Chapter 11- Dark Secret Revealed

"So you've stayed here? All this time?" Kagome couldn't help but be curious. The demon child in front of her had tried, and almost succeded, in tearing her soul from her body on more than one occasion. Now she was resting gently, if rigidly, against the base of a gnarled tree showing no inclination to do anything more than talk. Kagome didn't feel comfortable in her presence but the lack of malice was sufficient to keep her from bolting.

"Yes." Kanna was looking at her intently. If Kagome hadn't known any better she would say that the demoness was amused. Discarding the thought Kagome frowned, fingers curling tightly in Kiraras fur. The fire cat was montionless as a statue, waiting for any sign to get her charges to safely. Shippo was quite in the safety of his mothers arms, , braving this nightmare come to life and studying the demoness intently.

"But why Kanna?" His voice piped out.

The demon shrugged, her pale skin almost translucent against the stark white kimono she was wearing. The mirror in her hand was cracked, broken, aged but it still made Kagome cringe inwardly with nightmare memories of all it had been capable of. Now, removed from Narakus power and influence, its power had weakened.

It had been the mirror, at first, that had kept them from running. After she had realized that the mirror no longer posed such a great threat wonder had overcome fear. Here, at last, was a tangible connection from past to present. Kanna tilted her head, eying them with obvious confusion.

"Because I had to." She said it simply, as if the answer should be obvious even when it wasn't.

Cautiously, careful, Kagome slid herself from Kiraras back. The demon cat growled low, nuding at Kagomes hand as if to draw her back and away from this place. Shippo seemed to hesitate, eying his mother considerately. After a few moments he nodded his head before abruptly closing his eyes and, with a smirk, turned himself so that he could lounge comfortably on Kiraras back. Kirara huffed irritably but lowered herself to the ground, keeping her eyes firmly locked on the demoness as if daring her to attack.

Kagome slowly, warily, crossed the distance to Kannas side. When the demoness did nothing more than watch Kagome knelt down in front of her. Placing a single, tentative, hand gently on Kannas shoulder.

"I don't understand." Kagome whispered softly.

Kanna frowned, the expression made frightening only because Kagome had never seen it before. Kanna shook her head gently before mirroring Kagomes actions, placing one surprisingly warm hand against Kagomes shoulder.

"You do not know?"

Kagome frowned. Kannas voice had sounded frightened. The girls grip had tightened painfully on her shoulder.

"Know what Kanna?" Kagome asked, gently. Trying and failing to keep the panic from her voice. It didn't matter how many years had passed Kagome was sure that if anything, or anyone, could scare Kanna in any way it was bad. Very bad.

"It was a secret, a promise. My first and only." That the promise was made to Kagura was obvious. Kanna had never been close to anyone, wasn't capable of it, but Kagura had been an exception. The fierceness with which Kagura has once protected Kanna, the fire in her that had fought for freedom had drawn what little self Kanna had possessed and inspired her. Even without her heart she had cared for the wind witch, hundreds of years later and that care had turned into a sad but devoted kind of love.

"I am Kanna, The Lady of The Woods, and I have guarded this sacred place from the moment I felt my heart beating in my chest."

Kagome blinked for a moment, straightened and frowned. Doing a slow circle her frown slowly changed into a shocked O. Time had changed everything and nothing. During that last battle she couldn't remember how far they had all gone. Jumping, leaping, running, flying they had fought. Naraku had destroyed everything in his path while they had been whittled down to one. To her.

"The woods end at the points where Naraku died, every incarnation, every sliver of him. Five hundred years ago there would be bodies where the borderlines now are."

Kagome understood, Naraku had always been one to spread himself out, to be in as many places as possible so that he could exploit any weakness and he would have traveled far even as he fought them to the death. This land, hallowed land, was fertile and beautiful and Kagome wondered, briefly, if this was the jewels doing. The land had been decayed, ripped of life and barren after that great battle. Then the jewel had turned the world to light and Kagome had been too happy to have her friends back, too shocked at the changed that were taking place within her, to do more than glance at the vegetation that had covered the once barren land.

She let herself appreciate the wonder in that, the magic of it, before pulling her thoughts to more important things. Kanna, despite the years, had never been one for idle conversation and while she could understand the significance of the information she had just been given it was not enough to have worried Kanna into telling her. The demoness was holding something back, something that Kagome needed to know.

"Kanna, please, tell me. Whatever it is that i'm suppose to know is bad isn't it?"

In the past Kanna would have killed her, stolen her soul in an instant, and still could if she wanted to. However she had been gifted with a heart. That heart had allowed her to experience things she had never even considered. Friendship, curiosity, forgiveness and even love. It didn't matter that she had isolated herself here in these woods or even that she acted as its keepers. It hadn't mattered that she had remained cold and stoic because beneath it she could still feel and share those feelings with others. In short she was alive. The debt she owed Kagome for her part in that was beyond her ability to repay.

And Kanna wished, desperately, that she could alter destiny to save the priestess the pain of what was to come.

"Naraku is dead, dear priestess, he shall never be seen again, at least not in any form of his choosing."

"But…?" She encouraged even as she felt her body shaking in silent refusal.

"Naraku is dead but...his spirit remained behind." Kanna shrugged helplessly, " Whatever power governs souls did not, or perhaps it could not, take him. He lived on powerless, invisible but eternal"

Kagome blinked, a stone forming in the pit of her stomach.

"He wandered, a haunting wind, for four-hundred years. He tried, over time, to posses different beings but he could not. Severed because of my heart and yet my soul can still feel him. He is a miasma within me, I can feel an echo of all he's donre."

"So…he never got a body right? He'll wander in purgatory forever?"

"No."

The demon looked away from her as if speaking anymore might shatter them both. Kagome wanted to run, wanted to scream and cry but couldn't. Something within her was pulsing along with her heartbeat. Something powerful that had, somehow, wove itself into her very soul without permission. It would not let her run. It wouldn't . She hated it, but she would protect it. Had done so even before she knew she had it.

"A hundred years ago, on the anniversary of his death, one you love returned here, as he had every single century before. This time Naraku was aware and waiting. Naraku possessed him and now he wanders. For a time, for a long time, the one Naraku possessed fought and Naraku almost lost but, regretfully, something occurred, I know not what, and Naraku won."

"He's back. How!?" And then, "WHO IS HE IN KANNA?"

The girl, her entire being as white as newly fallen snow, looked at Kagome for a moment before walking back towards the shadows of the eldest trees. Before she reached them, before she was out of ear shot, the demon turned and a single tear streaked down her face. Kagome knew the answer. Knew it and wanted to reject it.

"Inuyasha…and he's searching for you Kagome. He will never rest until he finds you and takes back what is his. He will never release either of you. He will destroy everything he touches, the atrocities of the past carried out into an unprepared world."

Kagome could see the devastation in her minds eye. Naraku would move through her world like a shadow, he'd delight in warfare. He'd turn brother against brother, country against country, and smile as the world burned beneath him in his greed and he'd come for her, yes. Somehow he'd find her, her mother, brother, all her family, her friends. He'd tear through them like tissue paper, tormenting them just to get to her. To get the jewel.

"Is there is no hope?" She asked, her heart racing as she imagined seeing her dearest friend again. Of knowing Inuyasha had, indeed, survived the centuries to reach her. She imagined the moment saw him and knew, with heartwrenching certainty, that she'd fly into his arms uncaring that it was actually Naraku in there. She wouldn't be able to care because it was Inuyasha and he would be hurt and in pain and all she wanted was to go to him, hold him. She'd die and nothing could stop that from happening, Naraku would win.

"Always." Kanans voice echoed through the trees, absolute and knowing. Kagome clutched the word tight to her heart. The only thing holding her as she collapsed in tears. Her agony tearing out of her in hard, wrenching sobs.

"There"

Hiei whispered, shattering the silence in the room. His eyes had been scanning the woods for hours, tirelessly when his heart accelerated, his pulse went wild, his soul sighed in peace,and an electric current seemed to move throughout his body. He could feel her. Before the others could react to his words he was off, moving faster than he had in a long time, passing through the trees like a shadow.

Kirara came thundering towards him on his right and he slid to a stop just as the fire cat slid to a halt. Shippo sat atop the cat demon,the visage of an extraordinarily handsome youth roughly Yusuke's height. His silver streaked fiery red hair fell in elegant waves behind him, almost reaching the back of his thighs. His face was delicately wrought, a bit boyish, a bit mischievous. His bright green eyes glowing like emeralds in the sun with tiny sapphire and gold hints giving them a look of a faerie prince. His mouth was one that brought to mind serious frowns, deadly glares, and a laughter that would sound like angel bells in the distance. His body was a bit leaner than Yusuke's, more like Kurama's truest form. His clothes modern, blue jeans and a white shirt, but he had an ear-ring in his right ear in the shape of some sort of tooth. All the details were there and all the irregularities corrected, even if his ears were just a tad bit pointy at the top. The boy held his mother in his arms. Her head resting motionlessly against his cheek. Silent tears streaming down her face.

Stiffly Shippo slid from Kiraras back, Kagome cradled against his chest. Her feet hit the ground and she would have crumpled had Shippo not been holding her so carefully. Hiei took a single step forward and saw Kagomes entire body tense. Another few steps and Kagome pushed herself from Sippos chest, desperate but gentle, and fell forward. Hiei caught her effortlessly and watched as Shippo numbly shifted back to his true form.

"Tell me." It was a demand, one that could not be denied because it was borne out of concern and caring and fear. Kagome, however, remained unmoving,he sensed a sorrow so profound that it threatened to tear her in two. Her blue eyes, flaming pink and gold and silver all at once, bore into his and it was as if his essence was being sucked into them. She shook her head helplessly.

She couldn't find the words to tell him. Not of what happened in the forest, no how they had run, together, fighting anything that got into their path and killing all but those who allowed them to pass. Shippo holding her up as much as he could, eve when his own grief weighing heavily on his shoulders. Kirara sobbing in her own way for another friend lost. Alive, yes, but lost. Kagome remained mute, broken, because Inuyasha had been her first love, her best friend, and, in the end, her brother when he could not love her any other way. They had been through too much together and Kagome just wanted to disappear because how could she deal with this?

Oh god Inuyasha, always getting yourself into trouble. Is Kikyo ok? Why didn't Sesshomaru save you? Where are you Inuyasha? What has Naraku done to you?

She couldn't do this again. No one person could suffer through this again. She wanted to slip into the darkness and hide but Inuyasha needed her, her friends needed her, her son and Kirara needed her, and, most importantly, Hiei was with her, holding her. She refused to let herself shatter when he was there silently encouraging her. Holding her together.

When the others found them Kagome was kneeling on the ground, her eyes vague and determined and lost all at the same time. Shippo and Kirara curled on her lap the cat demon mewing sadly and Shippo with one hand curled into Hieis shirt, the other pressed against his eyes as if to protect himself from the with his arms around them all looking as serious as he always had and, yet, somehow deadlier.

Yusuke and Kuwabara stood there, seeing a family that had yet to realize the truth of what it was, Kurama sensing something terrible and pivotal had just happened, and Genkai seething with anger that Kagome had escaped the forest relatively unscathed. The stark sadness in the priestess eyes was almost enough to sway her, Genkai knew sadness at that level, but this was a priestess and Genkai's memory was long. As she watched, though, Kagome's eyes cleared and jumped with phoenix fire for the first time in Genkais presence.

Deftly Kagome bent her head and kissed Shippos cheek, running a soothing hand against Kiraras back, before turning to Hiei. Moving slowly she placed a light kiss on his lips, shocking everyone present including herself and handed her dear ones to him. He held them against his chest, deftly, allowing the two could cuddle against each other. Yusuke would have laughed at this, would have teased his friend mercilessly, if Kagome hadn't suddenly launched herself at Genkai, pinning the old woman against a tree as her form wavered between the Kagome they knew and the one Hiei had briefly glimpsed in that first battle.

"Inuyasha was here. He came here. HOW COULD YOU LET NARAKU TAKE HIM!?"

Genkai was no weakling, she was a tough old broad and damned proud of it. Proud that she could destroy just about anyone and anything that roamed on the earth with a few notable exceptions. This girl, though, wasn't using any physical strength, or even spiritual or purifying strength. Her power came from something inside her, something so powerful its energy was wrapping around Genkai, binding her so that she could not move, not even to defend herself. If she had not given Yusuke her spirit orb she may have been able to escape but the naked pain in Kagome's eyes, and the accusations, stopped her dead.

"Listen here, you little monster, I don't know any Inuyasha. I do, however, know Naraku. Until a year ago he never told me his name but I know him, oh yes. He and his wife" She spit the last word out as if it were a vile curse,"A monster equal to you I'm sure. They have been coming here for years killing the innocent demons in this place and more than enough humans too."

"YOU IDIOT!" Kagome shouted, desperation and anger cracking through the air like a whip. "Did it ever occur to you to talk to them? Or if that proved impossible then to Kanna? The Lady?"

"We have an understanding, she and I, she stays away from me and I won't kill her."

The bindings tightened and tears threatened to spill.

"They weren't killing demons or even humans for the fun of it. Inuyasha and Kikyo" Kagome paused at the name for the space of a moment, "were killing those possessed by Naraku the most vile, evil, compassionless demon that has ever existed. Don't you get it? Were you so busy hating them that you never thought to ask them why? And now he's back and he'll never stop. He'll destroy the world and he can do it, he almost did it once before."

Genkai shook herself away from Kagome's grip, the girl having lost whatever unnatural strength had possessed her before. Part of her was sure she was exaggerating, pulling her leg as Yusuke was always attempting to do, but had she ever talked to the two demons? No, she admitted, she never had. Had never searched for the Lady either, and tried to gleam whatever knowledge the demon might have known. And hadn't the demon been different? Before he had been loud, somehow noble, and almost laughable. Like Yusuke. But that last time she had seen him he had been different. Sly, cold, a perpetual darkness hovering within him.

"Hmph."

Kagome could only shake her head, force herself to be strong. To stay strong. Inuyasha, she had to save Inuyasha.

"Naraku was alive five hundred years ago but we killed him, we thought we killed him but something happened and you 'Spirit Detectives' need to find out what because he stayed, his soul stayed, and after so long he was able to become strong enough to final posses something. That's what they were fighting, that's what your 'monster' was doing when she killed all those people. She was killing Naraku over and over again until it got to Inuyasha."

Hiei moved to stand at her side, reaching down and helping her to her feet. Steadying her. Kagome's eyes were bright, determined. She was ready to fight.

"Yusuke says you can make us strong. Teach us how to use our spirit energy, and mold any other energy we have. Train us to fight. Now you do it. Train us all because if I know about the tournament then so does he and he'll know I'll be there. We gotta train, and we gotta be strong. All of us."

"And why should I train you?" Genkai questioned, despicable in her inability to care.

"Because you owe me." Kagome started. Her voice was cold, her eyes swirling madly and her aura surging with power. Tendrils of it reaching out to wrap around the older womans body. "You may have helped to kill my friend and let loose an evil that will make all evils before him seem like a common cold." She hissed venomously. There was pity in those maddening depths, a pleading that should have made her words less threatening but didn't. "And if you don't, if you don't make us strong enough to get my friend back and end this forever..." Kagome shot forward, so quick Genkai couldn't see her. Not until Kagome stood before her, hand a hairsbreadth from her throat. Her next words were a promise, absolute even as her tone suggested the deepest of regrets.

"I'll kill you."

Artimes...Shh. Be good lol ^_^

Gooberdee- She is but I've given her good reason for it. I've given Kikyo a better life, essentially, sure but I never liked her much at all. You could say that Genkai is a representation of how I feel towards Kikyo except...you know...she hates all of 'em...

I'm sorry this chapters not as long as the others but, really, I just wanted to get it out today before I have to get back to work.

Once again Thank you all and I hope to have another chapter out come Friday at the latest. Also I apologize I said I'd get this out by Sunday and it's Monday buttttttttt

I fell asleep T_T