He will wait exactly long enough for her expression to change, and then add "I stuck her there so the witch wouldn't find her, and 'cause it was funny. All the rest of 'em are fine until they get sick or stub a toe or whatever and croak it."

She's pretty sure that very nearly gave her a heart attack, but he looks so pleased with himself, and if everyone's really all right -

" - okay," she says, weakly. "We should probably go get Kaede, then?"

"Eh, I bet she can sit a little longer."

" - no, I need to talk to her. About stuff."

"Fine."

So they can walk along in silence, for a bit. She's still trying to get a read on him, replaying the interactions they've had since she got back. She'd expected to need some more time to let all of the panic leave her system, and maybe it's still in the process of doing that, but she feels a lot better, honestly. Maybe snapping the comb was cathartic, somehow. She feels like she can finally think.

At some point she'll realize that he used her name, for the first time, after, and will smile to herself.

Kaede is, yup, buried except for her face, which is largely covered with leaves. It looks kind of ridiculous.

"There you are, Inuyasha -"

Ah. Kagome. 

"Kagome."

"I'm sorry for leaving," she says. Might as well get that bit over with. "I'm back now. We killed the demon."

"Apology accepted. Welcome back." Pause. "Good work."

She'll glare at Inuyasha. "Can you get me out?"

OKAY FINE I GUESS

What is WITH these two. First they're so violently opposed to one another that Kaede wanted to leave Inuyasha stuck to the tree even while Mistress Centipede was in the process of killing them, and now they're... not.

"Are you hurt?"

"Uninjured," she says, getting up with some difficulty. (She looks like Kagome's grandfather when he's slept on the wrong side of the bed, but not... wounded.) "The rest of the village is unhurt."

Kagome will reach out to help her up, and then remember just in time that her hands are still covered in blood, and she probably shouldn't touch people until she's dealt with that. "That's good. I have a lot of questions that I didn't ask before, and that I really think I ought to ask, about everything, but - I guess maybe they should wait until you've rested."

"I've been resting for an hour," she snaps. "What happened?"

"We won."

- gah okay she will try to give a summary! She's not really sure what she's supposed to be summarizing, so she'll do her best to quickly summarize everything.

(But she does have enough presence of mind to notice that he said 'we' too.)

" - well, I - left, and I was able to go back through the well and get home, and I hung out with my family for a bit, and my grandfather did a ritual to attempt to seal up the well so that demons couldn't go through it anymore, except I guess it didn't work, because a few hours later Inuyasha came through and said there was a demon, so we came back - actually, he tried to go through first again and couldn't, I went through and then he came through after, which is weird - anyway, we came out into a big mess of razor sharp hair and had to cut through it - I mean, Inuyasha had to cut it, I just told him where it was - and then we found Yura, except Yura wasn't actually controlling the hair, or maybe the part that looked like a woman wasn't Yura - anyway, she tried to kill us," and almost succeeded like half a dozen times, "but Inuyasha was able to hold her off, and I guess I must have used another special arrow to open up the big, uh, hair nest full of skulls, and one of the skulls had a comb inside it, and when the comb was disconnected from the hair then all of the hair went slack."

"Then I, uh, broke it in half, and Yura disappeared. I don't really know whether there's anything we should - do with the pieces, or anything. And we got a jewel shard back."

... She's more worried about that last bit. "... Back?"

" - She got it while I was sleeping." NEXT time he will just keep it in his MOUTH but

- okay actually she was referring to the fact that they previously had an entire jewel and now need to retrieve the fragments, which they had all of before Kagome messed up, but if he's going to just admit it like that then, uh, at least that settles what happened.

" - well. We can sleep in shifts if there are two of us. And then it won't happen again."

- WAIT Kaede's also gonna know that she GAVE him the jewel fragment, augh -

"Fine." And maybe he could sleep under a roof instead of out in the forest maybe

On the one hand: It is VERY BAD if Inuyasha has the jewel.

On the other: Kagome can actually use the necklace to paralyze him and take it from him at any point.

CONCLUSION: Allowing him to hold the jewel shards is probably not a major issue.

Kagome spends a few seconds bracing for a lecture that doesn't seem to be coming.

"...I guess we're not in very good shape to defend the jewel shard right now, though, are we. Uh - do you know how long it'll take you to recover? - you are going to recover, right - "

"Bah, I'll be fine tomorrow." 

"Okay! Good." Although he's also been saying he's fine now, so she can't be entirely sure what 'fine' means. At least he doesn't expect to get any worse.

"I - actually think the safest place to stay for the night might be through the well, if we can still go through and you don't expect anything to attack the village while the jewel shard isn't here."

On the one hand, if she invites Inuyasha over too, this leaves a suspicious demon (half-demon? she's beginning to suspect that this counts for something) on her side of the well, and she can't stop him from making trouble while she's sleeping. On the other hand, he seems pretty badly injured, and he can apparently come through the well on his own regardless of whether she invites him.

He could have cake. She could have cake.

"Wanna come? In case something comes through the well for the jewel again?"

"Sure, why not." He's not really much of a city person and that city looked HUGE but he does need to rest and Inferior Kikyo Substitute Kagome does have food that he doesn't have to hunt himself, which he is not in shape to do.