On the night that Kagome left, Inuyasha never returned to the others. He stood staring into the Bone Eater's Well for what seemed like hours, trying to will himself into diving into the blackness and bringing her back. In the end, as the dewy grass surrounding him shone like a false dawn in the moonlight, he realized that he didn't know why he wanted to bring her back. Though he had once found it possible before to divide his heart between two women, he could not bring himself to divide it between three. Love divided two ways was suspect, love divided three ways was simply false.
He reached a fateful decision then, to abandon the group of companions which his carelessness had so undermined. He could think of a thousand reasons to let them go on their own, and only one reason, Sango, to stay with them. And Sango, he decided, would be better off without a faithless lover to break her heart.
The wound Kikyo dealt him so long ago burning freshly in his chest, Inuyasha leapt into a tree and made his way off through the forest canopy. His path unthinkingly took him past the small clearing where his erstwhile companions had pitched camp, and as he passed by his unnaturally keen hearing was flooded with a swirl of stinging words and bitter epithets as Miroku and Shippo lay into Sango. He stopped for a long moment, weighing the consequences of intervention, but eventually he moved on, thinking that maybe - just maybe - he had been right about himself this whole time.
*****
The warm night air caressed the last traces of tears from her cheeks as Sango sat in the dewy grass. Somewhere nearby an owl cried, and the surrounding woods were alive with sounds of night creatures. Kirara whimpered and nuzzled her hand. None of it mattered. Everything was numb. Sango was vaguely aware that she was twisting a few strands of hair around one of her fingers, a habit she had despised since childhood, but she couldn't generate enough concern to make herself stop.
The entire day had been a nightmare. After Kagome left her for her own time, Sango had taken it upon herself to finally explain to Shippo and Miroku what exactly had happened. While she hadn't expected anything close to a positive reaction, the lambasting she got nonetheless caught her off guard.
"I'd expect something that dumb from Inuyasha, but not you," Shippo had screamed at her, red-faced and crying.
Miroku had said little, but in their own way his actions were even worse than Shippo's verbal assault. He simply gathered his things and walked off into the woods. Just before the darkness enveloped he turned and spoke in the most measured tone she had ever heard from him.
"Come Shippo," he had said. "I think it's time we took our leave."
A few moments later she was completely alone for the first time since her family had been killed. Though they might have allowed her to follow, she knew well enough that she was no longer welcome among them. For the first time she thought of how she had shattered the sanctity of Shippo's surrogate family, and the wave of guilt that swept over her for destroying the child demon's little world drowned out even her remorse for Kagome's suffering. She had wounded even the monk, whose boundless lechery had long ago led her to believe that he would be quite detached from such matters.
It was that thought that hung in her mind. For if Miroku's lust was so unremitting, what right had he to even dare to be offended by her liaisons with Inuyasha? The more she turned that over in her mind, the more she was able to turn it into a source of anger. It was by stoking this inner fury at the monk's casual hypocrisy that she was able to force away from wallowing in her sadness and to look ahead to the days she would spend at Inuyasha's side.
It was a few hours later that she realized Inuyasha would not be coming back either. Then the tears had begun anew, for she had just seen her companions disappear into the night in exchange for…nothing at all. She had wagered her heart against the half-demon's and what come back empty-handed. It was that realization that hurt her so deeply, that she had gambled all of her companions for the sake of her feelings for Inuyasha, and the reward for her sacrifice and faith in her heart was abandonment.
Sometime just before the first light of morning began to shine through the trees, Sango gathered up her belongings and prepared to journey on. There were two paths leading out of the clearing, excluding the one by which they had arrived, one to the east and one to the north. Miroku and Shippo had traveled north. After a moment's indecision, Sango bit her lip and set off along the eastern path.
*****
Inuyasha perched in a tree, letting his mind wander as he stared into the iridescent surface of a small lake not more than a few yards away. A handful of children, human children, were splashing and cavorting in the shallow water near the shore. They were innocently unaware that he was watching them as they laughed and played together. Inuyasha frowned. Their scents, though masked by the strong smell of the lake, were boisterous and dusty, and they clung annoyingly to his senses.
Several days had passed since he left his companions, and Inuyasha had done little but wander through the forest. On a few occasions he had caught their scents, and it appeared to him that the group had disbanded almost entirely, as Sango's sweet scent was never intermingled with the earthier smells of the others. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about all this, and more than once he had barely stopped himself from tracking Sango's scent to the source and rejoining her. At one point he had even briefly entertained the thought of finding Miroku and Shippo before shaking the idea from his mind.
He had barely allowed himself to think of Kagome, though she often made her way into his mind unbidden. Whatever the case, he was not about to allow himself to wallow in self pity and weakness over a stupid human girl.
Which one?
Inuyasha bit his lip and angrily forced that thought from his mind before it could plant its seed. After all these years he had no intention of developing a conscience, and wasting his time thinking about it was asinine anyway.
She was always complaining about not spending enough time in her era anyway, he thought bitterly. Who needs all those humans around? I mean, what was the point of having so many people weaker than me hanging around slowing me down? When did I agree to be a nanny for all the weaklings? And while the hell does the air smell like cucumbers…?
Even above the smell of the water, the stink of dead fish and rotten cucumbers caught his attention. After he became aware of it, it only took him an instant to process its meaning, but by that time one of the children below, a little girl, had already been dragged underwater. The remaining children scattered, screaming in terror, as a thick red cloud began to spread through the water like ink spilt on a parchment.
"Damn it all," Inuyasha growled to himself as he leapt from his perch, his superhuman agility allowing to propel himself well into the lake's shallows. "I'm really getting sick of all this babysitting."
As he dashed out into the deeper water, Inuyasha overheard one of the fleeing children cry out something about fetching the woman from the village. In the back of his mind he wondered if perhaps the little brat meant Sango, but he pushed the thought away as a small hand frantically broke the surface only an arm's length away from him. He sprang forward, seizing the frail wrist and pulling the struggling child into his arms. The little girl flailed against him for a moment as he retreated towards the shore, but her strength waned quickly and she was unconscious long before he set her down on the beach.
The girl couldn't have been more than seven or eight. Inuyasha couldn't help but think that she might have one day been a beautiful woman as he stared down at her waxen features. He hair clung to her face in matted tangles, and on the right side of her slender abdomen was the telltale bite of a kappa. Even as he heard something splashing through the water behind him, Inuyasha knelt beside the child and gently slipped a finger into her wound. It was with some small relief that his tender probing found her liver still intact, but Inuyasha knew well enough that such a wound would almost certainly prove mortal.
"Why have you stolen my feast from me?" From behind Inuyasha gurgled a voice that sounded like water sloshing through seaweed. Inuyasha stood and slowly turned around.
The kappa was large for his kind, almost as tall as Inuyasha. At first glance its frame appeared almost deathly gaunt, but further consideration showed the creature to be lean with muscle. On its back was a flattened turtle's shell, its interlocking plates uneven and bladelike. Filthy claws hooked from its webbed fingers and toes, and its froglike mouth, held agape, was jagged with needle-sharp teeth. It stared hatefully at Inuyasha with its pinpoint red eyes, its protruding brow furrowed with rage. The plane of its skull was unnaturally flat, for on the top of its head, like all other kappas, it had a small circular dent which constantly held a small quantity of water from the lake. It was from this water that the demon drew its strength.
"You had no right to rob me of my meal, half-breed," it hissed, advancing a few steps closer.
"Look, frogboy, today is the wrong day to start trouble with me," Inuyasha snarled, the flames of anger within him rapidly flaring higher and higher.
"This lake is my home, half-breed. It is my right to hunt within its waters as I please."
Inuyasha chuckled coldly.
"If you're gonna call it hunting, at least hunt something your own size," Inuyasha spat in his most derisive tone.
The kappa, now less than a meter away, gave him a bemused look.
"Like you, I suppose," gurgled the kappa.
"That's exactly what I had in mind," Inuyasha snarled, a lopsided smile cutting across his face and revealing his fangs.
Then something strange happened. The little girl let out a trembling gasp, and Inuyasha glanced back at her for the briefest of instants. Before he could turn his attention back to the kappa, the creature seized him by his cloak and hurled him to the ground. Inuyasha landed badly, awkwardly twisting his head to one side to avoid the skull-splitting impact and nearly breaking his neck in the process. The water demon smiled cruelly and beckoned him to stand again. Inuyasha slowly rose to his feet, brushing himself off.
"I almost forgot," Inuyasha grumbled in exasperation. "All kappas are masters of wrestling."
The kappa smiled at him with a crooked grin.
"I'm afraid that such talent is mine and mine alone, half-breed."
"Then I guess its an honor to face the one kappa in the world who's more skilled than me," Inuyasha said in the most ingratiating tone he could muster, politely bowing his head to the creature.
The kappa's eyes lit up at Inuyasha's glowing praise, and it bowed in return. As it did so, the water it kept in the small dent on the top of its head, its link to the lake and therefore its power, spilled ignobly onto the ground. The creature's expression changed from smugness to horror as it realized that it had fallen for so pedestrian a deception, and it tried to throw itself past Inuyasha in a frantic dive for the water as its muscles began to rapidly wither away. With neither hesitation nor spectacle, Inuyasha unsheathed the Tetsusaiga and cut his foe down as it surged past him.
"One thing I didn't forget is that kappas are stupid," he quipped as he sheathed his sword.
As he began to turn his attention back to the wounded child, he heard the little girl's companions stampeding down the path back towards the lake. He stooped down to bind her wounds, paying little heed to the children's screaming.
"Hang on, Yuri!" Came one cry.
"She's coming!" Answered another.
Inuyasha shook his head, irritated that "help" had arrived so late. The kid didn't look like she was going to last until sunset, much less make it through the night. It didn't matter, though. Now that help was on the way, he would disappear into the forest and let the villagers take care of her. It was only as he turned to leave that a familiar scent hit his nose. It wasn't the one he had been expecting. As if to confirm his suspicions, another joyous cry came from the fast approaching herd of children.
"It's gonna be okay, Yuri! Lady Kikyo comes!"
With no further hesitation, Inuyasha sprang back to his earlier perch just as the children came bursting off the path and onto the shore. There was a moment's confusion as they found the kappa slain and their friend safely on the shore, though Inuyasha couldn't make out any single voice above the den. Then she was there.
Kikyo seemed to glide into his field of view as if floating on some invisible current. Her raven hair shone like polished onyx in the afternoon sun, and her robes were almost impossibly resplendent. A lump formed in Inuyasha's throat as the longings of so many years ago flooded back into his memory. With the grace of a walking dream she set her bow and herb basket next to the bleeding girl and began to examine her wounds. Watching her as she knelt down over the dying child, Inuyasha could almost see her as she had once been, as kind and as gentle as a mother's kiss.
Inuyasha found himself transfixed on her, and he watched motionlessly as she tended to the child. He couldn't remember how many times he had done this in the past, watching in amazement as Kikyo healed the sick and nursed the wounds of the injured. For a moment, he nearly allowed himself to forget just what she had become.
Then it happened. The little girl gave a shuddering breath and went limp in Kikyo's arms as she cradled the child to her chest.
"I'm sorry children," Kikyo said in a voice that flowed like masterful calligraphy. "Yuri has passed over."
Kikyo bowed her head over the little girl as her playmates burst into tears. Even Inuyasha felt his heart sink a little at her words. Shaking her head in resignation, Kikyo lay the child gently down and turned to her friends.
"Children, go quickly to the village and bring back Yuri's parents. I shall remain here and pray for her soul to reach the afterworld."
The children did as they were told, and within seconds Kikyo was alone with the dead girl's body. Inuyasha was about to sneak off himself when he felt the tiny ripple of energy as the girl's soul disconnected from her remains. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as Kikyo gingerly reached out to cradle the disembodied soul before absorbing it into her own being. Inuyasha grimaced in disgust. His warm memories of her suddenly seemed impossibly faraway, and Inuyasha, having seen more than his fill, rose to leave.
The arrow found its mark in exactly the same place as its predecessor had all those years ago. A current of spiritual energy coursed through him as Kikyo's magic surged within the wound. Inuyasha staggered, then fell from the tree. Still sitting on her knees beside the corpse, Kikyo sighed softly and watched him through narrowed eyes as he tried to stand.
"You'd watch me all this time and then leave without so much as a greeting, Inuyasha?"