Chapter Fifty: The Thread That Binds
Kagome's pulse raced.
Sitting under the glow of lanternlight, she stared at the handwritten journal, her eyes unseeing. Tears streaked her ruddy cheeks and her face felt like fire. The air. Her skin. Everything was burning. With a ratcheting tension, she began to pant, the nauseating stink of linseed oil and old paper filling her nose. Soon, she was gasping, her chest tight and painful. And her stomach churned.
She couldn't breathe.
She couldn't breathe.
She couldn't breathe.
Her chair flew back as she bolted up from her seat and it banged into the bookcase behind her. Books and scrolls tumbled from the desk as she brushed past them to clamber for the door. By the time they slapped against the floor, she was gone.
The stairs were a blur as she rushed down them, her feet stumbling. Desperately, she grabbed for the handrail, catching herself before she fell. Then a surge of nausea climbed up her throat, and she barreled onward, heading for the first floor.
Somewhere nearby she could hear Tora arguing. His voice sounded distorted, as if he were underwater, but without knowing what he was saying, she could hear his anguish. Hear his despair. It melded with her own, enveloping her. It swallowed her up. The shrine was a tomb. She had to get out.
She couldn't breathe.
With an ungainly thump, she hit the first floor and exploded out the front door. The chilly mountain breeze buffeted against her body, turning her smooth skin to goose flesh. Her chest heaving, she gulped for the crisp air, but her lungs wouldn't fill. She was already drowning. Another wet wave came, painting her flushed skin with perspiration and she couldn't keep it down any longer.
Her bare feet faltering across the gravel yard, she scrambled for a hedge and leaned into it, her mouth open. Accompanied by retching grunts, dry heaves shook her body and long tendrils of saliva poured from her. But that was all that came out.
She hadn't eaten anything since that morning. There was nothing to purge. No relief for the upset that twisted inside her.
They would die. Youkaikind would die and there was nothing she could do about it but watch it happen. Nothing she could do about it but be there when her friends and family die.
A renewed need to escape wrenched her forward, propelling her along the hedge and driving her away from the shrine and the fate it foretold. She felt the fluttering of the hedge's leaves against the palm of her hand and she followed it up the rise, letting it guide her deeper into the mountain.
Silver moonlight dappled the forest floor, revealing thick piles of pine needles and spindly saplings. She waded through it, staying close to the hedge-line until it thinned, thwarted by half-buried, granite boulders along an eroded ridge. She spied up at the crest, its hard silhouette cutting against the night sky. Her jaw set, she approached the closest boulder and grabbed onto a handhold, and slowly, she began to climb. Clothed in shorts and a thin top, she slid over the rough rock, abrading her skin and shredding her elbows and knees. Her feet turned slippery with blood, cut up as she wedged them into jagged crevices, securing her footing as she wove her way upward. The stinging pain hovered like a haze in the back of her mind, numbed by panic.
Scrabbling over the final outcrop, she reached a hidden copse of stout conifers surrounded patches of meadowland. Sage-green grass rippled in rhythm with the breeze and amid it, dark clumps of lavender bloomed.
Its summery scent floated in the air and as she breathed it in, her heart slowed a beat. Steam curled and billowed somewhere beyond the trees and when she peered through their black trunks, she spied the flickering glow of a lantern set upon a rock beside a hot spring.
Silently, a shadow moved through the trees towards her.
She froze.
The figure emerged, his fair skin and short, argent hair bright under the cool moonlight. Water trickled down the lines of his nude, statuesque body, and like her, he didn't seem to feel the cold.
"Kagome?" Sesshoumaru called to her, frowning as he approached.
She blinked, staring at him.
Tilting his chin up slightly, he scented the air and the concern that furrowed his brow deepened. "It's as I thought. You're injured. What happened? Has there been an attack?"
"I was… I was…" she stuttered, her voice small and distant as she tried to think, "I was running away." Then her mind snapped back into focus. She spotted his hands, blistered and red with weeping, open sores from his knuckles to his elbows. "What happened to your hands?!"
Unfazed by her shock, he continued to watch her, his expression unchanging. "I have not yet mastered my enchanted gauntlets and they have drained my youki to the point where I cannot heal."
She limped forward. "You crafted weapons that drain your youki and then trained with them until your power was so emaciated that you can't heal? Do you know how dangerous that is? If you run out of youki, you'll die."
"Kagome."
Gently, she took his hands into her own, turning them over so that she could examine the sores and blisters. "No, you have to understand. You're going to get yourself killed."
"Kagome."
"And I can't let you die. I-I can't take one more death. I can't fail one more person. I just can't—"
Turning his palms up, he closed his hands around hers, clasping her gently.
Her babbling subsided and her tired, wide-eyed gaze drifted up to meet his face and its understated kindness.
"What happened?" he asked.
And the despair that she had momentarily forgotten, again brimmed inside her.
"I found a journal," she admitted, her face turning away to hide the tears that welled in her eyes, "I recognized the handwriting. It was mine and in it, I describe the curse. The plague. The disease that wipes out youkaikind. The entries start out bleak yet hopeful and end with horror and loss." She laughed ruefully. "I'm such an idiot. What else did I think it would be? It's the story of my failure."
Shame pained his features. "We both failed. If I had acted when I should have, perhaps—"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I failed long before that. The Shikon-no-Tama was my responsibility and I treated its recovery frivolously, like some teenage adventure. Like it didn't have consequences. If I had never shattered it, then maybe everyone would still be alive. Maybe if I had right away returned through the well when I first fell in, youkai would still be thriving in this world. Maybe if had never entered the wellhouse doors…"
"To what are you referring? What does the Shikon-no-Tama and your connection to it have to do with anything?"
She looked up at him, her cheeks shimmering wet and her voice rough and broken. "The curse that killed youkaikind was exactly that. A curse. Naraku's real wish, warped by the sentiment of the embattled souls inside the gem, weary from fighting and eager for an end. They were so evenly matched that it was chance on a cosmic level who would deliver the decisive blow. And humans lucked out." She shrugged at the senselessness. "When Naraku was defeated, we thought we were victorious, but it was already too late for half of us."
"Are you certain?"
"It's in my own hand. How could it be anything else but true?" A glimmer of hope sparked inside her and she leaned forward imploringly. "Unless I was mistaken and you believe it could be something else? Anything else? A pathogen or an environmental hazard? Some kind ecological collapse? Anything that I can still stop?"
His attention fell from her to the spider-shaped scar that branded his chest.
Her gaze followed and she swallowed, closing her eyes.
"No," he replied quietly, his words measured and heavy to speak. "The past is what it is. You cannot change its outcome. After hearing the details from you now, I know there is no other truth. Our extinction was inevitable."
"Then what's the point?" she pleaded, sorrow ravaging her throat. "I go back through the well one more time for what? To watch thousands of youkai die, slowly petrified into crystal? To share their trauma with them and to mourn them when they've passed? To be without hope as my friends and family die? That's my fate?" Hiccupping sobs shuddered her body and she rubbed at her stinging eyes, unable to dam the anguish flooding within her. "This is the punishment I deserve, isn't it?"
"Kagome."
"I-I shattered the Shikon-no-Tama making it easy for Naraku to gather the pieces. Then I kept the shards we recovered in a little bottle or wore them fused on a chain around my neck like some kind of trophy…"
"Kagome."
"…When I should have left them in the future under a protective seal. I made it so easy for him, because one way or the other, every shard I gathered was also one I gave to him…"
"Kagome."
"…I let his happen. It's my fault. I didn't think and I killed everyone. I'm a monster. I—"
Arms wrapped around her, pulling her close. His skin was warm and wet against her cheek, the soothing sulfurous scent of the hot spring filling her every shivering breath. She could feel the strength of his muscles enveloping her, shielding her from the cold she hadn't felt, but he was softer than she thought he'd be. Gentler.
He held her in silence until the sobs that rocked her body eased, rolling through her in slowly diminishing waves.
High above, silver-rimmed clouds passed over the moon, eclipsing it.
"We are all to blame," he consoled, stroking her hair. "Had we known the stakes, perhaps we would have acted differently, but in the end, we all bear the burden. Not just you."
"But…" she murmured, burying her face into his chest. "But I—"
"We are all to blame," he repeated firmly. Then he shifted her to one side and scooped her up from under her legs.
"What are you doing?" she asked as she grabbed his shoulder.
Cradling her in his arms, her body snug against him, he spied at her from the corner of his eye. "You're injured. I will tend to your wounds."
"No-No, it's all right," she sputtered.
"It's only fair," he added, ignoring her objections, "After all the times you've tended to me that I return the favor." Noiselessly, he waded into the tree line, weaving his way back towards the lantern-lit spring.
She laid her head against the crook between his neck and shoulder, too tired to resist.
Flat hunks of granite surrounded the spring and he climbed them like steps until he reached the edge of the steaming pool. Then he carefully stepped down into the knee-high water.
"As I stated earlier," he explained, his skin aglow in gold and shadow. "My youki is depleted and I cannot heal. My master mentioned that this spring has recuperative properties. Whether that proves true or not, we shall see. But compared to my wounds, your scrapes and cuts, while many, are relatively superficial. A soak will definitely benefit you."
Steadily, he knelt, and she felt the steaming water rush up, engulfing her lower half with shocking warmth. Her injuries stinging, she winced, but after a moment, the pain lessened, flowing out of her and into the pool. He sat down, the water rippling just below his collarbone, and rested his back against a rock.
Together, they closed their eyes and let their muscles relax as their bodies absorbed the soothing heat. Slow and regular, they breathed in the vapor through their noses, letting it fill their lungs before exhaling it out.
In the surrounding undergrowth, crickets sang their melodies.
"I wish I was as strong as you," she murmured after a time, her eyes cracking open. "You've overcome so much and here I am a wreck."
He scoffed under his breath.
"No, really. You've become the guardian you aspired to be. You're saving lives and uniting people. I can't even remember the old you, the one from centuries ago. You've changed so much. And I'm just the same as I've always been. A naïve girl lost in time."
His eyes opened, revealing his slit pupils. "You've never realized it, have you?"
She tilted her head up to look at him, her expression quizzical.
"When I consider the lord I wish I had been," he explained, his gaze unfocused, lost in memory, "The one, as you said, I aspire to be, I think of Inuyasha. I think of his commitment to save people who I had deemed unworthy of my time. His ability to unite disparate groups to a dire cause. And his compassion for a brother who ignored his pleas and paid the price. He embodied these things because that's what it meant to be a guardian. To selflessly give yourself in service to your people, even in the face of certain doom."
"He wasn't always that way," she admitted.
"And that is my point," he said, and his eyes met hers, irises glimmering gold. "It was you."
"Me?"
"It was your commitment, leadership, and compassion that I saw in him. You are the one who shaped and inspired him to become the guardian our people needed in our dying days. You are the rock. Not Inuyasha and I. Because you're the thread that binds us. We only became our best selves through… you."
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks and her chest swelled with emotion.
"And when I was sealed, it may have been Inuyasha who plunged the sword. But it was you who made the seal that saved my life. I wouldn't be alive and here without you."
"I saved you?" she asked.
He leaned forward and pressed an earnest kiss, soft and warm, against her forehead, his hand cupping her jaw as he stroked her cheek.
A shuddering sigh escaped her. She had found the relief she had been seeking all evening in the glow of his affection.
Then he pulled away to look at her, a smile hinting at his features. "You saved us both."