…Review Response to Kai Wren: wow...passionate I see. Flame me all you want, I suppose, if it makes you feel better. I am not a Kikyo-hater. I don't see her as a bad guy. In the anime she only feels anger, jealousy, and hatred. She does in my fic as well; she just isn't consumed by it, besides Inuyasha's stupid like that. It doesn't matter what she does, he'll side with Kikyo, right? And honestly...wouldn't Kagome forgive her anyways? Don't worry I plan a 'snit' scene between Kagome and Kikyo. Kikyo's sin isn't repaid yet, if ever. She put Kagome in mortal danger, I won't forget that, but what I've written doesn't seem too out of character for Inu….

Her body felt slow, drugged almost. Any movement felt as if it took forever to get where it was supposed to be. Molasses ran through her veins and honey dripped down her throat. Sand pierced her skin and weighing her down with every second, every grain passing through the funneled grasp of the hourglass. Her arms felt heavy and weak. She tried to pull the sheet from where it rested at her hips to above her shoulder, but the fabric just slipped right through her fingers. Kagome just couldn't remove herself from this dream state. It was too warm, too perfect. The peace was contagious and nurtured in Kagome's heart with each even breath fueling her body. Every beat of her heart opened a new world, a new dream for her to enter. The lovely sunlight dappled onto her cheeks from between the drapes swaying in the breeze from the open window.

Open your eyes

Taste the sun

Leave it undone

And touch the sky

Kagome's lashes fluttered against lightly tanned cheeks. Long hair flung carelessly to one side of her neck where the silky strands attempted to swallow her pillows. The lavender cases were barely seen beneath the wavy tresses. Kagome felt like she was in heaven. The downy softness enveloped her weary form. A thousand clouds bolstered her soft, plaint flesh molding into her curves. She rolled over on her side placing one hand next to her face. The fresh scent of newly washed sheets washed across into her nose. Her mouth felt a little dry and she licked her lips. Kagome laid so still reveling in the pure comfort she felt for this one moment. All she wanted was for this feeling to never end. No fear, anger, sadness, grief, anxiety or confusion, but that isn't possible in reality. Life would be too simple, too straight that way. The roads of life twist, turn and meander in unpredictable, unprecedented movements meant to catch you off guard. Kagome was no exception. However, the maiden slept on despite this wishing and willing for this tranquility that was so new to her. Kagome's mind wandered.

Break the rules

Swallow the clouds

Make it past the crowds

Watch it all come true

Worry flashed quickly into her drowsy mind. A sudden blare of a silent scream inside her made of brilliant white, highlighting her world of dark dreams. Her mind wakened from its stream of consciousness. The blurred existence that stretched from one scene into the next with a milky transition was now herded into bold outlines. The contrast starkly understood from one panorama to the next. No more mystery or wonder. The picture was obvious and blatant. Visions remembered from long ago interrupting her soothing peace of mind.

A worry-wrinkled face contorted in pain. A trembling hand encased in another much smaller even in the first's decrepit state of health and mind. They had been the same age, but her mother looked so young and her father so withered. Once lively with a hearty laugh you could see reverberate in his belly. There was always a smile adorning his lighthearted features and above his cheek bones the skin crinkled with his grin. He was once happy, he was once Hiromi. The man who laid flat on his back in the hospital room was not her father. In a place where white reigned supreme, Kagome's father was not lying sick. He wasn't dying from stomach cancer and also not resisting the urge to groan in pain in order to spare his visiting family heart aching toil. This person with short black hair with a few wisps of short bangs spread on his forehead was not her father, not anymore. Not anymore. How it broke her heart to see it.

The pain remained a harsh burning spreading throughout his abdominals and to his thighs and then up to his chest. The sting was so deep and cruel that it stole his breath leaving him gasping. He was sweating from the sheer effort of staying awake. Despite any medications or anesthesia, he was hurting. The shock bit through his thin frame and her once proud father curled in on himself. He squirmed wanting to rid himself of the pain if not let it subside just the tiniest degree.

Kagome didn't even know she was crying as she stood there before the nurse offered her a tissue. The spark left his eyes and the sapphire irises dulled grey black. The pupils fuzzed and became glassy. His mouth stilled and he no longer struggled for the breaths that he needed. Kagome felt her shift forward lifting up a hand. Dully in the back of her mind she could hear a panicked voice yelling for someone to do something. She had no idea it was hers, the tone was so alien. It was high pitched, frantic, but it was hers because her throat was sore from it.

'No! Why are you just standing there! Do something! Do something- he's dying! Please! No, no no…daddy! Daddy, please hold on! Daddy…Daddy…don't go…don't go…don't…please someone!'

Kagome collapsed down hard onto her knees, but barely felt a thing. No one responded to her words. It was like they couldn't hear them, but the truth was Kagome screamed them. Everyone in the nearby vicinity heard the pleas, but there was nothing that could be done. Higurashi Hiromi was lost, he was gone. It was too late. In those few seconds Kagome felt completely hopeless. The time flew by too quickly like it was at light speed. In Kagome's eyes this could only be a movie and someone hit the pause then fast forward. The frames clicking by, the DVD whirling, as the main character fell forward onto her elbows. Her whole ribcage contorting and her shoulders shaking as her cries were reduced to heaves of pure torturous grief. Soon, Kagome would realize this wasn't her life at all. She was just too absorbed in the final death scene. She would be curled up in front of the living room couch with her knees hugged up close to her chest. A tissue armed in one hand and her teddy bear in the other.

Except that it wasn't the end, it was only the beginning for Kagome. This was no happy ending that she could walk away from with that fuzzy feeling of contentment. Kagome would wake the next morning with a funeral to look forward to and a future of unconscious perusal into suicide. To live in a daze and a yearning for completion that she may never feel. It would be a suppressed need to be happy even though should she ever find it, Kagome wouldn't know what to do with herself. In her life, happiness was a dream of the days left behind and no matter how hard she tried Kagome could never return.

Bend the truth

Breathe in the sweetness

Free of completeness

The reality of youth

Metallic candle flickers swept across her lids. Her vision shut off from the world. An aggregation of hodgepodge colors blended into a vivacious haze of perilous warning signs. The bells sounded in the back of her head like before a church service. The tinkling unfeeling and lacking the beauty she had once seen within their musical anthem. No comfort could be given or received from such substances of objective behavior. Their tone never changed, never bled with emotions. Only the notes could decrease or increase in octaves to give the illusion of expression.

A solo individual stood solemnly before a conservatively sized headstone. Her body bathed in black only sensitized by the arising dusk. One tomb lay nestled among the hundreds of others. Row upon dozens of identical rows with a few flourishes of gaudy headstones overcastting shadows on the previous. A silver cross hung at her neck, simplistic, but beautiful containing a world of words for the child who wore it. Wilted flowers, forget-me-nots, flopped over in her hands still wrapped in the crate paper and plastic. Cerulean orbs gazed lovingly over the quote emblazoned on her father's grave. There was a cavernous sadness that trenchant her soul, one that couldn't be comprehended simply by the passerby. No tears fell from her eyes now and nothing could penetrate those thickened walls around her heart. What that wounded girl didn't realize was this was also not the way one could live. Depending on only yourself wasn't possible. In the distant years to come a young man would attempt to breach those barricades for the wrong reasons and Kagome would let him leave another scar that would never heal. Forgiveness for herself would always be harder to achieve than for the strangers she would come to hold in the deep of her impoverished soul.

Spark the hazed sunset

Taste the petals

Feel the pastel metals

Fall into arms of regret

Silver bangs flitted to and fro drawn away from an alabaster forehead by the streaming of the wind.

Invisible fingers curling through their silkiness, something Kagome always longed to do. She'd had a few passing touches as he walked past or when she was a klutz falling on him or the like. Kagome wanted more than that; desired it, needed it. Sesshoumaru, everything about him, was perfect and screamed out to Kagome. He needed chaos and disarray to be alive, to truly live.

Thin peach lips layered with medicated Chap Stick that contained sunscreen to keep them safe. Soft cheeks, pronounced jaw line, straight nose, and a clear complexion. His skin so above tight muscles that Kagome had to stay her fingers from reaching out to graze along its smoothness. Stone gold eyes that heated incomprehensibly when she met his gaze weakened her knees and stroked her heart. Sesshoumaru was becoming an inextricable attachment. Sesshoumaru confused her, but he was also someone Kagome was almost cosmically drawn to.

She was always wondering what he was thinking or what he was doing. Even when she was being held up in Naraku's estate, her thoughts were focused around him. Like the Christmas gala that even though was once again an emotional event for her, it was actually memorable in a positive fashion. Or like when they danced and the limited ability of movement with her kimono that he compensated for by shortening the steps of the dance. The kiss when they walked out the door, the dreams where he saw only her, and how would hold Rin's hand so tenderly when they walked together even if it was always away from her.

Live the night

And lick the morning

Give no warning

No retreat in sight

Kagome twitched in her sleep. This was how she found herself awake sometimes, more exhausted then when she fell asleep the night before. Her mind was so active with dreams and contemplations that there was no time for real sleep. However, other times she was like a rock and out like a light in five minutes not stirring until the last zing of her alarm clock. Now though, she didn't feel any better. Miroku left the library around five or five thirty, but Kagome remained until closing time, which happened to be eleven o'clock because the facilities were meant for college students and not the local community.

Kagome sat up too quick, feeling her head spin like a hangover. Kagome had one once and after that made certain never to have more than one drink a night. She was such a light weight. Kagome had only had like three beers and she was gone. The woman was lucky that Sango had been there with her or Kagome might have woken up in an unfamiliar apartment with foreign substances dried on the inside of her thigh. Kagome made a face and flopped backwards onto her mattress. Kagome groaned lifting her hands to lie indenting into the pillow on either side of her face.

"I have to get ready for work…"

There was never another time when Kagome wanted to play hooky more than she did at that very moment. It if wasn't for her undue absence for like two days Kagome probably would have seriously considered it. Her shower was slower than usual and Kagome struggled to drag her tired ass out of the too distracting streams of deliciously warm water. Tendrils of wandering steam melding against the shower door condensing into a milky background to the semi-opaque glass door. Kagome's hair dripped on the floor creating little puddles running into each other making one wet mess like tributaries to a river.

This day would surely be interesting especially since she was having a staff meeting of sorts with Sesshoumaru, Miroku, Jakotsu, and others in their department. Kagome rubbed her face with both hands with a short groan. A hot cup of coffee rested in front of her at her right elbow waiting to be put to some good use. Apparently there were some major developments in the disease that could help them to make excellent lee-way. Somewhere in the pit of her stomach, Kagome could tell this wouldn't be as good as it originally sounded.

…This was a strange chapter. I don't know where it came from, but it's certainly a filler. It's a more discreet way of doing a flashback I suppose.

Next chapter: What new developments could there be with the epidemic? Kagome…where are you going?

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