Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha nor do I, in any material form, profit from posting fan fiction containing its themes and characters. Please do not sue.

Author's Note: I wrote this in a three hour sitting after debating for a week how to execute it. Sometimes, I hate that.

I don't have much to say about this chapter. I'm sorry that Kagome hasn't had much to do but cry and pass out as of yet, and we're six chapters into the story, but character progression takes time. Pretty soon, Kagome will really get on the ball. Maybe the next chapter? Who knows? Not me!

Translations:

Baka- stupid, idiot

Hai- yes

Ee- feminine 'yes', generally a term used among young ladies and interchangeable with 'un'.

Chapter 6, Lullaby

Inuyasha!

An electric shock coursed through me. The heel of my hand flew into the air and struck Inuyasha's cheekbone. The feeling of the firm bone against my wrist sent shivers up my spine. Inuyasha's hold on my neck did not slacken. I grabbed a tendril of his silvery mane and tugged with all my might. His jaw dropped, but the insanity in his eyes did not abate.

Insane! Inuyasha was literally out of his mind!

My arm arched over my head and clawed desperately for a solid object. I was running out of air, and I was running out of time. If I didn't find a way to restore Inuyasha to his senses immediately, he was going to kill me! The realization was there, and yet I refused to acknowledge it. It was the fuel for my actions, but I wouldn't let the terror of that statement's implication reach my head just yet. I had to keep my head clear; my thinking had to be sharp. All Miroku's fear training was finally becoming useful.

'Think—respond,' his smooth voice called from the shadows that were forming around my vision. 'Don't feel—react.'

I was reacting. My hand closed around a solid object—a flashlight that had been placed on the windowsill. I didn't feel. I executed a cold, completely heartless thought. I clubbed Inuyasha across the head. He fell away.

Air! I could take it in, taste it. I sucked it in greedily, filling my lungs in senseless disregard to the needs of the rest of the planet. There was a gaping hole in the Ozone layer, but what did I care? For now, there was only the simplest of life functions. Breathe in, breathe out, and quickly, now, more air! More air!

I choked; I had taken too much.

The coughing seemed to alert me to the situation. I sought my attacker. Inuyasha was sprawled across the floor. A thick, red stream of blood was trickling down his forehead, discoloring the silver hair. His golden eyes were half-open and opaque. His breathing was irregular.

"Inuyasha?"

He twitched, but could not seem to manage to make a more significant response to my plea. I crept out of the bed and slid cautiously to the floor. My neck was aching and my throat felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. My tongue was swollen in my head. My head throbbed with a dull yet intense rhythm. There was a sticky, foul taste in my mouth. I was shaking all over.

Don't feel—react!

"Inuyasha? Are you awake?"

There seemed to be a dim response to my voice in the left side of his body.

"If you can hear me, blink."

His left hand shot out. The claws there seared my collarbone and a thin layer of blood spurted forth. I rocked back and began to back away on my hands, not daring to turn my back on him.

"Get back here, Kikyo," he growled in an unearthly voice. I spun around and crawled frantically for the bedroom door. Inuyasha's hand caught my ankle, stopping my progress. "We're not finished talking yet."

"Let go, Inuyasha!" I wailed desperately. "Let go, let go!" I kicked out. My foot connected with his face. He did not release me. I kicked again. His cheek was swollen and blood was dripping from his lip, but he did not let go. Stay calm, I kept telling myself. Stay calm and it will pass. I forced down the panic.

That was when Inuyasha started laughing.

It was maniacal, and fought its way out of his throat in straggled, garbled bursts that bore no semblance to any laughter I had previously heard. With the laughter, a fresh trickle of blood found its way onto his chin. "You thought I'd die, didn't you, Kikyo? You thought I was gone that night. I saw it in your eyes; you knew I was finished."

"I-Inuyasha!" I pleaded. "Stop! You're hurting yourself! Let me go, I'll go get Sango. I promise, I'll—"

"URSAI!" he screeched. "You stupid, stupid girl. All you can do is talk!"

I responded. With all my might, I planted a kick on his collarbone. He shrank back immediately and I was free. I ran for the door. I didn't bother with shoes or clothing—I had to get to Sango fast. Inuyasha was completely out of his mind! I slipped a little as the ankle Inuyasha had held contacted the floor, but a hall table saved me. I reached the front door and closed my hands around the doorknob.

The hall table that had prevented my fall smashed into the door and shattered into a million tiny splinters. I gasped. Shielding my eyes, I fell back onto the smooth tile of the entrance area. My tailbone protested loudly as I hit the unyielding floor. With laborious pains, I dragged myself to my feet.

Inuyasha's hands grabbed my shoulders and turned me around forcibly. His head wound was bleeding freely, but at least his mouth was no longer leaking the vital fluid. I didn't dare meet his eyes. I knew that I'd find murder in them. I didn't want to see it. I refused to see it!

With a cry, I brought my right around to break Inuyasha's hold and leapt away from him. He pursued at once. I blocked a punch targeted at my head, but the other hand hooked into my hip and threw me off-balance. I fell onto the coach and quickly rolled away.

What was going on? What was happening? Why was Inuyasha acting like this? I had to figure it out soon, or we'd both soon be—No. I refused to think about it. I caught Inuyasha's arm and slid through an opening in his stance to gain his back. If I could hit a pressure point, I had a chance at knocking him out.

Inuyasha was too fast for me, though. He twisted and grabbed me around the waist. With almost dancer-like grace, he lifted me over his head and threw back onto the coach.

"Stop!" I managed before he descended upon me.

Despite my struggling, his hands grappled their way across my shoulders and found my throat. I screamed once and then he was strangling me, stealing my life again. Was this deliberate?

I kicked him in the stomach. His hold slackened, and I pushed his hands away. He slumped against me, momentarily stunned. His head against my shoulder, his warm, blood-scented breath eased along my neck. Still securing his hands with one of mine, my stream of consciousness broke off into a thousand different directions. It was impossible to win in a physical fight; Inuyasha was insurmountable in comparison. His strength was so much more than I had previously considered. He was on top of me now, and I could feel his weight pushing me back down into the cushions of the coach. The muscles of his neck and back worked feverishly against my chest, working to keep the adrenaline rushing, to keep him from passing out. There was only one way I could reach him now.

With conscious effort, in just the way Miroku had instructed me, I released the tap on my emotions and left them to run wild. The subconscious emotional stress of the situation caught up with me all in one moment, and I began to sob uncontrollably. I was wailing, the tears sliding effortlessly down my face.

Inuyasha reacted at once. His breathing slowed, and the tension in his body eased. He did not lift his head, but his muscles no longer struggled against me. Very softly, his voice slid forth from his sticky, bloodstained lips. "Girl?"

"H-hai?" I stammered.

"What-what-?" He couldn't finish the thought.

"You're killing yourself, Inuyasha. You're killing yourself!" I wailed, trying to push him away, as though his was some disease to be caught through proximity. He yielded to my touch, and I slid out from underneath him as icily as I could manage. His eyes were still blank, unrecognizing.

"What the fuck is your problem, baka? Baka!" I shouted. The tears didn't stop. They were racing down my cheeks, hot and humiliating. I pushed them away with the back of my hand. "You were trying to kill me! Screaming at me and calling me Kikyo and—baka! Baka! Baka!" I began to punch him, randomly striking and hitting him repeatedly. It was a terrible, nonsensical thing to do, but I wasn't thinking. I was done thinking. Now, I was just feeling. The punches were like fleas gnawing at an elephant's side, but they contained all my frustration, fear, anger, hate, love, compassion, everything. "Baka!"

Inuyasha caught my hands. "Call Sango," he said in a wispy, ethereal voice.

I nodded and got up to find the phone. The time for my emotional outburst would have to come later—right now Inuyasha's life was on the line.

Inuyasha's hand closed around my wrist. I looked down at him in surprise. It was impossible to feel afraid; Inuyasha could no longer summon the strength to fight me. All that unconquerable strength had fled, deserting him and leaving him as empty and weak as a dried cornhusk. "Are you crying?" he wheezed.

"No," I lied.

"I'm sorry," he whispered just before he closed his eyes.

…

"It was cocaine," Sango was saying. I turned away from the window and smiled politely in order to pretend that I was listening.

"Hmm?"

"Cocaine," Sango repeated. She crossed the office to her desk and laid her bloodstained apron across the back of her chair. Gingerly, she sat down and began taking down abstract numerical data from the session she had just had with Inuyasha. "The crash aspect, most specifically."

I didn't know what to say. I stared at Sango for several long minutes. She stared back. Finally, Sango sighed and tapped the edges of her paperwork against the table.

"Inuyasha is not a coke addict, Kagome-chan," Sango said bluntly. "He does not have a past of recreational drug use. Unfortunately, he is an easy target for the negative side effects of coke. As you can easily imagine, Inuyasha's social life is far from perfect. He's been betrayed countless times, he has no real connections, he's a loner, and his moral climate is in turmoil."

I looked away. I didn't want to hear anymore. He was, after all, the man that I had married.

Sango seemed to sympathize with my reaction. She stood up and came around her desk. Resting against the edge of the desk, she turned my face with her index finger and smiled. "There's a positive side here: Inuyasha did not take that cocaine himself."

"He was attacked?" I asked.

Sango nodded.

"But who would do that?" Well, that was easy enough to answer. The Government wouldn't hesitate to take out an old enemy. But why now? Why, after all this time, were they targeting Inuyasha? I gasped; a sudden, chilling thought had occurred to me. "Is it because of me?"

Sango seemed surprised by my question. She grabbed my hands and crouched before my chair so that we were at eye-level. "No!" she protested. "Kagome-chan, you can't blame yourself."

I had no energy to argue. I just nodded. "So, do we know who did this to Inuyasha?"

Sango straightened up. Her expression had suddenly become quite cold. "That's what Miroku is working on right now." She placed her paperwork in a tray on top of her desk. I couldn't help but feel slightly scathed by her reaction to my question. "Inuyasha's sleeping in the next room, if you want to see him."

I managed some sort of weak response and slipped through the door. We were in one of the main wings of the hospital, not the basement. It was not necessary to hide a mainstream drug abuse case from the public—the MIS Hospital saw thousands of such cases per week. Sango still handled all the therapy herself, and kept Inuyasha's files on her person at all times, but if she began spending too much time in the basement, people would worry.

The staggering smell of antiseptics washed over me. A nurse pushed past, mumbled an excuse, and kept rushing forward. The main wings of the hospital terrified me. White and blue—everything was shiny tile and whitewashed walls. Flowers decorated every available surface in cheerful irony to the sorts of things that went on these places. An old woman sat in the nearby rest area, cooling considering a daisy. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing. I wondered whom she was visiting. I was suddenly filled with the overwhelming need to talk to her, to confide in her, to have someone, anyone with whom I could talk!

A group of doctors pushed their way through the length of flooring that separated us, and when I looked again, the old lady was gone. It felt as though a cavernous hole just opened in the pit of my stomach.

I turned away and pushed open the door to Inuyasha's room.

Inuyasha was lying on his back, hooked up to an IV. His life functions were being displayed all over, advertised like some product: come see the living, breathing cocaine container! Leadenly, I walked to his bedside.

"Inuyasha?" I used the same voice my mother had used to open my father's eyes on the hospital bed. It never really woke him up—he was beyond full consciousness, but it was enough to get my father to look into our faces and know us. If he saw us, he would know that we were there. Sometimes, my mother had said, that was all it took.

Inuyasha opened his eyes. The beautiful golden orbs were glassy and filled with a fog, but I could see that he knew me. I smiled, just like my mother would smile into my father's face.

"Hello, Inuyasha," I whispered.

I began to cry. These tears were different from the ones I had shed just hours before. Those tears had been born of desperation and pain. These tears were harsh, determined…cleansing. I wept and wept. The tears rolled down my cheeks. My sobs were shallow and caused my throat to ache even more. I fingered the scarf that I wore around my neck to hide the bruises.

I wanted Inuyasha to wake up from whatever strange limbo-land he had escaped to. I wanted him to tell me why he had tried to kill me. I wanted to know that he hadn't been replaced by a demon…or that he hadn't been that demon the whole time.

Hanyou.

The word echoed metallically though my head. Hanyou were half-youkai, I knew, but half monster? If he was really a hanyou, wasn't half of him human as well? Was he human at all? Had I given my life over to a monster in order to save my family from the devil himself? I didn't understand what was going on. I was so confused and shaken and scared. I hadn't cried that much since my father died on the hospital bed, his life signs slowly arching away into oblivion while the doctors scrambled about in chaotic waves.

I wanted my father at that moment, as I sat sobbing in my husband's hospital room. I wanted to feel his strong, comforting arms around me. I wanted to crawl into his lap and hear his warm, rich voice recite the stories of Momotaro, the Tortoise and the Hare, and so on. I wanted to see my mother smiling at him, kissing his cheekbone. I wanted to watch Souta and him play ball together. I wanted my grandfather to be arguing with him over taxes. Instead, I was sitting in a hospital room sobbing. My hanyou husband had just made an attempt on my life.

Those tears entered into their own form of eternity.

…

Eventually, the beautiful afternoon died away into the brilliant pallet of sunset. Sango walked quietly into the room and placed a hand on my shoulder. "It's good, ne, Kagome-chan?"

I looked at Inuyasha's face. He was sleeping peacefully. None of the signs of a murderer were in that face. That face was serene, that face was childlike. I remembered the way that face had been twisted just that morning, before the dawn broke. I remembered the face, and I carved it into my memory so that I wouldn't lose it. Even if he had been under the influence of the drugs, that face had been a part of Inuyasha. That face, pain-stricken, maddened, and venomous though it was, was as much a part of Inuyasha as the peaceful face he now wore. And so I made a promise to myself, as I sat there in the dying light of the sterile hospital room: I promised myself that I would be the pathway to this peaceful side of Inuyasha, this calm and tranquil eye in a raging storm.

And I made one more promise, somewhere deep inside where I was only half-conscious of it: I promised that I would discover the truth about Kikyo.

"Ee, Sango-chan," I answered. "It is good."

- Ichimu