INTERLUDE: A HELL OF FOREVERS

"Can you even imagine yourself in paradise?
Even the daughters of the gods must know loneliness,
Want sometimes nothing more than to be
Trapped in a hell of forever. Thank me, you queen.
I've given you forever."
(Letter from Hades to Persephone, Clementine von Radics)

Though it had been many years since he had been in the vicinity of his father's manor, he still knew the way. Call it intuition, call it bloodline – call it what you will, but he felt the pull towards his ancestral home as surely as a compass pointing north. It called to his very blood, making it sing the moment his feet touched the ground.

This is mine, his blood said. This belongs to me.

He had never once thought about this place as his. His hanyou blood made him unfit to rule. He had not been taught as his older brother had. There had been no lessons in court etiquette, in warfare, in writing or math. He had been left, after his mother's death, largely to his own devices. Find his own food, his own shelter, make his own way in the world. And the world was a harsh place for a young half-demon boy.

But now he felt a connection to this land as he never had before. He could taste it in his mouth, feel it in his lungs with every breath. He felt as though he could reach out and grasp it in his hands and pull it into him.

"Inuyasha!"

His name called out in a frantic voice makes him skid to a stop. When he sees who spoke out, he drops from the tree branches to the dusty road, muscles twitching and singing to move on. "What are you doing out this way?"

Miroku and Sango glance at each other, before the demon slayer speaks. "I happened upon Miroku-sama on my way back to Kaede's village and he told me Kagome was at Lord Sesshomaru's castle. We're going there now."

His eyes lit up. "Perfect! You can help me kill that no good brother of mine and get Kagome back!"

"Um, well, yeah… first we were probably just going to ask Kagome what was going on."

"Tch. Why? He's got her, I'm getting her back. What more do you need to know?"

"Inuyasha," Miroku said in a placating voice, like he was soothing an irate child. "Koga, who cares for Lady Kagome as much as you do, indicated that she appeared healthy and in good spirits. It did not seem as if she were under any undo duress, nor as if she was being held hostage, since they were alone at the gates during that conversation. She could have left at any time, but chose not to."

"I don't give a shit! That bitch is shacking up with my brother! What possible reason could there be!" He shouldn't have stopped, he should have just kept going until he kicked in Sesshomaru's front gate and blasted him with a Kaze no Kizu directly to his face.

"Maybe she knows something that we don't, Inuyasha," Sango said, attempting to be the voice of reason before this deteriorated into a brawling match. "She gave you a second chance, didn't she? She always sees the good in people. Shouldn't we hear her side of the story? Doesn't she deserve that?"

He gaped at them. "What does it fucking matter what her side is? It's Sesshomaru – remember? He's tried to murder us!"

"So as Lady Kikyo, but at least Lord Sesshomaru is alive."

Sango's swiftly indrawn breath at Miroku's blunt comment is overshadowed by Inuyasha's screech of outrage. "What did you just say?!"

Miroku holds up a hand to stave off his lunge forward. "All I mean to imply, Inuyasha, is that Lady Kagome deserves better than you barging in accusing her of doing some untoward when you have no right to make such accusations. It is no great secret that she once offered to be with you and you refused, for love of Kikyo." He raised his voice slightly to speak over Inuyasha's attempted interruption. "I mean no disrespect. If Lady Kagome can find it in herself to stand aside for your happiness, I can do no less. But you must make a choice, soon, now, about what your happiness actually comprises of. Before you ruin more lives than just your own."

There is a brief second where Inuyasha gapes at him like a fish out of water, before the expression vanishes as swiftly as it had appeared. In its place is nothing but irritation and anger. And, under that, confusion. "Tch. I don't have to stay here and listen to this. I'll kill Sesshomaru and get Kagome back without you two." Without listening to Sango call out for him to wait, he leapt back into the branches and continued his headlong flight towards his brother. He can hear them shouting behind him, hear their footsteps hurrying down the road as fast as they can go, he can hear Sango calling for Kirara, but he blocks all of those sounds out.

He clears his mind of everything except the coming battle, because he knows his brother is far stronger than him.

If he does not think of the fight loudly, plan it to the minute, then, in the silence of his mind, Miroku's words will surface and he will start to dwell on them, as he does late at night and early in the morning, in that gentle, misty time between awake and asleep, when his thoughts are liquid and fluid.

When his mind is empty he finds himself thinking about the soft, fluttery feeling the first time Kikyo had smiled at him, at the touch of her hand, the press of her mouth. He thinks about the incandescent joy he felt when she was returned to him when he thought her dead and lost and gone, gone, gone. He thinks about Kagome and the way he wants to protect her, about how he showed her his vulnerability on the nights he turned human. Then his treacherous mind lists the other people he wants to protect, the other people he showed that secret to of his own free will. His mind hisses that maybe that is friendship and nothing more.

Because how could anything be stronger than a bond beyond life and death? How could anything be stronger than the bond between him and Kikyo?

But then he doubts himself, doesn't know what to think. He hates when the wolf flirts with Kagome, but ignores it when Miroku makes a pass at her. Perhaps he simply hates Koga on a purely canine level. Maybe he just hates that she is with his brother, whom he has hated since his childhood. Maybe it had nothing to do with Kagome at all. Maybe that fleeting connection he felt with her when they first met was just his soul calling out for Kikyo's soul that he could sense within her, even after so long.

He doesn't want to be a man full of doubts, as wishy-washy and unsure as a woman. When his mind is filled with doubts, it makes him angry and irrational. He knows he cannot think of such things now. Maybe later, after he has dragged Kagome away from his brother's clutches and dragged her back to the village. Then he will think about his doubts. Then he will make a choice.

But now, now is not that time, he thinks, looking at the tall, imposing gates of his father's castle. Now is the time for teeth and claws and swords and blood. Red trickles across his vision. The iron-gate crumbles under his sharp claws. Now is the time to fight.