When There Is Nothing Left To Burn by le_disko

1. Things Of Interest

(I dont own inuyasha or blackbird by the beatles)

"Mmmhmm, yeah, no, definitely, you were really shafted on that one, uh-huh. Yes, yes, I agree..." Pale fingers appear over a marble countertop. They scrabble wildly on the surface, waging a war with the odds and ends they find. Brushing paperclips and eyelash curlers out of the way of their desperate search, the fingers grasp their object: a diminutive bottle of red nail polish. Their battle with the counter done, the fingers retreat, nail polish clutched victoriously.

Three feet down and to the left, the owner of said aggressive fingers is attempting to paint her toenails one-handed while consoling a distraught friend. Soon a challenge of epic proportions appears: How Do You Unscrew The Top Of A Small Bottle With One Hand? Not digits to pass up a challenge, four fingers plus one hangnail-clad thumb leap at the contest. It's a close fight- what the bottle-top lacks in dexterity and animation, it makes up for in sheer stickiness. Finally, the fingers win their second battle of the day and the top comes off. The bottle's contents follow suit, causing the girl sitting cross-legged on her bathroom floor to swear explosively.

"Kagome!" the voice of her scandalized friend jolts one Kagome Higurashi, age nineteen, to come out of her nail-polish induced trance. Kagome fumbles with the phone before clenching it to her abused ear. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, I was listening to you, Maori, it's just that..."

"Its just that. Its just that." Frowning at the phone, Kagome listens to her voice being parroted back at her in a pitch-perfect falsetto. "I don't know what your DEAL is! You are always zoning out in class, you NEVER do your homework, you don't LISTEN, where ARE you these days, Kagome? Talk to me when you'll actually pay ATTENTION to my PROBLEMS." The one-sided conversation is terminated by a vicious click.

Kagome tosses the phone away from her, blows her bangs out of her face, and wonders when her friends have started using so many italics. It could have been anytime as Kagome has not been paying attention to her friends lately, or at any rate, not her friends in the present. Sighing and giving up on red toenails as a lost cause, Kagome stands up. Wobbling crazily, her legs asleep, she makes her way over to the bathroom mirror. Clipping back wayward bangs, she stares at her reflection.

She starts at her hands. Splotch of nail varnish aside, they are not so bad; white wrists blend seamlessly into palms and five nicely shaped fingers, complete with short, square fingernails. Gaze moving upwards, she decides that her arms are nice too, toned with even skin, albeit on the pale side. Thin, small chest, long neck: here Kagome pauses, not ready to see the reality that is her face. Finally, she raises her eyes to meet her own in the mirror. Stark grey irises, surrounded by the prescription contacts she desperately needs, stare back questioningly. One neat eyebrow rises, causing the previously smooth forehead to scrunch into ripples of skin. Kagome brushes her hand impatiently through her hair, recently dyed black again.

I'm not so bad-looking, Kagome decides, and heads off in search of her mother. Heading out of her tiny bathroom, she ignores the door as it leans crazily off hinges in dire need of replacement. She navigates down a cramped stairwell and turns left into the kitchen. Kagome smiles gently at seats herself at the small table wedged in the corner, and waits for her mother to notice her.

The mother in question is a short, almost matronly figure, which most would mistake for Kagome's grandmother. Grey-streaked brown hair is piled on top of her head secured by a pencil which bobs as she mops the floor. She twists her silver ring around her finger, a sure sign that her mother has caught on to her presence. Kagome watches as her mother straighten up and turn towards her. Light brown eyes crinkle at the edges as her mother beams at her only daughter.

"Sweetheart, I didn't notice you there! Still sneaking up on your poor old mom, eh? Come here, we'll get you something to eat! Or are you not hungry? I can whip up some soup, if you're interested..." In typical Kagome-mother fashion, she manages to make Kagome feel loved, guilty, and starving in one breath. "Silly girl, you missed dinner! How about I heat up something for you? Anything? Don't forget to do your homework! School is so important! So is food!" She whirls around her daughter, kisses her forehead and exits the room abruptly. The only traces of her mother being there are a bowl of soup placed in front of her, steam curling up from the top to dance lazily around the ceiling. Kagome chuckles, bringing the soup with her on her trip back upstairs to her room.

Kagome's room is an interesting place. Dog-eared posters hang haphazardly from thumbtacks, looking down at the clothes and books scattered upon the floor. A quiver of arrows is behind the door, resting upon a stack of American fashion magazines. Kagome eases in the doorway, still cradling her soup, and turns her stereo on with her hip. It's impressive that she manages to find the power button with her pelvis. Kagome mourns the lack of spectators in her bedroom. She waltzes around her bedroom, picking up books with broken spines and arrowheads and placing them in the correct spots.

"Blackbird sings in the dead of night..." Kagome's voice cracks slightly, but her mother has told her if you can't sing it good, sing it loud, and Kagome obeys wholeheartedly. "Take these broken wings and learn to fly...all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise..." Kagome stops at this. She sets Shakespeare's complete works on her pillow and lies besides them. She stares at the ceiling and considers the lyrics. God knows, Kagome Higurashi has waited for her life to start. Kagome has waited for a lot of things. She has waited for her mother to paint her room-she hates pink- waited for the usually ever-present Hojo to ask her to the prom, which he hadn't done, for her grandfather to stop thinking she was a demon... Her life was just so boring!

Naturally, some excitement had some Kagome's way when she managed to fall down into the past and unpin a boy named Inuyasha from a tree, starting a chain of events that may very well plunge the earth into darkness, but the initial rush from that had worn off slightly. Nothing interesting happened to her!

Kagome scowled at her ceiling. Kagome Higurashi was no whiner! She throws her remote at her stereo, shutting off the music abruptly. Again Kagome wishes there was someone to see this amazing stereo-related feat, but if wishes were fishes, we would all cast nets. She rockets of her bed and grabs her backpack from under her desk. Whirling around her room in a fashion decidedly like her mother, she gathers her Going-To-The-Past-Again essentials, retrieving the arrows from their TeenVogue throne. Throwing one last look into her room, Kagome sidesteps through the narrow doorway and darts downstairs.

"MAAAAMA!" Kagome's voice ricochets off the close walls of her house at decibel levels previously untouched by human vocal chords. She takes the stairs four at a time, and looks for her mother's head.

A door opens and a tousled head peeks out. Kagome's mother considers her daughter. If she had any doubt to Kagome's destination, running shoes, loose sweater and skinny jeans were far less telling than the flush Kagome's face sported and the strange glow that seemed to follow her around at such times. "Kagome sweetheart, I know you have a duty to ancient Japan, but when you get an urge to go down the well, do it at a more reasonable time than 3 am, okay?" She looks at her daughter appraisingly and twists her ring, a habit bourn of years and years of practice. "Hold on a second, sweetie..." She disappears from Kagome's view and reappears seconds later, holding a lumpy bundle. "It's a winter jacket! I know you kids, never like to dress appropriately, but its winter soon, and sweaters aren't enough! I was going to give it to you tomorrow morning, but..." Here an eyebrow inches up her forehead, giving her daughter a reproving look.

Kagome feels the familiar stab of love-guilt, and shrugs on the jacket. Toasty warm already, she knows her mom spent a lot of money on a good one. She kisses her mother on the cheek before running outside, closing the front door with a snap. Her mother chuckles and watches her run to the well-house before returning to bed. Pulling the covers back up, she realizes it's just for show, as she never sleeps on the days Kagome goes back to the past. It's a mom thing.

Kagome peers into the gloom that is her family's well-house. Dust motes whirl through the air as she passes through them on her way to the hole in the center. Leaning over the edge, she suppresses the familiar rising of nausea. No matter how many times she does this, she will never be able to leap in unaffected. She wasn't afraid of heights, exactly, but she would never get her first trip down this well out of her head. First impressions.

Zipping up her jacket (not overlooking that it was her favorite color, and a perfect fit, she sends a mental thank you to her mom), Kagome shakes herself mentally. She has done this a million times before, and hyperbole aside, she could do this, no problem. Smiling resolutely, she nonetheless feels nervous as she leaps over the edge. The well reacts instantly, throwing up the cloud of dark blue light to carry her across time...

Kagome jiggles her leg impatiently. Honestly, you would think the well would speed up its service after three years. Kagome is positive there is no stories in existence about time machines taking hours to get the job done. It would be nice to get this trip done instantaneously, but no, the time-traveler she finds has to be the one that works on snail-time. Kagome reaches backwards and lifts one of her books out of her bag. She has learned that suspended in time was an excellent place to do homework. She hoped she hadn't forgotten anything, because she did NOT want to make this trip more than once every two weeks. Opening her AP biology book, she is lost to karyotypes and autosomes until she hears the trail of notes meaning her journey is at an end. She rolls her eyes and swears this trip gets longer every time. She secures everything, and prepares for her descent into the past.

The well spouts her 6 feet into the air. Familiar with this, Kagome rolls into a ball and sticks her landing. Brushing time-dust off her clothes, she glares at the well. Time travel needs some cheaper thrills, Kagome thinks, and yanks her bag back onto her back. Normally she would wait for Inuyasha to come get her, but she could hear him heading in the opposite direction. Even with her admittedly inferior senses, she could hear him move through the forest that was his namesake, crashing into branches as he went. For someone who claimed to be so good at being stealthy, he sure made a lot of noise.

Chuckling at the idiosyncrasies of her best friend, Kagome moves her bag further up her back and heads towards the village she knows is near. Moving through the dense forest, Kagome thinks how lucky she is to be able to come here. Everything is bigger in the Feudal Era, the trees and the stars and the flowers. Yes, the predators are bigger too, Kagome concedes reluctantly, but risking getting mauled was so worth the stark beauty of the past. Predators remind her of dogs, and dogs of her best friend, who by the sounds of things is caught in a thistle. Kagome snickers. Inuyasha was great, and had a great heart, but Kagome couldn't see herself marrying-or mating- him. One can't spend their lives with an emotional amoeba.

Kagome climbs up the last hill on her trip and looks down at the village sprawled before her. Home to about a hundred people, Kagome considers the tiny civilization a second home to her too. Skidding down the side of the hill, she shakes her foot, getting rid of the pebbles that insinuated themselves into her shoe. Running up the path leading to the biggest hut, she waves to all the people smiling at her. Kagome reaches the hut, brushes aside the cloth covering the doorway and grins at its inhabitants.

"KAGOME!!" Two humans and a small fox demon scream out her name in unison. Kagome is lost to sight for a few moments under the onslaught of excited hugs. Ribs creaking ominously from the force of her friend's enthusiasm, Kagome laughs and hands out presents she brought, beaming at the strangely assorted bunch. Her friends.

"Well, tell me! What's been going on? Anything happen? I want all the news!" Kagome sits on the floor next to her best friends: Sango, Miroku and Shippo. They all start talking at once, and frown furiously at each other until it is decided that Sango will tell Kagome the most recent events since she's been gone.

"Oh Kagome! You wouldn't believe! Three separate bands of demons have attacked here. They knocked down the hut twice, but the villagers were so nice about it- they dropped everything to help build it back up! They all missed you, especially when Tokunawa got sick. No one heals like you do, but I think he's okay now. It hasn't rained at all, isn't that strange?" Kagome frowns at this, worrying for the village's inhabitants. Water was essential, and no rainfall in a month was dangerous. Sango continued with her news. "Let's see... you know the seamstress, Furiyo? Of course you do. Well her daughter ran away last week with some boy from the village west of here-" Here Sango is cut off by two separate elbows from two separate boys, resenting the demon-slayer's descent into gossip. They debate quickly over the definition of news, and whether it is acceptable to include gossip in Kagome's update. Finally they decide, and Sango is about to start back up, but she is interrupted again.

"Kagome!" The girl in question turns towards the door to meet the worried eyes of her best friend. "Kagome, you have to come with me right now! It's important!" She gets off the floor and tells her other friends to wait. Heading outside, she is swept off her feet and onto the back of Inuyasha before she has a chance to ask what is wrong. He sprints off in the direction Kagome had just come, towards the well.

Ducking tree branches whipping past her, Kagome thumps on his back. "Inuyasha, what's the deal? I just got here, I haven't heard the news yet, you haven't said hello..." Plucking leaves out of her hair, she fumes silently while she waits for him to answer her.

Inuyasha enters the well-clearing and shakes her off his back. Kagome feels her blood turn to ice. Of all the things she didn't want to see, this was the one on the top of her list...

The well is smoking; curls of ash are separating from the main column and dissipating into the air. Kagome starts to shake, her eyes growing wide as she feels her heart clench painfully. There is only one place that smoke could have come from, only one place that must be on fire right now. Ignoring his yells and her common sense, Kagome jumps into the smoky well. Praying that she is wrong, she doesn't notice that the well has already delivered her until she hears it.

The snapping sound of wood on fire. Her eyes snap open, no no no NO, this can't be happening, this isn't real... Kagome climbs out of the well and sprints towards the door, pleading with whoever might be listening to make this not real, to make her senses lie to her. She opens the door and faces her house.

Anguish. Charred remains of her house are slumped around, fires still crackling maliciously as they entreat her to look closer, to see what she desperately does not want to see. Unable to resist the fire's call, Kagome inches closer, soles of her shoes beginning to melt under the intense heat that still lingers. Her eyes widen. She breaks into a sprint, rushing through half-burnt beams and liquefied plastic, ignoring the pain in her legs. She collapses next to a stack of scorched wood and released a strangled sob. Protruding awkwardly from beneath the blackened lumber was an arm. A blistered arm, the skin on the fingers curling away from the bones underneath, the entire thing a horrifying sight for anyone. Heart in her throat, Kagome turns the hand over and feels her entire world crumble. A simple silver ring slides off of the smoking finger and into the ash below.

Kagome screams. Her throat rips and begins to bleed and she still screams. The remains of her only, her most beloved, her beautiful talented mother catch flame, and turn into a spitting fireball, burning the skin of Kagome's forearms. She doesn't feel it. She screams. Someone comes up behind her, picking her up and taking her back to the well. Kagome doesn't notice. The trip into time is instantaneous, but Kagome doesn't smile. Kagome screams.

Inuyasha looks at the girl in his arms. He was sad at the loss of his second mother, but doesn't know how to console Kagome. He sets her by the well and leaves. Maybe she will get better on her own.

Kagome curls up by the well. Pale fingers comb compulsively through her hair, dragging ash and her blood through the waves. Screams turn into hacking sobs.

"I didn't mean it, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it. I wanted something interesting to happen. Not like this. Not like this. NOT LIKE THIS." Kagome looks down at her arms. Burns lead up from her wrists to her elbows, bleeding. She knows she will have scars. But she doesn't care. Kagome doesn't think she will ever care about anything again. Clenched in her fist is her mother's ring. Still hot, it has left a perfect circle imprint on her palm. She slides the ring on her finger and raises it to her lips. "I'm so sorry, mama. Not like this. I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to." Kagome knows she is incoherent. Her sobs are breaking up the syllables. Tears splash onto the ruined skin of her arms. They burn, the ring burns, but Kagome will not take it off. Not the only thing she has of her mother. Kagome feels her cheeks. No longer individual tracks, tears are pouring from her eyes like poison.

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these broken wings and learn to fly, All your life....

You were only waiting for this moment to arise. Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these sunken eyes and learn to see, All your life ....

You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly, Into the light of the dark black night....

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly, Into the light of the dark black night.....

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these broken wings and learn to fly, All your life...

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

You were only waiting for this moment to arise."

Kagome whispers the song brokenly. A beautiful song, with beautiful lyrics, but Kagome suspects she will hate the Beatles for the rest of her life.

Kagome stiffens. She knows someone is behind her. Fingers clench, push her hair out of her face. Her tears continue to fall, joining the blood falling from her arms. It stains the grass. Kagome turns and faces her silent observer.

"Sesshomaru."

_______________________________________________________________________

So that's that. Continue? Do you want to know what happens next? Please review with comments, suggestions. Is my grammar or sentence structure off? Please let me know.

Le disko.