Chapter 6
Audentes fortuna iuvat.
"Fortune favors the bold"
"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."
-The Great Gatsby
They'd been driving forward for hours, and they'd covered a generous amount of ground. The mountains were closer. Probably another day of running and they'd be on them.
He could hear Kirara's labored breathing. Sango had been yelling at him for a while now.
"Inuyasha!" She yelled over the force of the driving wind. Both humans were hunched over against Kirara's back. "We need to slow down!" He didn't answer. "We need to take a break!"
He snarled at the idea.
"You wanna stop? I ain't stopping you!" His legs stumbled on a branch, but he caught himself and leapt to the next.
"We can't keep up like this! Kirara is—"
"I'm not stopping until I find her!" He roared back.
Inuyasha only relinquished to their requests for rest when he crashed through the canopy, panting, nearly gasping for air, and literally unable to keep moving. Kirara landed beside him, collapsing onto her stomach. She reverted to her smaller size and mewled pathetically. Inuyasha's clothes stuck to him as he tried to catch his breath. He'd remained as he'd fallen, sprawled out on his stomach.
"Inuyasha?" Miroku asked, resting a hand on his shoulder.
"Give me a minute. We can go."
"No, we need to rest," Miroku looked at him and then turned his glance towards Sango, who now cradled Kirara in her arms.
"No time." He managed to get his limbs to work enough to climb precariously to his hands and knees, but he couldn't get himself enough leverage to push himself up to his feet. He swayed slightly before making another attempt to stand, only succeeding in throwing himself onto his ass.
"You can't stand, Inuyasha. And Kirara is worn out too. We all need to rest."
"No," he paused, taking a deep breath. "We have to go."
"Inuyasha, we'll be no use to Kagome if we don't rest for a bit. We can continue when Kirara can carry us again," Miroku said firmly. "Here, have something to eat."
"No, can't." His stomach rolled at the thought of eating, of feeling comfortable when she had been out there for so damn long already. Scared, afraid, alone . . .
"Yes. Eat something. You'll recover faster." He paused and looked down at the struggling hanyou on the ground. "For Kagome?"
He put his hand out, clawed fingers wiggling in response. Miroku gave him an energy bar, which he usually hated to even consider eating, but this time, he seemed to swallow huge chunks of it, finishing it in a few bites. He kept trying to stand, but his legs refused to hold him for more than a step, faltering and failing almost immediately. He dug his claws into the trunk of a tree, but it didn't help; he only succeeded in gouging out the trunk in several places as he sank to the ground. He collapsed next to a tree and roughly knocked his head back against it as he growled in frustration.
There was no time. Didn't they understand that?
She'd been taken by a youkai, a bird one at that, meaning that she was probably going to be used for food. She was going to be eaten, and they didn't have time to stop and rest. He didn't have time to stop and rest. She was depending on them, and there simply wasn't time. He took a deep breath, cursing his half-demon blood. If he'd been full demon, he'd be able to continue on. He was strong, but he could be stronger. His legs were twitching; he'd pushed himself too hard and too long. The fact that his legs spasmed so hard that they couldn't hold his weight any longer spoke volumes about how badly he'd abused his body. Something was off his left leg as it was, like everything below the knee was just soft and too flexible.
He let out a low whine of frustration and closed his eyes. She could be anywhere. All they had was a direction. But they'd tracked Naraku with less before, right? They'd find her and she'd be fine. She'd be okay, and he'd never let her out of his sight. Because even without the shards around her neck, the woman attracted trouble like nothing else. And it was fucking stressing him out.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. She'd be fine. They'd be fine.
It was not fine.
He woke dazed. When had he fallen asleep? How long had it been?
His eyes scanned the area. The shadows were wrong. It was like the sun had backtracked from its previous position.
Miroku and Sango were dousing a fire with dirt. Kirara looked loads better. His limbs weren't twitchy. They were a little stiff but felt fine.
Which meant that he'd passed flat out. And he'd been out for a while.
"You look better. Ready to go?" Sango asked as Kirara transformed.
"Here," Miroku handed him another energy bar and a bottle of water, which he took without argument this time.
"Why didn't you assholes wake me?" He growled, swallowing the bar nearly whole in the three bites it took him to consume it. He rubbed his tongue along the roof of his mouth to get the taste out of it faster as he guzzled the water down.
"We tried, honestly," Miroku conceded. "But you did not wake. No matter what methods we tried. We opted to wait instead of leaving you behind."
"How long, monk?"
"It's still morning," Sango replied. "Can we go?"
Inuyasha growled and then leapt up into the trees, listening to Sango's curse behind and beneath him as Kirara ascended to the sky.
All night. He'd passed out all damn night. He ignored the voice that argued that his body was clearly severely injured if he'd passed out like that. But that was an excuse. Excuses didn't save anyone. They wouldn't save her, so he bunched the muscles in his legs and leapt forward, towards the mountain range that loomed too far off in the distance and tried to convince himself that they'd make it in time.
She was a powerful miko.
That was horribly untrained.
With no weapons.
God, she was probably dead already.
The whine built up in his throat as he pushed himself to move faster and harder. They needed to make the mountains soon.
It wasn't that he didn't have faith in her abilities, he's seen her take out enemies that even he couldn't tangle and defeat by herself. Ones that he couldn't even touch, and she'd just purified them with barely any effort. She'd even managed to come out of the forest of illusions no worse for wear. None of them could say that.
He pushed, leaping a divide of trees and continued towards the mountain range that felt almost close enough that they could touch it. He made a high leap, feeling more hope than he'd felt the entire time she'd been missing.
There was still time. He convinced himself of this fact.
There was still time.
There was still time.
A/N: Sorry about the short chapter, but you'll get two next week.