Bent low over Jiro’s back, Kagome clung to his neck as much as his reins, her lungs striving for air against the crushing weight of her anguish. Her eyes bleared, blood trickling down from her raw, busted knuckles and sealing her clenched fingers shut. The road before her obscured as Jiro raced on at her heels’ stabbing insistence, the howl of the wind past her ears vying with the roar in her mind.

Home. She needed to get home. Everything would be fine if she could just get back to Edo—Edo, where the world was sane, where she could anchor herself back to reality again. The madness of these lands was threatening to undo her, threatening to drag her down into the pit of her despair.

As the last golden rays of sunlight rusted out, Kagome thundered into the village. Frothing at the mouth, Jiro reared as she veered him to a halt outside her house, the aged horse nearly throwing her from him. As Kagome tumbled down from his back, he took off in the direction of Kaede’s hut, tossing his mane in distemper.

Picking herself up from the dirt, the miko trudged past the noren curtain. Inside, everything was exactly the same as she had left it. Wandering across the room, she ran her fingers along the shelves that lined one wall, her eyes roving over the cold hearth, the scrubbed work table, the stacks of baskets and trunks, the neat futon tucked away in the corner.

Rather than comforting, the normalcy of it all was jarring, alien. It was Kagome herself who stood at odds—she who had changed. Amidst these familiar surroundings, she found herself a stranger, her distress mounting as her foundations crumbled beneath this terrible realization—this harrowing truth that had followed her home from the west.

Her hand swept out as the hysteria overtook her, vases and jars crashing from the shelves to the floor. At the sound of them breaking, something within her snapped as well. With an agonized cry, she tore through her home, stomping and ripping and crushing down the rest of her possessions, listening to them smash and shred and shatter with a perverse sort of pleasure—and a dreadful surge of remorse. Staring down at the irreversible damage, she sank to the planked floor—wondering as she had wondered that day, how something that had been so whole and perfect only minutes before could now be so irrevocably destroyed.

Shards of clay and glass cut her knees as she fell heavily onto them, gazing helplessly around at the havoc she had wrought—at the mayhem that mirrored the turmoil within her. There was nothing to anchor her in this place. No one to pull her from the mire of her pain. Before, there had been Sesshoumaru—but Sesshoumaru was…Sesshoumaru was…

Clutching her head in her hands, Kagome moaned wretchedly as the memory of that consuming heat washed over her, bathing her in a tide of dark demonic flame. She had brought herself off to that hateful blaze—she had brought herself off to Mayuri’s murder. Her stomach revolted at the knowledge, dry heaves wracking through her as she doubled over in sickening shame. In her lust, she was complicit—as culpable and irredeemable as the killer himself.

Free-falling through the devastation, Kagome wrapped her arms around herself as she pressed her cheek to the jagged floor, a long, keening wail rising up from the bottom of her soul. It was a sound from the depths, a familiar sound, and as she felt that old icy darkness rising around her, she knew she had only herself to prevent it from closing over her completely.

Slowly, Kagome began to crawl, dragging herself away from that black, razor edge. With shaking fingers, she unlatched the trunk near her bedside, sobbing as she retrieved Inuyasha’s fire-rat haori and pulled it around her trembling shoulders. As her tears stained the coarse red fabric, she wound his rosary around her wrist and cradled Tessaiga in her arms. Rocking back and forth, she closed her eyes and breathed in the bitter, bracing remnants of his scent.

This house meant nothing. This village meant nothing. There was only one place that could ground her, only one sanctuary she had left.

Rising shakily to her feet, she strode through the carnage of her home and made her way to the village shrine. Gripping her husband’s red robe about her, she gazed up at the long series of steps, the pale cut stone glowing in the burgeoning twilight. Kagome held Tessaiga to her chest as she climbed, the latent hum of the sword’s power growing stronger as she approached the graves.

Crumpling before Inuyasha’s granite marker, Kagome let the resonant sword roll to the grass between them, her chipped dirty nails catching against the etchings in the stone. As Tessaiga thrummed in mourning, a plaintive whimper escaped her lips.

Though she couldn’t understand the sword as Inuyasha had, she could sense its lamentations, its regrets. Tessaiga was the blade of his father—their father. It connected them still. What had it spoken to her husband in those last fateful weeks? What had it revealed?

She remembered the mounting tension, the muttered warnings. She remembered the edginess, the paranoia, the simmering hostility that seemed to have no outlet, no relief. She remembered the guilt and the suffering, the mad relentless drive for proof—always for proof…

“Why didn’t you tell me, Inuyasha?” Kagome demanded piteously as she curled her bloody fingers around the rough edges of the stone. “In your heart, you knew…you knew!”

Hurt and anger flared within her. She would have borne this burden with him. She would have helped him. She never would have abandoned him as he had abandoned her. But instead, instead he had left her—he had left her alone…

Alone with him.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi