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Kagome wished it was Kikyo she saw Inuyasha with as she blindly crashed through the underbrush of the forest. Thorns pulled at her clothes but she paid them no mind.

'How could he do this?' She cried in her head, gritting her teeth, tears spilling reluctantly over her cheeks. The cold night air stung the wet tracks left behind. She raked the back of her hand across her eyes and pumped her legs harder. Despite her effort, the memories bubbled to the surface.

They were staying overnight in a hut on the far outskirts of Kaede's village. Miroku, Sango, Shippou, Kilala, and Inuyasha. Against the walls in the bare hut, the occupants rested. Kagome was dozing lightly with Shippou in her lap when she felt, more than heard, someone stirring. At first, she ignored it, but when Shippou twisted his head restlessly on her lap she grudgingly opened her eyes a sliver. A dark shadow unfurled from a corner and stood sleepily; a woman's form.

"Sango…" Kagome thought foggily, "she must need to use the restroom."

She turned her head to close her eyes again but noticed that Inuyasha's dark blob, sitting a few feet from her, was missing.

A low branch whipped across her face. She didn't know whether the stinging was more from tears rising in her eyes or from the branch that had left welts. After what she saw, she had felt something inside her shift. It was the last thing she could handle and now she was escaping.

Worried, Kagome frowned into the empty space where the hanyou should have been. After a pause she relaxed back and waited a few minutes, now alert, listening to the silence, waiting for either of them to return.

When the curiosity became too much, she slid Shippou as gently as she could from her lap and stood slowly. With as careful precision she could manage, she stepped around Shippou, Miroku, and Kilala and made it through the weaved-bamboo flap door.

The chilly night air brushed against her bare arms which she wrapped around herself. Outside was almost as dark as inside the hut. The moon was a slivered crescent. It had recently been the new moon, which was why the group had hunkered down for a while.

Kagome glanced up to the clouded sky that few stars managed to pierce. She couldn't help but take a deep breath. Then, looking around, she noted that neither Sango nor Inuyasha were in sight.

"Sango?" she half-whispered, turning in a slow circle. Still Nothing. With a sigh, she began to wander towards Goshinboku where she was certain she would find Inuyasha. Being as silent as she could to not attract forest life, she picked her way there slowly. When she neared the tree is when she saw them. Even in the minimal moonlight, Inuyasha's silver hair seemed luminous. Beside him was the figure of a woman.

"Kikyo?" Kagome thought brokenly. The pair was standing very close, Kikyo's back to Kagome.

Kagome's heart clenched and the bottom seemed to drop out of her stomach when they both leaned in to kiss, passionately as far as she could tell. Anger and jealously bubbled up under the shock. Her heart was beating so hard she felt like it was trying to escape, and she couldn't blame it. She wished she could escape from this. This reoccurring, heart-rending pain Inuyasha always staked through her chest when Kikyo came to see him…and he accepted her.

Her face was stained with a flush of red, the anger becoming too much to hold in, and on the verge of eruption, everything—everything she was feeling, thinking, hating—disappeared. Her mind was a white screen. The couple pulled apart. And it was not Kikyo. It was Sango.

At that time, when she saw them together, Kagome wasn't sure whether her heart sped excruciatingly or if it stopped all together, frozen indefinitely. But she did know that she had to get far, far away.

Now as she fled, she was losing energy and her only focus was one foot in front of the other. She was sure that if she stopped, if her foot snagged on something as slight as a weed, she would fall and not be able to get up. She was through being strong and painting on the smile for the sake of the group. She didn't let her mind linger on the group and put all her will into lifting her feet. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left—ditch.

She fell hard, crying out.

Oh. She was wrong. She could get up and keep going.

Not pausing to check for injuries she most clearly felt, Kagome immediately clawed from the ditch. The rough grit of sand in her mouth forgotten and the pounding pain in her shoulder was also pushed aside. Breaking from the ditch, the miko barely registered the wall of foliage before she plowed through it. Her foot caught in the brush, a vine refused to give to her speed, and she was whipped around and she fell to the ground in a large clearing, finally out cold in a numb mixture of sleep and oblivion.

oOo

Kagome had no idea how she was out for so long, but when her eyes blinked open of their own accord, it was bright day. The sun was high in the sky, even tilting towards the west. She rolled onto her back, her body blissfully desensitized. She looked slightly to the side and saw the clearing that framed her. A wildflower patch. And a large one, at that.

As she stood up slowly and pulled her gaze across the grove, every color she could possibly imagine waved up at her cheerily. Kagome felt like scowling, but she didn't have the energy for it. Instead, she didn't try to lock down her barriers. She just disintegrated them and all she saw was the field of bowing, merry flowers. All she felt was the breeze on her skin, warm and dry. All she smelled was the amazingly fresh scent of the flowers cradled on the breeze. And all she knew was that she wanted to release the vice holding her chest tight.

Since the incident (for that's what she dubbed it), she found she could only think on one track. No, it may not have been safe. Yes, everything would catch up with her later. But, who cared?

Kagome felt the heat on her face from the sun, she felt it seep through her skin and warm her muscles. Then she found herself walking forward, then running. The field looked to be a little over a mile across and despite her race yesterday, she sprinted full-out.

A quarter of the way across, she breathed in the warm air deeply and let it out with a whoosh. She spun and cart-wheeled and closed her eyes and danced. Her hair spun out and her skirt blossomed around her legs. Across the field she danced, twirling around the edges and then whirling and leaping amid the sea of blooms.

It was freeing to pull back from the world like this and withdraw from all things beyond the edges of the meadow. And yet maybe the absence was a drawback. When Kagome finally flopped into a bed of flowers, her breath racing, a pair of golden eyes were locked on her. They blinked, then turned away.

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A/N: Alrighty, so it's up! This is the main story of my trilogy of sorts so thank you for reading! If you didn't read the prequel to this story, I'd like you to because I'm pretty proud of it, not tootin my own horn or anything but y'know. Lol. It's not necessary to read it before this one, so you won't be confused or anything, but please do.

I wrote this story a while ago and it was pretty popular back then when Inuyasha was airing on AdultSwim (again, sorry if I sound like im big-headed about this, im really not) and I think the Inuyasha fandom has slowed down since then…Anyway I took these stories down and fixed em up and now im putting them back up just for the heck of it. There're probably still spelling or grammatical errors even after I combed thru them (man u guys should have seen how I was hacking away at the earlier chapters lol this first chapter I completely redid!)

So anyway, enough with my rambling =) please be kind and leave a review, if I have an audience I tend to take more care in updating and I love to read if people are liking the story. So, with pleasure I give you my work ^_^ I hope you like it!

JA NE