Chapter 13
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"Hey Fluffy! Over here!"
Inuyasha heard Buffy's voice before they rounded a corner in a narrow natural passage. The cave opened up into a large artificiall chamber. It was lit by electric lights in the ceiling and had been carved out of the rock with skill and artistry -- great pillars supported the weight of the roof, but there was ample space to amass an army of hundreds here.
The floor was white marble, inset with swirling lines of darker stone that might have been decorative or might have been evil. He wasn't sure.
Water dripped somewhere, he could smell it and hear it but he couldn't see it.
And in the middle of the chamber, the Slayers and their friends were taking on his brother. All of them were there, though the vampire looked like he'd gotten hit in the head with a sledgehammer -- half his face was black and blue.
They were doing better than he would have expected. Sesshomaru was bleeding in several places. He looked pissed, which took some doing -- Sesshomaru wasn't exactly a hothead. On the other hand, the axe in his shoulder probably wasn't helping his disposition any, and he knew from personal experience that Buffy's mouth could have enraged a saint. And her friends were almost as skilled with the cutting words.
Kagome said in a tone of calm observation, "Buffy's powers are coming back."
"Not quick enough, though ..." Inuyasha broke into a run across the room as he saw Sesshomaru whip around on Buffy, mouth open, teeth bared. He'd rip her to pieces if he got ahold of her.
"Sesshomaru!" He shouted, hoping to distract his brother long enough for Buffy to dodge.
Unfortunately, Sesshomaru didn't react -- but Buffy did. She glanced over her shoulder while running from Sesshomaru's jaws, tripped, and went down.
"Fuck." He leaped over her, drew Tessaiga in one smooth gesture, and landed between her and Sesshomaru with his sword drawn. Sesshomaru skidded to a halt, then swapped ends when Faith slashed at his hamstrings with a sword.
He heard Buffy scrambling back to her feet behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she wasn't going to attack him and said, "Get out of here. You're not back to normal yet. I'll deal with my brother."
"Inuyasha ..." she breathed, seemingly stunned to see him here.
"Get!" He barked the command at her, then returned his full attention to Sesshomaru. Someone was going to get hurt or get dead if he didn't put a stop to this battle now. The mortals were attacking Sesshomaru like cave men going after a mammoth, and Sesshomaru was starting to get visibly frustrated. This was not a good combination.
"Get BACK!" He shouted at them.
They ignored him.
Kagome's voice, behind him, "Get away! Inuyasha needs room to fight him!"
Still no response. Damnit, he needed room to use his more effective attacks.
He slapped Tessaiga into the ground, not nearly as hard as he could. The resulting ripple of power left a deep gouge in the floor and and got everyone's attention, including Sesshomaru's -- who abruptly transformed back from the dog. Icily, he asked, "You want to fight me, whelp?"
"Everyone out of the way!" Inuyasha yelled again, at the humans. This time, having been clued in to his intentions by the destruction of the floor, they scattered -- Buffy ended up by a door leading to a side room with Kagome, and the rest ran the other way, clustering together near the exit.
He concentrated, identified the lines of demonic power radiating from Sesshomaru, and pulled Tessaiga back to cut along them. Sesshomaru charged towards him, claws reaching out.
Someone among Buffy's friends -- he thought it might have been Xander -- said, "Anybody bring popcorn? This should be entertaining."
He ignored them, except to note that they weren't nearly as frightened as they ought to be. What sort of life had these people been living?
A Wind Scar attack on Sesshomaru wasn't likely to kill him as long as he had Tenseiga, but it would put an end to this fight ... and he really didn't want to prolong it. Nor did he, particularly, want to kill Sesshomaru. At least, not today. He was keeping that option open for the future.
"Turok-han!" Buffy shouted, suddenly, alarm in her voice, "Look out!"
The vampire dropped from t between the two of them, from a vantage point above them, just as he unleashed a blast of power on Sesshomaru. The vampire got the brunt of the attack, and a blow from Tenseiga at the same time, and poofed into dust. More of them poured down from above, however, from a ledge fifty feet over their heads.
He and Sesshomaru exchanged a look. A few turok-han weren't much of a challenge to either of them. There were lots of them, however. Dozens. No, scores. Enough that mutual defense might be prudent.
"Kagome!" He shouted, "Stay with me!"
Hundreds of turok-han.
He unleashed a Wind-scar blast on a group of them, disintegrating them. His chest burned with the effort of summoning that much energy through the sword, however; he was painfully reminded that he'd been near death only a day before. Damnit, he thought, savagely.
An arrow hissed past his head and buried itself in the chest of an ax-wielding ubervamp a few feet from his back. He spun around in time to see it explode into oblivion, and Kagome running to him behind the path of the arrow. Purifying arrows made short work of vampires, even supercharged mutant nasty vampires like these apparently were.
He could hear the others engaging in a battle behind him. Sesshomaru, wisely, dropped into a line beside him. "So we fight together again, little brother," Sesshomaru said, sounding amused.
"You're bleeding. I can smell it."
"Clever little monkeys," Sesshomaru snorted. "It is nothing."
"They actually managed to wound you. I'm impressed," Inuyasha shot back.
"You stink of illness." His brother snapped. "I can't kill you today, it would not be an honest fight."
"Excuses, excuses ..." Inuyasha found a clean line of sight on at least thirty Turok-han, and sent a roaring burst of energy their way. The cavern rocked with the aftershocks, and gravel rained down from overhead.
"Careful, dog-boy. Don't bring this cave down on our heads." Kagome stepped stepped into line next to Sesshomaru -- Inuyasha didn't think it was chance that led her to stand on Sesshomaru's armless side. She was protecting Sesshomaru's vulnerable side, a tactically smart thing to do when the enemy of your enemies had just become your ally ... but it also meant he couldn't defend her.
For his part, the daiyoukai lord gave Kagome a very startled look, apparently only belatedly recognizing her. Inuyasha tried to remember if he'd ever told Sesshomaru where, or rather when, Kagome was from, and couldn't remember if he had. It wasn't like they'd ever sat down over coffee to have a nice brotherly chat about their lives and loves. Did Sesshomaru even know about the well? It had been so long, and his memories were so faded ...
Sesshomaru bit out, "You. The little miko!"
She tossed a grin over her shoulder at him. "Hello, Sesshomaru. Miss me?"
"Hardly."
"Gee, I feel so loved." Kagome sent two arrows towards Buffy, who was grappling with one Turok-han and being menaced by another. Both ubervamps went poof. Buffy snagged a dropped axe up off the ground, spun, and took the head off a third one.
Buffy's powers were coming back -- though she was still far slower than she ought to have been.
Buffy was pinned down in the doorway leading to the side room. The rest of her friends were being beaten back towards the exit. He, Sesshomaru, and Kagome were being forced towards Buffy by wave after wave of Turok-han. In theory, Tessaiga could take out a hundred demons with a swing ... in reality, they were underground with a roof that could collapse on their heads, he was trying not to hit the good guys, and he was nowhere near full strength.
The lights went out, plunging the cave into darkness.
"FUCK!" That was Xander.
A blow smashed into his shoulder, savage pain ... he'd been hit by something sharp and heavy. He smelled the vile stink of vampire, and a heavy body crashed into him. The vampire dodged away, and slashed out with his claws, missed entirely, then he heard a howl of pain from the darkness that was no vampire. He smelled the blood, and his heart twisted into a horrified knot.
"Kagome!" Somehow, she'd been injured.
"Inu ... inuyasha ..."
There was a glow from Tessaiga. His eyes adjusted, and he saw and smelled blood ... too much blood ...
"Not your fault ..." she murmured, at his feet. "Save the others, koishii ... glad we had ..."
She trailed off, and he yanked his sword arm back and funneled all his horrified rage at the army of ubervamps. A hundred dead? No, more than that ... the blast shook the cave, and then there was a crack and a roar of falling rocks that brought him back to himself.
"Idiot!" Sesshomaru snarled at him, bolting for the exit.
Inuyasha grabbed Kagome up, her blood hot on his hands. Rocks came down between him and the passage to the outside, however. He bolted for the other door as the ceiling gave way above them. Buffy was two steps ahead of them; they made it through the doorway just as the vast chamber filled with rock and debris.
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It was dark, in the side room, without electric lights.
Buffy coughed on gagging amounts of dust and fumbled her cell phone out of her pocket. She used the lighted display as a flashlight, and found Inuyasha ... the hanyou's red clothing was transmuted to black by the green light of the phone, and there was more black on his hands, his face. His eyes were terrible pools of inky darkness ... in better light, she knew they would have been red, as they had been when he'd killed Kennedy.
"Is she ..."
No words, just a snarl.
Inuyasha spun away from her.
"Inuyasha ... "
"Stay away from me." A warning, delivered in a harsh choking voice.
He stumbled to a clear patch of floor and set the bleeding young Slayer down on it. Only belatedly did Buffy see the seal on the floor. She swore in horror. "Wait! Not there ..."
Too late. The heart's blood pouring from the woman's body covered the goat's head seal. There was a sudden flare of light. The seal abruptly came to life, and the very air trembled and seemed to fold around itself.
"No ..." Kagome murmured, perhaps sensing the evil below her. Stronger, she said, "NO!"
Light flared from her. Inuyasha wrapped his arms around her and light flared from him, too. A maelstrom of heat and energy rose from the pair of them, a tornadic swirl of power fighting the creation of a new Hellmouth. Buffy could only stand and stare in horror and awe.
"This will not be!" Kagome screamed. Yeah, she sensed the evil all right ...
For ten minutes, the power raged. Dark tendrils of purple and black swirled among the light blue and white that was the combined energy of miko and hanyou. Gradually, they drove back the darkness ... Inuyasha's snarls filled the air, and Kagome's whimpers grew softer and softer. Finally, with a pop of power, the maelstrom disappeared.
She snapped her cel phone open again. The goat's head seal on the floor was utterly gone.
"Kagome?" Inuyasha held her in his lap, and shook her shoulders gently. "No, Kagome. No, no ..."
Buffy cautiously drew closer. The front of the girl's shirt was soaked with blood. She wasn't breathing, and wasn't bleeding anymore.
"No!" He laid her on the floor, pressed his lips to hers in a parody of a passionate kiss. Between breaths, he gasped, "No! Kagome, no!"
He pressed on her chest, hard -- she heard rips cracking. He actually knew how to do CPR, she realized; some distant part of her brain wondered how he'd learned. It was a logical skill for a warrior to know, but she'd never thought of him being that smart. Or that caring. Or capable of that sort of planning.
"Kagome!" A desperate wail. "Kagome, no!"
Wordlessly, then, but with desperate intensity, he worked over her -- he kept trying to bring her back for what felt like hours. Buffy's cel phone beeped a low-battery warning and she snapped it shut, not wanting to watch anymore. This was utterly futile.
And still he continued to try against all logic and hope to save her life. Buffy knew, by the volume of blood that covered the floor, that Kagome was gone and he was trying to save a dead body ... but she didn't have the heart to tell him that.
Finally, after what felt like hours, the sounds of his rhythmic breathing and the slapping and cracking noises of his hands on her chest stopped. The wail now, instead of desperate, was simply and utterly broken. "Kagome, oh Kagome, no ..."
Buffy opened her cell phone again. Now he was shrugging out of his red jacket, and wrapping it around the body. His touch was tender, but the expression on his face was terribly, terribly lost.
"I'm sorry." She was, she realized -- he'd loved this woman, and he'd lost her without warning. She'd died in heroically slayerish fashion, however ... taking out that seal had been a truly incredible feat of power. Jaken had alluded to Sesshomaru having difficulty with it.
"What do you care?" Bitter words. "You didn't know her."
"I wish I had," Buffy said, honestly.
He gathered the body up in his arms and retreated with it across the room, as far from her as he could get. There he sat, Kagome's corpse in his lap, head bowed, silver hair falling around her. Buffy thought he was crying, but she couldn't be sure. His breathing was harsh, ragged, and he was visibly shaking. His facial features looked weird, and his eyes flashed dark as she watched, then faded back to normal. "No ... no, I won't ... " he murmured. "I won't hurt anyone else!"
She shut the phone off. She could feel a draft and remembered there was another exit out of here -- but wandering around in the dark with only a dying cell phone for light seemed really stupid.
"My instincts are still telling me to kill you, you know," the hanyou spoke after perhaps half an hour of silence. He sounded shaken. "I will not transform and lose myself again."
"Is there anything I can do ...?" She asked, carefully. He could kill her, if he wanted to.
"I'm done." Inuyasha said, sounding more exhausted than anything else. "I'm done, Buffy. I've nothing left to fight for. Kagome was it. Without her ... I'm not sure I would even fight for myself."
He exhaled a shaky, ragged breath. "What point is living if there's no joy in the world anymore? I don't want to go on."
"The world needs heroes," Buffy sighed. "Sometimes you have to go on even if you don't want to."
"What, are you going to invite me to join your merry little band of misfits? Like that's going to work." Angry words. "This is your fault, woman."
"It's both our faults. There's a whole spiderweb of lines of fault. And I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't bring people back. Sorry is useless. Pointless. You're only saying it because it makes you feel better," he bit out at her with anger and grief.
She didn't know what to say, so she sat silently with the light off, listening to him breath.
After a moment, he said, "This woman ... she healed my soul, Buffy. I was hurting so bad the first time we met ... she taught me to trust, to care for others, to laugh and to live and to share what's in my heart. She taught me to love, and that if you loved someone, you cared more about them than your own welfare."
A shuddering sigh. He was crying.
"I've never understood why ... why me ... of all people. There was this boy, you know, who was always chasing after her. He was kind and caring and handsome. Gentle. Educated. He didn't have a vicious or mean bone in his body. He was from her time. And he loved her. And I was so threatened by him ... I figured she'd surely chose that perfect boy over me. I was an asshole, sometimes, to her. To this day, I don't understand ... I've never understood ..."
He trailed off, and held the broken body in his arms closer.
"Inuyasha, there's a place, after ..." Buffy swallowed a lump in her throat. "Mourn for yourself. But don't mourn for her. She's gone to a better place. It's real. I've ... known ... it."
"Feh. Shut up."
She flicked the light over him again, briefly, knowing the phone was almost out of juice. He was leaning against the wall, Kagome's head in his lap. He had his head rolled back, was staring upwards, and his expression was terrible to behold. Tears tracks glinted in the dim light. She saw his adam's apple bob.
When a flashlight shone across them, from the other exit, she was blinded by the sudden appearance of light where there had been none. A voice said, simply, "Inuyasha."
It was Sesshomaru. He gave Buffy a brief glance, then walked across the floor to regard the hanyou with a small frown. Inuyasha didn't even get up, he just sat there staring up at him. "Kill me, Sesshomaru. It's over. I'm done."
The daiyouki lord was very still and silent. He regarded Inuyasha with an almost curious expression for several minutes. When he spoke, his voice shattered a quiet so profound that Buffy jumped. "True evil's on the move in the world, Inuyasha. I haven't time to spare for this petty fight between us. I can't let them kill you and I can't let you do this to yourself."
"She's dead." Inuyasha said, without moving. His voice was simply broken. He sounded breathless, almost choking, when he whispered, "I ... I can't."
Buffy was expecting Sesshomaru to say something like, 'She was just a human' or 'pathetic' or half a dozen other insults. Instead, the demon lord said in a tone of voice that held command,. "Inuyasha, put her down and get up."
Inuyasha growled. By Sesshomaru's light, Buffy could see his eyes flash over to red and his facial bones lengthen. "If you won't kill me, just leave me alone!"
"Get. Up." Sesshomaru bent over, set the flashlight on the ground so that it was still pointing towards Inuyasha, and drew his sword.
"You gonna send me to the afterlife, then?" Inuyasha didn't move. He sounded almost ... expectant.
"You are an idiot, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru slashed at something in thin air. Buffy blinked. What was he doing -- practicing katas, now? He seemed suddenly to be fighting something invisible. He slashed and spun about and jabbed and cut at unseen victims.
Inuyasha suddenly scrambled to his feet, Kagome clutched to his chest, with his mouth hanging open. Sesshomaru continued to chase things that Buffy couldn't see -- he pursued one halfway across the room. In a tone of dumbstruck awe, and terrible hope, and utter disbelief, he said, "Sesshomaru ... you're ... Kagome ... why?"
Sesshomaru made a noise that might have been a snort, though it was far colder than anything that Inuyasha had ever uttered. "This only works once, little brother. You best take better care of your woman in the future."
Kagome made a noise -- a deep, gasping sound. Inuyasha exhaled a tiny shuddering breath in reaction -- barely a sob, but a sound that held all sorts of incredible relief.
Sesshomaru put the sword away. "Bah. You look like a woman now. Crying like a girl. Typical."
"T..." The words seemed frozen in Inuyasha's mouth. He tried again, after a quick glance at the now-breathing woman in his arms. "Thank ..."
"Don't say it. You'll embarrass both of us." Sesshomaru said, sounding unhappy and uncomfortable with the whole situation. He paused, then added quietly, "There's trouble bigger than either of us coming, Inuyasha. That was why I came to save you from these fools. I see you've managed to save yourself, but still, heed this as a warning -- we cannot keep fighting as we have in the past. I may not be the bastion of light and goodness that you are," he said this with a almost, but not quite, a sneer, "but I have no desire to see this world consumed by foul evil."
After he led them to the surface, Sesshomaru paused, and added to Buffy with a very cold tone, "Touch my brother again and I will end you. His fate is mine to decide, and mine alone."
And then he was gone in a simple twinkling of light.
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