Chapter 18: Deep Trouble

He didn't know how long he had been walking, wandering the barren streets, looking for some kind of clue as to where he was. His only clue was the battered street signs posted at every corner; but most of them had been graffitied or damaged in some other way so that they were beyond recognition. He could only guess that he was in some suburb, and he had no idea how far away he was from Cameron Drake High School.

He looked down at Kagome. She had stirred a few times, more and more frequently now that she had had some time to recover from the shock of everything that had happened. Her ankle definitely looked broken: her foot was hanging limp from her leg, turned away at an odd angle.

She stirred once more, turning over slightly and putting a pale hand against Inuyasha's chest. He smiled. She would probably wake up soon, and that meant that he needed to find a place to put her down so she could clear her head. He looked from left to right and back again, but couldn't find anything that looked safe or clean enough to put her down in. He kept walking, keeping his eyes open.

Eventually, he saw a corner that looked relatively untrashed. He walked over to it and carefully set Kagome down on the hard concrete, keeping her head in his lap so it wouldn't break on the pavement. She moved a little bit, biting her lip as her hand reached out and felt the cold concrete on the ground. She opened her eyes, still sightless, and looked emptily up at the sky.

"Where am I?" she asked softly. "Who's there?"

Inuyasha chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound, and patted her head fondly. "It's just me," he said, smiling. Immediately the stress fell away from her face, and she looked totally relaxed.

"Oh, good, Inuyasha. Okay. Where are we?" she asked, trying to sit up. In the process, her foot moved a little bit along the ground. Her face immediately contorted with pain and she reached over to her ankle, pressing a few fingers against it. Pain immediately flared up her leg and she swore loudly. Inuyasha laughed again.

"Yeah, you broke your ankle when we were getting away from that Kouga idiot," he explained. "Quite frankly, I have no idea where we are. But you shouldn't worry too much about it. I'll figure out how to get back home and we'll go as soon as we can."

He put his hand up to his eyes to shield them from the sun as he looked around again. He could find absolutely no clue as to where the two of them were. No readable street signs...no building names...just a bunch of run-down shacks. It was almost as if they were in an entirely different world.

It was getting easier and easier to distinguish shapes and colours. Every so often there was another blankout - the entire world went black again, just as it had been before - but they never lasted long, maybe ten minutes. Then everything would come back and she would feel the same rush of happiness she had felt before. The light brown below her, that was the dusty ground. The blue above her? Finally, she could recognize the beauty of the sky. There were large dark brown splotches everywhere - the buildings they were passing. And the large blob that was always close to her - the one that was taller than her with two yellow circles and a long white mane - that was him. Inuyasha.

Finally, she thought to herself. It's coming back.

"Where on earth could they have gone?" Miroku muttered, pacing back and forth. Him and Sango were sitting in Sango's bedroom, trying to figure out their next course of action. "If Inuyasha hasn't been able to find his way back here yet, they must really be lost."

"Okay, we have to think about this," Sango muttered, putting her head on her hands and staring down at the ground. "Where is the one place where Inuyasha wouldn't be able to smell his way back?"

"Well..." Miroku began. "It would have to be pretty smelly if he couldn't follow anything back."

"A place where nobody in their right minds would ever go to..." Sango added. "Probably really poor?"

"And there couldn't be anything to give away its position," Miroku muttered. "Otherwise he'd know where he was."

They fell silent as they thought about all of the possibilities. Smelly...poor...run-down...

They looked at each other as the town's name popped into their minds.

"Jicharo."

If Inuyasha's brain was working, he probably would have been able to figure out where he was, too. After all, there was only one town anywhere remotely near Cameron Drake High School that was poor, smelly, and hopelessly broken down, and that was Jicharo. If his brain was working, he would know that in order to get back to Cameron Drake, he would just need to run southwards for twenty minutes or so.

But his brain -wasn't- working. He was about as close to panicking as he would ever get. Kagome's ankle was broken, he couldn't figure out where he was, and for all he knew there was some crazy madman who wanted to kill him and he still didn't know why.

Needless to say, it was highly unlikely that he was going to figure out where he was anytime soon.

Miroku and Sango, on the other hand, were already making their way towards Jicharo. So while they moved as quickly as they could to the beaten-down town, Inuyasha and Kagome continued to struggle around, attempting to find some kind of clue that could snap Inuyasha out of his daze and lead them back to civilization.

Kagome looked up at Inuyasha, trying to recognize the expression she could vaguely see on his face. His eyebrows were furrowed and his mouth was set in a grim line as he looked far away into the horizon. She could see his long, silver hair flying lazily in the slight breeze behind him. The same wind ruffled his clothes, making slight noises that she could only detect because of years of total blindness.

She, too, looked up at the sky, the great blue expanse. What would happen to her, now that she could see? What would happen to her life? She wondered what Sango would say, what Miroku would say. What would happen when she saw her mother? What if she looked totally different?

Inuyasha looked over at Kagome, opening his mouth to say something. Slowly, his brain was beginning to piece together their location. He was about to share his findings when he saw the expression on her face: as she looked up at the sky with her long hair dancing behind her, she bore a look of such sadness that a knife seemed to go through his heart. Hopelessness, fright, desperation...everything was captured in her glassy orbs as she watched the scant clouds float by.

"What's wrong?" he asked, moving closer to her. She looked over at him, looking straight in his eyes. Inuyasha found it unnerving. "Come on, tell me."

She smiled a bit, looking down at the ground. "Nothing's wrong," she said lamely.

"Liar."

"Hey!" she said angrily, standing up on her one good ankle and glaring at him. "You're not the only one who-" She broke off mid-sentence, looking away from him again, finding something very interesting on the ground.

Inuyasha scowled. What on earth was going on in her head? "Come on, Kags," he said. "What's wrong?" He put a hand on her shoulder, tilting her head up with his other hand so he could look into her eyes. She looked back into his with a sort of clarity that he had never seen before.

"I'm just thinking," she said softly.

"About..." he prompted. There was silence between the two of them as he waited for her to answer.

"Everything," she said finally, biting her lip. "Just...I don't know. When we get back, what if my mum comes up to me and I can't recognize her? There are so many people I've never seen, or haven't seen in years. What will they think when I'm completely different?"

Inuyasha sighed, putting his hands on her shoulders and bending over a bit so his eyes were level with hers. "You're not completely different," he said, smiling. "You're just getting your sight back. Trust me, it won't change you as much as you think it will."

"How can you be so sure?" she asked, pulling away from him.

"Because they're my friends, too, and I know them better than that." He sighed. "Do you just need some time on your own or something?"

She shot him a death glare and he took a step backwards.

"Well, excu-u-use me," he said, holding his hands in the air. "You're not the only one stuck in a hellhole, you know."

She bit her lip and tried to sit down using only one of her feet to support her, but only managed to get halfway towards the ground before she lost her balance and fell the rest of the way. She closed her eyes and Inuyasha saw a few tears roll down her face.

What did I do wrong? he thought to himself, walking back to Kagome and sitting down beside her.

"What do you -mean- we're only halfway there!" Sango exclaimed, running ahead of Miroku, who was carrying a small travel map in his hands.

"I mean that we're only halfway there," he replied. "Come on. If we stand here arguing about it it'll just take us longer to find them."

Sango sighed. "Okay, you win," she said. "Lead the way, map-man."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

HEY GUYS!

Okay, okay, I know I haven't updated for ages, but you know how it is :P Anyways, I wouldn't have updated at all if it weren't for a sudden influx of reviews begging me to write another chapter, so I sat down and managed to write this. I know it's really really short, but you'll have to forgive me for not having a twenty-eight hour day :

Thanks for the support guys!

And it might take be another age and a half to write the next chapter 'cause I'm taking a happy trip to a foreign country, and I was debating whether or not to post this, but I figured a small update is better than no update.

So thanks for all the reviews! You guys are awesome.