Sixteenth Chapter: The Stupid Conclusion
A/N: ok, so there's not really that much to say, except, for the few of you who are having trouble reviewing, that should probably stop happening after chapter 18. The reason its happening is because I deleted a few chapters (the ones that were random A/Ns because apparently that's illegal on / whatever). Anyway so after we get past chapter 18 it should all be back to normal. Sorry guys. (P.S. to Isisoftheunderground: thanks so much for bringing it to my attention, I was confused about it for a while too:). And thanks for the reminder! I luv my reviewers!) Ok anyway the other thing I have to say I Inuyasha isn't going to be all sentimental in this chapter. Only because I don't actually think that's they way he'd be right now. He will have at least one or two sentimental/soft moments in the fic, but not now, we've only jut got to the interesting part of the story. :D
Disclaimer: All the characters I owned are either dead or now irrelevant. However I still don't want them stolen. I like my dead/irrelevant characters, and I'll be absolutely heartbroken if you take them from me. Thank you :)
The Stupid ConclusionWhen she woke up she was cold. Comfortably cold… and she also had an acute pain blossoming in the back of her head. Groaning, she pushed herself up off the floor, her entire body protesting with a stiff ache. A smooth softness slid down her back, making her realize that she had been sleeping a clean, white cot, and the cold feeling had in fact just been a morning chill embracing her as the sheet fell. She winced slightly as she sat up on her knees, closing her eyes against the pounding pain in her head and the sore aching in her muscles. What had happened to her?
"Hey."
Kagome's body jumped a foot in the air, and she practically screamed when she heard the unexpected voice. Whipping around and forgetting about her developing migraine, she turned to see whom the voice had belonged to, and stared in shock at his golden eyes. Those same golden eyes…
"No way." She heard herself say faintly, her brain frantically trying to come up with and explanation, but finding none.
Inuyasha didn't respond. He seemed to be content with just staring at her, unblinking. "Morning." He said casually, as if something huge wasn't happening.
"Morning?" She echoed, currently in a state of numbed shock.
He smirked. "Yeah, 'morning'."
"I…" She said slowly, staring at him, numbed. Slowly memories of last night returned to her, disoriented and fuzzy, but returning nonetheless. She remembered the way his body had been pressing down on top of her, forcing her into the ground. The way he had yelled at her… the way it had felt… and gradually, it dawned on her what he had done the night before. "I don't believe it." She said, blinking once.
"What?" He asked, seemingly interested.
"You…" She said softly, unable to finish her sentence. She noticed the way his ears flicked forwards on the top his head, his expression showing that he was listening intently to her. "Last night…" She said, staring at him in awe. "You…"
"Yeah…" He encouraged her slowly, trying to prompt her to finish her sentence.
"You…" She struggled with her words, but somehow they had become caught inside her mouth. "You… you kidnapped me!" She cried, voice returning to her with unexpected suddenness on both their parts.
Inuyasha stared at her, slowly blinking twice before he scowled at her. "Kidnapped you!" He exclaimed, his annoyance and exasperation cracking through his voice. "I saved you!"
"Oh yeah right." Kagome retorted, her words flowing freely now. "And that's why you tried to poison us in our sleep last night!"
Inuyasha leaned forwards, bracing himself on his hands so as to get closer to her. "Why you crazy, insecure, over imaginative wench! How could you come up with a conclusion as stupid as that!"
"It's not stupid!" Kagome shot back, standing up suddenly, drawing herself up to her full height to stare down at him. "And I'm not crazy! You poisoned me with all that miasma and then you kidnapped me! You… you…" She was stammered, searching for an insult good enough to express her anger. "You dough head!" She screamed, mentally kicking herself. 'Oh yeah, Sayuri, good job; 'dough head'… that one ought to teach him.'
Inuyasha then abruptly ruined her dramatic effect by drawing himself up to his full height as well, proving to be at least a head and a half taller than her. "For the last time, I didn't try to kidnap you!"
"Oh yeah, then why did you destroy the castle!"
"I didn't do it, Naraku did it!"
"Why would Narakudestroy his own castle!"
"He didn't destroy it! He moved it, god damn it! He does it all the time!"
"He moved a castle!"
"Yes!"
"Now whose the crazy one!"
"Argh! Would you just listen to me for a second! You're so damned stubborn! I don't even know how I can stand you!"
"Then why did you kidnap me!" She demanded.
"I DIDN'T KIDNAP YOU!"
Kagome "humphed", glaring at him angrily, before abruptly turning on her heel and stomping toward the door, her fists clenched white at her sides. Her head was pounding, and she was almost too stiff to walk without falling over, but she wasn't about to let Inuyasha know that.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?" He called after her, his voice rising dangerously.
"I'm going home!" She said over her shoulder, reaching for the flap.
Suddenly he was standing next to her, moving with an impossible speed that made her breath catch in her throat. His hand reached out and caught her wrist to stop hers from reaching the straw-thatched flap. His golden eyes were incredibly intense. "You can't." He said softly.
"W-watch me…" She faltered on her words, hating herself for letting her voice waver. But he was so close…
"I told you, you can't." he said again, his voice, strangely enough, getting gentler. "I sealed the well."
Kagome frowned, "You what?" She asked, confused.
"I thought you were dead…" He said softly, getting closer and closer to her, she tried to shift her weight back, but she was paralyzed by those eyes again. "So I sealed it…" he finished, looking slightly nervous. "I'm… I'm sorry."
Kagome was shocked. "Sorry?" She echoed, blinking. Had he actually just apologized to her? And also, "What are you talking about? What well?" She asked, confusion obvious on her face.
Inuyasha blinked, his expression entirely changing as he looked at her. He backed away slowly, releasing her hand and letting it fall. "Oh… right." He said, looking at the floor. "I thought you meant…" Suddenly an odd smirk crossed over his face. But it wasn't like the one before, it was sad. "You know, with that fight we just had… it felt like we were back to the way we were before…" he said, still frowning at the floor. "I forgot that you…" He trailed off, his voice dying and leaving Kagome in silence. "Heh."
His fragments of broken sentences had her dangling in confusion…she tried to make sense of what he was saying, but couldn't. There was a good chance, then, that Inuyasha was crazy, she decided. And the last thing she needed was to be kidnapped by a crazy murderer at a time like this… so she bolted.
"What the – Hey! Kagome!"
Her heart lurched in her chest as she tore out of the hut. There it was, that name again… it hadn't left her alone. And that feeling always came back when she heard him calling it. That terrifying feeling. She ran from the house, stumbling a bit as she tripped out the doorframe, sore legs aching as she pushed the pain into the back of her mind.
'Got to get away…'
"Sango stop her!"
Kagome looked over her shoulder at Inuyasha's figure in the doorframe. He wasn't coming after her. That was strange… "oomph!" Kagome coughed as she slammed into something.
'Great…' She thought angrily to herself, her sore muscles screaming at her. 'I slammed into a tree while I was trying to run away… how much of a klutz can I be?'
But when the tree wrapped its arms around her and gripped her shoulders to keep her from getting away, she jumped in surprise. 'Or not…' It wasn't a tree, in fact, which would have made her feel a little bit better, if it hadn't turned out that the tree was actually the girl from earlier, the one with the hurt shoulder. And she was trapped again.
"Kagome." Sango said quickly, her grip on the younger girl tightening. "Before you-"
"Let me go!" Kagome demanded, cutting her off and trying to yank free of her. But just like Inuyasha, shoulder girl had a grip like a vice. And Kagome couldn't even come close to breaking it. She thought about punching the wounded shoulder, knowing that that would probably be her best chance at being able to escape. But her arms were pinned to her sides… couldn't she just get a break today?
Before she knew what was going on, Inuyasha was standing next to her again, his body dangerously close to her own. She continued to struggle against the girl, even though now there wasn't a point. If she broke free from her, Inuyasha would most likely just knock her over and pin her to the ground, or grab onto her hair and yank her or something of the sort. His strong hand clasped firmly over her shoulder, and in an instant she had stopped, something about his touch paralyzed her.
"Kagome." He said, his tone serious, as if he were calling her.
She didn't want to say anything. And even if she had… she wouldn't know what it was she was supposed to say. So she settled for the first thing that came to mind. "Don't call me that…" She said softly. "That's not my name."
His expression hardened momentarily and then the next second the anger was gone. "Whatever." He said off handedly. "If you promise not to run off again we'll let you go and tell you what's going on."
Sango raised an eyebrow, but Inuyasha wasn't looking.
"Promise not to run?" He asked. His voice serious.
Kagome sighed, with one last useless tug at Sango's hold her body slackened. "Fine." She said, defeated. "I promise not to run."
Inuyasha paused, staring at her intently before he nodded, his golden eyes moving up to Sango. "Let her go."
The Slayer looked hard at Inuyasha, telling him that she knew this wasn't a good idea. But he was deadly serious, and he wasn't giving her a choice. Sango rolled her eyes and sighed as she let go of Kagome's shoulders, knowing that he was asking for it by letting her go.
"Alright," Inuyasha said, his voice turning to a lets-get-down-to-business tone. Meanwhile Sango was counting down the seconds in her head.
"Now this is what's really going on here. Firstly, I didn't try to kidnap you or poison you, got that?" The hanyou asked, unaware of the obvious. "And secondly - oof!"
Kagome had shoved him roughly with her hands and bolted once again, this time headed at a dead run for the forest, her movements slightly clumsy from her sore muscles, her soft raven hair flying out behind her as she took off. She was lost within the foliage in seconds.
Inuyasha stood staring after her, thunderstruck, he frowned, his mouth gaping, his golden eyes blinking. Sango rolled her eyes. Only Inuyasha couldn't have seen that coming.
"Sh-she ran from me!" Inuyasha finally blurted out, his tone somewhere between hurt shock and rage. "She just ran from me!"
"Of course she ran from you." Sango said, whistling for Kilala.
"But she said she wouldn't!" Inuyasha insisted, still unable to get over it. "She promised me she wouldn't!"
Kilala scampered up to Sango from seemingly nowhere, and instantly transformed, making Sango shy away at the sudden burst of flame. "Well," The slayer said, mounting the fire-cat with one easy swinging motion. "She isn't our Kagome anymore." She said matter-of-factly. "We can't count on her to keep the promises she makes to us."
"She doesn't trust me!" Inuyasha said, still bewildered and furious. "I don't believe it! She's always trusted me!"
Sango rolled her eyes. "I'll search from the air, you go into the forest, ok?"
"She ran from me!"
With a tired sigh Sango dug her heels into Kilala's sides, and within moments they were soaring up into the air, circling carefully over patches of the forest at a time. Sango watched the endless sea of green for some sort movement, some distant sign of a running girl… but saw none. "Come on, Kagome," she said softly to herself, "where are you…"
Where was she? She hadn't a clue. And she didn't much care. All she could think about was running. All she could feel was the fear that a certain silver-haired someone was coming up behind her, about ready to grab her and tackle her to the ground. She tore recklessly through the underbrush, blind to direction, deaf to her heavy breathing and not caring what she hit or where she stepped.
The thorns and thick piles of underbrush had already ripped off large patches of her dress, clinging greedily to its soft silken fabric as she passed over them and tearing them from the hem. It had slowed her down, but it wasn't going to stop her.
Her sore muscles jolted as she tripped over a rock and started to slide down a little hill, her body half slamming into a tree trunk before she shoved herself off and continued to run as fast as she could through the forest. "Do I even know, where the heck I'm going?" She breathed, only half listening to herself as her hair caught in a low branch. She jerked her head forwards as she continued to run, tearing it free from the tangle of gnarled twigs and leaves. The pain was numbed by her pounding fear. The last time she had been running like this was… 'Tetsuya.' Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked them away rapidly. She couldn't think about that now… she couldn't think about anything now, except running. So she ran. She ran for about twenty minutes straight, until she twisted her ankle in a hidden ditch, and then finally she was forced to stop.
"No, no, no, no, no, no…" The dishelved miko said softly to herself, sitting up and examining the swelling flesh, a purple bruise was already starting to form. "This is not good… This is so not good…" She said, looking for a place to hide. No doubt Inuyasha and the shoulder girl would come looking for her soon. And when they did, she needed to be hidden. But where was she supposed to hide? She was in a clearing, and there was nothing around her to shield her. What was with her luck today? Had it been like this her entire life? Or was it just recently that everything had turned so rotten around her?
She looked frantically at her surroundings, her mind racing and panicky. Rocks, trees, puddles, pine cones. Nothing she could use. Great, she was as good as dead now, and all because of a stupid twisted ankle.
And then she saw it. Perfect. A fallen oak tree lying a couple of yards away, rotten and molding, long patches of lichen and moss growing over the damp, darkened wood. It was so rotten that had been hollowed out, though she didn't know by what. But the point of it all was the fact the hole in the trunk looked just big enough for her to squeeze into if she made her body as small as she possibly could. It was going to be a very tight fit, but if it meant staying alive…
She crawled over to a nearby grove and picked up a large fallen branch from a pine tree. The needles were thick and bushy, and would serve as a good cover-up, without blinding her to the outside world. Looking back at the hollow tree trunk she roughly judged the size. It looked like the branch and needles would be large enough to cover the hole… but it wouldn't be perfect. If they were really looking for her they'd still be able to find her, not that she had much of a choice.
"Damn, it!" Inuyasha cursed as he ran through the forest. "I can't believe she ran from me!" He was still replaying the scene in his mind. The shock of watching her dive into the forest, without even a glance over her shoulder to look back at him was still fresh in his mind. And it was still shockingly enraging for him, mainly for two different reasons: the first being that he had actually allowed himself to fall for it, and the second being that she had actually gone against her word to him.
"She isn't our Kagome anymore. We can't count on her to keep the promises she makes to us."
But she was his Kagome. He knew she was. She still acted like Kagome, she looked just like Kagome, smelled like Kagome, she was Kagome damn it! The only difference in her was that now she seemed to hate him. Inuyasha clenched his jaw tightly as he felt his insides begin to twist around into knots.
It hurt… to know that she didn't trust him anymore… to realize that she didn't remember the way that she felt about him… or the way he had felt about her. It hurt more than any physical blow he had ever suffered from anyone… but he wasn't about admit that. Especially not to himself. He'd be damned if he ever let anyone know that…
He stopped suddenly, sniffing the air delicately. Her scent ended here. He looked around, carefully, golden eyes narrowed and focused. But there was no sign of her. So he hit the ground, looking for tracks. They were easy enough to find, the soil was still damp and soft from the rain. She had fallen here… and then began crawling. But thenhe tracks ended.
He felt himself begin to panic. Ended? How could they just end? What the hell did that mean! Was she hurt? Did something happen to her? What if she was… he growled to himself, willing his mind to focus. The tracks ended there. But… there was something else funny going on. There was a trail of disturbed earth… it almost looked like something had been dragged… to that tree. Inuyasha stood up, regarding the tree suspiciously. It looked just like any ordinary, fallen tree would look, but the pine tree branch placed in front of it was almost too coincidental to be a coincidence. Inuyasha frowned at it. For a moment he considered just picking up the branch and throwing it aside, but… it probably wasn't worth it. And there were plenty of other places she could have gone…
"Feh."
A/N: Next one should be coming up tomorrow, or maybe even tonight if we're lucky. review please!