Chapter Seventeen: The Morning After
Inuyasha leaped at the newcomer with Tetsusaiga held high. Inu looked up at him and flicked Sesshoumaru's whip at him, catching him on the ankle and throwing him back to earth.
"What the hell did you do THAT for?" the hanyou screamed. They watched as the woman disappeared into the foliage.
The youkai stepped from the water and reclaimed his swords. "Baka. She will be in no shape to fight for some time. Elemental youkai are far different from normal youkai. Revenge is not a dish served cold with them. It is served frozen. She will certainly seek revenge on our family, but it will be ages before she does so."
"So we should kill her NOW!" Inuyasha was furious.
His nephew suddenly looked more like Sesshoumaru than ever before. "Baka. That fight is not today, and will not be yours when it happens. Be quiet." He strode back up the hill to where the trio was standing.
"Inu-kun..."
Inu blinked. Ruri was some distance away and in no condition to shout. He looked around him. The trio looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. They obviously hadn't heard anything.
******
Kagome dunked a rag into a bucket of water and wrung out as much water as she could from it. She folded it and placed it on Ruri's forehead. Tenseiga could indeed cheat death, but one healed by it still must recuperate from whatever wounds they had suffered. Ruri also still had to fight the toxins that were left in her system. Inu's somewhat crude blood transfusion had indeed saved her life, but the girl was still suffering.
"Inu-kun..."
"Thy friend comes soon, child," Kaede said gently from the doorway.
Ruri opened her eyes and tried to sit up. She could have sworn that he was in the room with them.
"Take it easy, okay? You haven't had a chance to recover yet," Kagome scolded. Ruri allowed Kagome to push her back onto the floor once she'd managed to convince herself that Inu wasn't in the room. Granted, sitting up probably wasn't the best move she could have made, since the room was now swimming in circles around her.
She closed her eyes to shut out the swirling. It seemed like every part of her body ached. Even her heart ached. Her eyes snapped open as her brain rejected the notion. Big mistake. She closed her eyes again against the spinning. No, she really was feeling that emotion. She tried to focus her thoughts amidst the lingering poison which still partially clouded her judgment.
She knew that she had nothing to be upset about. Okay, maybe she harbored a little jealousy against Sango-san for being a better swordswoman than she was. Baka. Why would that matter? Inu-kun obviously wasn't interested in Sango-san; she wasn't competition. Inu-kun was... Baka. 'That's not the problem and you know it,' Ruri told herself. Focusing on the ache her emotions were feeling helped her forget the physical aches she was feeling, so she tried to isolate it.
The more she focused on what she was feeling the more she became aware that this feeling was not internal. Baka. All emotions are internal. But she couldn't accept that this feeling of heartache came from herself. She simply did not have a reason for such pain. Yet, it was growing. It was definitely slowly growing stronger and stronger, as if emotion had a physical form and was walking up to her. Where were Akito-san and Yurika-san when she needed them? She felt herself beginning to cry. Baka. Baka! She had no reason to cry. Where was Inu-kun? He was the only person she knew here who might be able to help her.
"Inu-kun," she said softly.
******
Inu was almost back to Kaede's hut when he heard his name called again. He broke from his stride and almost fell on his face. No one was around. Miroku, Sango and his uncle were all walking back. Perplexed, he hurried the final distance back to Kaede's hut. He slowed when he got to the hut. He pushed back the mat and stepped inside.
Ruri's dizziness was slowly fading, she realized, as she pushed herself up. She looked up at Inu-kun, and, defying every ounce of logic she had, suddenly knew where the pain was coming from. Despite the physical ache from her side, she stood and ran to him. She watched him lean down to pull her close to him as she approached. She dove the final part and wrapped her arms around him.
As soon as they touched, Inu felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. Unable to stand, he fell to his knees as everything happening in Ruri's mind washed over him. His mind struggled to find its strength. 'Dammit, I'm Ruri's protector! I can't let her down this way!'
"I know, Inu-kun, it's okay" Ruri said softly.
******
Inu inhaled deeply as he felt sunlight poke through an unpatched hole onto his skin.
'Mmm, stew'
'Baka.'
'Baka yourself. Mizu no Shi is a BITCH of a spell to cast. I've only cast it at training targets before, not a being. I was hungry every time before, and I'm starving now.'
Ruri audibly sighed, garnering a raised eyebrow from Kagome.
'So, Inu-kun, put on that stupid hat and 'naze nani' this.'
Inu laughed out loud and sat up, working a kink out of his shoulder.
"But I wanted the rabbit ears."
Kagome stared. "You've... gone... loony."
'Okay, here's best guess, Ruri-chan. A blood transfusion is normally no big deal. Happens every day. But as far as I know, there's never been a youkai-human or youkai-hanyou transfusion.'
'So you're going to tell me that I got part of your soul and vice-versa or something?'
"Something like that," Inu said with a smile.
"Mm-mmm-Miko K-k-kaede!"
'You're really starting to freak your aunt out. You should stop switching between a mental channel and an audible one.'
'Ever the comp operator, aren't you? Of course, it's analogous to our present situation.'
Ruri lifted her hands and started at the circuits embedded in them. "I guess you could say that. Just like I can communicate with the ship's computer either by touching an access point or by talking to it, we can now communicate via a verbal link like everyone else in the world or a mental one."
"Does that convince you of our sanity?" Inu teased his aunt.
"Uh, yeah, sort of." She handed them each stew as miko Kaede stuck her head back in. Seeing the guests up, she came in and sat down.
"How long were we unconscious?
"It's only mid-morning," Kagome said reassuringly. She filled in the elder miko on the previous conversation.
"Interesting," Kaede said when Kagome had finished. "So what caused ye both to pass out last night?"
Inu shrugged. "Neither of us were in a normal mental state. Ruri-chan was injured and I was weakened from Mizu no Shi."
"I must say that it is disturbing that anyone knows how to cast that spell, even more so that one aligned against us should know it."
Ruri looked at Inu's face. She saw sadness pass across it and felt the heartache she had felt the night before.
Regaining his composure, the youkai spoke "You will not be troubled by that one in your lifetime."
The elder miko read that it was a subject which should not be broached, but the younger lacked the insight. "And why not?"
It clicked for Ruri, and she let the tears slowly fall out. "You didn't have a choice, Inu-kun."
"I know." Reading the confusion on the mikos' faces, he explained. "That was my grandmother I destroyed."
"So the other one was- was your mother?" Kagome's shock was plain, but Kaede took it in stride.
"I see. Thus if ye had killed thy mother before thee was born, how could ye have been born?"
"It's not just that." Inu lowered his head. "Because I killed her mother, she will harbor a grudge against the clan of Inutaishou. Knowing that Inuyasha-sama was also present, she will believe that I was Sesshoumaru-sama. Thus when she meets him again in several hundred years, she will ingratiate herself to my father in order to strike back and cause him the most pain possible. As a part of that revenge, she will bear me. Had I not killed her mother, I would not have been born, and I would not have dragged Ruri-chan back here to be injured."
The mikos sat in silence at this.
'Baka. You didn't drag me here. You gave me a choice and told me that it would be dangerous. You also know that's not exactly how her revenge goes, either. Unless it was me you lied to.'
'No, you know the entire truth. This is to keep them ignorant of things that they could affect.'
'But, Inu-kun, haven't we basically proved you can't alter history? I know you Inu-kun, even better now. You wouldn't purposefully harm me, this is the way-'
"-that history is meant to happen," Kaede said, apparently finishing a rather lengthy speech. Inu had caught only the last part of what the miko said, but knew that it matched Ruri's words.
"I can't accept it wholesale, but there's more than a grain of truth in what you say," Inu said, more so to Ruri than to the miko.
'Inu-kun, I want to go for a walk.'
******
