Ch.Vl: Making Fire

And then there it was, the shelter that he had been searching for.

It was a large cave, with green moss covering all sides of it. Inuyasha ran inside, still cradling Kagome, and tried to take a look around at what was inside, but it was pitch black.

Oh how much he hated being a human! His hearing would have come in perfectly in this situation had he been a demon, and he could have picked up if there were a demon in the cave or not.

Inuyasha set Kagome down against one of the hard cold walls of the cave. As he set her down, his arms remained around her for a minute longer than they needed to be. Kagome squirmed around in his arms and began to wake up.

"Inuyasha?" Kagome asked with her soft brown eyes gazing sleepily up at him.

Her body was so soft and cold...not dead cold like Kikyou's had been but...it was unaturaly cold.

He had to force himself to let go of her.

Inuyasha looked down into her eyes apologetically. He wished he could do something more for her... she had to be seriously uncomftorable.

Kagome began coughing again, and she didn't stop for awhile.

"Damnit Kagome! Don't you get sick on me!" He told her in a gruff voice, but Kagome caught the worry in it.

"I'm fine.." She replied. She didn't make eye-contact with him, but instead her eyes stared at the rain outside, and then she closed her eyes, with her eyebrows tightly drawn down, showing him that she was in pain.

Kagome was not feeling very much like herself at this moment. Her mind and her body felt extremely heavy..like she could pass out at anytime...and she kept drifting in and out of sleep... the thing that kept her up the most was the consistantly throbbing pain in her foot..and the stinging cold.

"Damn...I can't see anything in here..." Came Inuyasha's distant voice echoing into her head. She opened her eyes and saw him standing by the entrance of the cave. His eyes were looking into the cave, trying to see through the dark...and then they shifted to outside, and they settled on watching the rain. She watched as he began to go deep into thought.

The wind shifted, and rain began to blow inside the cave. Little drops of it landed in his hair, causing it to sparkle.

His bangs were plastered down to his forhead, and to Kagome he looked so breathtakingly handsome...

He had to fix Kagome's foot tonight, it was in bad shape and the longer they waited, the worse condition it would be in. He was dreading it, but it had to be done.

But he couldn't do a thing about it in the dark though, and so he would have to somehow make a fire...and Kagome, and himself, were freezing and needed one anyways.

Though Inuyasha himself would never admit that he was cold out loud... just because he hated admiting to weaknesses of any kind.

"Kagome?" There was no responce. He knew that she was awake back there. "Kagome?" He said alittle louder and forceful.

"Huh!" She squeeked. She had been so deep in her own thoughts that he had startled her.

Inuyasha couldn't help but smile at that one.

"I'll be back in a few, Kagome."

He started to head out and Kagome's voice stopped. him.

"Where are you going?" She tiredly asked him.

"I'm gonna go get us some firewood." Inuyasha looked back at her and cockily added. "Try not to attract any demons for us, all right?"

Kagome managed to laugh lightly. "Okay Inuyasha.." She said sleepily.

He ran out into the stinging cold rain once again. He didn't know how the hell he was going to start a fire but he was going to do it, no matter how wet the wood was.

Kagome needed it, and he was gonna do it for her.

He began picking up little twigs first, so that he could start it. Then he made several trips into the woods and back to the cave, grabbing as much wood as he could get.

And finaly, he was finished. Now all he needed to do was to light this fire up.

Looking at Kagome, she was fast asleep on the cave floor. He hated seeing her like that, it looked uncomftorable even to him.

Inuyasha gathered all the little twigs into a pile first and began rubbing two together to try and make fire. After a few minutes, it just was not working.

And then, a spark, and accompanying it was a fire. He smirked at his accomplishment.

Then he remembered the thing that had to be taken care of. Kagome's foot.

Inuyasha walked over to the sleeping Kagome that was stretched out across the floor. He gently whispered her name to her.

"Kagome?" When her eyebrows only furrowed together more in agitation, he put his hand on her back and lightly shook her.

"Mmmrh." She whined at him.

Her eyes slowly opened, blinked once, twice, and now she was staring at him. "What is it Inuyasha?" She asked him gently in her sleepy voice.

"I got a fire started for us, I thought maybe you'd wanna move closer to it to get warm." He told her unsurely, he hated being put on the spot, and he had a guilty conscience for what he was going to have to do.

"Ok..." She told him sleepily at first, not really knowing fully what was going on in her half-awake state. Inuyasha put her arm around his shoulder and lifted her up off the ground. He walked her over to the fire military-style.

"Wow you got a fire started? How'd you do that?" She asked him sweetly as he helped her over. She was impressed!

"Heh. It was nothin' Kagome." He told her as he set her down in front of the fire. "How's your foot? Does it still hurt?"

"mm." Kagome whined. "It does still hurt alot, just as much as I first did it. The pain hasn't subsided hardly at all." She looked at him woriedly.

"That's gonna have to be taken care of, you know."

"I know.." She whined. Kagome looked away from him and into the fire. He hated seeing her like that, looking so scared and vulnurable.

He started thinking back to how this had happened in the first place, and realized that if she had only waited on him, that they would probably be at this moment, sitting inside of Kaede's cozy little hut, nice and safe, and in no pain.

"What were you thinking running away by yourself, and unarmed none the less!" He scolded her. She narrowed her brown eyes at him.

"What did you want me to do-- stand there and watch while you and Kikyou-" She clamped her mouth shut and ground her teeth together so that she wouldn't continue.

She didn't want to make things worse than they were already, but it was to late.

Inuyasha narrowed his violet eyes at her.

"If you would have stayed, you would have seen for yourself that we didn't do anything." He said extremely agitated, borederline yelling.

"How was I supposed to know you wouldn't!" Her voice shook.

"Because you were there!" He snapped at her. "Do you actually think that i'd sink so low as to do something like that to you!"

Kagome didn't know what to say. The last time he had done anything intimate with Kikyou was that one kiss along time ago...and she had had some sort of spell on her that would make him not see her there at that time.

At least, that was the last intimate moment that she knew of.

"Inuyasha!" She snapped back and went in for the final blow. "She was taking off her shirt!" She yelled back, finally losing it.