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H u s h

Summary: Kagome shifted on her spot next to the well, her dried lips and blood shot eyes betraying her nullified craze with the small smile tugging the edges up and leaving the eyes half closed. "I suppose I am damned to this world, eh?"

Disclaimer: This may be the only time I say it, so this counts for my entire story of "The Damned". I do not own Inuyasha and I only lay claim to the characters I may create during the process. But otherwise, any characters from the series, anime or manga, do not and will not belong to me.

Authors note: Yes. I realize I have many unfinished stories. I realize I have one under the Inuyasha section as well (whose name shall never, and will never, be spoken again). They died due to the story being played out in my head had finished, and not enough people wanted to see what had happened in my mind. So they are on pause, hiatus, break, yadda yadda until I gain enough desire to continue.

'Thoughts'

"Speach"

"Sit." Kagome whispered through a blood caked mouth as she peered out of half lidded eyes, watching the form of her past love dance before her in trembling spins and quick movements. It wasn't really a dance, but it was still magnificent in its own way as her former interest moved about, free of his subjugation and permitted to act like a monster without any repercussion, and cut open the bodies of the innocent.

It was almost laughable.

It was just her luck that once she had given the freedom to Inuyasha, that he would once again take up the same behavior that he had the moment she had first met him. When she had first released him to the world those few years ago. And it was just her stubborn being that she continued to whisper over and over again the same word that had sedated him so long.

Part of Kagome found it incredibly impressive that the hanyou, with his brash words and headstrong behavior, could have hidden his true colors from her for so long. Perhaps she should had listened to little Shippo's rants about how mean the dog boy was.

Speaking of Shippo.

Kagome peared under her prone body, past the ragged cuts in her flesh caused by Inuyasha's long and pointed claws that had driven themselves for deeply into her soft human skin, to the huddle ball of skin and fur that sat had grasped itself firmly onto the rest of her tattered school shirt. She could feel the little fox youkai's tears as they seeped through her shirt and to her fevered skin where their liquid touch chilled her heat.

Kagome wished to comfort her adopted kit, wished until it hurt her already damaged heart, but they had silently agreed to keep up the haze, the facade that she was dead by the claws of the half Inu and Shippo was merely missing in action, perhaps dead in the rage that followed. It felt like one of those outrageously bad, touchy feely things between a son, his mother and the abusive father and husband figure where the girl would do something though to be good before the husband kindly reminds her that, no, she was very very wrong about her actions.

She wanted to laugh again.

Instead of doing the hysterical, the beaten girl bit her lip and closed her eyes once more, feigning what Inuyasha already believed: her death, which was easier for her to fake then actually give in to the real thing that so nicely knocked on her soul's door. She supposed this is what she got for screwing with the past and ignoring the present where she could have built a life for herself, instead of having whatever this was. This feudal hell.

Grinning like an idiot, white teeth scraping the ground as she pressed onto it further to hide her kit from the prying eyes of the creature too consumed with trying to decapitate the lecherous monk known as Miroku. Kagome wondered slightly, as the grit of the earth got sucked into her mouth with a breath, if the monk would use his curse or not on his former friend. That tiny voice in the back of her mind told her that was a horrid, terrible thing to wonder, but it seemed like such a good idea to end the hanyou and all of his plaguing destruction. Or, maybe, the taijiya would get up from the pool of blood coming from herself and the half grown fetus, that had only come out of the mother's stomach when Inuyasha's 'Blades of Blood' had taken her off guard, and maybe she would finish the battle with her boomerang Hiraikotsu . Or this might have been the end for all of them.

A dry cackle escaped her lips as her mind tried to grasp the fact her best friends were dead and dying, that in fact, Sango had been all but ripped in two, and Miroku? Well, she willed him on the best she could as that little 'instinctual fear' crept into her mind and planted seeds of doubt in her mind with his lack of the Wind Tunnel in his hand, he would only have his prayer slips, pieces of paper that could easily run out, on his side.

Shuddering slightly, the Miko felt herself grow increasingly woozy, thick with lethargic though as if someone had shoved wool into the crevices of her mind to make it cease all action and thoughts.

Shippo prodded at her belly moments before the thin fingers of sleep-or death- drummed on her doorstep. She knew he was trying to keep her conscious, to keep the safety of her awareness shrouding them both, however little it may be. But the darkness was so damn inviting, away from the perilous claws of Inuyasha, the dead Naraku, the bodies of her friends, and the well.

Kagome hated the Bone Eater's Well. Or, at least she wanted too.

Shippo's hands became frantic, even as she could tell he was trying to be careful in the face of her injuries, though, all she could really do is sigh as if the action was a simple annoyance and not a daring plea from her baby.

"Hush, sweetling." Kagome whispered sullenly as her eyes drooped. "Hush now. I am only going to sleep…"

Tears wept from her eyes as she looked down at the little carrot top, a thin lipped smile on her face as she looked lovingly down at her adopted kit. One hand reached down to stroke away the tears marring the perfect little cheeks of the youkai, permitting the youth to push his little face into her hand before holding it tightly with his own tiny hands. She gave a silent prayer to the bastard Gods above that they, in all their spiteful glory, would lay down a blessing to the little fox.

She doubted she would see another day.

It was peaceful when sleep grasped hold of her little body, skinny from over exertion and lack of proper care, and drove her down into the deep slumber that permitted no pain and no hurt to waft through. And she was left with nothing but the drowning emptiness. Even her name had floated away from her lips as she found herself falling.

Voices, otherworldly and soft, started to go on about her. Speaking in low tones as the pit went on, growing to a rapid crescendo as it became apparent they too were hushing something. But who? Was it her?

Kagome felt her body grow cooler as the words became louder, shushing something she had been aware of quite yet until she felt its shallow pounds in her chest grow slower. The voices, they were shushing her heart. It was a frightening thought, that those bodiless voices could possibly be telling her heart to be quiet, to hush.

Then, like a great tear in a large fabric of no color or dexterity, mindless ribbons of colors that were so bright in comparison to those of her empty plain of nothing. In hurt those blue eyes of hers that sat in misty confusion as that floated over the spattered colors and the images they were soon creating. Beautiful pictures.

Extravagant memories turned sour with what she had realized.

Kagome's life, good and bad, was flashing before her eyes as her heart bade their will to the now retreating voices. But, that was not really what was important at the moment, now was it?

No, what was important was the first fast paced image that portrayed a dark haired mother and her dark hair child, and though Kagome knew it was not her eyes she saw this from, it was her birth. the first moments she spent on his cruel and evil world. It was sharply defined as the mother, her mother's, mouth moved in a soundless motions before it all faded, more or less, to the splotched ribbons once more.

Image after image, memory after memory. Most she truly wished hadn't happened, like the time she had fallen from her bike, or when all those dreadful faces from her childhood danced about her singing 'Kagome' from that god-awful game, and the centipede lady whom dragged her through the wooden maw of the well. Sure, there were more. Many more things she felt were typically the idea of humility or self-loathing. Like her grandfather's neverending ramblings of illnesses that seemed to plague her at every turn and did not allow her to go to that grand place named School.

School. It seemed like a far gone memory, struck away by the crude hand of a half-breed. Maybe she should stop blaming it all on Inuyasha. It was easy though, to blame someone else when they commit a wrong.

Kagome turned away from the images abruptedly as a flash of colorless illumination muted the sharp colors furthermore then before. The bright minded miko had a troublesome time remembering what exactly this glow told her. In her split up soul, she felt as if it were being tugged three ways; one toward the light itself, one toward the darkness which she had come from and one being pulled to an unknown destination.

Narrowing her blue eyes to slits, her mind grasped at straws to what this meant.

Something deep in her subconscious told her that the welcoming glow of the light meant something unfathomably bad if she were to go to it. The same state of mind held true to the unknown force as well, neither one she wanted to experience and with little to no action on her own, unless her simple choice had given enough will to her to be tugged to the tunnel of darkness she had just fell down.

And was thrusted into a world of incomprehensible pain.

Almost immediately, Kagome's exotic eyes snapped open to to reveal that of a ceiling hovering far above her body, simple and gapped so she could see the dark indigo tapestry of the night sky and the fading ribbon like bodies of what she remembered to be Kikyo's eel-like soul collectors.

The previously endured event came rushing back to her and Kagome's already doe like eyes widened further and her body sprung upward despite the tearing pain across her abdominal section and the ragged claw marks pulled with the already aching muscles. He simply bit her lip as she looked around frantically for her little kit, maternal instincts flaring wildly as the worst of the thoughts entered her mind, making up dark scenarios where Inuyasha or some other malicious creature had gotten to her poor son. Tears leaked down her face as fear leaked into her already pained heart as her breathing came in sharp gasps and her body, wracked with burning sensations, fell back to the floor.

Kagome laid there and cried as her emotional weaknesses got to her, angry and blaming herself for the horrors that had become of her and her companions on herself. The pain of knowing was a far worse pain than that of her body.

While the miko wept, she didn't or hear the sliding doors slip open to unveil the tiny form of her worried kit and an older presence of an antlered woman that sat in the doorway unmoving. The kit, on the other hand had been itching with fear for what was to expected when he saw the fleeing soul thieves and had hurried himself and his companion back to his okaa-chan with great haste and anxiousness.

" I see she is awake, young one…" The smooth, quiet voice of the female wrung out like a soft bell in the walls of the beaten down house, making the woman-child strain to see as quickly as she could. The tears returned twice as cruel as her arms extended to her sides as she made out the form of her orange kit.

"Shippo!"

"Okaa-chan!" The little boy sprung from the spot he had held and scrambled over to the welcoming, warm arms of the priestess before curling into the chest of the woman. She had felt pain when Shippo collided with her wrecked body, but the joy overcame such feeling as she held tight to her little kit, sobbing into his ginger hair.

"How are you feeling, Miko-sama?" The bell-like voice rang once more, making Kagome look up from her darling son with blurry eyes as she made out an old looking woman, as skinny as could be, but a beauty nonetheless. What caught the miko, was the short, six pointed antlers that sprung from beneath the woman's cherry hair, but the woman herself gave off no indication that she was actually a daemon.

"I, uh…" Kagome stuttered mildly before shaking her head and offering the woman a weak smile. "Never better…"

The woman herself gave a small laugh at the miko's flustered behavior, before offering a smile of her own."Hello, Miko-sama, I am called Zulma."

"Hello Zulma-sama." Kagome answered with a stronger grin, unable to do much else and hoped her expression offered some sort of resemblance of thankfulness...and hopefully block out the uncomfortable feeling rising at the back of her mind.

"Okaa-chan, you were asleep for so long." Shippo cried as his tiny fists held fast to the bland kimono she was now wearing and Kagome couldn't help but feel bad about the whole ordeal and what it must have put Shippo through. "Inuyasha is gone, and Sango, Miroku and Kirara…"

The rest didn't need to be explained to the woman as she held tighter to her son, kissing the top of his head and praying for herself to be strong enough to care for the impressionable young boy. He had already experienced far too much than that of anyone should, especially at his young age and as his mother she had long taken up the job to block him from such atrocities.

"I apologize to thee both, but I must attend to our business before the time slips between my fingers." kagome sprung up from the embrace with her son to stare at Zulma, whom had gotten right up next to them without the miko or the youkai knowing, and at this close proximity, the downed girl got a good look at the woman. She had red hair, so red that it almost seemed like an impossible fire was trapped within the shine of the strands, a face that was tanned to a caramel tint that would have any model from her time yearning for it, and eyes that shone like liquid chocolate. Then there were two very defining features that put the abused woman on edge; cloven hooves attached to thin brown legs akin to that of a deer that just peeked out from under the rundown clothing's hem.

As if sensing his mothers unease, the little fox kit piped up with bright words; "Zulma-san helped me save you, okaa-chan!" The simple words earning a small laugh from the miko when Shippo's chest puffed out in boyish pride, before a wave of embarrassment flooded the girls system for her preconceived notions that overcasted the blatantly obvious act of kindness. If the lady wished for her doom, she would still be out on that blood soaked battlefield she had been left within.

"I- Thank you...So much." Kagome stuttered, worried for further insults she might burden the woman, whom seemed to find this exceptionally funny as she broke out in a charming laugh before her legs collapsed beneath her and she was left to sit next to the resting miko.

"You are fine, Miko-sama. For what you have been through, I would not expect you to simply find comfort in my company in the first few moments of knowing me." The deer-woman chirped as the miko blushed in tedious gave the woman and her kit a bright smile before bending over and dragging a tarp over their bodies, Shippo already snuggling down into the safety of his mothers arms. "Well, miko, I realize that I may put your off, but you must regain your strength. I have much to discuss with you on the marrow."

And with those words, Zulma got back onto her feet before offering another smile to the covered miko whom was feeling the tug of sleep once more, her body yearning to heal itself, before heading out of the sliding down and into the forest seem just beyond the slitted wall panels.

Well, jeegus. This was fun.

Please review.

~DeadlyWolfQueen