Kagome sat dully in her school desk, memories and images of her last moments with Inuyasha three days ago still fresh in her mind and swirling about like oak pollen on a fall day. It seemed as if they clogged her mind somehow, everything seemed unreal and unimportant. All she could do was think of what had happened, how she had failed Inuyasha.

She ran the sequence of events over and over in her mind, trying to see where she had gone wrong, how she had failed Inuyasha. What made it all the more painful was that he had told her that he loved, what she had been aching to hear for so long, and she couldn't even free him from the his hellhole of a prison.

No, it was worse than that, she was helping them. She was going to have to aide the twisted researchers in their torture of the one she loved so much, the one she had finally learned loved her back.

The guilt and pain tore at her heart like a ravenous predator, and she embraced the pain. She deserved it, she needed to be punished, it had been her fault that He had been caaught in the first place.

Kagome was punishing herself, she wouldn't let the painful heart rending images of Inuyasha twisted on the floor shrieking in pain leave her mind. She mentally attacked herself over and over again, it was starting to feel like physical pain now, stabbing her in the-

She looked up to see Eri poking at her with the sharp end of a pencil and saying; "KAGOME! snap out of it, class has been over for ten minutes. It's time to go!".

Quite loudly too, it was as if she had been repeating it for a while. Kagome didn't respond, she simply stood up and grabbed her empty bag and walked out of the classroom.

Eri, Yuka and Ayumi stared at her without following, their mouth's agape at their confusion with Kagome's behavior.

"what's wrong with her?" Yuka asked rhetorically.

"maybe it's that two timing boyfriend of her's? He's got her upset before." Ayumi chimed in.

Eri looked at Ayumi and shook her head at her.

"No, something's really wrong. Her boyfriend's never gotten her nearly this upset before. Kagome barely moved at all during class, not even when the teacher called on her. And it took us ten minutes to get her to leave the room." Eri said with concern in her voice.

"Well what are we doing here? We're Kagome's best freinds and she needs us right now. It's our job to help her out in her time of need!" Ayumi said with determination.

They all nodded at each other, pleased with their deduction, and raced out the door after Kagome.

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As Kagome walked swiftly down the sidewalk she felt cold, detatched from the world. She had just been so empty feeling, her heart was not with her. Her heart was still with Inuyasha in that wretched torture pit of a lab.

She heard from somewhere behind her someone calling her name. She didn't look back and kept walking straight ahead. The sound of someone calling her voice came again, but Kagome blocked it out. She didn't care.

It was as if the things that had made up her entire life before falling through the well just didn't matter anymore, all that was important was Inuyasha, all that seemed real was the pain she brought upon herself for hurting him so.

Her friends caught up with her, swarming around her like pestilential insects. Kagome didn't acknowledge their prescense at all, she hardly noticed it.

"Kagome, what's wrong?" Yuki questioned, doing her best to sound understanding.

Kagome didn't say anything, just started walking faster. Her friends had to almost run to keep up.

"Hey, Kagome, let's sit down and talk about it. OK?" said Ayumi as she grabbed Kagome's arm.

Kagome stopped very suddenly, almost making Yuki, Eri, and Ayumi crash into her back. She simply stood there with her head hung for a second, and then slowly turned to look at her friends. They all winced unwillingly at her facial expression.

Her eyes held such a look of sadness and emptiness, they reminded Ayumi of a corpse's open and unseeing eyes, empty and unlit.

She followed dully as Yuki, Eri, and Ayumi led her to a bench in a small park. They stared at her expectingly, waiting for her to say something. When she didn't Yuki said;

"Kagome, what's wrong? If you tell us maybe we can tell you. There's no problems that can't be fixed with the help of friends!"

Kagome didn't say anything, she just sat ehre blanklyand without expression. It didn't matter what was happening. All that mattered was that she had failed Inuyasha, she had left him in the clutches of that horrible twisted man.

Almost on que to that thought, Eri said;

"is this to do with that two timing boyfriend of yours? Really Kagome, it's not worth it, If he really cared about you he'd of told you. You really need to leave him."

It was then that Kagome broke, all of the pain and horrible guilt became physically manifested, Kagome broke down into sobs, crying into Yuka's shoulder.

"He does love me and I left him, Oh god, I left him all alone, It's all my fault!" she cried, hysterical.

Kagome's outburst shocked her friends, they had no idea what Kagome was talking about, and none of them had ever seen Kagome so upset. So being the clueless and naive girls that they were they simply sat there in shock, waiting for Kagome to calm down.

After a while she did, and sat on the bench in the small empty park and began to sink back into her impassive shell of depression. Finally able to get her wits back Ayumi decided to change the subject. This may have been a good idea, had she not chosen quite possibly the only one worse for Kagome at the moment than the one they were on.

"Hey, did you guys hear about that freak monster thing they caught at the hospital? I read in the paper that it killed someone!"

Kagome felt surges of pain at the words "freak" , "monster" and "killed", was this what everyone thought of Inuyasha as?

Eri jumped excitedly and said; "My sister has actually seen it! She's a nurse at Tokyo Central hospital, remember? She said that it had a sword with it! How wierd is that?"

Kagome was pulled out of her depression by this statement. She sat up and looked at Eri and said in a monotonous voice; "That sword, where would it be now? Would it be possible to find?"

All three of the girls sitting around Kagome had flinched at the sound of Kagome's unfeeling voice, they were slightly spooked by how unemotional it was so soon after her being so hysterical.

"uuummm.... well, It would probably be in the unclaimed objects area, where all of the things people left at the hospital are sent. Why do you want to know, Kagome?"

Kagome stood up and said "I'm going to get it. You guys can come too if you want, I may need your help."

Eri, Yuka, and Ayumi looked at each other with confusion, not understanding.

"uuuuhh.. Kagome, why do you want the sword of that... Thing? what if it has germs or something?" Yuka asked, baffled and lamely trying to talk Kagome out of it.

Kagome simply stared impassively at them.

"are you coming with me or not?" she asked.

"yeah! of course we are, uh-huh!" Yuka, Eri and Ayumi all said brightly, all extremely confused at Kagome's behavior.

"good. The hospital's not far from here, let's go."

And so they set off to the hospital, Kagome walking maybe three feet in front of her friends with them watching her apprehensively and whispering among themselves.

Kagome was starting to feel a little better, knowing that she was doing something productive for Inuyasha. She knew that the Tessaiga and the fire rat haori were the only things his parents had left him, he would miss them greatly when he got out if the lab if she didn't get them. Especially the Tessaiga, Inuyasha would be heartbroken if he lost it, not to mention dangerous.

When they arrived at the busy hospital Kagome's friends had decided that all the medications Kagome must be taking for her numerous illnesses and maladies must be infringing upon her mental health.

Once they were inside the front lobby Kagome turned to Eri and asked;

"ok. Where is the unclaimed object area?"

Her three friends looked at her apprehensively for a moment until Eri said;

"Kagome, are you sure that this is a good idea? It's really starting to get late, and we sould be home by now, so uuhh....."

She started stuttering a little at Kagome's piercing stare and looked at the floor. In an instant she felt a hand round her neck pulling her face a few inches away from Kagome's infuriated features and narrowed eyes.

"I said where is it, not wether this is a good idea or not, so answer me before I get mad, WHERE IS IT?"

"its...it's ........on the third floor on the west side.... I'm sorry please don't strangle me!" Eri managed to get out through a tremoring jaw.

Kagome released her hand from Eri's throat and began in the direction of the elevators. Her friends didn't follow. Kagome didn't care though, all she cared about at the time was getting Inuyasha's things, the Tessaiga and fire rat haori.

The unclaimed objects area turned out to be little more than a very large closet filled with boxes full of things, clothes, hats, glasses, there were even many dead plants. Kagome sifted through them until she spotted the fiery red of the fire rat haori.

She took the box off of it's stack and set in on the floor in front of her, and with trembling fingers reached in and took the purple and white string of beads out to look at.

"Oh Inuyasha... I'm so sorry..." she whispered as she felt tears starting to form in her eyes.

They fell freely as her shaking hands slipped the Kotdama Rosary around her own neck, the memories of all th times she had slammed his face into the dirt with it arising in her mind.

"never again, I promise, never again." she promised quietly under her breath as she felt the smooth beads on her shoulder with her cheek as she asked herself if she would have ever sat Inuyasha once if she knew this would happen in the future.

Kagome tore herself from these thoughts as she lifted the tessaiga out of the box in it's smooth black sheath. Memeories flooded her again of all the times he had saved her life with this sword, he had put his own life on the line time and time again to save her, why hadn't that been enough for her to know that he loved her back?

She folded the smooth and soft fabric of the fire rat haori which had been stuffed carelessly into the box, and then hugged it to her chest and just cried, for a long, long time.