Disclaimer: Ah, thus……… I do not own Inuyasha. I apologize for all the hearts that small fact breaks, but I do not. Gomen.
Author's Notes: This story MAY NOT be as good as you all think it will, but I'm going to try. I'm new to Inuyasha, and I defiantly have no PLAN for how to continue the story, but I will try anyway, okay? Somehow, someway, I'll squeeze time in to work on this fic and come up with a real plot. I have a very vague idea, but it's totally new to me. OH! And those of you who are reading this, you may want to read 'PROTECTION IN THE ARROW' to understand what's going on. It's only a one-shot, but I'll summarize it here if you don't feel like reading it: Inuyasha and company were fighting Naraku, and to put it plainly, getting their butts kicked. Kagome had to shoot Naraku with an arrow, and in the process, she purified the jewel, and both her and Naraku disintegrated.
Angel in the Abyss
Prologue- Awakening
Inuyasha shifted once more upon his perch he had settled into within a tree directly outside of Kaede's hut. A scowl marred his otherwise attractive features as he glared at a passing cloud. He'd never noticed how quickly things had changed after the destruction of Naraku. Most of the people had moved on with their lives and stopped quivering in unquenchable fear of a demon uprising. Calm had once again set upon the villages surrounding Inuyasha's Forest.
But it wasn't that way for all.
Inuyasha's mind was still playing in the past. His anger grew from frustration and a feeling of weakness he loathed. Kagome was gone. Nobody else seemed to notice or care like they had when she had first arrived. It angered him to see how quickly loyalty could be transferred from one person to the next without a passing thought, but that wasn't what angered him the most.
The fact that haunted him out of sleep for the past three and a half weeks was how he had failed to protect Kagome. He still had to go back to Kagome's era and tell her family she was dead. Inuyasha had a steel exterior, but that didn't mean his heart couldn't bleed. The thought of watching the expression upon Souta's face change from admiration to hatred, or the look of hopelessness within Kagome's mother eyes, and the worst off, the banishing words of her grandfather, tore away at him slowly. He didn't want to break their hearts because he had failed to do as he had promised to so many times before.
So many people had been depending on him to keep Kagome alive, to save Japan with the help of her, a little runt kitsune, fire cat demon, demon exterminator, and a hentai monk. Inuyasha knew he possessed a strength that humans did not, but in the end, it hadn't been enough to perform the only task he had promised himself to do. Kagome was gone, she was dead, and it was his fault.
"Feh." Inuyasha grumbled, letting his leg dangle from the tree branch he was lounging upon.
Inside, the swirls of emotions and conflicting memories were bothering him. Something about the entire occurrence just didn't add up, something wasn't right about how it had occurred. Naraku hadn't tried to kill Kagome. The demons he sent after her when she had darted off toward her bow and arrows were simply a diversion to frighten her, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to dodge them all. If Naraku had truly been trying to kill her, she would have never reached her bow.
The bodies had never turned up. Kagome was lost without a body to bury, and Naraku hadn't even left his annoying baboon pelt behind. In the time between Kagome's arrow hitting Naraku in the skull and the clearing of the fog, they had just disappeared. The arrow Kagome has used, her bow, and the jewel were the only objects left amongst the rubble in the aftermath of Kagome's attack. What really bothered Inuyasha was the lack of a scent in the area of the two craters created within the battle. He hadn't been able to pick up Kagome's smell, and the demon scent of Naraku as nowhere near where he had last stood.
Inuyasha had pondered all the possibilities concerning that, but nothing was logical to the conditions. Despite his immense injuries, he had attempted to search the surrounding wooded area and castle for any sign of Naraku or Kagome, but had ended up collapsing and coming back to Sango and Miroku empty handed. Failure had never been an option for Inuyasha, and despite the fact that they had the jewel back, Kikyo was finally at rest, and Naraku was gone, he still felt like he hadn't completed his mission. Without having Kagome returning with them, all the trials they experienced seem to be for naught.
And that bothered him more than anything else did.
There had been many things Inuyasha pondered to get Kagome back. The first was for him to forget becoming a complete demon and wishing for Kagome to come back. Only one thing stopped him in that, and that was the fear that struck him with the thought. What if she came back completely different, just like Kikyo had? He didn't want Kagome to go through the pain of living in a world she wasn't supposed to like Kikyo had. With all his power, he didn't want Kagome to feel the bitter hatred and anger Kikyo had felt before she finally descended back into the afterlife. There was absolutely no denying the fever with which he wanted to see Kagome again, but if it was going to be purely for his own advantage and would only destroy Kagome in the end, he wasn't going to risk it.
At the moment, his quest was to figure out how to tell Kagome's family she was gone. He knew they were probably very suspicious by now, since she had not returned in so long. It was times like these that he hated the fact that he was the only one who was capable of climbing through the well and landing in her era. If she had still been alive, he wouldn't have to worry over all these trivial things.
But she wasn't. She was dead.
Inuyasha growled before he stood up and jumped out of his lounging tree. He padded with an irritated gait back toward Kaede's hut, which was housing the still healing Sango and Miroku. The brooding had left him rather irritated and furious, so he decided it was time to stop his thoughts for the day.
Her eyes opened slowly, blinking with confusion. Pain pulsated within her skull, causing her to draw a hand up toward her forehead. Everything in her mind was blurry as she tried to remember were she was, why she was there, and what she had been doing. The silent sounds of crickets and wind comforted her enough until she could force herself to sit up and take in her surroundings.
Ebony hair fell over her shoulders, all of it caked with dirt, twigs and leaves, tainting its normally pristine beauty. Deep chocolate eyes continued blinking back at the extreme amount of irritation within them until their normally moist constancy had returned. She let her hand drop, and she stood slowly upon her shaky legs. Gripping a tree, she tried to keep the jello feeling of her limps out of her mind until she could stand on her own without much trouble.
"What happened?" she questioned aloud, searching around her slowly once she started to walk. "Where am I?"
Images began to pound back into her mind. Pictures of a bloody battle, feelings of extreme helplessness, and the little voice within her mind reminding her that her miko energy would not be enough to defeat her enemy.
"That's right." She muttered under her breath. "To defeat Naraku, had to use my life energy too. So am I dead? Did Inuyasha and the others make it out okay?"
Kagome continued stepping forward, not even noticing that she had no sense of feeling other than that within her body. Everything she touched left not sensation to let her know she was feeling something. No soft, gritty, or smooth textures were being alerted to her senses. The feelings of hot, cold, and warm weren't even slight sensations against her body. She just continued walking.
"I can't be dead if I can remember everything." She muttered to herself. "So where am I? How loud was I out? Where are Inuyasha, Sango, and Miroku? What about Shippo and Kirara? Did they leave me here, thinking I was dead?"
She shook her head, dismissing the thought. She didn't want to ponder thoughts of death and a life stuck not knowing where she was or what happened. The last she remembered was the arrow flying from her bow. Kagome wasn't positive if she had hit Naraku or anything. Once the arrow left the drawstring on her bow, the world had turned completely black. Then she woke up here, somewhere that she couldn't even recognize.
How far away from the well was she? How far away were the others, or even Kaede's village? She couldn't pinpoint her location. The thought made her heart leap. If she was all alone, with no weapon, who was she supposed to protect herself? Deciding the only safe path was to keep walking, Kagome pushed herself onward.
Author's Notes: Well…….. I'm sure this is all confusing. I myself am still attempting to decide what I want to have happen, but I'm pretty sure I know what's going on. Review and let me know what you think! DON'T HESITATE! I accept everything. Signed, anonymous, flame, short, long, or kind, just review!
Love and hugs—
Crystal Renee