Events in this chapter are synced with events in the movie Avengers Infinity War
Kagome woke with a harsh scream, sweat and tears pouring down her face and her skin glowing with agitated reiki. It lit the room as eddies of it floated from her and swirled off into the darkness. She frowned as she pressed her hand to her chest above her racing heart, clutching at her locket that felt hot to the touch.
'What...'
the lights to her room flickered on and she pinched her eyes shut, the signal of a new day searing her corneas. The slot in the wall that acted as food delivery when she was locked up alone flicked open and the strange smell of the breakfast gruel wafted out and she slid off her bed to collect it. She mostly played with it, a strange sense of foreboding tingling her all over and making her restless. She forced a few bites down and then paced, hoping Thanos would return soon and let her out. Hour after anxious hour spun by and still she found herself locked in her small, metal box of a room, so stifled by the silence that the sound of her food slot opening for lunch startled her so badly she almost cried. Once again she could only pick around at her rations, deciding that perhaps meditation would help calm her nerves enough to relax and eat something. She closed her eyes and centered herself, dropping her consciousness into the well of purity that existed in her soul, allowing it to consume her, suffuse her being, cushion her from danger both real and perceived, and her heart rate and racing thoughts slowed to a comforting crawl.
There was very little to experience in this state of concentration. Most everything inside her had been muted, including her thoughts, feelings and awareness of the passage of time, but her reiki flashed and swirled behind her eyelids, making her feel as though she was floating in a tank of pink water. It was just the soothing sensation she needed to take the edge off of her jitters, and she allowed herself to sink further down into the cooling peace.
A bright, white spark flared and flitted about, and she got the impression it wanted her to follow, so she followed its lead deeper into her conscious, deeper through the pink depths of her power, until it shifted and blurred around her. Her eyes fluttered open to find herself in a strangely familiar meadow full of lush grass dotted here and there with a whole rainbow of blooms, the distant edges lined with a happy forest.
"Where am I? I know I've seen this place before..."
"Indeed you have."
Spinning quickly around, Kagome was shocked to find herself staring into her own face, smiling serenely at her with glowing eyes.
The voice that spoke again was not her own voice, it was a multitude of voices blended together speaking at once, and it sent a chill down her spine.
"We have brought you here before, our Chosen."
"You... have? Who are you?"
"We are you. We are the jewel."
She gasped in remembrance as the memory of her last time here came back. Shortly after being captured by Thanos she'd seen this place, talked to this weird doppelgänger.
"You're the jewel... you're... me?"
Her face nodded at her, and then a bright swirl of reiki kicked up, surrounding them in a rushing cocoon of light and purity.
"We have found great peace and rest within you. You have done well to protect us, Chosen."
The jewel held out its hand and, reluctantly, Kagome took it.
"Uh... thanks."
"Are you ready?"
"Ready? For what?"
"To wake up."
"I... wake up? What do you..."
"He comes. Be ready Chosen, and remember: your will is ours, our will is yours. We are you."
Kagome blinked, thrown off guard by the gentle smile on her likeness, the empty eyes, the affection squeeze of the fingers around her own.
And then she was shoved back through the soothing layers of her consciousness and back into the cold, harsh reality of her current circumstances.
Her lights flickered on, the signal of a new day. Her breakfast rations dropped onto the uncollected dish of her dinner from the night before, and then her door swung open and Thanos stepped in holding a long chain.
She blinked owlishly up at him, still sitting upright on her bed where she'd started her meditation. She eyed the chain as he silently shackled it to one of her wrists and then tugged her along. With a sinking feeling she noticed that the gauntlet on his hand glowed with several new colorful stones, stones he hadn't had the last time she saw him.
"The day of my victory has arrived, little angel. It's time to go collect my final stone and set balance back to the universe."
"I..." she had to jog to keep up, his long stride quickly tearing across the ship in his urgency to leave.
"Where is the Stone?" Her heart hammered in her chest, her breath came in shallow pants, her head buzzed with dizzying anxiety once again.
"Earth."
Her soul sank like a rock.
Earth.
He was dragging her to earth.
Of all places, this had to go down on Earth.
"Wait!"
She wrapped her hands firmly around her chain and tugged with all of her might, falling to the ground as a dead weight. He was too strong for it to physically stop him, but it startled him enough that he turned to her to hear her.
"Promise me again."
His brow furrowed, and she found she did not like his confused act.
"Promise me!"
"Promise you what, little angel?"
"Loki. Promise me Loki. His life for my cooperation. That's been the deal all along Thanos, from the very beginning. You will Promise me again, now."
His eyes fell to the floor and she felt like she was being dangled over the open jaws of some great beast.
"Oh, little angel. It pains me to know you've not come to see things the right way around."
"The right way around? Thanos, you're a monster. Why would I ever see things your way? I've been complacent for Loki's sake."
He met her eyes again and she noticed the weariness that had set into the lines of his face, and another layer of resignation shuttered over his features.
"Promise. Me. Now."
He lifted his hand bearing the gauntlet, the rainbow stones glittering pretty and menacing in their settings.
"I'm sorry, but sacrifices had to made for the greater good. You'll see it when this is all over."
The blue stone glowed and flashed, and something she'd been told before came back to her, some bit of information about Loki's time on earth and the dangerous artifact that had been retrieved with him. She cursed herself for not caring more about it, for only caring about seeing Loki again and not taking a few more minutes to really digest everything that had happened.
'What was it... the... tesseract? The tesseract!'
Her eyes widened with horrible realization and she stared, horrified, at Thanos's blank face.
"You killed him?"
"He was a noble sacrifice for-"
"You killed him."
"He will forever be revered as a martyr for-"
"You killed him!"
He didn't answer her again for several moments, simply staring into her as every part of her broke. The stones glowed again, his face a hard, solid mask.
"I did."
A flash, a burst, and breathless rushing, and they were gone.
————-
Kagome didn't know where they were, couldn't recognize the terrain, couldn't make out a single face in the crumbling turbulence of her mind and heart, she just knew she'd been taken right into the heat of a battle with large ships floating across the sky.
She was hyperventilating, that much was certain, and she could feel her reiki bubbling up and surfing, hot and angry in response to the loss of her love all over again.
"You... you killed him."
Thanos ignored her, marching through the mayhem, searching for his target, the holder of the last stone.
Her skin tingled and her reiki consumed her.
"He was my only leash... you've severed my only leash..."
She didn't see when Thanos stopped to glance back down at her, for her vision had gone black as her eyes began to glow.
'Are you ready?' Her power whispered, dark and seductive, beckoning to her.
'Wake up!'
Her gaze snapped up to Thanos and with a bright burst of reiki she destroyed her chain and floated up from the ground. Thanos's eyes widened at the frightening display of her power he'd only seen the once before when it had almost spelled his premature demise.
"You killed him," her choral voice accused, and he wondered if he hadn't finally overplayed his hand. "So I shall kill you."
A feral scream was the only signal she gave, and then her power exploded out of her all over the plain.
——————-
High up in a penthouse in Tokyo, where the glittering lights of the city have faded and the only stars are the social elite, a man with shining white hair sat on his couch and flipped absently through the television, his brother, hair white as his own, pouring tea in the kitchen.
He paused at a news channel, fires and monsters and battles taking up the screen, and he sighed in annoyance.
The news anchor's voice was deceptively pleasant as she delivered the headline.
"We have a live feed out of the mysterious nation of Wakanda today where the private drone of the nation's princess is broadcasting what appears to be an alien invasion-"
'Oh gods, AGAIN?'
But then the camera panned over the field, zooming in on something that froze his heart in his chest and his breath in his lungs.
A glowing woman floating above the carnage screaming a desperate, broken scream, her hair and dress whipping around her with the fires of her power, her face the picture of agony.
He knew that face.
He knew that power.
Even all these years later, he'd know it anywhere.
"What the fuck?! Shippo, Sesshomaru, get the hell in here!"
They were there in an instant, eyes roving over the screen, shock stealing their words and voices.
"Inuyasha... is that..." Shippo tentatively asked, and Sesshomaru's grave "Hn." Did little to break the awful tension.
"Kagome..." the Fox whispered, and the bubble around them burst.
"How the hell did she-"
In a flash of Youki Sesshomaru snagged them both around the waist and folded them into his light orb with him. He hated traveling like this, especially since his brother tended to not give him any warning, but it was fast and could get them anywhere in the world in minutes. The older Sesshomaru got, the faster he got.
In almost no time at all they were bursting out of the orb right in the middle of a titanic battle and in the middle, Kagome floated like an ominous pink specter, raining deadly reiki down on the head of some ugly purple guy struggling to stand under the onslaught. Shippo and Sesshomaru quickly found themselves swept up in the battle, but Inuyasha couldn't tear his eyes away.
He watched as the best friend he thought he'd lost set off like a firework.
She screamed to the heavens, hovering high above the ground while her hair and dress continued to float around her in currents of power. Pink tendrils of purity swirled and writhed like tenticles, and white-pink bolts of lightening flickered throughout them.
"You killed him. You promised me!"
She rained her grief and terror down on her target, who brought up his hands to shield his face, but the purity of her attack began burning him and his skin smoldered.
Inuyasha drew Tessaiga from its bespelled sheath and made to leap up and grab her, purification he damned. She wouldn't survive this, but he was halted by another scream clear across the battlefield.
"KAGOME!!"
Flying toward her through the air, lightening streaking behind him, a being he'd never seen before threw all caution to the wind and grabbed her from the air, directing his own lightening onto the being she'd been attacking as well.
All on the battlefield stopped to stare, daring to believe this might be enough to end him. He was faltering under the enormity of the power in their attack, and he struggled to bring his gauntlet wielding hand up as his skin smoked and singed, but he just managed, using one of the stones to teleport away, at least momentarily.
The man holding Kagome descended, cradling her close to his chest, breathing hard and scrunching his eyes closed.
Her power had abated, now pulsing just a touch to lift the ends of her hair. Her eyes still glowed with unearthly pink fire, and her voice was soft and broken.
"He killed him. He's dead."
"I know Kagome. I'm so sorry. He tried... he tried to.."
"He's... he's dead..."
"He was not alone. I promise you. I was with him to the end"
"He's dead... and so I shall die too."
"No. No. Don't you dare! I won't allow it! Natasha! Natasha!!"
A blonde woman ran up, stopping several feet away and approaching slowly.
"Please, do that thing, do that pressure thing you do to make her sleep."
She hesitated, but reached out slowly.
"She won't hurt you. I swear."
The woman named Natasha touched a point in the back of Kagomes neck, rendering her immediately unconscious and the power ebbing around her went dormant.
"Thor... who is this?"
"She is my sister. I thank you, thank you Natasha."
Another scream of grief and anger rang from across the battlefield.
Natasha began turning away.
"I have to go, Thor. Please don't be far behind."
Thor passed Kagome over to a walking tree, addressing a raccoon at his feet.
"you guard her with your life. Anything happens to her I'll kill you."
Old, ancient instincts flared to life, instincts to shield and protect her that he could not fight, so he walked up, arms outstretched.
"I'll take her."
But the man, Thor they'd called him, turned to block him with a harsh glare.
"And who the hell are you?"
His ears snapped back, but Thor simply lifted a brow and brushed passed him, lighting up the axe he wielded with lightening again and running off into the thick of battle. The tree began sprouting and weaving himself into what looked like a cradle to better keep kagome safe while he thrashed any enemy that got too close and the weird raccoon fired mercilessly into clumps of alien soldiers.
Inuyasha looked off in the direction that this Thor guy had gone.
'She is my sister...' he had said.
'That is not what Kagome's brother looks like. Kagome... what's happened to you this time, wench?'