A/N: I was supposed to update in November, but then I didn't have time. And then someone pointed out that Kagome was a bit not herself, and that is so true, so I was like, "I'm going to tackle that issue in this chapter." And the result is mayhem. Seriously. This thing's 7000 words, baby – for your enjoyment, and because I was tired of Kagome whining, too. ;)

Disclaimer: (loff)


Chapter 12: Second Base

Nghi


She lay still in bed, straining to hear any sound outside of the bedroom. Kagome wasn't very graceful or lithe in her movements, but it didn't mean that the girl was a stomping elephant. The house had thin walls, but it wasn't permeable to every noise made, and not to mention the girl had become very acquainted with her home – meaning that she knew where every crack and creak on the steps and wooden floors were. The girl could slip out of the house at any moment without her knowledge, and Ayumi wasn't about to let that happen.

She sighed, her eyes closing and her head pounding. She was so, so tired right now, and her eyes were dry and probably red, too. But she refused to drift off; she wouldn't let herself drift off since yesterday afternoon. Another image of Kagome's face came to her face, carving itself in front of her, and Ayumi felt like burrowing underneath her covers. Her breath shortened, and she swallowed heavily, trying to brush the quick feelings of frustration and humiliation and shame away. She had better things to do besides curling up in her bed – she grimaced – and crying out all of her troubles. Crying never solved anything, and she hadn't done so in over a year, since her father had died. So why should she start now?

Her weak resolve diminished, disappearing as quickly as it had been constructed, as she realized the answer to the question was only too obvious – maybe because her family was disintegrating and falling apart, maybe because she hadn't cried over a year and her tear ducts only needed a reason to exercise themselves, maybe because she was a bad mother and couldn't even take care of her children by herself, maybe because she had lost two of the most important people in her life in such a small span of time, maybe because she was about to lose another important person, too… what better reasons were there for crying?

Just a little bit, she thought, groaning as the hot tears leaked and slipped down her cheeks. Souta would wake up if she sobbed out loud and threw a big fit, so Ayumi bit her cheek instead, one hand covering her closed eyes as she trembled violently. It had never been her intention to destroy the resilient facet that characterized the woman, but she had a disgusting, sinking feeling that things wouldn't be all right for a while, not between her and Kagome for a long time.

Eventually the tears subsided into a few sniffles, and the sniffles subsided into nothing, and the nothing subsided into dry salt trails on her cheeks, and Ayumi finally removed her hand. She didn't want to go to work today, not when there was too much on her plate and she had finally broken down for the first time in over a year. And not to mention there was still the matter with Kagome, too. She closed her eyes and took in a deep, shuddering breath. Calm down, something said, and she recognized it as Rational's voice, the part of her who had dominated her for the past year. Rational was always there for her, always answering in simple logic, always trying to offer solutions in a placating manner. Rational was reliable, was didactic, was everything she needed to pull herself together.

So Ayumi took its advice, taking in a few more breaths and putting the hysterical emotions to bed. Angst was the first to go, followed by Disgust and finally, with difficulty, Pessimism. At least for now, anyways. You are strong. Life is always full of ups and downs – this just happens to be downhill.

Rational sounded so reassuring and confident and overly optimistic, yet honest and truthful. Maybe Rational was right – of course I'm right, it scoffed – about the situation. Maybe she was blowing it out of proportion too much. Maybe she was just taking too much in all at once. Maybe it was the stress from work, or from the fact that Yamaguchi had found out in the worst possible way that the two had been carrying an affair behind her family's back. Or what was left of it, Pessimism rose to say before she could push it out of her mind. No, no – being angry would get nothing done! Ayumi tried to focus on Rational's words, on how life dipped in the most unexpected places. It sounded right….

Of course I'm right, Rational said again, you're overwhelmed right now. You're an adult woman. You're more than capable of carrying on affairs of your own. The one-year anniversary of your father's death is coming up. She choked a little bit at such a breezy statement, but Rational didn't notice. Everyone becomes a little emotional. Everyone. You're not a superhero. You can't always be in control of your feelings.

"I know that," she said out loud desperately. Inside, she was saying the same thing to it, knowing fully well that she could only try her best at such a demanding role. "But what should I do now?" She closed her eyes, trying to calm her frazzled nerves again. Talking in circles, that was all it was –!

Talk to Kagome. It is the only way to fix things.

Ayumi bit back a small scream. She knew what to do with this situation in the beginning – she just wanted to know how-to know how—

To get your life back?

Yes, that too, but Rational was being completely irrational as of now, and she felt frustration corroding her collapsing front for the God-knows-how-many times. She must have looked absolutely disgusting and pathetic right now, because she certainly felt useless right now. The one time when she needed Rational and its logic and its simple ways the most, it decided to grow Wit and Humor.

Are you angry at me because I can't tell you what will happen? Ayumi halted, her uncoiling thoughts stopping midway. As if it was in front of her, she opened her mouth to answer no, as a matter of fact, I'm not angry that you can't predict anything and you're just a useless figment of my self-conscious. Then she closed her mouth, her lips pressed together in a tight line. Or are you angry because I'm not saying what you want to hear?

Rational waited for a response, and waited, and waited. Ayumi lay on her bed, her arms crossed and her eyes tracing the ceiling patterns sullenly. "You are useless," she finally spat out loud, glaring soundly at the chipped, white paint. "What good are you if you can't even guide me down the right path? Why give me all this rehearsed advice? You haven't helped me one bit at all!" She slammed one fist on the side of the bed angrily, as if it would show Rational how much it meant this time, how important this was.

Then in a small voice: "My family is breaking apart, can't you see?"

The future is never guaranteed. Never.

"Then you were never any help."

Rational did not answer, because just then a muffled clatter came from downstairs, and without a second thought or a second opinion, Ayumi had rolled off her bed and swung the door open and was already scrambling down the stairs. In the back of her mind, she must have known how ridiculous she looked, with her frizzy hair out of place and her tripping and stumbling – she really needed to use the shoe rack more often – down the stairs with the worn-out, green bathrobe whipping around her legs like a parody of a superhero who had forgotten to put on his mask.

"Kagome!"

She lost her footing on the last step and fell backwards, hitting the carpeted stairs with a dull thud painfully. Her hand gripped at the railing, and she ended up half-sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. "Kagome!" she cried out, forgetting that her leg was throbbing and her heart was thumping and her hand was numb and her face was all one big blur of emotions – she couldn't tell what kind of face she was wearing. She didn't have a mirror in front of her.

The green skirt paused at the doorway, a moment's hesitation, and the woman didn't waste any time to jump at the chance, at the chance to do anything to make things right between them again.

"How… how are you?"

There was another awfully long pause, and she saw the slender fingers – her slender fingers – grip around the doorknob a little tighter, and she knew it wasn't a good sign. It was never a good sign when Kagome tensed like that. Keep ca— Rational was cast aside before it finished its sentence, and she chose to panic instead. "Don't go!" she cried aloud, and to her relief, the door barely moved. Maybe-!

"I know," Ayumi began slowly, trying to tread as carefully as she could. "I know… you must be confused, right?" Kagome didn't say anything, and she took it as a good sign to continue. "And I know that you don't want to talk to me right now."

It was still silent.

"But I think-I think we need to. We need to fix this bad blood between us. We need to, soon." The girl had been silent the entire time, and a small jewel of hope began to glitter at the bottom of the cave. "We could start… with Grandpa, if you want." The door opened a bit. "Then we could talk about Souta. Souta is very important." She could see Kagome's unruly, black hair now, uncombed and equally as frizzy as hers.

"And we can talk about Yamaguchi and me."

It was the wrong, wrong thing to say, and she watched the dirt smother the jewel as the door swung forward sharply. "No, no, no, you've got it wrong," she rushed, and all the while she felt the stones of hopelessness pile at the bottom of her stomach, making her heavy and slow to react. "I love him, that's why!"

The door slammed shut in her face.

-

She couldn't think for the rest of the day.

Who could? She thought bitterly in math period, her head hunched over her desk in a look of pure, fake concentration. The teacher announced something about lines and formulas, but they were all lost, all absorbed into the silent cacophony inside her head. What an oxymoronic expression that was – it wasn't thrumming like yesterday, thank God, but her mind was just restless, just turning things over and over and completely exacerbating things.

Kagome stared hard at the blue lines on the blank sheet of paper, as if some pencil marks were going to magically appear out of nowhere and spell out an answer, spell out the solution to the muddled troubles and everything. Maybe if she burned holes through the paper, it will give her a key, a hint to getting out of this.

But as it stood, there was no such thing as magic, and there was certainly no such thing as a spontaneous solution or even spontaneous combustion, as the paper did not explode into flames underneath her fiery gaze, and no pen or pencil carving out anything on the blank lines.

There was no pre-set anything right now, and she wanted to punch karma for putting her through this. She almost had her this morning, almost. Wasn't it so funny how convincing her mother's words sounded that morning? She sounded very sincere, Kagome thought dryly, and she bit the insides of her cheeks.

It was almost hypnotizing and syrupy, the deceptively honey words coming out of her mother's mouth. Oh, I think we should talk about our family, oh I think we should talk about Grandpa, oh, I think we should talk about Souta – it was all building up so she could just talk about that Yamaguchi guy! Kagome fumed quietly, her eyebrows drawing angrily. Her mother's words echoed inside her head annoyingly (Yamaguchi and me; Yamaguchi and me; Yamaguchi and….).

What about her? What about the effect on everyone else? 'Yamaguchi and me' sounded so-so exclusive! Her mother almost had her, almost – she sounded so understanding of Kagome's feeling. Yes, she was confused, yes, she was lonely, yes, she didn't want to talk to her at all. If only Ayumi hadn't mentioned his name-! But she had, and she had to go and ruin everything by going into that territory. Her stomach had frozen up, and her shoulders tensed and her grip tightened, and she slammed the door without waiting for her mother to finish the sentence.

But she wasn't fast enough – she wasn't quick enough to block out those devastating words, and the reply came back in a haunting reverberation. She loves him? She thought incredulously; it wasn't the first time she had acted in such a surprised way. The first time she turned it over in her head on her way to school, she had stumbled into the classroom in a daze; the seventh time when she had turned it over in her head on her way to science class, she had sat down in her seat with shock; the eighteenth time she had turned it over in her head during lunchtime, her friends' words went in and out of one ear neatly; the twenty-eighth time she had turned it over in her head on her way to math class, she was somewhere in the mind-numbing state of half-shock and half-anger.

No matter what kind of sub-feelings she could acquire along the way, there was always some degree of uneasy amazement, like a frozen jolt embedded somewhere in her chest, making it hard for her to breathe for the rest of the day. Her mother had tried to put a limb out for her, and it was a start… no, it had been a start, before-before everything fell to pieces.

A folded piece of paper suddenly appeared in her line of view, and it took her a few moments to recognize the scraggly kanji as her name. Her head snapped up, and Kagome looked behind her to find Eri nodding expectantly. "Open it," she mouthed quietly, her eyes glancing briefly at the math teacher.

Turning back into her seat, Kagome did as she was told obediently; Eri rarely passed notes in class. She liked to learn, or something close to that, so there was hardly ever a reason for her to participate in gossiping in the middle of calculus. Not to mention that if she needed help, there was always the ever-nerdy Tamakawa sitting beside her. Kagome never had any luck in math in the past, and from the way this class was looking, there wouldn't be any future for her in that area, either.

"You look really out of it. What's wrong?"

The note was simple, only two sentences long, but it hit her with a force of a brick. Her friends could tell that something was wrong? (A little part of her mind scoffed at her astonishment. You didn't really try to keep a normal façade, you know, it reminded.) It felt… nice to know that some people cared, and even though she was still as confused as yesterday, and she was still as numb as this morning, Kagome smiled through the haziness and picked up her pencil.

Eri was smart… maybe she would know what to do when everything else seemed to fail.

As soon as the teacher turned around to scrawl another formula on the board, Kagome threw the paper back to her friend, who had been leaning sideways to read Tamakawa's handwriting. Eri looked down to see the folded note on her desk, and she smiled, forgetting all about him.

Kagome settled a little more comfortably in her chair, feeling slightly relaxed. This was good – maybe it was time she invested a little more faith in her friends. After all, were they not called 'friends' for a reason? It wasn't like she hated them and only hung out with them because of lack of anything else to do. They really were her friends, her good-natured, good-humored, good all-around friends. But that was all they were, too good overall. Having boy problems and hair problems and skin problems and other trivial problems were fine and dandy, but that was all they would ever be: trivial. Her friends were by no means shallow, – OK, maybe Yuka, she conceded – but if the single, greatest setback they had ever known or had was a bad haircut, how could she ever talk to them about anything that spawned past inconsequential troubles?

But wouldn't it be nice if she could talk to them about the bigger pictures, rather than the small details? The paper bounced off her arm and landed neatly on top of her desk, and Kagome snatched it up, greedily opening it for the rejoinder. This was clearly a sign from some higher immortal being, a proclamation that it was time she invested in a little more than petty faith in the people around her (The people in school, she corrected herself warily.) and to—

"Aw, I'm sorry you're having problems. It's about Hojo, isn't it."

Her heart sank when she read Eri's response, and just to make sure she was seeing right, she closed her eyes and opened them again to find that yes, her friend had written it. She hadn't ask what kind of problem, just plunged right in with a blind assumption that it was always about boys, boys, boys, and that it was automatically about Hojo; it wasn't even a question, that second part, just a false, prophetic statement that aimed too far and fell too short. Her vision clouded for a moment, as she read her friend's answer over and over, and she couldn't stop herself from whispering the one word that had always been attached to her friends, no matter what kind of best intentions they had intended, or what kind of well-meaning they had meant, or what kind of thoughts they had thought.

Trivial.

-

"So sorry, loves," the baseball coach had announced when everyone had arrived at the field. "But today's been cancelled, too."

"What?" one of the girls had voiced aloud. "What happened?"

"Oh yeah, about that," the coach had begun, sighing a little bit. "It turns out that the teachers actually have quite the strong feelings towards budget issues. The history department wanted some new books, as theirs were terribly outdated, and the finance teachers wanted new computers. Then there's the sports department – that's my husband and me, by the way -, and we wanted some new field equipment." The coach shook her head sadly. "Overall, it's positively one of the biggest debates we've had since the year seventy-nine and the carpeting issue over in the foreign language area."

"But there's a game this Saturday-!"

"I know, and I'm terribly sorry, loves," the woman had said, her hands clasped together apologetically and her words laced with an English accent. "We'll make it up as soon as possible. But for now, there won't be any practice until further announcements."

And that was how she found herself at the baseball field again. As soon as the coach had announced a hiatus in baseball practice, she had been the first to turn around and walk away amidst the frustrated murmurs. After school never made her feel any more comfortable than 'during school' or 'before school', and she didn't want to go home, either.

Kagome thought about meeting Souta at the soccer field, but he was old enough, and he was beginning to become aware of just how cool it was to have an older sister hanging around him while he was showing off to his friends the extent of his soccer skills. There was nowhere else to go, except the old field.

Throwing her bags onto the bench, she climbed up to the middle bleacher, sprawling herself across it. Her head hung back, and for a moment Kagome watched the clouds passing by above her, the faint wisps moving quickly and slowly at the same time (She was just an oxymoron lately, wasn't she?), and the warm, oncoming summer breeze hitting her face gently as the grass swayed side to side atop the hills.

It was unsettling, despite the nice atmosphere.

The note earlier today had become obsolete – she had picked up her pencil and scrawled down a message that apparently satisfied Eri (It shouldn't have.), and that was the end of that. She forgot what she wrote down, despite math class having ended only twenty minutes ago; no doubt it was along the lines of "Yeah, boy troubles", or "You said it", or most likely "Rough day. But I'm fine". Kagome was disappointed that the girl had made such a gross assumption, and even more when she left it at that. Why couldn't her friends be nosier in the right places? Prod a little further at the right time? Worry more when she wasn't acting like herself? Her vision clouded again, this time the sky mixing with the green shadows of the trees instead of the paper with her hand, and she closed her eyes, taking in deep, shallow breaths.

Was this some test, some ridiculously hard test that she had to pass in order to advance onto some next stage of her life? Was it like a game to karma or something, a button it pushes to see how far she could reach her limit? Because she was teetering on a cliff and swaying back and forth, half-wanting to fall off and half-wanting to stay—

"What the hell?"

Kagome opened her eyes to find Inuyasha looking at her, and not very happily either. "What the hell?" he said again, as if it was the only thing he was capable of saying, and she gave an ugly, sarcastic smile. "Nice to see you, too."

"Why are you here?" he demanded, ignoring her jab. His duffel bag hung over his shoulders as always, but he made no move to throw it towards one corner.

"It's not exclusive," she sniffed, looking away. Then, as an added thought, "And if you're so bent out of shape about it, baseball practice was cancelled again."

"I know. Why do you think I'm here?" Inuyasha always had this ability to twist everything, even the simplest and most neutral statements, into a demeaning, rhetorical question. It had always annoyed her way back, and it didn't fail to annoy her even now. "But the question is, why are you here?"

She sent him another dirty look. "Like I said before, it's not exclusive."

He stared at her for another minute or so, scrutinizing her body language (Did he mention that the damn woman could have an entire book devoted to her body expressions alone?) as she did the same, except not quite scrutinizing and not quite defiant and not quite as up to the challenge. She was not up to par with her usual fiery temper, as was yesterday, and he found it a little bit suspicious. Kagome was not the type to beat down and stay down – she was annoyingly resilient and perky, the opposite of him.

After a while, he turned his head away and dropped the bag by his feet. "Get out," he said, not very kindly and very much rudely.

Kagome scoffed loudly enough for him to hear. "Make me," she retorted, her eyes glaring. It made her feel slightly better to know that at the very least her friends were more considerate than this bag of dirt. How dare he say something so coarse to her! She didn't need this, especially not now, and that cliff was just ready to swallow her about now.

Inuyasha pivoted on his heels to lock horns with her. "Don't antagonize me," he growled. "It's bad enough that I have a game on Friday, and I'm stuck practicing by myself, and hell if you think you're going to sit on those benches again and mope and whine about whatever the hell it is." It was a harsh invective, and it made her all the more furious.

"I'm not moping, first of all, and you don't have to be so rude to me!" she spat back. "You're so paranoid, you know that? All I do is sit on the bench and mind my own business. I'm not even trying to edge onto the field that you're so obsessed about!"

"The bench is part of the field, so really, you're on it!"

"That is the most ridiculous logic I've ever heard!"

"And I don't care, because you get out now."

How was it possible that such a brusque, uncaring person existed? And lives within fifteen feet of her, too? Kagome took in a deep breath and closed her eyes to stop herself from answering. Inuyasha was only riling her up, and he was cheerfully succeeding, too. He was carrying her at his pace, and she didn't want to go there, especially when she was feeling unstable.

But closing her eyes didn't make him go away, and she heard him say callously, "Why don't you go and save us both the trouble of seeing each other's faces by hanging out with your friends or your mom or someone else you actually like."

Maybe it was his wording, or maybe it was the way no one seemed to give a damn about her problems, or maybe it was his skewered view labeling her in the same category as her friends, but either way, the words spilled out of his mouth with no intentions of hurting and ended up with the force of a bulldozer ready to crush her.

His sentence took away her breath in its ironic and ignorant glory, and Inuyasha knew something was wrong when he saw her eyes suddenly closed up and her mouth not opening to inveigh against him and her hands tremulously crushing the green fabric that was her skirt. One of the rarer voices in his head – Acute Perception or something like that – made an appearance before disappearing just as quickly, but it was all Inuyasha needed, that one moment for the alarm bells to start ringing and telling him that something was gravely different about her from yesterday.

A jarring discovery? Why, yes it was, actually.

"You don't decide where I go and what I do, and if I want to stay here, I will, whether you throw a temper tantrum or not," she bit out steely.

"How about I pull you out of the fuckin' field myself?" he snapped wittily.

Or that was how it was supposed to be, and maybe Inuyasha would have really said it, if he hadn't seen that brief look on her face. Because the truth was, it made him uncomfortable… really uncomfortable in that oh-my-God-you're-about-to-cry kind of way. And it was just the icing on the cake when guilt sank its claws into him, making him all the more susceptible to bend over backwards (I don't bend like that! he thought irritatingly) and let her get her way.

But not today, not when there was an important game coming up, and he needed all the practice he could get. It didn't matter if Hojo – and he only remembered the name because the kid was on the baseball team – broke up with her, and she was feeling lost and heartbroken, and it didn't matter if the situation was on the other side of the spectrum, and she was pregnant with the guy's baby. The point was that she was distracting him, and he needed to practice his swings and his throws and his sliding and his running and everything. With no baseball practice at school, he needed to work twice as hard, and absolutely nothing could be accomplished if Kagome was going to drill holes into his head about her broken social life, her broken dream, her broken whatever it was.

And just when he gathered up the confidence to really say what he wanted to say ("Why don't you haul your ass out of here and pull the emo shit somewhere else?"), the image of her clenched fingers around the hem of her skirt and her mouth puckering just a little bit and was it his imagination or had her eyes watered then, too? Tears or no tears, guilt was practically clawing off his arm and making him feel utterly terrible. It wasn't like he gave a damn about other people's feelings, because he really didn't; it was the thought of crying that terrified him, and even if he wasn't there to see it, his mind would still replay it, or try to imagine it, and then he'd never get any practice for sure.

So for the sake of his conscience and his conscious and his focus, Inuyasha gave a little huff and snatched the bat lying by his feet without a word. He was very much aware that she was watching him, and he wondered if she was secretly gloating, because it wouldn't surprise him. It made him all the more furious that she got her way. Again. If I fuckin' catch you here tomorrow—

He threw a ball into the air and swung the bat. Like last time, the baseball flew towards the fence, colliding fiercely against the wiring before dropping to the ground with a dull thud.

He really meant it this time.

-

Inuyasha exploded.

The prolonged meeting was causing quite a controversy, and for the third time baseball practice was cancelled. It pissed him off that no one else on the team was practicing for Friday's game, and so he had hauled all of his ten-fuckin'-pound equipment plus his backpack to the baseball field in a bad mood, and what did he find?

None other than Kagome sprawled across the damn middle bench with her damn eyes looking melancholy and her life looking so ridiculously damn pathetic.

"That's it!" he snarled angrily, stomping down the hill and flinging his equipment and backpack to the side without a care in the world. In a few strides he was beside her, his own hand enclosed over her wrist, and he gave a hearty yank that sent her tumbling off the bleacher.

"What the-!"

"You. Field. Out." He said simply, directly, and her eyes widened.

"Wha-"

"No, no!" Inuyasha interrupted her savagely, his eyes glittering. "Two days. I gave you two days to get your shit together so you can beat the hell out of here. I gave you two days for you to stop moping and whining about how sad you are, and don't you fuckin' tell me it's not moping because I practically embody moping! And what do you do? Not only do you do nothing and waste your time, but you're also wasting mine!" he seethed angrily. "You were supposed to fix whatever the hell it is that's bothering you so I can go back to practicing like normal, but all you like to do is sigh and cry-"

"I never did-"

"Oh, you never did, eh? Well, boo-hoo!" Inuyasha snapped. "No one likes a whiny, little kid, and you're just taking this too far. It's the third day already, and I am not going to let you stay here and ruin my concentration, so you had well better get up and go do something about it." He finished, his free hand curled into a fist and his shoulders tense and his breathing heavy. In essence, he looked like he was ready to kick the crap out of her.

Kagome looked up at him from the floor, her legs splayed out from beneath her – she was still stunned that he had pulled her three feet off the ground. "Don't you play 'Retard' with me!" he all but snapped, roughly jostling her arm and forcing her to her feet. "Fix your fuckin' problem, or go home!"

The word 'home' had its effect, and she snapped out of her stupor just in time to realize that Inuyasha had already started dragging her towards the green hills. "Hey!" Kagome exclaimed, pulling her arm out of his grip. She stumbled backwards slightly but maintained her balance. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" She sent him a nasty look for an effect.

"What am I doing?" he said incredulously, turning around. "Whaddaya mean, what the hell I'm doing? I'm kicking you out of my field so I can concentrate again!"

"Excuse me? This isn't your field-"

"Hm, I think you had trouble hearing me back there," he cut her off, his face mocking pleasantness and oozing sarcasm. "Let me say it again: get out." And with that, Inuyasha reached out and grabbed her arm, intending to drag her as far away as possible from his haven.

Of course, Kagome resisted and chose to dig her heels into the grass. "Shit!" she swore as her foot hit a pebble, but it didn't stop her from trying to pull her arm away from his grasp. To her surprise, she found that she couldn't. "Why don't you fuck off instead?"

"Maybe I will once you fix whatever crawled up your ass."

"Why the hell do you care, anyways? Why don't your just mind your own business like always?"

"Because I can't!" Inuyasha all but roared. He turned around, facing her with a furious expression.

What? Her mind raced at the implications of what he had just said, and why he had said it. Did that mean – does he – all the— There were too many, and her head suddenly felt a few pounds too light and airy, and she must have looked the way her insides were jumping around, because Inuyasha opened his mouth again. "Do you know how much your mood is affecting my game play?" he growled in a venomous tone, and she saw that he was really, really pissed. He leaned in closer, the veins in his neck standing out, and for the first time in three days, Kagome felt something besides confusion. "You come here while there's no baseball practice at school, and all you do is sulk."

Oh, so it's about his precious baseball session, she thought, and her mouth pulled into a scowl. "So it's all about you, huh?" she asked daringly, her chin jutted out. "How self-absorbed can you get? You're always thinking about yourself, and not enough about others."

Inuyasha choked. Incredible…! "Wow," he said, but he didn't mean it. "You really know how to play the card right, don't you? Hello, was there any form of thought process going on since Monday?"

"You're not the only one who has the right to feel less than happy sometimes, you know," she sneered.

"Well, at least I don't try to get attention," he sneered right back. "Did you ever think about the effect you're having on other people? You're sad and depressed. OK, the whole world fuckin' gets it." He dropped her hand as if it burned him, but it was really his eyes that were the ones smoldering. "But do you do anything about it? No! You just sit there and let the damn thing get out of hand. And meanwhile, some people are trying to go on with their lives and do their own things, and you're just really setting the mood for us to do that, aren't you?"

His words were hurtful, and she said nothing, only biting her lips and furrowing her eyebrows and refusing to look at him. She knew he was more than capable of hurting people's feelings, but this… this just went above and beyond the requirements. Something hitched at her throat, and her eyes began to cloud, meshing the grass and colors together again.

Inuyasha smiled pitilessly. "Who's the one thinking about himself now? Why don't you think about that first before you come crawling back here." And before she could answer, he had passed her coldly and was already at the base plate.

Her eyes stung, and her cheeks itched hotly, so much that she scratched at her neck several times. Her nails raked long, red lines, but that wasn't what made her wince – it was his words. Kagome was never one to lie to herself, and Inuyasha was never one who lied when it came to baseball. So-so what does it mean?

That she had just been a whining shell of herself the past few days? That she wanted to savor the negativity and the bitterness? That she wanted to feel shock and hurt and anger when she knew her mother might have found love again? That she wanted to keep bothering him at his practice time? That she wanted to pretend she was all right in front of her friends? That she wanted her life to fuck up in a matter of a few minutes?

"You're wrong," Kagome said, her voice cracking, and she saw Inuyasha stop and sigh with more than a touch of aggravation. He turned around, his eyes glowering and his mouth twisted. But whatever it was that was going to come out of his mouth died as he saw the first tear drip down her face.

"You-You say I only think about myself," Kagome started, her hands shaking by her sides as she valiantly fought the tears that wanted to come for so long. "You say that—" her hand wiped the tears away roughly. "But you don't mean it."

The sob escaped from her fierce clutch, and she bit her lip to calm herself down. Her fingernails dug into her palms, and she shook her head roughly, trying to clear the calamity that was howling again. "You wouldn't, not if you found your mom in bed with another man—"

(In that moment, Kagome was positively blown out of the water; never had she expected this. The impact of seeing her mother and some man was a hit to the stomach, and she felt a cold wave of... of something rapidly approaching before reaching out and crashing on top of her, blanketing and smothering her... her what? Her emotions? Her thoughts? Her breath? Her life?)

"—or-or if she told you that she loved him back—"

(And I love him and I love him and I love him and I love him so much—)

"—and all she did was work and let her family f-fall apart—"

(But with all the extra jobs running around, the woman almost had no time for her family. They weren't even one anymore, anyways. Everyone was off doing their own thing, with Souta meeting friends everyday and her going to school and baseball practice and their mom slaving over everyone else just to make ends more than just meet. She always insisted in providing the best for her children, and ideally, it was a very good cause. But that didn't mean she could just run off and leave her family in shatters; it was downright selfish to expect Kagome to piece them back together while Ayumi dozed the rest of her life away.)

"—and not even a goddamn year has passed since your grandfather died!" she screamed the last part out, and she bowled over, her fingers gripping and digging into her scalp as she tried to block out the echoes marching around and screaming deafeningly.

(The machines around him and the pasty, white skin and the blue-tinged lips and the failing heart monitor and the damned doctors who didn't save him and Grandpa's soft, warm hands and his cold, wrinkled skin and his life sucking away—)

She was coughing and crying and kneeling on the grass now, the breakdown shaking and rattling and knocking her windpipes and making her gasp and heave as the tears dripped and dropped to the ground in a rhythmic, one-two one-two fashion. It had to happen, it was bound to happen. Too much at once, and Kagome couldn't feel ashamed for breaking down in front of him because the layers of tough skin had peeled away and she was too raw right now and because he was the only one who had given a damn.

And as she was crying on the ground, her hands covering her wet face, Inuyasha was standing a few feet away from her, very much rooted to the spot and very much effectively panicking. Fuck fuck fuck fuck— He tried to think of some way to make the horrible crying stop, but he couldn't think of anything other than to stand there while the Girl Who Was Supposed to Be Strong and Tough broke down into little pieces.

It was so uncomfortable, those five, grueling minutes, and then all of a sudden, the tidal wave began to pull back, the catastrophe ebbing away slowly, and Inuyasha used that chance to stop her from starting again. "You're right," he said, careful to not sound angry or aggravated or sympathetic or anything. Neutral was the best way to go, in his opinion. "I don't understand how you feel."

She grimaced from behind her palms.

"That still doesn't mean you should let it eat you," Inuyasha continued warily, turning around and heading for the field once more. "But… don't you think it would solve everyone's problem if you said all this to your mom?" He sounded cool and under control… good. Best not let Kagome know that she had made him nervous and alarmed, or else nothing good would come out of it.

She inhaled sharply, sounding suspiciously unstable, and Inuyasha tensed up. OK, calm down, buddy. You can do this. If she does cry, just wait it out a little more, and then you can say the same—

"She wouldn't understand," Kagome interrupted his thoughts, and he almost died of relief. Thank God she's not a crybaby. "She said she did, but it was only to talk about Yamaguchi." She wasn't too careful to hide the disgust in her tone.

"Well, it's your choice," he called out, walking away from her scraped knees and tearstained face. "If you want to cry and do this all over again."

If you make me go through another one of those again, Higurashi, I swear to God-!

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