A/N: An extra long chapter to make up for the last two small ones, just like I promised.
And, since I'm really sad after writing this (not to mention the music that I'm listening to is PERFECT for the ending story), I'm only going to write a few more things. First off, since nobody rejected any endings as evil, I'm writing it exactly as I want to. If you don't like it, you don't have to, but please tell me. I'd love to know. Constructive and creative criticism is awesome, and I would love for people to point out my flaws so that I can make this a better story all around.
Alright, last few things. There is only ONE more chapter here, and that will be both conclusion and epilogue. Then this story is getting shelved, and I hope that some of you will go back and criticize my other stories (as I believe this one is the best written of them all). Also, next chapter (which I hope to get out later today...otherwise I probably won't have time to write until Friday or so, and that would be oh, so cruel) I'm going to copy what I did in ACE and write down every single reviewer's name as a thank you and also post a song that I've been listening to non-stop as inspiration for writing the final chapters for Truth and that everyone should go to radioblogclub(dot)com and listen to while reading or just after so you get the mood. In fact, I would say that when I give it to you, you should reflect on it and see just how perfect it is.
One final thing: Some of you are well on your way to figuring out why I wrote this as I did. I'm a twisted, evil person...so I need to surprise you. I hope I will.
Okay, enough rambling. I've already gone on long enough.
Youko had been sitting in his study, as he had been since Kagome left the castle, when Yuusuke entered and stared at him. The butler was very angry, even a fool could see that. And the depressed fox knew it had to do with him, but he didn't care. He didn't seem to care about anything anymore, and all because he was too thick to realize how he felt before it was too late.
He sighed, which seemed to bring Yuusuke some courage to say whatever he wanted to. The tall immortal walked to stand directly in front of Youko and began to speak.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Youko? You've been sitting here on your sorry ass, wishing for something you let go of your own free will." Youko looked up with dead eyes as Yuusuke continued his rant. "You have no reason to be ths depressed at all! If anyone should be down, it should be the rest of us."
Kurama's head fell back and he stared at the ceiling. "You just don't get it Yuusuke."
The immortal flipped, his anger getting the better of him. "Don't get it? Don't get it? No, you don't get it, you annoying bastard!" The butler ignored the spark of anger that lit up in the prince's eyes as he turned his face to Yuusuke again. "So you fell in love and blew it. Big deal. Everyone falls in and out of love everyday, and in case you've forgotten, you're not the only one out there suffering from heartache. You have no right to be acting like this, since it's not only your fault that we're in this situation, but it's also your fault that we'll all be stuck like this until the end of time!"
Youko stood furiously. "I know! Gods be damned, I know all that, you don't need to point it out to me." He clenched his fists and loosened them, agitated but knowing the spell wouldn't let him hurt anyone. Even if he really wanted to.
Yuusuke snorted. "Bullshit. You totally forgot, or you would be moving on. If you had had any courage, you would have told Kagome how you felt before she left. But no, we poor cursed souls had to make the mistake of working for a childish prince, too cowardly and proud to admit to the one person he's ever loved how he feels!"
"You don't know how hard it is, damn it!" How Youko wanted to just wring Yuusuke's neck between his pale hands, to watch the face grow pale and his lips gain that blue tint from lack of oxygen. He snarled his frustration. "Just shut up and leave me be! Leave me to wish I was off the face of the earth, that I had never been born so that none of this would have happened." He turned away with finality.
It was lost on the other occupant of the room. "There you go again, taking the coward's way out. Why don't you just face the fact that the only way you can move on is to take responsibility for your actions and accept it. It'd do the world a favor."
Youko spun and grabbed Yuusuke by the collar, pulling him face to face. "What do you want from me? What more can I do after I've screwed things up so badly that they can't be repaired, hm?"
"Learn from your mistakes. Move on. And don't ever say that you didn't deserve to be born. If you would stop and think for a single moment, everything that happened is your fault. Both the good and the bad."
Youko took a deep breath and threw Yuusuke back. The brunette stumbled slightly before standing and straightening his collar. Before turning to leave, Yuusuke said, "Learn to think as the prince your supposed to be, and not the spoiled brat you were a long time ago." He left.
Youko turned back to the fire but didn't sit down. Instead, he thought about everything Yuusuke had said. Looking back, he realised that his friend had been trying to break him from his funk. And he had made some clever points as well.
It was true that it was all Youko's fault that they had been cursed and would be cursed for the rest of time, but there were other things to counter it. It was his fault that Yuusuke and Keiko were together after he sent the rambunctious young man (at the time Yuusuke was in his early teens) to Keiko for a punishment. It was his fault that Yukina and Hiei were hired after the fire demon had insulted him and beaten his younger self and his pride hadn't let him let it go. It was also his fault that none of them were fired after all this time, when otherwise they would have been sent away long ago for various reasons.
Sometimes it was advantageous to being a spoiled child. It made it so much easier to get his parent's to believe that it was some of the village children that had ruined the garden when Touya was still learning about flora, or when the barn door was unhinged after Kuronue accidently forgot to put away one of the more spirited stallions.
He was right about all that, and then some. But before Youko could dwell on anything else, the door burst open and Keiko came stumbling in.
She was breathing heavily, which meant that she had to have been somewhere on the other side of the castle when she was sent to find him. Calming down just a bit, she choked out her message. "Strangers at...the gate. They're trying...to break down...the doors. They've got pitch...pitchforks and other farming...tools as weapons, and...and they're being led by someone holding the...enchanted mirror."
Youko's face slackened in surprise. That could only mean... "Quick, get all of the staff down to the gates and hold them off as much as possible. I'll go see how many there are from the rooftops and join you as soon as possible." He made a move to brush past the housekeeper and was stopped.
"No, you go to the roof and stay there. The rest of us can hold them off, but you're not an immortal and you haven't had nearly as much experience in fighting as the rest of us. And we're going to fight." She had a determined look in her eyes that Youko had to question.
"And what about the curse, or are you forgetting about the inconvenience about not being able to hurt people?" he asked.
Keiko smiled. It was surprisingly malicious for the young woman. "Oh, we know that part. But here's the clincher- the other day Yuusuke punched Kuwabara and they got into a decent fist fight until we all realised that the curse wasn't kicking in. We sat and talked about it, and figured that the spell has weakened enough for us to defend ourselves due to you falling in love. So you just stay out of the fighting and let us handle it."
She left before he could say anything, and it took him a moment more to realise what she said. If the curse was weakening, and it was because of him, then they really had a chance to survive this. He also didn't miss the undertone in Keiko's voice that thanked him for choosing the perfect time to admit to his feelings.
Then Youko was tearing out the door to the roof, for once acting like a ruler by taking the advice from people who knew more about a situation than he did.
Yuusuke gathered everyone at the door. The intruders were still pounding on it, doing everything in their power to get the wooden doors open. It was a good thing that Jin had become a wind demon in this respect; the only thing keeping the people out was the fact that there were gale-force winds keeping them closed.
It made it a bit difficult to speak over, but he managed. Somehow. "Listen up everyone!" he began. All heads turned to him, and he saw Keiko come back from talking with the prince out of the corner of his eye. "We've got to stop them here, now, before they get a decent foothold in the castle. Any ideas?"
Nobody spoke up. They all just shifted uneasily, looking between each other. Yuusuke sighed with exhasperation.
Hiei tilted his head a bit. "Bring out all the stops," he stated simply. Yuusuke motioned for him to continue. "It's not like the immortal can die, and we demons have defences for ourselves. So we use everything we have in one last stand, do anything that can lower their courage."
Yuusuke smirked. "I knew there was a reason I liked you." He ignored the piercing glare that greeted him after that statement. "Alright, we need the element of surprise on our hand. Everyone, you have two minutes to hide!" People started to scatter to their chosen battlegrounds. "Jin, when we're all prepared, let the wind die and get up to the ceiling. You're our first attack." Yuusuke ran away, hiding behind the banister.
Jin waited for the right moment before cutting off the wind. It was right after they had hit the door once again, and he had plenty of time to jump up and use the air to float him to the top of the cavernous room.
The door burst open. People began pouring in, torches and pitchforks in hand, flooding into the room. They were led by a black haired somebody whose eyes were flickering from one corner of the room to the other. They all pulled to a stop, looking around in confusion.
One of them spoke up. "'Ey, Inuyasha," the man asked in a gruff voice. "I thought ye wur sayin' thems all'd be 'ere ta fight! Alls I be seein' is un abandonened rum, wit' null life in't."
The leader, now identified, turned around. "Something's wrong, they should be here! I know it. They should be here." He kept repeating his own mantra while the crowd became annoyed.
Jin got a wonderful and glorious idea in his mind. Calling on his windy specialty, he made the doors close 'themselves'. Everyone jumped spectacularily, and Jin rolled over in the air trying to keep in his laughter.
Yuusuke caught on to the agitation created by the ever mischeivous wind youkai and laughed out loud. He was in the perfect position to do so, as it echoed off of the stone walls and wrapped around the villagers like a ghost.
They began to panic. "Inuyasha, wut's thus?" one woman asked. "There be spooks attackin' us all, mark mine words!"
Inuyasha growled. "There's no such thing! It's the castle people, it's all them." He looked up. "Search the place and we'll find them."
That was a good enough cue for the castle staff- with various battle cries, they seemed to just pour out from every crack and possible hiding spot in the entire room.
The tresspassers were only frozen for a moment before swarming out to meet the opposition. Their forces clashed violently, the shedding of first blood lost within seconds. The demons were using any of their abilities- Jin with his wind, Touya with his ice and Hiei combining fire and sword were the most devistating- while the immortals used anything remotly resembling a weapon.
Keiko was doing some pretty decent damage, only having a handful of scratches and minor bruises as she swung a broom around to catch another unaware villager in the gut. Shizuru topped it off by bringing down her skillet on his head. The metal pan became severly dented, and Shizuru sighed over the loss of such a good cooking utensil.
Yukina was wandering about, making sure that the people on both sides had no fatal wounds. The villagers nearly fainted when she used her ice abilities to heal them, and ended up fleeing out the now open doorway back to where they came from. It didn't help that Kuwabara, wielding a very menacing looking spoon in his hand, was watching over the love of his life with eagle eyes.
Through the confusion, as bursts of fire and ice combined with wind to take out countless fighters, nobody noticed a lone shadow climbing the steps at a run.
Youko walked out into the rain, picking his way onto the balcony with care. Even if he had extremely good balance due to his demon senses didn't mean he could make a potentially fatal mistake and slip over his own two feet. He had long ago put on his old silver garments, and silk was known to be slippery. He didn't want to make a novice mistake, so he took off his slippers and tossed them back into the building.
Walking in bare feet, he peered over the balcony edge to see what was happening out on the grounds. He hadn't thought he would see any people still standing there, as the servants wouldn't have allowed any of this to go without a fight. It did amuse him when he saw them fleeing back to the forest, their sputtering torches resembling panicked fireflies as they ran back to the village, glowing slightly in the distance.He hoped half-heartedly that they would meet up with one of the guardians.
He heard a noise behind him and turned. A man stood behind him, with black hair that was soaked by the rain. He wore the garbs of a farmer, and dirty ones at that. In one hand he held a makeshift sword. In the other, the man clutched the mirror that Youko had given Kagome before she left.
Anger welled up in the demon prince, and he glared into the dark purple eyes of the intruder. "What did you do to Kagome?" he bit out. "She had better not be hurt, or I swear you will regret laying a hand on her."
Inuyasha laughed. "Oh, so you must be the big bad demon that brainwashed my little flower." His insane eyes met Youko's. "You're not so scary." In fact, according to the slightly drunk village boy, the fox looked like a drowned rat. His ears had the fur stuck to them, his hair was seperated into little stringy clumps plastered to his head, and his shirt was quickly becoming see-through. All in all, combined with his death-like glare, it made Inuyasha want to giggle. "And I would never hurt my Kagome."
Youko's glare intensified, if that were at all possible. "Kagome isn't some possession for you to give or take. She isn't either one of ours except by her own choice, so don't you dare claim her as your own if she doesn't even want you."
Inuyasha narrowed his eyes to match Youko's. "Oh, really? So why isn't she here? In fact, why would she leave at all if she didn't want to be with me and not some stinking, second rate, lowlife beast?"
That was too much for the proud demon. He lunged at Inuyasha with a roar, not wanting the person in front of him to spout any more of his lies and echo the slight doubt that had been plaguing him since Kagome left. He couldn't help but think that she left so quickly, did she even miss him?
Inuyasha ducked out of the way and was standing over near the balcony rail. He stood there, breathing heavier than he was before and smiling with malevolence. "What, the poor widdle ickle fox can't even fight pwoperwy?" he said in baby talk. Then he laughed.
Youko lunged at the person, his hands outstretched in front of him, reaching for the man's neck. His hands wrapped around the slender, delicate appenadge as his momentum carried them over the stone ledge and onto the roof below.
They landed with a dull thud muffled by a crack of thunder that peeled through the air. They began to grapple in the rain, Youko straddling Inuyasha in order to hold him down. The night hid Inuyasha's face while Youko's stood out like a ghost in an empty room. The young demon's hands were being pried from the villager's neck, slowly, inch by inch.
Before their positions could be switched, Youko leapt up and danced away from the pathetic slash from the boy's toy sword. He looked about him for something to use himself in defence, and spotted a bit of a weed peeking out from a small crevace in the roof face. He plucked it and used his abilities to make it lengthen and sharpen into a point, becoming a deadly sword.
He brought it up just in time as the other man's sword was brought down on him. If they were both metal, they would have rang out their song into the dark night. However, there was no noise as they began to fiercly battle for their lives.
For once, Youko was glad that Hiei had beaten him all those years ago. After he had been put into his place, the young boy prince had bullied his father into making the short fighter give him lessons. It was quite possibly the only thing that was saving his life. The village boy wielded a sword surprisingly well, like it was a natural extension of his arm.
They dodged and attacked, defended and prusued all over the rooftop. The lightening was their spotlight, the thunder their audience that egged them on as they slipped and slid over the dangerously slick roof tiles. More than once both slipped and nearly got themselves killed, just barely bringing their weapon up to block a fatalistic blow from their opponent.
And then, miraculously, it was Inuyasha's boots that was his undoing. They both stepped on the same patch of wet tile and slipped, but Youko's bare feet were able to cling to the roof while Inuyasha couldn't get a grip and fell to his knees. His hands went out in front of him to catch himself, his sword clanging as it rolled off the room and fell onto the ground below.
Youko leveled his weed-made-sword to the neck of his enemy and glared. He wanted desperatly to kill him, to slice off his head and watch it as it followed the sword off the roof. Yet so many years under the curse had softened him, and he couldn't follow through with a killing stroke.
Instead, he opted to stare icily at the young man. "I want you to get out. I don't want to see your face again. And I want you to never lay eyes on Kagome again unless she tells you herself that she loves you." His voice was filled with contempt, rage shuddering just under the surface.
Inuyasha met his face defiantly and didn't move. Youko was about to prove that he was dead serious in his demands when a cry called out behind him, calling his name.
He turned to look up through the rain. He couldn't quite pick out the figure, but the voice was as familiar as his mother's was. Inuyasha was just as shocked as him when the sky lit up and illuminated Kagome's face in the rain. Her hair was a mess, and she looked like she was under a lot of stress, but she was there and that was all that mattered.
Kagome smiled down at Youko, glad to see that he was unhurt. It calmed her heart to know that it wasn't him that had fallen, and set her mind at ease that nothing had happened to him. Her eyes softened and they stood there, staring at each other for what seemed like an eternity.
A flash of movement behind Youko caught Kagome's attention. "Watch out!" she cried, just in time.
Inuyasha lunged at Youko, his motions mimicking Youko's at the start of the battle. A feral snarl twisted his face and turned it into an ugly mask. Youko brought up the sword automatically, years of training ingrained into his very soul taking over. He brought it up to plunge into Inuyasha's stomach.
Inuyasha gasped in surprise, shock wrought over his face. His hands clutched the plant sticking from his torso as the momentum carried him forward to fall onto the roof.
Youko let go of his sword and released the energy, turning it once more into a harmless piece of foliage. He watched with detached emotion as his foe rolled down the roof and slowly fell off the side, too weak to stop himself from falling to his doom. It was only after another growl of thunder that Youko looked up to the balcony again.
Kagome stood there staring at him with fearful eyes. The prince idly wondered why she was like that, when he looked down and saw that Inuyasha's blood had gotten onto his shirt. It amused him a bit and he smiled slightly before climbing the roof to join Kagome on the stone ledge.
As soon as he was back onto flat ground, Kagome rushed to meet him. "What happened?" she asked, her hands bringing themselves up to touch where the bloodstain was, to make sure that he was whole and unhurt. Her heart was racing once again, she was out of her mind with fear that he was hurt beyond healing, and she just had to make sure that he was alright.
Youko grabbed her hands, which were feeling around his torso to make sure that there wasn't a gaping, bleeding whole in his stomach. He brought them out in front of him, holding them between his own clawed ones as their eyes met. "You came back," he whispered. "Why?"
Kagome blushed slightly and began to worry her lip. "W-well, I mean, Inuyasha was leading the villagers in a mob and I was...well, that is..." she trailed off, looking down.
Youko smiled. "You were worried about me, perhaps?" She nodded. "I could say the same about you. When I saw him walk out here, with your mirror in his hand..." Youko belatedly wondered what had happened to it, as it wasn't in the boy's hand when he fell, then shrugged it off. It didn't matter, as long as Kagome was here and safe.
Kagome looked up slightly. "He took it from me. I was so stupid, I showed him it while trying to defend you and prove that I wasn't kidnapped by bandits. I knew I shouldn't, but I did anyways, and it was so stupid of me! This is all my fault, if I hadn't acted so rashly, none of this would have happened." The young maiden knew that she was rambling and shut her mouth with a click.
Youko chuckled. "If you didn't do any of that, you wouldn't be standing here with me." He brought a hand under Kagome's chin and tilted her head so that her eyes met his. "Standing in the rain, about to become sick because you just couldn't resist my charm." Kagome was about to open her mouth to say something when Youko decided that the time for talking was done with.
He brought his mouth down onto hers, effectively cutting off anything she was going to say with a gasp. Feeling bold, Youko slid his tongue into her mouth, wanting to taste all of Kagome. She tasted so sweet, like ripe strawberries kissed by a refreshing rainstorm. Her mouth was so soft, Youko had never experienced anything like it.
Kagome's arms wrapped themselves around his neck, bringing their bodies closer to each other. Her mouth began to move shyly against his, her tongue tentativly responding to his. He encouraged her with pleasure, making her more at ease as they held each other in the rain.
It was more than either could ever have asked for, standing there like the last two people on the planet. The rain was pouring down over them, completely soaking the couple, but neither cared. They only knew each other, were unaware of the crashing thunder nor the flashing lightening as the weather seemed to dance around them.
Then Kagome's eyes widened as the kiss was broken off, Youko arching his back and crying out in pain as something attacked him from behind.
End Chapter
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