Chapter 5 : Lost Hope?

Disclaimer: …Mendou kusaaaaai yo! _ By now you should all know that I hold no rights whatsoever to Inuyasha, and the only thing that is mine is Kurozaki-sensei and this here fanfiction storyline.

A/N: Waaai! Here is the next chapter, I started on this one as soon as I finished the last chapter. Yup, another depressing one _ I have no idea why I write stuff like this, ack. I don't really have much idea about what happens when people get a lung tumour, so any medics who are reading this fic, sorry if it's wrong. Many thanks to everyone who reviewed! As usual, anything in italics are thoughts. Enjoy!

SylverAngel: Yeah, I'm trying to finish this as soon as I can too! ^^;;;

Niasdreams: Ahhhh, hontou ni gomeeeeeeeeeen ne! _ I know that update took forever -_-; but yeah, at least I finished it finally! XD

Zel no miko: o_O noooo!

Anonymous person (???????): XD I'm glad you're enjoying it! Stay tuned for the next chapter!

Ryuuzaki: wow, do you really think my story is that good? XD Thanx! ^^;; I keep thinking that it might be getting too repetitive or something for everyone who's reading!

DC: Yup, that's what I'm doing right now! Next chapter eh? Should be about a week or so from now ^^ Don't worry! I'll definitely finish it this year (lol!)

Anime-Guera: XD I'm glad ya liked it! Next chapter is the big bang ending :p

Lireal: I know ;_; my imagination just keeps running away with me _ I don't know why I'm writing stuff like this!

starfire: Yup, yup! Last chapter will be up soon! ^^

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The minute his eyes opened they knew something was up.

"Inuyasha ---!" Miroku stopped in mid-sentence when Inuyasha sat up, his face revealing nothing, and promptly left the hut without saying a word, disappearing into the night.

Shippo growled. "What is with that asshole! Kagome's in trouble and he still acts like a jerk! And we don't even know what happened to Kagome!"

The little kitsune got up and made to follow Inuyasha out the door when Sango reached out an arm to stop him. He looked at her in surprise.

"Shippo-chan, something must have happened in the dream world to both of them. There's nothing we can do right now, but wait for Inuyasha to tell us what happened."

"But that's why I'm going after him!" Shippo exclaimed.

Kaede spoke up. "He must be troubled at a time like this. Leave him be, Shippo." She frowned to herself. If I have guessed correctly, I would say that the reason that Inuyasha is like this is because he has decided never to see Kagome again! For the sake of trying to prevent the curse's effect.

She shook her head sadly.

When Kagome opened her eyes again, she found herself staring up at a white ceiling. The hospital, she thought to herself. As if a dam had been released, the pain flooded through her body, and she gritted her teeth, trying to stop herself from shrieking loudly outright. Of course, the memories came rushing back too; both the mental and physical pain were overwhelming her and she could feel tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes that were squeezed tightly shut. Whether the tears were because of the pain that rushed through her body or of the possibility of never seeing Inuyasha again was anybody's guess.

She could hold the pain in no longer as she let out a loud shriek that sent all the doctors and nurses nearby rushing towards her room as the comforting darkness enveloped her and she blacked out.

He jerked his head up suddenly; was that Kagome's voice he heard? The pain gnawed at his heart as he sat there in the rain: dull, lifeless. His eyes held no luster and he didn't care that he was a sitting duck to other youkai at this point. He had given up on his contact with Kagome, had just left her there in the dreamscape, the last time that he'd ever see her. When he came back from the dreamscape, he had felt empty, so empty, as if someone had taken out everything that was inside of him, and all that was left was the hollow shell. Which was probably just as well, because he had given up on his one and only beloved. Kagome.

Maybe now I should just die or something, he thought to himself. What's the point of living if I won't ever see, hold or even hear her voice again? His eyes seemed glued to the ground, as if it would have an answer for him. He hung his head, the platinum silver locks of hair clinging to his face as the rain poured down endlessly.

He closed his eyes to the world, and as the rain continued to fall from the skies endlessly, he finally gave in to the pain that enveloped him, and the other consciousness took over. [1]

Blood red eyes snapped open and they took in their surroundings with a quick glance. He snarled, the cold from the rain was finally starting to penetrate through his skin and leaped from the wet ground to the trees in a flash; he made his way to a somewhat dry, comfortable perch quickly and settled down to sleep. He'd stay here until the rain stopped, but after that, after that…

He would hunt.

This time when she woke up, her vision was filled with the worried faces of Souta, her grandfather, her mother, and also Kurozaki-sensei. She tried to sit up on the bed, propping herself up onto her elbows weakly. Souta and her mother were by her side at once, helping her up and puffing up the pillows so that she could lean back comfortably. A sad little smile graced Kagome's face.

Kurozaki-sensei spoke up "We found you unconscious near that large tree by the shrine and brought you back here. You've been unconscious for 2 days" Averting his eyes he continued. "You shouldn't be running around like that in your condition."

He promptly lost himself in his own thoughts. Why does such a young girl have to suffer like this? It was rather confusing to him that her condition could have gotten worse this quickly. According to what her mother and grandfather had told him, it was rather impossible that such a thing could have happened in two days, let alone a few weeks. Could she possibly have been cursed then? He sighed to himself shaking his head at such a thought. He wasn't a believer in such things, but it would have explained the same conditions that excavators who had opened lost Egyptian tombs had suffered. Sudden diseases, dying in less than a few months. People had said that they were cursed. But he wouldn't dwell on that now. What he wanted more than anything was to miraculously save the girl from all the pain that she was going through now as the tumour spread through her body.

He looked back to the bed where Kagome was talking (or rather wasn't really talking) to her little brother, mother and grandfather. The girl in the bed looked so different to the one that he'd seen a few days earlier in his office. Before the tests had commenced she had looked so…alive, but now, now even her posture looked dead, and her eyes, her eyes were blank, faraway, as if she was in another realm already. If he had known better, he would have said that she looked ready to die, but this he kept silently to himself.

Back on the bed, Kagome knew. Knew that despite Inuyasha's well-meaning sacrifice that the curse was still eating through her body like a parasite, and soon she'd be nothing more than a corpse. And even if it did work, I'd have eventually lost it anyway. I don't know what was going through my brain when I decided to leave the Feudal Ages forever! Bitter smile. Well now you have what you wished for in the first place Kagome, huh? Just in a really twisted way. She could feel nothing now. Didn't want to feel anything else unless it was connected to Inuyasha in someway. It was as if she was a druggie and Inuyasha was the drug that she had to have to survive. Another bitter smile graced her face. And that's right too, in a twisted way. The emotion of pain came creeping back slowly through the cloak of darkness that kept her emotionless and tears ran down her face in tiny rivulets without her making a sound and no matter how many times her mother and brother wiped them away, new ones came to replace them. Her heart clenched. I wonder how he's doing now?

His feet padded silently through the grass, still wet with the rain as he made his way towards the village. His red eyes flashed in the dark as he looked; left, right. The coast was clear. There was a smell coming from one particular hut that had him fascinated. He would find out what that smell was. Moving closer to the hut he could hear the sound of a woman crying, the smell of tears salty. There were three others in the hut that he could sense as well, and they were sleeping, but barely so. The smell grew stronger.

The sound of the door being smashed open woke Miroku, Kaede and Shippo up from the restless sleep that they had been enveloped in, and they saw the silhouette of Inuyasha against the light of the crescent moon, snarling at them.

"Inuyasha?! What on earth are you doing?!" Miroku exclaimed.

His eyes flickered to them in reply, and they all gasped in shock.

Inuyasha's eyes were red. Which meant that right now, he didn't recognize any of them, and in his current state, could actually kill all of them, without his human side knowing about it, until after. His eyes flickered to the object behind them; Kagome's knapsack. That's where the smell was coming from. He snarled at them and dived towards it. Still in shock, they stood there, unmoving, as he raised his claws to batter them down.

A black blur moved in front of his eyes and suddenly it was Sango, who stood before the bloodthirsty demon, brandishing her Hiraikotsu in front of his face. Still, Inuyasha's eyes were red, and in a flash, he had her by her throat, lifting her up off the ground as she struggled against him. Breaking from their shocked positions behind Sango, Shippo immediately leaped onto Inuyasha's hand, biting hard; Miroku's staff beat onto Inuyasha's other arm, trying to weaken it so that he would let go of Sango; Kaede could only back away against the wall, unable to fight because of old age and because she was weaponless.

Getting slightly irritated with all the ruckus that the kitsune brat and the human male were causing, Inuyasha flung his right arm and sent the kitsune flying across the room where he hit the wall and lost consciousness immediately. Still keeping his stranglehold on Sango, he kicked Miroku in the stomach and sent him sprawling on the floor, gasping for breath. His attention focused back onto the struggling Sango as his grip tightened on her neck.

Stop it!! The voice came from nowhere and everywhere as it echoed in his mind, and in his confusion, he dropped Sango onto the floor. Sango rubbed her aching neck as she watched Inuyasha in front of her. His hands were covering his ears as if he was hearing things, and when his head snapped up suddenly, she was shocked to see that one eye was red while the other was amber-coloured. His hand reached out towards her, clawing the air as his eyes continued to change colour and his other hand was clawing at his chest where his heart would be. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came out, and Sango could only stare. Suddenly collapsing in front of her, Sango hurriedly scuttled away. He lay still. Kaede moved from the wall towards Sango. [2]

Inuyasha opened his eyes suddenly and stared around at his surroundings. Kaede's hut. What am I doing here? His head throbbed in pain and his hands balled into fists. Looking around, he saw Sango and Kaede cowering by the wall near to him; to the left of the room, Miroku was in an unceremonious black heap, while Shippo was lying on the floor to the far right.

"What's going on?-----" His sentence was cut off as he watched Sango and Kaede shrink away from him. Why are they----?

It all seemed so clear to him suddenly. "No…it can't be!!" He had lost control again and from the looks of their faces and the room, had tried to kill them. Why is this happening now when I have more than enough to deal with?! His thoughts were anguished. He fled through the open doorway of the hut; he couldn't bear to see them look at him like that. Couldn't bear that he could actually have lost control and had gone after his friends. At that very time when his outwardly appearance was that of his demon form, his human consciousness, his human self, was buried deep within himself. He had been drowning within the black pain, the separation with Kagome filling his mind, overwhelming him, and he was running, running towards her form in his mind, but everytime his fingers reached out to touch her, she disappeared, only to reappear again further in front of him, smiling, laughing at him. And so the chase for her continued, so close, yet so far.

Then Kagome disappeared one last time.

And Kikyo was in her place.

Inuyasha had gone into a mad rage then, and he strangled Kikyo hard; Kikyo who he could touch, could hurt; Kagome who he could not. Kikyo struggled in his grasp, and his grip tightened harder and harder, close to the point of breaking her neck.

But then he heard Kagome's voice.

"Stop it!!"

And he came back to his senses.

Only to find that there was only Sango at his feet, rubbing her aching neck.

And they were afraid of him. His own friends. It added another bleeding scar to his already battered heart. [3]

She didn't know how long she lay there. Her eyes stared blindly at the ceiling, the machines hooked up to her beeped, the solution in her IV drip plopping slowly into her veins. She could feel nothing; it was as if she was already dead to the world. Everyday, she saw faces: Kurozaki-sensei, Souta, Mum, Grandpa, numerous nurses and junior doctors. Everybody except the one person she really wanted to see. Inuyasha. He would never show up in front of her again, and she refused to sleep and return to the dreamscape that was so bleak without him, not to mention the nightmares that she had either. Nothing mattered to her now that he was gone. She had already lost hope in ever getting better again. Only the pain assured her that she was alive. Mentally, the pain of losing Inuyasha when she had just found him trapped her in her own mind. Physically, the tumour was killing her inside, bit by bit, the white hot flash of pain in her abdomen the only sign to her that she even had a body.

And she was tired of it. So tired of it. No meaning to life, no feelings, no emotions, just pure…nothing. And the pain of course. Definitely the pain. More than anything, she knew that she would die anyway. The doctors didn't even know what exactly was wrong with her so how could they possibly find a cure for this 'disease' that she had? More like a curse. The irony of it all didn't escape her.

Just a whisper to herself, she sat up weakly in her bed slowly, limbs weak, eyes staring now at the white, blank wall opposite her.

"I can't take this anymore …someone…anyone…kill me please…"

His surroundings flew past him; all sense of time was lost to him, he could feel his legs tiring, but still he went on. Inuyasha didn't even know where he was going, his legs were on autopilot and all he did was keep running. Only this time he wasn't chasing after Kagome. The thought of her brought the pain back again, but still he kept running.

He came to a sudden halt; everything around him was in pitch-darkness. [4] What is this place? Turning around and around, all he could see was black. He could feel the pain in his limbs now, and he felt liking collapsing right there and then, but decided against it. Noticing what looked like a human figure in the distance that hadn't been there before, he moved slowly towards it.

As he got closer he noticed that it was the figure of a woman, and she had her back towards him. Long black hair flowed down her back and she was dressed in a red outfit. A thought flashed through Inuyasha's head. Maybe she knows what exactly is going on here. Guess I'll just ask.

"Hey. Woman." As rude as ever.

She turned around and he was frozen to the spot. What is she doing here?!

"Why, if it isn't Inuyasha."

The woman was none other than Kikyo.

Anger and hate seethed through him. "What the fuck are you doing here Kikyo?! You're supposed to be dead!"

She smiled icily at him. "Well, I'm right in front of your eyes, am I not?"

His hands were at her neck in a flash.

"If that's the case then I'll just kill you again, bitch!! How dare you try to rip Kagome and me apart, you fucking bitch!!"

The smile was still on her face as his grip tightened.

"Well, if I can't have you then no one else can. She was just another obstacle."

"Why you!!!" He felt his blood boil and then squeezed her neck tighter.

"Let's see what you make of this."

He was close to breaking her neck now.

Snap.

He let her figure slump to the floor and prepared to make short work of her corpse by shredding it. But when he looked at the face again…

Inuyasha's eyes widened in horror. It can't be!!

Lifeless blue orbs stared up at him, never to see again.

"Ka…Kagome…I…this can't be real right?" He cradled the corpse in his arms, his entire body shaking.

"Please wake up…this is just some trick that you're playing right? Right?!" Anguished tears spilled down his face; guilt, pain, and most of all, remorse flooded through him.

"Please wake up and tell me! Tell me…tell me that I…that I haven't killed you!"

He saw the blood on her clothes now. The blood on his claws now. The blood on his hands. Blood that he had spilled. Kagome's blood.

"I killed her." The sentence uttered the reality.

His emotions were mixing up, hysteria overriding his mind as his head started to throb painfully again. The tears were still falling as he clutched his head, the blood staining the dirtied platinum hair. He fell to his knees. He could take the pain no more.

"KAGOMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"

Red eyes opened and glared into feminine amber ones. Sesshomaru glared back; he had been rather unnerved to find his younger halfling brother lying unconscious on the ground. And in his demon form now, no less. And where were those friends of his anyway? He sniffed the air. The scent of pure anger and hatred was in the air, and it was coming from Inuyasha. Sesshomaru narrowed his eyes. Something's not quite right here. He ducked as Inuyasha lunged at him, evading him easily. I can't smell that girl around either. Must be something to do with her and his human friends.

"Hmph."

He just ducked the other swipes that Inuyasha gave him easily. Not like him to keep his mouth shut and not spout obscenities. Ducking underneath Inuyasha's arm, Sesshomaru straightarmed Inuyasha's back, and sent him offbalance; he barely caught himself before his face kissed the ground.

What is this? His fighting is terrible. Something rather devastating must have occurred to reduce him to this kind of state. Sesshomaru quashed the emotion of worry that was showing its ugly head. Not that I care anyway.

"You've become so pathetic…Inuyasha."

A/N: -_- Argh. Finally finished it. Had some writer's block, and the story love to take off on its own as always, and I had to put the storyline straight-ish. If you get my meaning. If you've just read through the chapter and you're getting confused, let me explain it to you.

[1] Basically, Inuyasha lost it because of all the trauma that he was going through and his demon side took over. His human consciousness was, at that time, buried deep within his soul, trying to take some of the emotional pain away.

[2] While Inuyasha's human consciousness was dormant, the demon part of him went on autopilot really, and it was the smell of Kagome that actually dragged him back to Kaede's hut. Even when Inuyasha isn't really being Inuyasha, he just can't seem to get her out of his system.

[3] During the time that Inuyasha was in his lil' world, so to speak, the image of Kagome kept appearing in front of him, and he kept chasing it. But then Kikyo 'showed up' and remember, she was the one who kept them apart and put a curse on Kagome? Of course he's still pissed. So he strangles her. At that exact same time, he's in Kaede's hut strangling Sango. Kagome's voice that he heard? He might have realized unconsciously that he was actually strangling Sango instead of Kikyo, but his mind just 'inputted' it into Kagome's voice so that he'd notice what he was actually doing. Hey, strange, but it's my fic, so my rules :p

[4] *cough* Eh, don't worry, he didn't kill Kagome in here. He's just kinda slipped into unconscious mode again, and he's living his worst nightmare (literally). Even though it isn't real, he just doesn't know because of all the overlying emotions that overwhelm him, which eventually, leads to him losing control again.

In real world time though, he actually collapsed, and Sesshomaru came upon him, just as he woke up in demon form. Inuyasha's pretty much a gone case now.

Weeeeeeeeell, thanx again for all the reviews and everything. Stay tuned for the next chapter, because it's the last one!!

In the next chapter of "When you're gone…"

Chapter 6: To Death and Beyond – Together forever

"Goodbye, O cruel world…"

"…Thank you…"