Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author.  The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise.  No copyright infringement is intended.

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She lost her footing on the tread carpeting and tumbled down the stairs, her head smacking against the marbled floor at the bottom. Pounding footsteps coming from the upstairs hall way started making their way slowly, tantalizingly, down the stairs and she knew she had to get up. Stars and varied colors blurred her vision and her head throbbed with pain that threatened to knock her to her feet.

"Come here, little kitty, kitty," His voice lilted through the staircase railing and floated to her ears. Submerged under yet another fresh wave of fear, she ignored her battered body’s screaming and scrambled up on her feet, a fit of nausea making her lean against the wall for support.

The footsteps were coming closer.

She ran blindly down the hall way, her hand sliding against the wall slightly in front of her, helping to guide her, but her blurred vision didn’t help and she managed to smack into the sharp edge of the living room’s glass table. Pitching forward, she fell against it, her sudden weight causing the table to buckle and break beneath her. The glass fell first, and she fell among the broken shards. The shatter of the glass split the spell of silence in the night, and she held in a scream of pain as her palms and forearms struck the broken shards of glass. Panting, she struggled to sit up and she glanced sharply toward the sound of his thundering footsteps once again.

He was getting too close to Lila’s room.

"Lila," She breathed out the name, and it seemed to renew her with enough strength to stagger to her feet, and run to the room across the broken shards of glass. As soon as she entered the small nursery, she slammed the door, dead bolted it and sagged against the door, her cheek against the firm wood. She turned, her back still against the door, and sighed heavily.

She took it all in. The pale pink and purple walls; The animal border in the middle of the wall, running to both sides of the door; The white bed that she knew held her most precious gift in the entire universe; the small closet that held all the changing materials and blankets and clothes that was also joined as a bathroom.

Slowly, she wobbled over to the small, white bed, peering down into it.

All the noise they had caused, had woken the eleven-month-old baby girl.

Collapsing to her knees, Kagome sank into the mesh carpet. Her eyes darted over her daughter intently, first starting at her small, little feet, then scanning her chubby legs, and finally her small, heart-shaped face with the wisps of dark, ocean blue hair. She didn’t see any signs of abuse. Kagome sighed in relief. She had gotten here just in time. Lila’s azure eyes blinked up at her mother, still clouded with sleep. Her small mouth formed an ‘o’ as she yawned, and Kagome smiled.

"Good morning, beautiful." She was shocked at the gentleness and lightness in her voice, but knew that it was because she was looking at her daughter. "Mommy is going to take you to the park, okay?" She was answered with a wide smile, revealing dimples on both cheeks. Standing from her current position, Kagome smiled down at her daughter as Lila sat up slowly. Releasing the safety latch on the bed that held her daughter in, she watched as the small bars slid to the floor, and she reached inside for her daughter. At the moment Kagome’s fingertips had touched the soft skin of her daughter, a loud barreling noise pounded at the nursery door Kagome knew he was behind.

"Mommy help?" Kagome cooed gently but urgently. Lila pushed her hands away, a determined look in her deep azure hues.

"Baby help, baby help!" Ever since she knew how to talk, Lila had been saying ‘baby help’ to show she thought she was a big girl. Kagome smiled at her daughter and let Lila slowly slide herself out of bed, then laughed quietly as she fell on her butt when she let go of the railing.

She picked up her daughter, and ran to the adjoined bathroom, closing and locking the door. The bedroom door wouldn’t keep him out for long. Kagome set Lila down on the bathroom floor, handing her, her favorite stuffed animal to play with for a few minutes while Kagome fixed herself up. Seeing her daughter was occupied long enough for Kagome to clean herself up, she grabbed a washcloth and wet it.

"Mamma, ok? Mamma, ok?" The child’s baby talk made Kagome smiled widely and she winced at the pain it caused.

"Mammas’ fine, sweetie."

Glancing at her reflection, Kagome was shocked beyond belief that her daughter actually recognized her. Her cheek was bruised and swollen; from the fall or his vile punches she wasn’t sure; Small cuts from the broken glass marred her normally beautiful features, and blood was flowing down the side of her face.

"Kagome!" Kagome winced. His words were slurred, and she knew immediately that he had been drinking. A glass, a beer bottled she guessed, shattered against the door. "Get your ass out here right now, you bitch! You’re not takin’ my daughter, you hear me you son-of-a-b-,"

"Go to hell, Wilkins!" Kagome fired back, then immediately wished she hadn’t. One, because her daughter was watching her intently, two because she didn’t want to make him any angrier. Ted Wilkins, her husband of two years, her bundle-of-joys father. The one man she swore up and down that he was unlike any other.

And at first he was. With his honest blue eyes that let you into his soul, his shaggy hair and cute dimples, he didn’t fit the profile of an abuser. When she had first met him, he was sweet and nurturing, saying all the right things, basically making her heart melt. Six months was long enough to know someone, her mother had said. But Kagome knew her mother was wrong; she just knew Ted was different.

But a couple weeks after their marriage, he became abusive and violent. Much more so when he was drunk, but even when he was sober. If she wasn’t doing the laundry, if the dinner hadn’t been made before he got home, if it was cold by the time he did finally get home from wherever he was, he always lashed out at her. At first it was just emotional abuse, calling her a slut and a whore, and that a womans job was only meant to have children, cook dinner, and make the bed. She couldn’t have any friends, male or female; She could never go see her family over the weekends, or over the holidays. Then it turned physical, his broad hands leaving bruises too noticeable for her to go out anywhere.

Then, after he had neither sobered up, nor left the house in a rage for hours, he would come back, roses in one hand, apologies in the other, and she would dismiss it. After all, wasn’t he the same man she thought she had fallen in love with?

But he had never, never laid a hand on Lila. He never beat her infront of Lila either. And his anger, his violent rampages . . . they had scared Kagome into an icy submission.

And now, she decided she wouldn’t be put through it anymore. She couldn’t risk her daughters life for this bastard who swore they, Kagome and Lila, were the best thing in his life. Hell, he would say everything just to get in her bank account, and her bed.

"Mamma!"

Her daughters frightened wail and the slam of the bedroom door falling to the ground, jolted her out of her memories. She was surprised to find she had washed most of the blood off her face, and the deep gash on the side of her face, near her hair-line had stopped bleeding.

Dropping the bloody cloth on the bathroom counter, and leaving the water in the sink running, she scooped Lila up, and ran to the floor-to-ceiling window. It was slim, but she could get herself and Lila through. One at a time. To make things better it was on the first floor, so she didn’t have to jump anywhere.

"You bitch! Get your ass out here now! Don’t make me shoot you and your damned daughter!" Ted’s angry voice bolted through the bathroom window, and the threat toward her child sparked a fierce anger in the young mother.

"Shut up, you bastard! Were getting the hell out of here, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us! Just go away!" Kagome’s angry voice matched his and his response was to start breaking down the door. Fumbling with the latch on the window, she suddenly remembered a Desert Eagle .5oCal. , Ted had put in the drawer. Putting Lila down on the cool marble floor, she reached up above the vanity mirror, pushed behind the baby supplies and pulled down the black gun.

She cocked it, readied it, and aimed, just as the door came busting in, and Ted’s frame filled the door way. Lila’s shrieking pierced the tense silence, and Kagome felt a tug on her leg.

"Baby help! Baby help!"

Before Kagome could do anything, Ted grabbed Lila under the arms, and shook her violently. "Shut up with the baby help shit!"

Kagome felt terror seize at her whole body as she watched Ted with Lila. Without a second thought, Kagome smacked the butt of the gun against his knuckles, careful to point the gun toward herself, instead of anywhere near Lila, and Ted howled in pain. Dropping Lila, Ted held his hand, and Kagome caught her mid-fall and backed away.

Lila had fallen utterly silent, and, balancing the child on her hip, the gun cocked back toward Ted, Kagome glanced at Lila.

"Baby help?" Kagome asked gently.

Lila shook her head viciously. "Mamma help," The child muttered softly. Lila just stared at her father, who had never acted anything more than gentle and playful with her. Kagome felt her anger return full force.

"Damn you!" She screamed violently, glaring at Ted, who was eyeing the gun in her hands wearily. "You may be able to break my spirit, but I’ll be damned before you break my daughters!"

"Kagome, sweetie, just put the gun down," Ted said softly, in that one voice that used to make her feel hypnotized, weak in the knees. But not anymore. "We can talk about this. Let’s be rational."

"Don’t call me sweetie," She said levelly between clenched teeth.

Ted took a small step toward them, and Kagome fired the gun. Ted yelled as the bullet whizzed past him. Lila buried her tear-stained face in her mother’s neck as the shot was fired.

"Rational? You want to be rational?" Her voice was incredulous. "After all the things you did to me, the things you said to me? You think what you did was rational? Im not that naive little girl that believed everything you said. All the lies and the love whispers, not any more." Kagome motioned with the gun for him to move aside and let her through.

"Move one inch, and I’ll shoot you," Kagome said dangerously.

"You wouldn’t dare," He sneered. An eerie smile painted his lips.

"You don’t know me."

"Yes I do. Your that sweet, caring-,"

"Shut up and move. If you knew the bond with my daughter, if you felt as strongly and as deeply for her as I do, you would know I would do anything, anything, to keep her safe. Even if it means getting rid of you to keep her alive and well, I would as sure as hell shoot you." Her voice lowered. "So, unless you want to be castrated with this you better get out of my way," Her voice, low and threatening seemed to get her message through, for Ted backed away, and Kagome, never taking her eyes off him, walking into the bedroom backwards, the barrel still pointed towards him, but aimed at his heart.

"One inch, one little centimeter, and you’ll wish you never crossed me, got it?"

"You little bitch. You can’t just run away and take my daughter!"

"Watch me. She’s not your daughter any more. I will do anything to keep her safe. And safe, is not here with you. And where I go, she goes. Get over it. And I dare you to call the cops."

With those last words, Kagome grabbed her car keys from the side bowl, and exited the house she had called home for two years. Tossing the gun in the bushes beside the house, she gained a better hold on the keys. She fled into the moonless night that struck a pain in her heart, and memories through her vision. Running down the walk, she slipped Lila around her front, so her legs were straddling Kagome’s middle instead of her hips and jumped in the silver Honda Accord.

It was illegal to be riding with a child in your lap, but she couldn’t take the chance that Ted would follow them out of the house before she could get Lila in her car seat and then herself into the drivers seat and pull away.

Igniting the engine, she heard the front door open, Ted’s angry yelling, then gun shots fired toward the car. Shielding Lila with her body, Kagome somehow twisted herself to where she was hovering above Lila, half in the passenger seat.

"It’s okay, baby girl. It’s okay." Lila wailed, scared. Her eyes were screwed shut, tears falling from the corners, her mouth open in protesting screams of fright.

When the gun shots stopped for a second that was all Kagome needed before she straightened up, shifted into Drive, and gunned out of the driveway. Immediately the shots started again, and she prayed it wouldn’t hit a tire. Luckily, it didn’t and she was down the road before the gun fire died down.

Tears fell furiously down her cheeks as she drove with one hand, and supported Lila’s back with the other. Fortunately, Ted and Kagome had shared a car, so he had nothing to follow her in.

Driving down the dark, deserted road, Kagome let her mind wander. She thought about that night on the beach, when they had first let their passion for each other escalade in a whirl-wind of passion. How the slightest brush of his lips against her skin sent shivers down her spine and a warmth erupt in her heart.

Then her thoughts shifted.

She thought about how much he had changed her, how badly he had severed her spirit. Her grip on what she condoned or not, had long since flown away, and she found her vocabulary extremely different from what it used to be. Swear words had slipped from her mouth so many times with him, it seemed there were no bars. She had become vulnerable, and insecure about her confidence. About her strength. She had allowed herself to be weak, thinking he would soon get over what he was always angry about, and that the beatings would stop, and they could live a happy, normal life. But fate played an evil trick on her, and things didn’t happen that way. Her fairy tale ending had fled the first time he hit her, and it never came back.

After ten minutes of silent driving, Kagome pulled over in a high-tech furniture store, and parked in the parking lot.

"Are you okay, sweetie? Any boo-boo’s?"

"Momma, ok?"

"Momma’s fine, sweetie. Momma’s fine."

She could tell Lila was tired. Her eyes were cloudy with fatigue, and drooping every second. She had obviously felt the tension and the animosity in the rooms that held Kagome and Ted. Kagome smiled at her daughter, brushing her lips against the baby’s cool, smooth forehead, and climbed slowly, painstakingly out of the car, slamming the door behind her.

She had a close friend here at Leather Dimes, and she was praying hard that he was here. Kagome slipped Lila’s head onto her shoulder, her steady, deep breathing telling her she was sleeping. She was feeling every muscle in her body start to relax at the final realization that they were safe.

Her body was aching and bruising all over, and Kagome sighed as the automatic sliding glass doors opened to allow her entrance. The cool burst of an air conditioner greeted Kagome’s face as she walked in.

A familiar face looked up at the sound of the sliding doors and immediately she saw the gruff look on his face fall. The molten amber eyes, the long silver hair, the strange, but cute ears on his head, all made her surrender herself to the exhaustion that had plagued her since the fight began. At the familiar presence, Kagome felt her knees go weak with exhaustion, knowing that Inuyasha could take care of Lila.

Her faded jeans were torn in various places, as if she had been attacked with a knife. Her shirt was specked with blood, and torn across the front, exposing a good amount of her flat stomach. His eyes turned sharply to her face and he saw the bruising and the bleeding from the side of her temple, and he immediately knew what happened.

Close friends for almost five years, he was angered beyond hell when he found out what Ted had been doing to Kagome. But out of respect for her, he had foolishly not said anything, deciding that she could take care of it on her own. Then she stopped coming in to see him, and when he called Ted always said she was busy. He should have figured it out.

Within a flash, Inuyasha was across the floor from his office station, ignoring the present customer and right beside Kagome, helping her stand.

"What the hell happened to you?" He asked sharply, but his voice was soft. He lead her to the wall beside the vending machines, gum ball machines, and newspaper machines, all the while glancing over her battered body.

"Take her, please," Kagome’s weak voice made little sound, but he heard it, and gently took Lila out of her hands. Kagome leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor, her stormy midnight eyes closing in unconsciousness.

The sound of her own screaming and the call of her name woke her up, and Kagome found herself in a dimly lit room, lying on a sofa. Inuyasha sat beside her, his hands on her shoulders trying to shake her awake, his eyes shining with concern.

"Lila," Kagome whispered, sitting up sharply ignoring the protest from her body, and looked around wildly.

"Lila’s fine, Kagome. She’s just sleeping."

"Did he hurt her? Is she okay? What happened? How did I get here?" She fired off questions one by one, still looking around the room for her daughter, before Inuyasha got her to calm down.

"He didn’t hurt her, yes she is okay, and I brought you to my apartment when you showed up at my work. Im guessing by ‘he’, you mean Ted, am I right?"

Kagome nodded, suddenly aware of her body screaming. Her muscles ached, and her head throbbed. She felt the color leave her face.

"Not on the carpet!" Inuyasha yelped, grabbing a trash can just in time. Kagome retched violently, feeling the small soothing circles on her back from Inuyasha’s comfort.

"Oh God," She moaned. Her body felt like she was being burned from the inside out.

Once she stopped, she collapsed back against the pillows of the sofa.

"I have to see Lila," She whispered.

He wasn’t going to argue with her. The bond she had with her daughter was unbreakable, and he knew that if he didn’t help her to see Lila, then she would just go by herself. "Okay." With that, Kagome felt Inuyasha pick her up and carry her to another room.

"Can you stand for a minute?" He asked gently.

Kagome nodded silently, her eyes searching the bed for her daughters small form.

He set her down on her feet, and she leaned against the wall. She watched him as he went over to a queen-sized bed, and she smiled when she saw her daughter; lying in the middle, pillows surrounding her. Inuyasha was currently working on removing one wall of the pillows, and Kagome smiled slightly. He obviously knows what he’s doing, she thought. When he straightened up, he reached over to her, and she took his hand, allowing him to help her over to the bed.

"Thank you," She whispered softly, stormy midnight clashing with golden amber in appreciation. Inuyasha stroked her unbattered cheek, his eyes soft with concern.

"Go on."

She smiled wordlessly, and stretched across the bed right next to her daughter, laying her cheek against the soft, red down comforter she had bought him one Christmas.

She traced her fingertips against her baby’s cool, smooth skin and stroked her dark, ocean blue hair that was now a little past her shoulder blades with small, soft curls at the end.

She felt a light blanket being placed on her, and Inuyasha’s fingers against her forehead. She was vaguely aware of Inuyasha leaving them in the room, shutting the door softly behind him before she started falling into sleeps welcoming arms.

"I guess we’ve found an Ali, little one," Kagome whispered softly. "We are going to be okay after all."

THE END.