle and licked at her skin. "We know how to share."

"Get off me!" She and ripped the body off her leg, flinging it as far as she could and hearing the thump of it landing only a few feet away. They were the same snake demons as the one she'd killed before… and her hands were shaking just as badly as the first time.

She gasped loudly as something cold and wet and heavy landed on her shoulder and bit down into the skin. "Ah!" Reaching up frantically she ripped the snake's mouth of her body, hearing its contented sigh before it hit the dirt and started slithering.

"The taste is so good."

Kagome did her best to hold back her disgusted scream. "Get off me!" She tried to run, and an icy numbness started to spread deftly from her shoulder. The fact that she couldn't feel the pain made her heart contract painfully. This was so not good.

"Uh!" She stumbled forwards when something wrapped around her legs and bit into her ankle. From the pain blossomed the icy numbness… it spread so much more quickly than the first time. In about five seconds she'd lost all feeling in her leg.

She hit the ground hard.

And the snake in her foot was still leeching blood out of her body, its tail whipping her skin, and cording tightly around her ankle.

"She was the most stubborn girl I ever knew."

Inuyasha's words came back into her mind.

"And she was stronger than anyone I'd ever met… And she always got herself into so much damn trouble."

Oh yeah. The trouble thing she could definitely identify with.

"And you and her?" She had asked him tentatively. "Were you guys…"

He didn't answer her. "If you can't figure-"

"I want to hear you say that you-."

She could hear the other snakes slithering faster towards her.

"I cared about her." He said, cutting her off before she could say anything else. "I would have died for her." He said, looking right into her face. Golden clashed with russet. "I didn't give a damn about anything else. I still don't… And she'd better have known it."

Kagome scraped against the leaves on the forest floor, trying to crawl away. But Sango was too heavy, and she couldn't move her leg.

"… You're not going to tell me are you?" She asked, looking at him. "You're not going to tell me how you felt about her." 'Even though… everything you've done and said sort of gives us away…' She thought. 'You did… love her didn't you? Or at least, you want me to think you did.'

He looked at her, his face hard and unwelcoming. "No. I'm not. If I ever did feel that way, about anyone, I'd sure as hell never say it out loud..." His eyes narrowed at her. "She knew that."

Kagome felt the sting. "Wow." She tilted her head and looked away, her voice slow. "That actually hurt my feelings."

"I can't feel anything… in my lower body." She searched the forest blindly, but only saw thick shadow.

Inuyasha stood up roughly, and shoved his hand in front of her face, palm out. She stared at him for a moment before she realized what he was doing. She took his hand gently, and he pulled her up to a stand…

Only after, when his hand lingered on hers for moment, did she realize that she'd taken his hand without hesitating.

Oh crap.

'So... you'll stay with me?' Inuyasha asked her.

Kagome looked up in surprise at him. "What?"

He turned and looked at her. "What?"

"Did you… just say something?" She asked. She knew that he had. Or at least she'd heard him. She just didn't know if it was something he'd really just said, or something he'd said a long time ago…

He stared at her hard. "No."

"Oh…"

Had that come from inside her head?

'Yes.' She thought inside her mind, answering the voice she'd heard. 'For now… I will.'

"So… can I stay with you?" She asked aloud, because that's what she felt like she should have said. And somehow she knew she'd said it before. To him.

Inuyasha looked at her as if she'd shot a gun into the air, the bullet ringing through the mist.

"What?"

She linked her fingers together behind her back. "Can I stay with you? For now?" She asked.

"Uh… Feh!" He looked away, too quickly. She thought she saw a hint of something pink dusted over his cheeks… no. not possible. Inuyasha didn't blush. Did he? "As if… I'd ever let you run off on your own." He said. "You're such a klutz you'd get yourself hurt."

"Yeah… wouldn't let me run off on my own." Kagome said angrily, grabbing handfuls of dead leaves in her hand and gripping them tightly, trying to feel her legs again… but they might as well have not been attached to her anymore. "But apparently you don't have any issues with leaving me behind! Jerk!"

Her first instinct was to be mad. Her hands found their way to her hips, the familiar frown spread over her face and then… she smiled.

He was stunned.

"So…" She said brightly, trying her best to seem care-free, "How many more days do we need until we head out?"

His expression had gone sour. "We'll leave right now for all I care. I'm fine."

"Are -" Kagome stared at him in shocked disbelief. "Are you serious?"

"Did I stutter?" Inuyasha looked at her, as if daring her to challenge him.

So she did. "You were impaled!" She shouted. "I could see your spine!"

"Yeah, well I'm not a weak little human like you, okay! I'm fine!"

Okay. Strike… five-hundred.

"Human or not! You need to rest! I heard that guy- monk – person arguing with you about it this morning!"

"Yeah, well he's an idiot!"

'You're the idiot!' She had to bite her tongue from screaming it out loud.

"I should have just said it to him." Kagome said bitterly. "Ah! Ow!" She heard the deafening hiss, before she felt the fangs plunge into her lower back. "Ow! Get off!"

"The tassste. Its goooood."

"I get it you sicko! Now get off!"

It was useless… she was as good as dead.

"Besides, with a weak little human like you holding us up we need as much of a head-start as we can get." Inuyasha said, tossing his silver hair arrogantly.

Oh! If she could just… just… strangle him!

"Inuyasha you're such a… a…" She struggled for the right word, her fists balled up tight at her sides, her teeth grinding together. Her cheeks flushed and hot. Just… just…! "Urgh! Oh! You… you! SIT BOY!"


A/N: haha. Ok. Show of hands: who saw that one coming? Lol.

Ok, next chapter coming up soon.

So much love,

nanirain.