Author's Notes: This is not a new chapter; it's been on Twisting the Hellmouth for quite awhile. However, I realized it wasn't here and thought I'd fix that. I will be working on this story and finishing it eventually -- it's not abandoned. My Swordsman 'verse stories just had more plot bunnies in the last several months.

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Inuyasha couldn't figure Sesshoumaru out. Something was motivating his brother; he couldn't name it, but it certainly wasn't brotherly love.

"This is disgusting," Inuyasha said, flicking kraken guts from his fingers. He held Tessaiga in his good hand -- he didn't want to put the sword back in its sheath; it was fouled with gore and he didn't have anything to clean it with.

"Do you think you can break the barrier?" Sesshoumaru asked, pointedly, "Before something else comes along?"

Inuyasha stared up at the warded trap door. He had no idea how he was going to climb the ladder -- while he could, and frequently did, ignore large amounts of pain during fights, his hand literally wasn't working. Until the tendons and muscles regenerated, he couldn't grasp anything with it.

A shout, behind them. And running footsteps.

He turned in time to see swarms of armored elves, moving entirely too fast, appear around a bend in the storm drain. Inuyasha swore and Tessaiga flared to life in his hand. He had just gone from trying to figure out how to break into the hotel to resolving to defend it. Kagome was above him, and he had no doubt that these elves would try to break through the doorway.

He crouched, lunged ... and the lead elf whipped a bow up and fired off an arrow. The arrow crackled with energy and slammed right through Tessaiga's defenses and into his shoulder. And oblivion consumed him.

Again.

His last conscious awareness was of Sesshoumaru standing over him, bleeding from wounds of his own.

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There was noise coming from below the trap door. Shippou sat on his haunches, regarding the seals thoughtfully. "Somebody's having a fight down there."

They could hear steel ringing on steel, and people shouting in an alien tongue. Kagome glanced from Shippou to Buffy to the door, then back to Shippou. It sounded like trouble, and she had a sinking feeling her hanyou was probably in the middle of it.

"That's Unseelie," Kavan said, head tilted to one side. Apparently, he recognized the language.

"If somebody's fighting the Unseelie ..." Kagome said.

"... Likely, it's Inuyasha." Buffy finished Kagome's thought. "Andrew, open that trap door."

"But ..." Xander started to protest.

"If he's down there, he's defending us." Buffy glared at him. "Andrew do it."

Andrew broke the chalked seals on the door with a swipe of his hand, wiping them away. Then he yanked the door open, as the assorted Slayers, demon and vampires waited tensely around him. He ducked back with a squeak -- and none too soon.

There was a flurry of motion. Impossibly fast, somebody shot through trap door. "Miko," a cool voice said, before the figure was even done moving, "I would suggest re-sealing that doorway."

The figure resolved into --- first she thought it was Inuyasha, in the dim light, because she saw white hair and blue jeans. Then she realized, when the figure stopped moving and dropped a body at his feet, that he was too tall, too thin, and far too collected to be her boyfriend. It took her a moment longer to recognize him, however, because she'd never seen Sesshoumaru quite that ... messy ... before. He was covered in nasty gore.

"Seal the door!" she said, in a sudden panic. If there was something down there bad enough to make Sesshoumaru beat a retreat, she did not want to face it.

"Do it!" Buffy said, kicking the trap door shut on the head of an armored figure. There was a crash as whatever had been following Sesshoumaru up the ladder fell back down. Andrew hastily started drawing chalk runes on the door again ... and they promptly flared to vicious light as whatever was down there tried to break through.

There were howls of pain.

Willow said, "Niiice, Andrew."

"Sesshoumaru," Kagome said, by way of greeting.

"Miko." His greeting was cool; she had no idea how to read him -- if he even could be read. Was he a threat, or not?

She glanced at the body at his feet -- and realized, with a stomach-twisting lurch of dismay, that it was Inuyasha. Inuyasha had an arrow stuck in his shoulder, and his hair was black as midnight. He was naked to the waist, and blood and grime and gore streaked his body.

"What happened?" She demanded, of Sesshoumaru.

"Did you know elves can exorcise demons?" Sesshoumaru said. He didn't move to bend over Inuyasha or show any real concern.

Kagome crouched next to him. Her heart was in her throat. Was he even breathing?

He groaned. Encouraged, she babbled, "Inuyasha. Inuyasha, c'mon dog-boy, talk to me ..."

He was breathing somewhat shallowly. Slowly, he roused. "... Kag ... ome?"

"Yeah. It's me. Damnit."

"You're okay," he tried to sit up. This involved pushing himself up with right hand, which was bandaged with the remnants of his t-shirt. He promptly went pale and slumped back. The arrow was sticking out of his left shoulder; she could tell his collarbone had been shattered simply by the way his arm was dangling.

"Let's get him upstairs," Shippou said. He scooped Inuyasha up, careful of the arrow. "Damnit. I think he's bad hurt, Kagome."

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His first awareness was pain; this was followed by the realization that Kagome's scent was strong in his nostrils. Inuyasha opened his eyes to darkness, and shifted a bit, and the pain in his shoulder and hand flared to real agony. He groaned.

"Inuyasha," Kagome's voice was muffled. Her voice made him realize that he was being held close by the woman he loved most in all the world -- she was spooned up against him from behind, and she had one arm around his middle. Fingers stroked his hair -- touched his ears -- paused. "You're back to yourself. Thank god."

"What ... where am I?"

"You got purified." She murmured. "Thank the gods it was temporary. And it's late. You've been unconscious for several hours."

He felt her raise herself up onto one elbow; she fumbled with her watch, and the illuminated dial flared to life. She murmured, "It's three AM."

"Where ..." His voice was harsh in his throat. Dimly now, he remembered screaming when they'd washed and bandaged his hand, but he guessed he'd been pretty out of it for several hours.

He was in a bed. He could smell clean sheets, and a somewhat musty mattress beneath them. Distantly, he also detected the reeking stink of menthol. When he shifted his weight again, the bed creaked a bit. He repeated, "Where ... " realization dawned, "... hotel room?"

"Mmm. On the second floor. This is actually Buffy's room; we're sleeping in shifts. Everybody else is crashing in one room together, but I didn't quite trust them with you out of commission. Figured it was best if we had our own room." Her explanation sounded somewhat sleepy, but was coherent.

Smart, he thought. He had been very vulnerable while injured and in his human form. He suspected it was the transformation back that had roused him. Kagome had kept him safe ... like she always did. She had his back, just as he had hers.

"How do you feel?" She sounded concerned.

"I hurt," he confessed, something he wouldn't have admitted to her even as recently as a few months ago. But it was very true; his arm was on fire and his shoulder sent stabbing pains through his chest and back with every breath

"Figured you might." She sat up. He heard a pill bottle rattle and the plastic crackle of a bottle of water being opened.

"No pills." He didn't want to be muzzy-headed if trouble happened.

"It's ibuprofen, baka." She stroked his hair with her hand, then pressed a couple of pills between his lips. Her fingers reeked of menthol -- he wondered what that was from. He hated that stink; he couldn't smell anything else over it, and it clung to everything, permanently. She'd spilled a bottle of liniment in the bathroom once and he'd finally replaced the bathroom floor tiles to get rid of the stench. And he had banned menthol-scented liniment from the house forever by dictatorial decree.

She pressed the bottle of water to his lips -- he held his breath, not liking her stinking fingers near his nose. But when she persisted, he drained it in a few gulps, realizing as he did so that he was very thirsty.

After a moment she said, "Your arm is really badly burnt."

"I know that," he growled.

"And you're cranky, which tells me you're mending." She stood up and he heard her walking around the pitch black room. A flashlight flared to life after a second; she had left it on a bedside table on his side of the bed. She pulled the curtain back and peered through the glass -- he could see nothing out there, and apparently, neither could she.

The fact that there was only a thin layer of glass between him and the miasmic nastiness outside wigged him seriously. He started to sit up.

"Willow put wards on the window. I was just checking to see if they were still in place." She flicked the flashlight over runes painted on the glass. "Lay back down, Inuyasha. There's nothing to do for now, and you might as well get some sleep while you can. You're still mending. You can't even wield Tessaiga in the condition you're in. That arrow hit and broke your collarbone on your left arm and I doubt you could grip the sword with your right."

"Then come to bed with me?" He tried not to sound pitiful, or begging, but he really did want her to crawl under the covers with him and hold him close. He was weak, he was vulnerable ... and Kagome's arms around him would be very welcome indeed. And he'd learned a long time ago that she wouldn't mock him or tease him for the weakness inherent in asking for comfort. Indeed, she encouraged it.

She was right about holding Tessaiga. He'd be useless in a fight right now. He was as weak as a newborn kitten, and didn't have the use of either arm.

She returned to the bed, and slid under the covers with him. She moved his hair aside so she wouldn't lay on it, and curled close to him. He could feel the rough fabric of her jeans against the small of his back, and the press of her breasts against his shoulders. The contact made his injured shoulder twinge but he wasn't about to complain.

She snapped the flashlight off and wrapped an arm around his chest. The menthol on her fingers made him wrinkle his nose, but being held felt too good to pull away. And he was too sleepy to care, all at once. "Willow's guarding the storm sewer entrance," she murmured.

He was suddenly swallowed up by vertigo as the world began to spin around him.

"When you're better -- at least once your collarbone knits -- we want you to try to break through the barrier with Tessaiga." Her right hand reached up and stroked between his ears, then tugged gently at one.

He was on a damned rollercoaster. Every time he moved his head, the world seemed to flip over. He wasn't sure which was up and which was down. It made his stomach roll.

"Bitch," he said, suddenly, realizing why her fingers had smelled of menthol. "You devious bitch."

"You need to sleep," she said, hugging him with the arm that was around him. "You're hurt too bad to fight, Inuyasha. Trust me to keep watch over you. When you wake up you'll be in a lot better shape to deal with things. Even you can only do so much."

With his nose, he would have smelled the codeine in the pills she'd pressed on him, unless it was masked by a much stronger odor. Kagome had known that. She had completely lied to him about what the pills were. The problem was, "I hate codeine."

The world was spinning faster now. He couldn't tell up from down. He hoped he wasn't going to be sick; he'd had codeine laced pain pills forced on him before, a few times, and the results had always been less than satisfactory. His human half was enough to make him vulnerable to the narcotic, but it had the very undesirable side effect of vicious vertigo. "Bitch ..." he murmured.

"Go to sleep," she said, "I'm right here and I'll stay awake and watch over you. Okay? I'll wake you up if anything happens."

He wanted to curse her out more, but between his injuries and the medication his awareness was fading rapidly. His last conscious thought was that he was pissed at her, and he was going to make her pay when he woke up, even if she sat him into oblivion.

The fact that she was holding him close and watching over him was still comforting, though, even if he was seriously furious.