DISCLAIMER: I do not own Inuyasha.

**A/N: You may have received an update alert. There is, in fact, no actual update in chapters, except that the previously homeless clip about Sesshoumaru's unconsciousness is now Chapter 5. Hence the chapter update alert. As always, I am sorryyyyy for the inconvenience!

Love is drowning in a deep well
All the secrets and no one to tell
Take the money... honey...
...Blindness.

A little death, without mourning,
No cause, and no warning,
Baby a dangerous idea... that almost makes sense

Love is blindness; I dont want to see,
won't you wrap the night
around me?

Oh my love... blindness.

Love is blindness, U2

***

Then it was time to wake.

Something strange happened in the atmosphere of his mind. The undefinable haze shifted; the eons and sharply ticking moments cleared into perspective. Time had returned, and with it, it brought the tumbling parade of memories, gavotting in a stream, like a tide of mountain water, filling a void of naked earth.

The Demon of the the bone-eater well awoke with a head full of faces, without a name. His eyes gained sight with the same suddenness as his mind, and there was swirls upon gritty swirl of dusty decay invading his world. His limbs felt numb, having held an age-long vigil, his bones stiff and unmovable. Tiny splinters of bone mingled with the sharp shards of broken stones rained over and before him, embedding themselves in the stiff spaces between his hair. Dust, dust, it blinded his new found sight, and the demon breathed the course air into his lungs, nearly retching.

The scent of death that had lulled him to his sleep greeted his sensitive nose like an old friend, but stronger. Awoken, as well, like him, caught in the overwhelming state of new found animation.

He blinked. Something soft and warm crashed onto him from the chaos.

"Oof!" he heard, and he might have moved- would have lashed out, spiked youki, bared teeth, claws, swords, blood- but he did not.

The lord of the West breathed in this new sight, thinking he had smelt this before, faced this foe, been here, before.

He watched, unblinking.

Slowly, with the settlng chaos, he made out a haggard visage, just at the edge of familiarity; a crouching, worn miko caked in dirty mud, and dressed, ironically, like a sunny day.

Without blinking, the demon lord felt the ghost of a gap-toothed smile graze against his eyelids.

He sighed. So quietly, he did not think she could have heard it, but he glanced up anyways. Her chest was raised, and her eyes broken, and he imagined that she might have released a sigh of her own, but that she caught sight of him.

A question formed in the dusty edges of his mind.

The oddly familiar girl before him grunted, instead, body slumping like a lifeless corpse, newly unsheathed from a sword. The demon gazed at her, curiously.

Miko.

Below the creaking stir of his heart, he wondered if she could give him back his name.

__

In the end, there had been nothing else she could have done.

So she laughed. And in her lonesome, ringing chimes, Kagome felt the feeble shards of her heart grind against each other in silent agony.

She had felt her innards flinch in cold shock at the sight of his dusty, statuesque form. She had drawn in her breath immediately, and felt her eyes widen, mind racing through a beaten track, taking in everything. Taking in this; Him. And willed for it all to make sense. For it to be better, somehow better than it was.

And for a moment- one brief, unending moment, she had looked him straight in the eyes, and seen the sheen of opaque lifelessness in them, and stilled to her very core.

His skin was pale, as it ever was. His eyes shimmering amber and gold under the shadow of his unflickering lids. Unwavering, as ever they had been. But to Kagome he had looked dead. And the single thought alone had wiped all else- her shock at finding him; her disappointment; her pain; her foggy numbness- clear from her consciousness, and she had felt a thin whimper escape from her throat.

Dead? a small voice that sounded a very little like her old self whispered in her heart. And it sounded upset. Not sad, not broken and old like the voice she had so resently adopted. Not squenched of all it's selflessness, but living. Just barely- but there she was, in that small worried thought.

For a moment, that one endless moment, his sight alone had brought a small piece of her soul to life again. And she had wanted to fix it, to reach out and touch him, and fix him, heal him. To rescue him, as her old self would have wanted to do. Something soft and desperate had rekindled, and she had opened her mouth to call out to him, to say something, to announce her regret to the universe at large, when just as suddenly, the moment had shifted and fled.

-Then he was awake. Not dead, not frozen, but simply still. Menacing.

Through flat eyes, glimmering in the faint light, he watched her through the dust.

The spider inside her heart quailed. Kagome felt something slowly building, something just returned wash out of her like foot prints in the rain. The reality that she had not at first considered tapped at her conscience and finally slipped in, and the world had waited. Hushed and expectant, through painfully familiar golden eyes, it had watched her and waited. It had been almost like they had spoken to her, those eyes. Like a child hiding behind a corner to jump out at you, with an expression of expectant desire, the small flecks of topaz memory peaked out at her, from the deep folds of liquid amber and called her to do something. With every line of his face, every strand of his limp, white hair, his presence mocked and awaited her.

And, in the end, there really had been nothing else left to do. No shock left in her to surface.

Because of course it was not going to be Inuyasha. Of course, of course, after everything that had happened, after the cosmic joke had been unveiled in its entiretly, there would be the Laugh.

So she laughed. And laughing, she shifted in her jammed corner, and dared- dared- to lean in closer to him, and let her suddenly flowing tears fall on his stiffened, age-old hakamas.

Of course, this was how she was going to die.

In a twisted ending, at the doorstep of her home; in the heart of her shrine, following the murder of her beloved, to get killed by the brother who had sworn to see him dead.

Wasn't that the perfect end to the story?

Of course.

And as she laughed, her breath swept across, and blew the dust from his face. And in its gasping chimes, there was no hollow, embitterment. She really did, genuwinely find it humourous. A well-sketched out, elaborate farce; beautifully writ, and eloquently played out.

Kagome wondered if, before the end, she would be allowed to bow offstage.

So, stumbling and fumbling in the tightly confined space, grasping feebly at his upright knee and pulling herself into a better position, she let her head fall down in the thick space between them and bowed, through breaths of laughter, at him.

Someone had to be a witness, she thought. And here he was.

(Here he was, her empty chest cavity echoed. )

She had landed the leading role, after all. The thought made the feeble gasping of her mirth take more life.

Sesshoumaru. Lord of the West, King of the Moonlit country, daiyoukai of the epic tale, at the straggling butt of the joke.

Surely, it deserved a laugh.

And in the end, upon the closing of the curtains, as the spirit of the spider beat and scratched futilely inside her, a faraway miko whispered, at least she was not alone.

A/N: Love you all for sticking around for so long! This one is dedicated to everyone who ever read and/or commented on this story. :)

Review!