Also, thanks SO much to Talon Skydragon, who pointed out to me that in the manga, Kaede really DID slip the rosary over Inuyasha’s head when he wasn’t paying attention, and it was only in the anime that it was zapped on. Whew! That makes me feel so much better. ^^ Maybe if I’d actually read the manga, I would have known that, too. Lol Anyway, let’s say now that I’m taking aspects from both the manga and the anime series, okay?
*mumbles* Even though I never read the manga in my life… ^^;
Ahem. On with the story. ^^;
“What did you do to Kagome, Dog-face?!” Shippo howled pitifully as soon as Inuyasha set foot inside Kaede’s hut. Inuyasha didn’t bother with answering; his warning growl was eloquent enough to send Shippo freezing in his tracks before the agitated little fox could start chewing on his ears.
“Old woman, get out your medicinal supplies and help Kagome. She caught a cold and her leg needs tended,” he barked, carefully lying the half-conscious girl on her futon.
Kaede eyed him sharply before stiffly rising to comply with his demands, muttering to herself about being bossed around in her own home. “Shippo, heat some water in the kettle and bring it to me,” she ordered brusquely. “Inuyasha, seat thyself over there and tell me what has happened whilst you were away.”
Inuyasha sank cross-legged onto the floor, as close to Kagome as he could get without being in the way, and regarded the girl anxiously. “We found the youkai—a giant viper—and had a tough time fighting it, but we got three shards from it at the end. But Kagome was thrown from that bike of hers and tore some tendons in her knee, and she caught a cold on top of that,” he explained shortly.
“It’s all your fault, making her go out and fight youkai when the weather’s so awful!” Shippo complained. “And she was already all upset ‘cause you’re being such a big jerk to her, too! No wonder she got sick!”
“Shippo, that’s enough.” This weak protest, surprisingly, came from Kagome, who’d roused herself enough to witness the argument. Shippo squeaked in delight and threw himself into her arms, and she hugged him tightly and stroked his hair. “Inuyasha was very helpful to me,” she said quietly. “He made medicine to put on my leg so it wouldn’t hurt so much, and he was kind enough to carry me all the way back to the village. Don’t be so angry, okay?”
“But…” Shippo protested, but hushed when she laid a hand over his mouth.
“No arguing, okay? I don’t want to listen to it right now. Remember what I told you?” she said.
He sighed and hung his head, nodding slightly as he curled up on her stomach, curling his tail around his body and resting his ear over her heart. “I’m glad you’re okay, Kagome,” he said sincerely. “I was scared that something bad might happen. You know…something besides what did happen.” He shot an accusing glare at Inuyasha, who merely bared his teeth at the kit and snorted disdainfully, sticking his nose in the air.
“Wait outside whilst I attend Kagome’s needs,” Kaede instructed firmly. “There is stew over the fire and fresh vegetables in the basket. Be sure to save some for us.” Thus having dismissed the two males, Kaede turned back to her patient and began to tend her wounds. Inuyasha hovered nearby for a minute or two, clearly not willing to leave Kagome, but a stern glance from the elderly miko sent him skulking into the next room to join an equally anxious Shippo.
There, together, they sat in silence, for once putting aside their differences
to wait in peaceful repose.
Kagome’s illness would not leave. Days passed, and still it clung stubbornly to her weak body, settling itself into her in the form of a fluctuating fever and a hacking cough and rasping breath. None of Kaede’s herbs seemed to work, and Kagome, when she was alert enough to think, realized that her head cold had most likely developed into a case of bronchitis or possibly even the beginning stages of pneumonia, two diseases for which she highly doubted the elderly miko had any cure. It was the curse of being stuck in such an uncivilized time; she desperately needed a real doctor and real antibiotics from her own time, but she couldn’t seem to gather the courage to ask Inuyasha to let her go home. They’d been on fairly good—if not somewhat awkward—terms lately (most likely due to the fact that he didn’t seem to be around much lately), and she was horribly afraid of doing or saying something to set him off again.
Inuyasha, for his part, realized that there was something terribly wrong with Kagome, but even so, he could not bring himself to back down and send her home.
“I…I think that…if I actually went home this time…I’d never be able to force myself to come back again…”
Memories of those words, spoken so despairingly to Kaede those many days ago, continuously haunted him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that, if he allowed her to go back, he’d never see her again. Still, as he watched her laying there, tossing fitfully in her sleep, he couldn’t help but feel horribly selfish. She was plagued often by nightmares, most of them involving him in some way or another, and it was all he could do not to curl up somewhere and whimper in shame. He wanted to comfort her, no matter how awkward he was at such things, but his fear kept him away. His fear of getting too close, and her awakening and not knowing him, or even worse, being as terrified of his presence in waking life as she was of it in her dreams.
Still, there were moments, when Kaede was out gathering more medicinal roots and Shippo was sleeping, that he would push aside his fear to creep close to the fitful girl and gently run his hand through her sweat-dampened hair, pleading with her quietly to calm down, to rest, to get better. And to his surprise, it seemed to work. She seemed to be soothed by his touch, by his voice, and would calm slowly until she relaxed into a calmer sleep. Inuyasha was mystified and gratified all at the same time to know that he could have that affect on her, but then his fear of discovery would return and he’d scuttle back to his corner to wait for Kaede to come back with more medicine.
Sometimes Kagome would wake up, and seem almost better. It was during those times that she would plead with Kaede to leave her alone.
“Look, in this time, you and the villagers probably don’t have any kind of immunity to whatever illness it is that I’ve caught,” she’d argue. “If it’s pneumonia or even bronchitis, you could end up catching it! You don’t have the right kind of medicine to properly treat something like that, and the last thing I want is to be responsible for spreading a plague through the village! I’m highly contagious, and without proper treatment, it won’t get better!”
Kaede would merely shake her head. “I am using every precaution to take care of myself, Kagome,” she would reply solemnly. “Ye need not spend your time worrying for the people of this village when ye should be spending it concentrating on getting thyself well again. I have dealt with worse than this in my time. Save thine energy for mending thine own body.”
And Kagome, realizing that she couldn’t argue her way out of this one,
would merely sigh and lay back and hope and pray that Kaede knew what she
was doing.
A week passed by, and then another, and still she didn’t improve. Inuyasha was getting frustrated. All Kaede seemed able to do, whether through charms or herbs, was to keep Kagome’s illness from growing worse, but even that seemed to be failing now. He had to do something to help her, before it was too late and she couldn’t be cured at all. There was only one solution that he could think of, however, and so he finally swallowed his pride and, under the cover of night, snuck out to the well in the forest. He had the full intention of going to Kagome’s mother to beg her for good medicine that would help the girl get well again, and upon reaching his destination, he took a deep breath and peered into the dark mouth of the well, feeling as though he was about to leap into the gaping maw of some dark creature.
His mouth tightened; he’d never gone to Kagome’s time without her being there before, and he wondered how he could face her mother and explain to her why her daughter wasn’t there with him, especially having been gone for such an extended period of time. “Simple,” he muttered to himself, straightening his back proudly. “I’ll just say that Kagome’s sick, too sick to be moved at the moment, and so we needed medicine from her time to help her get well, and I came to get it! Her mother will understand that.” And hopefully, a small part of his mind added wickedly, she wouldn’t rip his ears off his head for allowing her precious daughter to get sick in the first place! He blanched slightly at the thought.
Nodding resolutely, he hopped lightly onto the rim of the well and peered around the shadowed forest, as though expecting to find eyes watching him silently. Then he leapt nimbly into the dark and shadowed depths, fully expecting the light to engulf him and carry him to the other side.
What he was not expecting was for him to hit the bottom of the well…and still be on his side of it.
He crouched there, stunned, for a full minute as he sought to understand what had happened. He looked around, then upward, and sure enough, rather than a musty roof over his head, there was the star-dotted sky surrounded by the leafy boughs of the forest. He leapt out of the well and gazed in utter confusion down into it, wondering if it was just a fluke. Shrugging, he tried again, once more expecting the brilliant light to engulf him.
Again, he hit the bottom and still he was on the wrong side.
And now he was beginning to panic. Muttering an oath that could wither flowers, he hopped back out of the well and once more attempted to go through, with the same results. Over and over he tried this, his heart racing faster and faster with each failed attempt, until at last he fell to his knees on the cracked dirt and stared at the sky despairingly as he finally reached one, inevitable conclusion.
The well had, for some inexplicable reason, locked him out.
Eh-heh. Yes. This chapter is really, really short. But this seemed like as good a place to end it as any. And hey, it’s only been…what, three days since the last update? Hmmm…the one benefit of being laid off work for a week is that it gives me lotsa time to write… ^^; Well, more on the way. Eventually. As for this chapter, it got posted fresh off the…um…keyboard, so it isn’t edited much. Any mistakes/plotholes/whatever, feel free as always to point them out! ^_^
Oh, and did I mention that this story was nominated for an award? O.o Wow! Thanks so much! I appreciate the nominations! ^_^
Quickening
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