Don't Fight, Don't Argue

"Don't" The pleading sound of his voice stopped the future born miko from jumping into the well. Tears trailed a dirty streak down her face as she bowed her head, her breath shuddering from keeping her sobs in.

"Don't what, Inuyasha? I can't keep doing this." She kept her back turned towards him for fear that if she saw those ocher eyes she would crumble and take him back and keep killing herself inside and out. Her fingers gripped the old wood, turning her knuckles white. She heard him take minute steps forward. The young woman could imagine his hand slightly raised, his eyes pleading. But she couldn't. What she could not do was beyond her. Maybe she just couldn't turn towards him, or stay. Maybe she just couldn't keep hiding her feelings from him so she could just see him happy with his first and only love.

"Don't leave me." His voice was quiet. "You promised you would stay by my side."

"That was if you wanted me by your side. You want Kikyo. I can't stay, Inuyasha. You know that." Her voice sounded just as she felt, defeated and hopeless.

"I don't know that, Kagome!" His voice was angry now. He walked up to her and gripped her shoulders, hard enough to keep her from taking the inch or two that would plummet her into the future, but not hard enough to harm. He was always careful with how he touched her, but never careful with his words or actions, especially when concerning Kikyo. It just reminded Kagome of why she was leaving.

"You do. Let me go so we don't have to keep doing this. I'm tired." The hanyou didn't let her go, but he did move his hands from her shoulders to her hands, wrapping his fingers in hers, so when she clutched at the wood again, it was his callused hands she grabbed instead.

"Then we can stay an extra day for you to rest. We can prolong searching until noon instead of dawn every morning if you want. Just, please, I can't…" He broke off, his chest constricting with fear. It was a fear he had only known a few times, when his Kagome was in danger or he thought he had lost her. She shook her head a fraction.

"That's not what I mean..."

"Then what do you mean?" His voice grew soft again. "Don't push me away, Kagome. Please, don't give up on me," He let go of her hands abruptly and wrapped his strong arms around her arms and chest, crushing her back against his broad chest and burring his face in her hair and inhaling her scent, "on us." She smelled so sad. "Please." She couldn't hold it in anymore and let her sobs go, wracking both of their bodies with the strength of her sorrow.

"No." Her fingers clawed at the flesh of his arms, trying to hold onto something so she wouldn't fall into the depths of her grief. "No. No, no." She didn't know what she was saying no to, but she wanted it to be to him, but knew it was towards herself.

"Just let me love you as you have loved me." It was the one drop of water that broke the dam. All her sufferings and grief came forth and shook her, drawing up her legs so she could warp her arms around her body and keep it all from coming back in. Inuyasha picked the sobbing miko up and deposited her in his lap, his back against the well. She leaned her smaller body into his larger one, his arms enveloping around her left side, and let her soak her troubles into his haori. He hummed a lullaby that his mother used to sing, rocking subconsciously and stroking her hair.

When Kagome was done, her throat sore and her head and eyes aching, she wiped her eyes and nose, keeping her face down so he wouldn't see. Inuyasha sighed and raised her head with his finger, mindful of his sharp talons, and pecked her on the lips. The surprise showed on the miko's face.

"Why did you run from me, Kagome?" Memories from the last hour rushed through her head, unwanted and frightful to her.

"I was tired of fighting with you over something that I was going to lose in the future." Her eyes glanced down, still afraid that this was all a sick joke and he was going to dump her down the well and forget about her as he made a life in hell with her incarnate.

"And what was that?" Kagome looked into his golden eyes, utterly confused.

"You really don't know?" He shook his head, just as confused as she. "Your heart." Realization dawned on the hanyou as he clutched her closer to him.

"But you are my heart." Confusion still played across the miko's face.

"But what about Kikyo?" A small smile twitched at Inuyasha's lips.

"She is a part of you, too. And she does not hold my heart, because I am holding it." Kagome looked down, just now realizing that they were in a very intimate position, a blush spreading across her cheeks. "She may have my soul because of my duty to her, but I will always love you, Kagome."

"Inuyasha, I…"

"Kagome." His face changed to a harder look.

"Wha…"

"Kagome! Wake up!" A hand gripped her shoulder, gently shaking her out of dream Inuyasha's lap and into her sleeping bag, the same clawed hands that had helped her through her grief now gripping her shoulders to rouse her to continue their search for the shikon jewel shards. A whimper escaped her lips as she realized that only in her dreams would Inuyasha tell her all that and would want her by his side that much.

"Sorry, Inuyasha, I'm up." Standing up, she pulled her sleeves down, keeping her secret of cut wrists from her unrequited love and her family.

"No more staying up late doing homework. We've already lost time trying to get your lazy ass up." He walked away, not knowing that he, although not in life, was the reason she wanted to sleep so much all the time.

** Well, what do you think? Sad, I know, but I found it only fitting. Effects of being in a bi-polar depressed household. Anyway, review if you have anything to say about it, even if it's cussing me out for making Kagome a wimpy cutter and Inuyasha an ass.