Disclaimer: NO I do not own Inuyasha. That awesome privilege belongs to Romiko Takahashi. Thank you!

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Chapter 9: The Difference

"How can you stand this?" Kagome asid throwing her thigns under her bed. There were tears in her eyes, not from saddness, but from pure, white hot anger. No one had even tried to treat Sango. The guards had laughed! LAUGHED! Like it was nothing.

"Kagome, look I know how you feel." Inuyasha said in a softer voice than she had everh eard him use. "I remember the first time I saw some one come back from solitary-"

"No one helped her!" Kagome turned to him. Her cheeks were red in fury and her tears were burning wet paths down her face. Her fists were clenched and her entire frame was shaking. "We were trying to stop her bleednig with the paper under our desks! Animals headed for the slaughter house get treated better!"

"What choice do we have?" Inuyasha asked. For once his cocky grin was gone and in it's place was a grimace of understanding, understanding her pain.

"Anything!" Kagome cried as her vision blurred.

"Look, the guards didn't find our medicine, we'll patch her up." he placed his hands on her shoulders.

"We have medicine?" She asked as her fury faded leaving only an immense sea of sadness.

Inuyasha smirked but it seemed slightly forced. "It's not always used as medicine but yeah, we have some stuff."

Kagome lowered her head as her tears started falling harder.

"Hey, she's going to be okay." Inuyasha consoled her as he pulled her into his arms. "Really, for coming out of solitary she looked great. I've seen people come out with half a finger missing."

"Why is this cheering me up?" Kagome hiccuped as she hugged him back as if she were afraid this small comfort would be snatched away from her. "Just what happens down there?"

He hesitated.

"It's bad isn't it?" she asked looking up at his face.

"You don't need to know." he said putting her head back against his chest. "We institute a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy when it comes to solitary. Truth is, none of us want to know and I would rather you never find out."

She shook her head as her tears, despite her best efforts, continued to flow. "How do you live through this, Inuyasha? How? Tell me because I don't think I can survive here much longer." Sad. In a mere week they had broken her. She had been so sure she could last longer.

"Pretend." Inuyasha said immediatly and he winked.

"Pretend? What do you mean?"

He picked her up and sat her down on her bed then sat next to her. "It's how we live. Pretend to do as they tell you. It's all just make believe. We're not really doing it, we're pretending."

"That's it?" Kagome asked wondering if that could help.

"It will be harder because of their nightly potrols but we'll pretend. Don't worry, it will be over before you know it."

So Kagome pretended. On Saturday she pretended to listen to the guards taunts and jeers while she broke up rock with a pick-ax to be used in gravel. On Monday she pretended to be cowed with her head down as Satan told them of his 'dissappointment' with them. She pretended to pay attention in class. She pretended to hear the guards orders and insults. She pretended to sleep when they patrolled the corridors. Things became quiet in Hell while she pretended that it wasn't really happening.

A few weaks of brainless work and pretending later she finally realized.

"Ayame?" she turned to her friend at lunch while Inuyasha and Kouga were launching pieces of 'fried potatoes' into Miroku's open mouth. Sango was watching, cheering each boy on in turn.

These last few weeks Kagome had been quiet at lunch, Inuyasha had said to her that it was a normal phase. When it was over she would be happy again, or as happy as she could be here.

But something had been tormenting her by dancing at the back of her mind, just out of her reach. It was bugging her, taunting her like the guards yet she had been unable to figure it out until she saw Inuyasha miss his shot and Miroku caught the potato in his hand before shoving it into his mouth and they pretended like he had actually made it.

"What is it?" Ayame asked, smiling.

"What's the difference between pretending to obay and actually obaying?" Kagome asked staring into space.

"Uh...Well, when you're pretending you're not actually doing it, are you? Why?" Ayame looked at her but Kagome didn't respond.

She didn't talk again though. Neither did she speak through their sex ed teachers lecture, something that no one slept through so they could laugh, jeer, and make suggest remarks about.

Instead of milling about in the yard with th others after class, she went right to the dorms and into her room.

She sat on her cot and stared at the opposite wall.

She wasn't alone long. Inuyasha had seen her leave and had followed, worried about her silence these last few weeks.

"Kagome, what's wrong?" he asked sitting on his own cot, right in her line of sight.

"It's the same." she said quietly.

"What?" Inuyasha said. Not because he couldn't hear her but because he didn't understand.

"It's the same, Inuyasha." she said a bit louder as she looked him in the eye. "There is no difference between pretending to obay and actually obaying.

"Yes, there is." he protested. "When you pretend you're not actually doing it."

"But we are." she said as tears welled up in her eyes. She wasn't exactly sure why. "Inuyasha, we're still being dragged to the cages for doing nothing wrong, still being put in the cells for the slightest thing, still doing exactly as we're told."

"Kagome-"

"No! This isn't pretending not to obay! We're still doing exactly what they want us to."

"Kagome!"

"Pretend all we want but we're still under their control doing exactly what they want and giving them the same, very real, sense of satisfaction."

"We have no choice!" Inuyasha inurrupted. Kagome looked at him, truly looked at him, and saw, for the first time, that same hopeless, crushed expression she had seen so often in everyone else's face. "You're right. We're not pretending to obay. We're pretending to pretend. It's the only way we can survive! We all know it we just don't think about it. If we do...We can't survive without that pretense."

Kagome shook her head. "I can't do that. I can't not think about it. I know it's a lie Inuyasha. I'm still obaying. Maybe you can fool yourselves but I can't."

"What do you think you can do?" Inuyasha demanded. "You think you're the first person to try and escape? The others have all died! Accidents, maybe even solitary, but they all die! There's nothing you can do!"

"Then I'll die." Kagome said calm and determined. "But I refuse to another broken spirit in their collection."

Inuyasha stared at her and shook his head. "I can't help you kill yourself."

"I don't need you to. I can do bad all by myself." she got up and left the room.

Inuaysha stood there and listened to her footsteps fade down the hall. One part of him wanted to help, another part didn't want to cause trouble. Trouble only ended in pain around here.

Kagome stormed down the steps, adrenaline pouring through her viens and she felt more alive than she had in weeks.

The guards were watching the others as they milled around talking or playing with their one beaten and battered soccerball.

It was as if she had been walking around the last few weeks with morphine in her system, not really feeling or noticing anything.

Now, as she planned up great, and slightly petty, revenge schemes, she felt like herself again. Sure she wasn't goody-two-shoes Kagome who was after pleasing everyone, but at least she was herself and not someone cowed by those guards.

She looked at them, surrrounding the kids looking at them with smirked or bored faced.

Then she saw Helga.

She was one of the ones smirking and Kagome couldn't stand it.

She bent down and scooped up some nice, muddy dirt and smirked herself.

Sure it was petty but it was revenge and it was going to tell them plain and clear that she wasn't taking it anymore.

She walked right up to Helga and she felt powerful.

Helga watched her aproach unconcerned, after all Kagome had been broken these last few weeks just like all the others.

Kagome took great pleasure in reaching up as Helga opened her mouth to speak and shoving a nice warm clump of dirt into her overly large mouth.

"Get that ugly ass look off your face." Kagome said feeling so free.

She felt free even as two guards grabbed her, even as they shoved her into an empty cell. She hadn't struggled and even lay down on the ground in the cell feeling victorious. The cells had no beds but stone had never felt so comfortable.

She had wiped that damn smug smirk off of Helga's face and that was all that mattered.

She slept that night smiling.