Disclaimer: Inuyasha is not mine. *sob*
Chapter One ~ Silence Unbroken
A myriad of colors swirled before her eyes. Scenes from her life played out before her, a tapestry of her existence. But no matter where she searched, there were no pictures of her family, of modern Japan, and she couldn't remember why.
Her eyes opened slowly, the sapphire orbs blinking in confusion. Pushing herself up on one elbow, Kagome gazed at her surroundings, the bleak, desolate landscape unbroken by vegetation or animals. As far as she could tell, she was completely alone, and the thought frightened her beyond belief.
"Inuyasha?" she tried to whisper, but her rasping throat made no sound, and the hanyou did not come.
She stood, tossing back her shadowy hair, and peered cautiously around. Perpetual darkness lingered on the edge of the horizon. Clouds obscured the sun, blanketing any light possible from the weak star.
The cry of an owl nearby startled her. Seconds later, the nighttime predator glided gracefully from a withered oak and soared away, intent on its meal.
Here, it would always be nighttime.
She struggled not to scream, but failed. Nevertheless, her cry of anguish was unheard, the sound muffled before it ever left her mouth.
Trying to walk, she managed to take a few steps, her bare feet scraping over the rocks. She winced as thorns scratched her arms, leaving long gashes, but no blood flowed out.
A sudden fog arose, seeping out of the cracked ground. Silhouettes formed through the mist, familiar ones, so close that she reached out a trembling hand to touch them –
"You cannot interact with them."
Whirling, she stumbled, falling to her knees. The man before her glowed with holy energy, a replacement of the indistinct sun. "Kami-sama..." she whispered in reverence.
His smile was comforting. "Yes, Kagome, I am that god of which you speak."
"Why am I here?" she inquired, surprised that her speech had returned.
He sat beside her, and she recoiled, careful not to lay a single finger on his pristine robes and thus dirty them. Amusement glimmered in the deity's eyes as he noticed her movements.
"This is the realm of the dead," he replied calmly.
Her horror must have shown clearly, because he quickly amended, "This is merely the boundary between Earth and my world."
"How did I die?" she asked.
"Look inside yourself, without blocking the memories you do not wish to see," he answered, placing one finger on her forehead.
The fog shifted, revealing a different scene. Shivering, Kagome watched as her nightmares became reality, and she realized that this wasn't a fantasy, but actually the last memories she held before her...death.
The tears quivered in her azure eyes as she watched Inuyasha kiss Kikyo again, neither of them noticing the girl viewing the meeting from behind a tree.
In the memory, her old self turned away from the pair, and froze. She recalled the single flash of Naraku's triumphant face before blinding pain enveloped her and she sank into darkness.
Sank into death...
The picture faded. Still kneeling, Kagome said nothing, her hands clenching before her. Her immortal companion watched patiently as she finally turned her face up to him.
"What do I do now?"
"You have three choices," he replied. "Since you died in the past, you were never born in the future. One option is for you to forget everything about the Sengoku Jidai, forget this, and be a normal girl with a normal life."
"I can't forget Inuyasha," she said softly.
He nodded. "That is as I expected. Another choice is for me to take you up to my world; you will retain your memories, though you may not speak with anyone on Earth."
"And the last?"
"Should you prefer, you may become a spirit, a 'ghost', as you call it. You can follow your friends in the past, but be warned: once the Shikon no Tama is completed, I will obliterate you from the world. You will never have existed, unless..."
She sighed, and he continued. "Unless the hanyou wishes on the jewel for you to return to your life."
She raised her head, eyes gleaming. "I choose the last option," she stated firmly.
"So be it."
Raising one hand, he gestured to her, and she felt a tingling sensation spread throughout her body. Glancing down, she watched her entire form become less-than-corporeal, like the mist she was suspended in.
A flash of light blinded her momentarily, and then she was back in the forest, gazing down at Inuyasha, who was bending over her dead body.
*
"Damn you, Kikyo!" the enraged hanyou roared. "You fucking seduced me just so Naraku could kill Kagome! I should have known you didn't care..."
Hovering above him, Kagome drifted down to the ground, peering curiously around her. Everything she saw seemed to be through a veil, shimmering and indistinct, though one thing stood out through the gauzy shield.
Inuyasha was crying.
She moved forward, tracing one misty finger across his cheek. He froze at her touch; whirling, he scanned his surroundings, still cradling her body.
'Inuyasha...' she mused, 'why would you cry now? You never seemed to care while I was still alive. Could it have been that you actually felt something for me?'
Her only answer was the hanyou's continuous sobbing, but it was answer enough.
*
Hours passed. Though they, too, grieved for their lost comrade, Miroku, Sango, and even Shippou knew that it was time to let go. Their pleas drew only anger from the furious hanyou; Miroku managed to force him to see sense, however, by reminding him that Kagome could be restored to the living once the Shikon was complete.
With his claws, he scrabbled away at the dirt until he'd formed a crater large enough for her body. Covering the form up gently, he placed one last kiss on her cold forehead before turning away from the grave.
"We're going," he muttered tartly to the other three, all of whom followed him without a word. None of them had witnessed the short messages exchanged between the two, but they realized that something had prompted him to continue with their journey, and they didn't complain.
Shortly before dawn, they encountered the first demon.
*
The dragon reared before them, its emerald scales flashing. Rows of silver fangs snapped consistently; the claws slashed the air. Rearing, it threw itself into a steep dive, aiming at the hanyou.
Inuyasha's first strike rebounded off the impenetrable hide. Cursing, he leapt into the air, attempting to drive at the creature's eyes. The dragon's tail slammed into his leg, which twisted under the impact.
Ignoring the pain, he swung the Tetsusaiga again, cleaving through one of the gleaming horns rising from the youkai's head. The beast screeched in pain and fastened its fangs into Inuyasha's leg. That was when Kagome saw it: the distinctive glimmer of the jewel shard embedded in its tail.
She reached out for the shard, but she couldn't touch the creature. Waiting, she watched in anguish as Inuyasha growled viciously, his leg still entrapped in the drake's mouth. He stabbed forward with Tetsusaiga; the dragon turned its head, repelling the blade, which spun out of the hanyou's hands to drift down to the ground.
Kagome grasped the sword before it could tumble to the ground, and to her astonishment, it didn't fall through her outstretched hands. 'Of course,' she realized. 'It was created to protect Inuyasha's human mother. Inutaisho must have realized that after she died, there would be those who would desecrate her body, and thus the Tetsusaiga can be wielded by the hands of a spirit, as well.'
Racing forward, she slashed at the underside of the dragon's tail. Though she couldn't carry the heavy blade skillfully, the shard spiraled out of the thin wound, glimmering in the pale half-light.
Letting out a roar of pain, the drake released Inuyasha. Kagome threw Tetsusaiga towards the hanyou as strongly as her spiritual form would allow. Grasping the hilt with his hand, he drove it into the youkai's eye, and the dragon let out one last shriek before it fell to the ground.
Kagome floated to where the Shikon shard lay, and as the purifying light flashed once, all the occupants of the clearing saw the outline of her form for one fleeting instant before she was gone, the shard glinting innocently.
"Was that...?" Sango began, but stopped, unable to voice the words.
Inuyasha nodded wearily. "She's watching over us," he answered, before his wounded leg buckled under his weight and he collapsed to the ground.
*
He could hear her in his sleep, as he lay in Kaede's hut, his broken leg healing. His dreams were always of her singing, a melody he couldn't recognize, one which he forgot as soon as he awoke but remembered once he passed back into the realm of sleep.
Each time, when he woke, he would scan the room eagerly for some lingering trace of her, a shadow, perhaps, or a mere silhouette. But she was never physically there.
Kagome always watched him, and her dreams were of the day that the jewel would be completed and they could once again be together. She had complete trust in Inuyasha to wish for her restoration; she never doubted him, knowing that her sanity depended on her belief in the hanyou who still held her heart.
She could never guess that his intentions were not completely pure.
*
It was during the day that Kagome first realized something was different. It had been one week since their encounter with the dragon, and Inuyasha was almost fully healed.
She noticed it when she was peering into the river. This was the same river that Kikyo had often wandered past when the miko had still been the village priestess. Though the thought was slightly ironic, Kagome still enjoyed listening to the comforting murmur of the brook.
Her reflection was only an indistinct blur in the water; she'd grown used to this. What startled her was that the hands in the reflection could barely be seen, though the rest of her body was still relatively distinct.
'I'm fading,' she thought, confused. 'I'm disappearing...'
That was when she remembered the god's words to her: 'Once the Shikon no Tama is complete, I will obliterate you from the world..."
Her interpretation of the phrase had been incorrect. He wasn't planning to wipe her off the face of the Earth after the wish was made. She would keep disappearing slowly until Inuyasha decided her fate.
*
Tormented, Kagome wandered the roads around the village. She was beginning to rethink her decision. Perhaps it would have been best to have become an angel; she remembered vividly her dreams as a child of flight.
Still, she knew that Inuyasha would save her, would grant her life again.
Her mournful voice sent a haunting echo through the valleys, but no mortal could hear it. She sang for herself, a melody of tragedy and death.
She was the avatar of loss, and she could not stop herself from loosing her own identity.
Trying not to cry, the spirit sank down beside the comforting boughs of a weeping willow.
*
She hadn't come into his dreams for a while now. Turning, Inuyasha glared pensively at the wall, his golden eyes narrowed in frustration. He still blamed himself for her death; it had, after all been his fault.
*Inuyasha's Memory*
Kikyo motioned to him, a slight smile curving upon her unusually pale face. Ignoring Kagome's plaintive expression, he moved instinctively over to her, delighted at her voluntary arrival.
She slipped between the trees and he followed obediently. Running her hands through his long, silvery hair, she wrapped her arms around his neck, nuzzling his shoulder.
This was a situation he'd dreamed of, and he leaned forward, determined that she would not escape.
He could not know that she had no intention of escaping.
Still smiling in that sly, alluring way, she pulled herself up to kiss him, and he responded in kind. He didn't hear the telltale crackle of leaves as Kagome darted away.
However, the girl's cry alerted him that something was wrong.
Pushing Kikyo away, Inuyasha ran towards the direction of the cry. He froze at the sight of Naraku leering at him, Kagome's bloodstained form lying crumpled on the ground. Naraku disappeared as soon as he charged; whirling, he turned to face Kikyo, whose smile had vanished.
"You planned this, didn't you," the hanyou snarled.
"Perhaps," she replied cynically. "Does it matter? Either way, that trashy reincarnation is gone, and you can be with me again."
"You bitch," he accused. "Have you mated with Naraku yet?"
He'd meant the question as an insult, but her reply was to shift the neckline of her shirt so that he could clearly see the imprint of the spider on her neck.
"Kikyo..." he whispered, unable to look. He didn't notice her walk away; consumed with grief, he bent towards Kagome's body, noticing that the jewel shards were, strangely, still around her neck.
"Kagome...wake up..." he pleaded, but she was far past hearing.
*End Memory*
"Kagome..." the hanyou mouthed, sighing, "If only I'd seen Kikyo's trap, you wouldn't be dead. Even in death, you were stronger than Naraku was...your powers kept the Shikon safe."
His eyes narrowed. "And once I complete the Shikon, you will be safe forever."
Review, please! It's kinda confusing, maybe... ~Wolfshade
Chapter One ~ Silence Unbroken
A myriad of colors swirled before her eyes. Scenes from her life played out before her, a tapestry of her existence. But no matter where she searched, there were no pictures of her family, of modern Japan, and she couldn't remember why.
Her eyes opened slowly, the sapphire orbs blinking in confusion. Pushing herself up on one elbow, Kagome gazed at her surroundings, the bleak, desolate landscape unbroken by vegetation or animals. As far as she could tell, she was completely alone, and the thought frightened her beyond belief.
"Inuyasha?" she tried to whisper, but her rasping throat made no sound, and the hanyou did not come.
She stood, tossing back her shadowy hair, and peered cautiously around. Perpetual darkness lingered on the edge of the horizon. Clouds obscured the sun, blanketing any light possible from the weak star.
The cry of an owl nearby startled her. Seconds later, the nighttime predator glided gracefully from a withered oak and soared away, intent on its meal.
Here, it would always be nighttime.
She struggled not to scream, but failed. Nevertheless, her cry of anguish was unheard, the sound muffled before it ever left her mouth.
Trying to walk, she managed to take a few steps, her bare feet scraping over the rocks. She winced as thorns scratched her arms, leaving long gashes, but no blood flowed out.
A sudden fog arose, seeping out of the cracked ground. Silhouettes formed through the mist, familiar ones, so close that she reached out a trembling hand to touch them –
"You cannot interact with them."
Whirling, she stumbled, falling to her knees. The man before her glowed with holy energy, a replacement of the indistinct sun. "Kami-sama..." she whispered in reverence.
His smile was comforting. "Yes, Kagome, I am that god of which you speak."
"Why am I here?" she inquired, surprised that her speech had returned.
He sat beside her, and she recoiled, careful not to lay a single finger on his pristine robes and thus dirty them. Amusement glimmered in the deity's eyes as he noticed her movements.
"This is the realm of the dead," he replied calmly.
Her horror must have shown clearly, because he quickly amended, "This is merely the boundary between Earth and my world."
"How did I die?" she asked.
"Look inside yourself, without blocking the memories you do not wish to see," he answered, placing one finger on her forehead.
The fog shifted, revealing a different scene. Shivering, Kagome watched as her nightmares became reality, and she realized that this wasn't a fantasy, but actually the last memories she held before her...death.
The tears quivered in her azure eyes as she watched Inuyasha kiss Kikyo again, neither of them noticing the girl viewing the meeting from behind a tree.
In the memory, her old self turned away from the pair, and froze. She recalled the single flash of Naraku's triumphant face before blinding pain enveloped her and she sank into darkness.
Sank into death...
The picture faded. Still kneeling, Kagome said nothing, her hands clenching before her. Her immortal companion watched patiently as she finally turned her face up to him.
"What do I do now?"
"You have three choices," he replied. "Since you died in the past, you were never born in the future. One option is for you to forget everything about the Sengoku Jidai, forget this, and be a normal girl with a normal life."
"I can't forget Inuyasha," she said softly.
He nodded. "That is as I expected. Another choice is for me to take you up to my world; you will retain your memories, though you may not speak with anyone on Earth."
"And the last?"
"Should you prefer, you may become a spirit, a 'ghost', as you call it. You can follow your friends in the past, but be warned: once the Shikon no Tama is completed, I will obliterate you from the world. You will never have existed, unless..."
She sighed, and he continued. "Unless the hanyou wishes on the jewel for you to return to your life."
She raised her head, eyes gleaming. "I choose the last option," she stated firmly.
"So be it."
Raising one hand, he gestured to her, and she felt a tingling sensation spread throughout her body. Glancing down, she watched her entire form become less-than-corporeal, like the mist she was suspended in.
A flash of light blinded her momentarily, and then she was back in the forest, gazing down at Inuyasha, who was bending over her dead body.
*
"Damn you, Kikyo!" the enraged hanyou roared. "You fucking seduced me just so Naraku could kill Kagome! I should have known you didn't care..."
Hovering above him, Kagome drifted down to the ground, peering curiously around her. Everything she saw seemed to be through a veil, shimmering and indistinct, though one thing stood out through the gauzy shield.
Inuyasha was crying.
She moved forward, tracing one misty finger across his cheek. He froze at her touch; whirling, he scanned his surroundings, still cradling her body.
'Inuyasha...' she mused, 'why would you cry now? You never seemed to care while I was still alive. Could it have been that you actually felt something for me?'
Her only answer was the hanyou's continuous sobbing, but it was answer enough.
*
Hours passed. Though they, too, grieved for their lost comrade, Miroku, Sango, and even Shippou knew that it was time to let go. Their pleas drew only anger from the furious hanyou; Miroku managed to force him to see sense, however, by reminding him that Kagome could be restored to the living once the Shikon was complete.
With his claws, he scrabbled away at the dirt until he'd formed a crater large enough for her body. Covering the form up gently, he placed one last kiss on her cold forehead before turning away from the grave.
"We're going," he muttered tartly to the other three, all of whom followed him without a word. None of them had witnessed the short messages exchanged between the two, but they realized that something had prompted him to continue with their journey, and they didn't complain.
Shortly before dawn, they encountered the first demon.
*
The dragon reared before them, its emerald scales flashing. Rows of silver fangs snapped consistently; the claws slashed the air. Rearing, it threw itself into a steep dive, aiming at the hanyou.
Inuyasha's first strike rebounded off the impenetrable hide. Cursing, he leapt into the air, attempting to drive at the creature's eyes. The dragon's tail slammed into his leg, which twisted under the impact.
Ignoring the pain, he swung the Tetsusaiga again, cleaving through one of the gleaming horns rising from the youkai's head. The beast screeched in pain and fastened its fangs into Inuyasha's leg. That was when Kagome saw it: the distinctive glimmer of the jewel shard embedded in its tail.
She reached out for the shard, but she couldn't touch the creature. Waiting, she watched in anguish as Inuyasha growled viciously, his leg still entrapped in the drake's mouth. He stabbed forward with Tetsusaiga; the dragon turned its head, repelling the blade, which spun out of the hanyou's hands to drift down to the ground.
Kagome grasped the sword before it could tumble to the ground, and to her astonishment, it didn't fall through her outstretched hands. 'Of course,' she realized. 'It was created to protect Inuyasha's human mother. Inutaisho must have realized that after she died, there would be those who would desecrate her body, and thus the Tetsusaiga can be wielded by the hands of a spirit, as well.'
Racing forward, she slashed at the underside of the dragon's tail. Though she couldn't carry the heavy blade skillfully, the shard spiraled out of the thin wound, glimmering in the pale half-light.
Letting out a roar of pain, the drake released Inuyasha. Kagome threw Tetsusaiga towards the hanyou as strongly as her spiritual form would allow. Grasping the hilt with his hand, he drove it into the youkai's eye, and the dragon let out one last shriek before it fell to the ground.
Kagome floated to where the Shikon shard lay, and as the purifying light flashed once, all the occupants of the clearing saw the outline of her form for one fleeting instant before she was gone, the shard glinting innocently.
"Was that...?" Sango began, but stopped, unable to voice the words.
Inuyasha nodded wearily. "She's watching over us," he answered, before his wounded leg buckled under his weight and he collapsed to the ground.
*
He could hear her in his sleep, as he lay in Kaede's hut, his broken leg healing. His dreams were always of her singing, a melody he couldn't recognize, one which he forgot as soon as he awoke but remembered once he passed back into the realm of sleep.
Each time, when he woke, he would scan the room eagerly for some lingering trace of her, a shadow, perhaps, or a mere silhouette. But she was never physically there.
Kagome always watched him, and her dreams were of the day that the jewel would be completed and they could once again be together. She had complete trust in Inuyasha to wish for her restoration; she never doubted him, knowing that her sanity depended on her belief in the hanyou who still held her heart.
She could never guess that his intentions were not completely pure.
*
It was during the day that Kagome first realized something was different. It had been one week since their encounter with the dragon, and Inuyasha was almost fully healed.
She noticed it when she was peering into the river. This was the same river that Kikyo had often wandered past when the miko had still been the village priestess. Though the thought was slightly ironic, Kagome still enjoyed listening to the comforting murmur of the brook.
Her reflection was only an indistinct blur in the water; she'd grown used to this. What startled her was that the hands in the reflection could barely be seen, though the rest of her body was still relatively distinct.
'I'm fading,' she thought, confused. 'I'm disappearing...'
That was when she remembered the god's words to her: 'Once the Shikon no Tama is complete, I will obliterate you from the world..."
Her interpretation of the phrase had been incorrect. He wasn't planning to wipe her off the face of the Earth after the wish was made. She would keep disappearing slowly until Inuyasha decided her fate.
*
Tormented, Kagome wandered the roads around the village. She was beginning to rethink her decision. Perhaps it would have been best to have become an angel; she remembered vividly her dreams as a child of flight.
Still, she knew that Inuyasha would save her, would grant her life again.
Her mournful voice sent a haunting echo through the valleys, but no mortal could hear it. She sang for herself, a melody of tragedy and death.
She was the avatar of loss, and she could not stop herself from loosing her own identity.
Trying not to cry, the spirit sank down beside the comforting boughs of a weeping willow.
*
She hadn't come into his dreams for a while now. Turning, Inuyasha glared pensively at the wall, his golden eyes narrowed in frustration. He still blamed himself for her death; it had, after all been his fault.
*Inuyasha's Memory*
Kikyo motioned to him, a slight smile curving upon her unusually pale face. Ignoring Kagome's plaintive expression, he moved instinctively over to her, delighted at her voluntary arrival.
She slipped between the trees and he followed obediently. Running her hands through his long, silvery hair, she wrapped her arms around his neck, nuzzling his shoulder.
This was a situation he'd dreamed of, and he leaned forward, determined that she would not escape.
He could not know that she had no intention of escaping.
Still smiling in that sly, alluring way, she pulled herself up to kiss him, and he responded in kind. He didn't hear the telltale crackle of leaves as Kagome darted away.
However, the girl's cry alerted him that something was wrong.
Pushing Kikyo away, Inuyasha ran towards the direction of the cry. He froze at the sight of Naraku leering at him, Kagome's bloodstained form lying crumpled on the ground. Naraku disappeared as soon as he charged; whirling, he turned to face Kikyo, whose smile had vanished.
"You planned this, didn't you," the hanyou snarled.
"Perhaps," she replied cynically. "Does it matter? Either way, that trashy reincarnation is gone, and you can be with me again."
"You bitch," he accused. "Have you mated with Naraku yet?"
He'd meant the question as an insult, but her reply was to shift the neckline of her shirt so that he could clearly see the imprint of the spider on her neck.
"Kikyo..." he whispered, unable to look. He didn't notice her walk away; consumed with grief, he bent towards Kagome's body, noticing that the jewel shards were, strangely, still around her neck.
"Kagome...wake up..." he pleaded, but she was far past hearing.
*End Memory*
"Kagome..." the hanyou mouthed, sighing, "If only I'd seen Kikyo's trap, you wouldn't be dead. Even in death, you were stronger than Naraku was...your powers kept the Shikon safe."
His eyes narrowed. "And once I complete the Shikon, you will be safe forever."
Review, please! It's kinda confusing, maybe... ~Wolfshade