Hitori ni Sasenai
by Lady Mac
Time to respond to my reviewers!
inuyashatotallyobsessed: omg omg I love you! You are my first reviewer to offer suggestions! (Besides v2k3 but i begged him and he still has Moreland on the brain) ahem. YAY!! And very good suggestions, I might add ... hmmm.... But don't worry I'd hate myself if I killed the pup, so Shippou-chan will be a big brother eventually ;-) Miroku, eh? Hmm... I did mention MxS in the summary...
Crystal56: you're my other muse. Markypoo tells me what to write, you make me want to write it! And I love your rants! Heh heh heh...
kogalover: why, yes i do. Thank you =-= (If you think that's bad, don't read my shaxpear fics...)
WAAHH!! sobs My fountain pen has blue ink! I thought it was black but it's blue so I can only ink my drawings in blue and that's depressing...... At least until I use up the blue cartridge. I guess I'll have to write a lot of rough drafts in blue until that happens.
Also, I'm going to have to ask you to suspend your disbelief a little bit in this chapter. Yes, I realize that even in the context of the story it's implausible that Kagome would miss that shard. But, as the author of "All Things Keep Getting Better" (in my favorites) said, you read fanfiction about a half-demon dog boy and a time-travelling girl. One more little jump of the imagination shouldn't be too much of a stretch. =-= Of course, she was referring to a skirt being half an inch shorter than Kagome's school uniform ...
Terri Botta, if you're reading this, I just read chapters 41 and 42 and I need you to update soon! Everyone else, go read her story and make her update soon! I'm totally addicted, and my writing here and in the upcoming "Singular Sensation" will be sporadic until "The Lucky Ones" is finished!
Note on the title: "Kagome no Kakera" has a double meaning. It can mean either "Kagome's shard(s)" or "shard(s) of Kagome."
Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. Feh.
Chapter Six
Kagome no Kakera
After her mother left, Kagome cried for a long time. Akemi changed Inuyasha's IV bags, and asked quietly if there was anything she could do for the girl who was sobbing helplessly into the bed linens. He shook his head - he was at a complete loss for what to do.
She cried until they both fell asleep, and they both woke that evening when Akemi brought Inuyasha some thin soup. She also invited Kagome to visit the vending machines at the nurses' station on the floor, and she returned after only a few minutes, slightly calmer and bearing two bags of chips and a can of Mountain Dew.
"What do you have there?" Inuyasha asked, poking at his beef broth with the plastic spoon.
"Potato chips." She pulled the bag open. "You've had them before; I brought some to the Sengoku Jidai for you."
He pointed at the can. "And that?"
"Soda," she said, then popped it open and took a sip of its sticky sweetness. "Mm. I probably shouldn't be having all this caffeine, but I needed a pick-me-up."
"Why shouldn't you be having ... caaafff ... eeeeeiine?" he asked, stumbling over the foreign word.
She sighed. "They say pregnant women shouldn't have much caffeine because it can mess up the baby. But I don't think a can of ambrosia at this stage will make much of a difference."
"Ambrosia?" he asked skeptically.
"Sweet ambrosia of the gods," she replied, lifting the can towards the ceiling. "The nectar of life." She lowered it to her lips and took another sip. "It's very good."
"Is that the stuff with the bubbles?"
"Yeah."
He made a face. "How can you drink that? It's nasty!"
They bantered like that for a while, until all of their lighthearted topics had been beaten to death and a worried stillness settled over the room.
"So ... how are you feeling?" Kagome asked hesitantly.
"Pretty well, considering," he said.
"They want you here for three weeks, you know."
"Three weeks??" he said. "That's insane! How do they expect me to just sit here like a caged animal for three weeks?"
"I guess that's how long they'd want a normal reattached-limb patient to stay. But ... how long do you think you'll need?"
He looked down at his arm and tried to move his fingers again. After a long minute, his thumb twitched and he grinned broadly. "No more than a couple of days to get most of my function back, and then maybe a week after that to get up to full strength again."
"Do ... do you think you'd be okay to go back to the Sengoku Jidai in ... like, three days?"
He lifted his head slowly and looked at her as realization dawned. "You're suggesting we just leave? Without telling anyone?"
"I can't let her do this to us," Kagome insisted. "I just can't. And there's no way she'll go back on her decision, not after she made such a case about it. I mean ... if my heart wasn't firmly against it, the science alone would have swayed me."
"Thank the gods for your heart," he whispered, and kissed her forehead when she leaned close. Then he sighed. "So we run away."
For the next three days Kagome lived at the hospital, only leaving Inuyasha's side for brief trips to the bathroom and vending machines. Eventually Akemi started bringing her hospital food, and it was mildly better than chips and soda every meal. Her mother did not return - no one at all came to visit.
By dawn on the third day, Inuyasha was no longer connected to his IVs and the only thing left for Kagome to do was remove the now-useless bandages, and the monitors that were still connected to him. Luckily, this was very easy and they had already been turned off so the sudden lack of vital signs wouldn't raise suspicions at the nurses' station.
He stood on his own and dressed quickly in his normal red clothes, which had repaired themselves while they sat folded on the shelf.
Kagome avoided looking at him while he changed, attempting to maintain a semblance of modesty. When he was done he touched her hand and she turned to face him. "This is it," she whispered.
He nodded, then pulled her into a tight hug. "I wish it didn't have to be this way."
"Me, too," she said, then pulled back and looked at him. "But it's for the baby."
"Our baby," he agreed. "Our family." He moved in close and nuzzled her cheek, ending the moment with a delicate kiss to her lips.
She breathed deeply. "Let's go."
They made it safely off the floor without alerting any suspicion, and somehow managed to get all the way out of the hospital without being stopped.
Kagome let out a relieved breath. "That was the hard part. Now all we do is hop the subway back to the shrine."
"How long will that take?" Inuyasha asked nervously.
"Twenty minutes," she said. "No sweat at all. We'll get there, I'll sneak in through the window and get my stuff, and we'll be gone before anyone wakes up."
They arrived on schedule, and Inuyasha found the strength to leap with her to her window and let her into the house. She packed as many of her belongings as she could, and grabbed the small vial of jewel shards.
Squeak.
She started violently and dropped the vial. The top popped off and all the little pink pieces scattered on the floor.
They held perfectly still, not daring to breathe, wondering who was outside the door, who could have heard them come in. Inuyasha strained his ears and nose, searching to discover the identity of the presence.
"No one's there," he whispered finally. "I can't smell anyone. It must have just been the house."
She sank to her knees and started gathering the shards back into the vial. She held it up. "Is that all?"
He nodded. "Looks like it."
"Good." She glanced around the room one final time, and they disappeared out the window.
. .
Kaiya Higurashi woke to the same sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach that she had begun to grow accustomed to. Her Kagome wasn't at home - she hadn't been for three days now. She had crushed the girl's heart in a fit of anger, and wished more than anything that she could apologize to her. But Kagome hadn't come home, and Kaiya was too afraid and ashamed to go back and see them at the hospital, at the site of their initial confrontation. Her own cowardice made her sick, and she barely ate, slept, or did anything else. Jii-chan and Souta had, of course, asked her what was wrong, but she was as unable to talk about her pain as she was to eat. She would stand for hours in the doorway of Kagome's bedroom, watching the furniture and various belongings that sat unused while their owner was absent. It wasn't that it was odd for Kagome to be gone for long stretches of time - she did, of course, disappear into the past for days at a time - but this time ... this time, it was her fault.
Kaiya swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood slowly, trying to ignore the throbbing in her head and sharp pains in her gut. The sun was only just coming up, and she walked slowly down the hall to Kagome's room and slid the door open.
It was empty.
Fear seized her and she stumbled into the gutted room. The closet doors were open and only a few items of clothing remained, and the pillows and blankets were gone from the bed. The surface of the desk was bare - all the books and pencils and photos had been removed, and the posters on the wall were gone as well. She pulled the drawers open - nothing. There was nothing of Kagome's left.
She ran to her room and dressed in a panic, then bolted out the door and drove as fast as she could to the hospital. She parked hurriedly, and rushed to Inuyasha's floor.
Chaos reigned supreme. Nurses were yelling and scrambling around, the phones were ringing off the hook. All the activity was centered around one room, and a few other patients were watching from their doorways.
Oh, no, she thought. Oh, gods, no!
Her feet took her to the eye of the storm, and she saw that her fears were true. Inuyasha's room was empty as well. The white-haired boy and her daughter were nowhere to be found, and the only things that remained were the hospital equipment and gown.
She left the building in a stupor. Gone. Completely gone. They had left no trace, given no warning. Not so much as a goodbye. She knew where they had gone, of course. Down the well. Into the past where no one could get them, where they led their other apart from her. The other life where everything had begun.
She drove home, and as she parked the car she was suddenly overcome with grief. The tears flowed freely and her body shook with sobs as she dragged herself upstairs and collapsed on Kagome's bed.
Kaiya looked around through the bleary haze that clouded her vision. Her baby was gone, and she wasn't coming back. Not after all the hateful things she had said, had threatened to do. She had known all along that Kagome would never willingly kill anything, especially not her own child, unborn though it was. And she knew enough about Inuyasha to understand that he loved her deeply and truly, perhaps more than she had ever experienced herself. He would never do anything to harm her, or allow anything to happen that would cause her distress if he could help it. She knew at that moment he was braving his own weakness to keep Kagome safe.
Something on the floor sparkled, and she rased her head. It was sitting on the carpet, halfway under the desk. The sunlight coming through the window had suddenly hit it, and as she blinked to clear her vision she realized what it was.
It was a shard of the jewel.
She sank to her knees on the floor and picked it up. It was, indeed, a piece of the Shikon no Tama. The pink glow of the magic was unmistakable.
Kaiya began to cry again. Kagome had been in such a hurry to leave that she had lost this precious shard. She had wanted so desperately to leave that she had been uncharacteristically careless and forgotten this thing that was the entire reason for her to be in the Sengoku Jidai. The thing that could make her problems there end so she would never have to come home.
A thought hit her. Kagome did have to come home. She had to come and get this jewel shard.
She stood quickly and ran down the stairs and out to the shrine yard. "Kagome!" she called, racing towards the well house. "Kagome, please! Come back to me! Kagome!"
She ran down the stairs to the well and peered over the edge, the shard still clutched in her hand. She knew she couldn't go through, but she could be right here when Kagome came back.
Her heart still pounding, she sat on the edge of the well. "Kagome," she begged. "Please, Kagome, come home."
Soft pattering on the stairs caught her attention. She turned just in time to see the cat throw itself at her.
"Buyo!" She leaned to catch him, but in the process lost her balance and fell into the well.
She braced for the impact with the bottom. It never came. She opened her eyes just in time to see the whorls of color in the time slip fade into the familiar bottom of the well and she came to rest gently on the dirt.
As it turned out, the bottom was the only thing that was familiar. She looked up. Vines crept down the sides, and above her the sky was blue and cloudless.
She climbed out slowly, still clutching the fragment of the jewel. Grass surrounded the well, green in the warm spring air.
One thing was for certain: She was not in Tokyo any more.