InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bloodlust ❯ Relinquish ( Chapter 41 )

The weight of Kagome's cry pulled deeply at the strings of tension across the battlefield, and at a motion from Kasuka, silence descended as every dragon stepped backwards away from battle and turned as one to face their mistress. If Sesshomaru had been there, the slaughter would have been complete, the army of dragons pushed over into death - but Kagome stood, and Kagome stared and stared and stared. It could have been a figure from a dream or a nightmare, there was no telling or defining. The human face she had seen for one night every month for so many months stared directly at her and there was no adequate response. The beat of her heart ducked its duties, the slow heave of her breast sped to meet the demand of suddenly panting lungs. There was no relief from her runaway pulse, carrying the message of her senses through her blood and into the tumbled down awareness of slipping thoughts.

The twisting of her heart intensified, old fire surging alight on the edges of her nerves, and the pain cleared her thoughts and set her feet in motion. With a slow step that swept a new meaning into grace, she made her way in the utter stillness to where Kasuka stood with InuYasha by her side. It was there that she finally saw face to face the enemy of her deepest heart. Kasuka took InuYasha's hand, spoke a word Kagome could not decipher, and a new life blazed in his unyielding eyes.

“Lady Kagome…ah, Kagome….so sad to hear that you lived, until I remembered the odd things you felt for this one. A youkai soul cannot be returned, not even to a hanyou such as this - but I brought back his human half for you, gave him a cloak of supple flesh. Would you like him, Kagome? Choose carefully. You will not have such a chance again.”

Kagome turned to face InuYasha, eyes wide open and pleading.

“Tell me you are not who she says you are…Tell me you are not!”

“Kagome…”

His lips parted for the word and she heard it as an echo in a broken voice, bleeding and buried. It was an answer to the question she had not asked instead of the one she had, the simple confirmation of his memory. Inside her thoughts all the illusion played over again, with the change in her heart of how much she wanted - how much she needed - to believe. Belief stood in front of her with dancing dark eyes, and her heart broke.

The sound that was ripped from her throat brought her to her knees, a keening of grief alive with its own breath, a shattering apocalypse of terrible love and terrible guilt. There was no person or creature who heard that sound that did not feel a wash of pity, an ultimate catharsis that brought unending waves of empathy. Only Kasuka stood unaffected, turning the coldest part of her heart to Kagome's cry, and when it ended and the pain had faded out of the air, Kagome was left on her knees to sob alone.

 

He could not bear to watch the woman he loved in so much pain, kneeling alone and spending so many hot tears in his name, as if they were coins to buy salvation. When her sobs did not die in the quiet minutes, he heard in his thoughts beyond the tug of magical bondage human laughter, a bright sunlit sphere of beauty in the darkness of rebirth. It was then he could stand it no longer and went down on his knees to pull her into his arms.

Kagome felt the warm, familiar comfort of a fire-rat haori against her cheek and collapsed forward into the arms that had protected her for so long. The return was so welcome, a firelight glow in her heart, such a deep and penetrating warmth that the air around her felt charged with its presence and rubbed shoulders with Kasuka's magic storm, lightening against lightening. InuYasha sighed, feeling the weight of her fill the holes in his soul, but otherworld memories and the mark of her mating kept him from hoping for his own impossible dream. He turned her salt-streaked face up towards him, and when he spoke his words were more gentle than she had ever heard them in his true life.

“I am not InuYasha…Kagome.”

His voice broke on her name.

“I…am half of my own soul in a body of strange flesh. I am sorcery and evil - and despite the pain you feel, you love Sesshomaru, Kagome. Love my brother…and feel no pain. I remember my death, I remember that pain - but I remember also the beauty I had to look at in my ending. No guilt, Kagome, no more pain for you. Forgive me what I do, for I did love you…”

 

Even the unenchanted blade of the katana he had been given to do Kasuka's work was still sharp enough to pierce his human flesh, and for a second time Kagome watched his life's blood spill to the ground in rivulets of sorrow.

“InuYasha…oh, InuYasha…”

There was no second cry, no sky ripping torment, only her lonely-soft whisper and the murmur of the rain. The whole night was a shroud for InuYasha and the demoness who held him, beautiful in her tears.

 

Sesshomaru stared straight ahead on his lonely path, walking in the silence of the dead. After a time, he saw in the pale distance the shimmer of half-light on clear water. The closer he approached, the brighter the shimmer became, until it was apparent that the light was not a reflection at all, but shone upwards in a spiral of radiance from the pool itself. In all that land, this was the sun, destined to shine its pale and broken light over all the dead and the infinite lines of waiting souls. At the edge of the water he stopped and looked around him, seeing the endless columns of fear around him, and then he turned to peer into the water.

There was a rough tugging sensation, like the hands of a small child pulling on a dog's fur, and then a swimming of dry colors, pastel and scattered in small pieces. When they pulled together they were shifting images of pain and travesty - and though he did not know it, he watched close previews as Kagome had done.

He saw Kouga's death, Kasuka standing with a black bow in the midst of a storm, saw the human form he knew belonged to his brother, standing in spirit bondage to the enemy of his heart - and then saw himself, strangely altered, pressed back under a horde of screaming dragon youkai. He watched blood spill and flow, the gore of warfare played out with unrelenting accuracy on the surface of a pool of water that reflected into the heat of his eyes. Sesshomaru stood silent, watching a final vision pursue itself across the water; and then he saw, and then he knew, and with a painful cry he reached as though he could save even the vision in the water.

There was a flash of brilliant light, a heartbeat of silver and white that was streaked with blue from the place where has claws had touched the magic, and he jerked away with a growl of surprise. Behind him came the voice with such depth of soft power, the voice that had trained both his mind and his body, and he turned to face it with dread and passion tightening his muscles - but there was nothing there. A blankness hovered in the air, shivering and twitching full of the presence of his father, but no image came with it, and Sesshomaru bowed to its depth. He was washed with a feeling that was half sensual, a something that pulled gently on all the strings that connected mind and nerves, and made certain to pull them taut enough to give them ear piercing notes that rang as they were plucked. He could not distinguish words from the numbing voice, felt too much soothing blood loss in his veins that moved over him like the low rush of ocean water.

“Kagome…”

There was no response or reply, no reflex for him to observe or understand. The images he had seen were burned indelibly into his thoughts, as though imprinted with a pen of gold against his eyelids. In his heart there was no more caring whether he made it free from this dark place or not - he cared only to prevent what it was he had seen, from the wholeness of his heart to the awareness of ever spear-goaded cell of his being. Silence deepened over him, softer and heavier than a rain layer of warm clouds, and inside his thoughts he felt the presence of his father's voice, a sound without a sound.

*Well done…*

Blackness consumed his consciousness in a riot of bliss. Awakening from the abyss could almost have been called pain - there was physical agony with the restoration of blood flow to cold limbs, chill and unfeeling for the first moments after he opened his eyes. It didn't matter - his soul was on fire with a lesson of the future, and he startled Histaru with his agile leap from the floor. To the boy-youkai it looked as though his Lord had sprung from death to life in moments, an instant resurrection. Sesshomaru turned, noting that Histaru had stayed, and spoke abruptly, hiding the emotion-light in his eyes.

“What is the hour, Histaru?”

“I…do not know, my Lord. It has been some time since you released the power. I was beginning to grow worried that you had left this world.”

A gleam entered Sesshomaru's eyes like the glimmer of stars, and he smiled the smile that had so frightened his dragon-baned foe.

“There is a great concentration of power here - but it will take more than that to do me harm.”

His eyes narrowed to perilous slits, and he moved rapidly toward the chamber door with barely a gesture for his companion to follow, and Histaru hurried, stretching muscles stiff from his long wait. He had barely passed through the chamber door when he heard Sesshomaru's growl and saw the blurred figure of his lord leap past him to slam it shut against a crashing wave of power.

“Now, Histaru, you must help me. I must find Lord Kinawai, and you must tell to your father everything that has happened here. With luck….they will be together. Come.”

Wind matched wind as they sped from the castle, and the new buds of grass shivered under their feet. There was a pause at the gate until Sesshomaru found the scents he sought, and found Kinawai sitting with Akira beside a fire where a haunch of apple-sweet bear roasted, dripping juices from beneath a crisp skin to ignite in the embers of the fire. There was surprise in the other lord at Sesshomaru's sudden appearance, and he stood silently, aware of something in the Taiyoukai's demeanor that spoke of a hushed and certain doom. As though to confirm his feeling, the wind died around them with a feel of rain, and Kinawai pushed his senses to their extreme edge, feeling the tingle of his mate's power and every surge of the storm that built around them.

“What is it that disturbs you, Sesshomaru?”

“Come with me, Kinawai. We must speak of many…things.”

Akira turned to his son with silent questions in his eyes, but Histaru could find no words to describe the ordeal of his past few hours, or the awakening brightness he felt building in his soul with no outlet to the world.

 

“You have led well in my absence, Kinawai. I apologize for the suddenness of my earlier departure, but it could not be helped.”

Kinawai shrugged off the apology, gesturing eloquently at the air.

“Akira informed me of your reasons; in a blood frenzy at the death of your mate, you would have done more harm than good.”

Sesshomaru accepted this silently, pondering deep in his thoughts how to tell this oldest of his allies that his mate had betrayed them all. There was no easy way- the depth and strength of the mating bond was such that even without a bond of love, the connection remained stronger than any other that could be forged between youkai. The Tai youkai turned his face to the sun's scarce rays, and his eyes hardened to grim amber steel with the power of memory.

“We must speak of your mate, Kinawai.”

“My mate?”

“She has betrayed us.”

A dark growl burned in the North Lord's chest, and he turned to face Sesshomaru's back, eyes glowing in the sunset.

“How many times, Lord Sesshomaru, before you understand that I will not tolerate this insult to my house!?”

He leapt without warning, and Sesshomaru dodged Kinawai's claws, hearing a solid sound as the other Lord tore free a chunk of cinnamon scented wood in place of spilling blood.

“Kinawai! Two hundred summers past, your mate, then not your mate, came to the clearing where I sat with my mother and bled her life into the ground! I took her to Eldest but it was too late - she has vowed never again to bring life to the dead, after some pain of her own choosing. It was Kasuka, Storm Flower, and I claim vengeance!”

A restrained roar escaped Kinawai's straining control, and he reached for Sesshomaru again, claws searching for flesh without the control of his mind.

“That has nothing to do with this war, Sesshomaru, that is nothing to speak of any new betrayal!”

“Your mate is the kuromiko who is helping our enemies, Kinawai! Your mate!”

The tiger lord stopped, completely still, and blinked red youkai out of his eyes.

“Kuromiko?”

 

Blood flowed thickly from InuYasha's self-induced wound, and his hands fell limply away from the sword's betraying hilt. There was silence on the hilltop as he fell forward into Kagome's arms. The smile on his face in that moment seemed somehow to ease the pains that had accumulated in her heart, the guilts she had born alone in torment for so long, and she held him tight against her. Her kimono was stained anew with blood, diluted a soft pink by the clawing rain, and there was a sense of mourning in her silence, a sense of something deep that had been awoken, and when she stood she looked desperately alone.

Nearer than she knew, Akira stood by Histaru's side and looked for the silver stain of her figure on the landscape, searching to point her out to the son who stood beside him. When he found her, his mouth opened soundlessly, cry caught in his lungs, and he had only a few words for Histaru.

“That is the Lady of the West; Aid her!”

Akira ran, rushing towards her, the only one who dared to break the stillness that still washed the battlefield, and he was there to catch her when the deep awakening of the pup within her body moved through her muscles. She knew its meaning, felt the pain she would labor through, and begged silently for her pup to lay quiet for only a few moments more.

With a swift focus, Kasuka's ears heard the pulse of life, felt the twinge of birth-pangs that rocked her enemy's body, and reached out with one treacherous hand to claw out the life that rode so near to the surface of claiming itself. With slowed vision, Kagome watched Kasuka's reaching, and it was as though the motion was the signal for the start of a race. Out of Akira's supporting hands and away down the field between armies, Kagome ran and Kasuka followed - but the race was broken by Kagome's speed and Kasuka's slow steps. There was a staggering to Kagome's pace, a moment by moment rocking that came with the pulses of the pup in her belly, and she did not dare slow or look behind her, though she knew Kasuka followed only at a distance. Her heart cried out, and Sesshomaru heard.

 

 

 

Woooo! See! I told you I wouldn't be as slow! Mwahahahahaha…..yay for the continuing evil of plotting in my head. We're getting near the end, still some more fun and naked Sess-chan though…and don't' worry, I already have other ideas pounding at the inside of my brain! Please review!