A/N: Thank you to innocentanimefan to their review on the last chapter! :) What happens to Yukari will be resolved in this chapter-ish.

After this chapter there is only one chapter left and then we're finished with Timeless...I can't believe that this is happening, but thank you all for your support along the way. :)

RxExR!

Timeless

Chapter 19 - The Return to the Village

They emerged from the caves in silence, none of them daring to say a word. Inuyasha and Sessomaru were both fuming, although for two very different reasons, and it seemed that this time Inuyasha would not be voicing that anger. Naraku had escaped him, again, and there was nothing that he could do about it. They didn't know where he had gone, and as Sango had pointed out quite helpfully, they didn't know into what time he had gone either. He could have gone into the past or he could have gone into the future. Or perhaps neither.

Fact was though that they didn't know what exactly had happened, only that the ones that they had been chasing after for the past months were gone.

It was infuriating to say the least.

Sesshomaru on the other hand was fighting a panic that he appeared to be unable to control. He hadn't been able to get the name of the poison from Midoriko so therefore he did not know what would heal Yukari.

He was beginning to face the prospect that maybe she actually wouldn't make it, that she wouldn't pull through in the end like she always did.

She had always been a constant in his life, ever since he was small. He didn't want to think about her not being there, it would be incomprehensible for her to not be around anymore.

She wouldn't die.

"Lord Sesshomaru!" Kohaku's voice broke him out of his reverie and he realised that they had arrived at where he and Yukari, along with Ah-Un, were staying. He stood there, impassive as ever as he looked down at Yukari, who's breathing had grown even shallower since they had parted ways.

"Sesshomaru?" Her voice was practically non-existent and he was forced to sit down next to her in order to hear her.

He would not kneel, he would never do that.

"Remember that time?" She asked and he knew what she was talking about. There could only be one thing that she was talking about.

"Please keep it." She asked softly.

"I will." He nodded solemnly.

She smiled weakly and Kohaku felt a deep sadness overcome him as he watched the two of them.

Was there nothing that he could do?

~.~.~.~.~

"What happened?" Inuyasha hissed at Jaken who kept looking over to where Yukari lay on the ground.

"Lady Yukari's heart got pierced by one of the miko's arrows. Apparently it's poisoned." Jaken explained before rushing over to his group, settling next to Kohaku, deciding to keep a silent vigil over her along with him.

"Oh my god." Sango's hand flew to her mouth and she looked over at Sesshomaru with pity. Now it made sense why he wanted to know what poison Midoriko had used to put on her arrows. He had wanted to know so that Yukari might have a chance at surviving. But without knowing the poison, the chances of that had decreased drastically.

Inuyasha looked over at his brother in worry. From what he remembered, Sesshomaru didn't deal too well with losing people close to him. Now, he didn't know how close Sesshomaru and Yukari had been but from what he had seen, they had been pretty close. Rin had only slipped up once about how Sesshomaru reacted once people close to him died and from what he could tell, it wouldn't be pretty.

Silence filled the area around them. The only sounds that could be heard were the wind rustling a couple of the leaves in the trees.

It should have been a good day, the weather was brilliant. Naraku was gone.

And yet...

Sesshomaru was pretty sure that it was mocking him.

The quiet continued and Sesshomaru appreciated Inuyasha's silence, as well as the silence from the group that always travelled with his brother. He was pretty sure that he would have beheaded them should they have been noisy and disruptive.

The whizzing in the air was the first thing that alerted him to something approaching. The second was the fact that he knew that something was about to hit them. It was a gut feeling and he had learned early on that trusting that instinct would bring about the best results for him.

Third was the loud screech of "Sesshomaru!" that completely destroyed the silence.

"Mother." He hissed, not caring at that moment in time that he was being disrespectful towards her. Yukari was dying and he was in no mood to put up with her theatrics right now.

Inuyasha, who had a very similar gut feeling, had had the presence of mind to hide behind Miroku so that Satomi wouldn't immediately be able to spot him. He disliked being battered by her as much as Sesshomaru did and like his brother, wasn't really in the mood to put up with her.

"Something terrible has happened." Lady Satomi stepped forth from the bubble that had been transporting her and looked at her son completely seriously, as if she hadn't just created a crater in the middle of the Slayer's Village.

Well, at least she hadn't hit any of them. The relief at that was tangible in the air.

"Yeah, your travelling abilities." Came the annoyed mutter of Rina as she stepped out of the rubble. When Lady Satomi had pretty much ambushed her that morning and spirited them away in her bubble, she had feared for her life. The former Lady of the Western Lands had never steered the bubble that eratic before and she had prayed to every deity that she knew of that she would make it out alive.

Thank god that she had. Otherwise, Lady Satomi would be the one fearing for her life right now as her vengeful spirit haunted her.

"As you can see Mother, we are a little busy right now." Sesshomaru pretty much snapped at his mother and everyone raised their eyebrows at his behaviour. Sesshomaru was decorum and control in person, this reaction was highly unusual for him.

It was then that Rina spotted Yukari.

"Yukari!" She dashed forward, ignoring all protocol as she dropped down beside her friend, panic overtaking her. "What happened?" She stared imploringly at Sesshomaru and then the others, willing them to tell her that her friend would be alright.

"Her heart got pierced by a poisoned arrow and we don't know what poison was used." Kohaku explained, Sesshomaru picking that moment to reign in his unusual emotions and be controlled and calm once more.

"That is why I am here." Lady Satomi pronounced and the others all turned their attention back to her. "I had a sort of premonition, a gut feeling that something bad would happen a couple of days ago and I had a feeling it would be about you. That is why I went into your father's old library, terribly dirty by the way, we need to tell the servants to clean it up properly, and looked into the whole 'linked by amulet' thing."

And that explained why the demon lady had been surprisingly absent from court the last couple of days, Rina thought to herself.

"And then this morning, a messenger came to me, telling me of some unusual movements of demons within this region. He gave me the report to give to you, as you were absent as you always are, and I looked at it." Lady Satomi continued.

"Mother, those reports are for my eyes alone." Sesshomaru told his mother, the slight crease on his forhead indicating his displeasure at her going through his stuff. Again.

"And I noticed that there were so many demons migrating here, some even daiyoukai, and I couldn't just sit there and wait for you to come back!" Lady Satomi completely ignored Sesshomaru's jab.

Sesshomaru was also sure that she enjoyed her theatrics a bit too much.

"Mother, we really do have a more serious problem at the moment than the demon migrations caused by Naraku." Sesshomaru tried to remain polite, he really did.

"Naraku? Why that foul, loathsome-"

"Mother." Sesshomaru's sigh was one of long suffering. He knew that if he didn't stop her now, she wouldn't stop ranting until the sun went down. Which was in a couple of hours.

"Oh yes. About the bond. You just have to will her to get better." Lady Satomi said quite off-handedly and Yukari cracked an eye open to stare at her former employer.

"He has to what?" She managed to finally croak out while everyone else merely stared at the demon Lady slack-jawed. She had to be kidding.

"Will you to get better my dear." Lady Satomi was suddenly the image of patience.

"Her heart got pierced by a poisoned arrow." Kohaku stressed the words 'heart' and 'poisoned', pretty sure that Lady Satomi must have misunderstood, or not heard, him before.

"I know." Lady Satomi said as she waved her hand in the air. "It's rather obvious once you think about it."

"It's not obvious Mother." Sesshomaru was pretty sure that his mother had finally cracked. "She is poisoned and her heart is pierced, how do you expect me to simply 'will her to get better'? It wouldn't do anything. The bond has practically disintegrated anyway."

"No, you just believe the bond to have disintegrated." Lady Satomi stated and raised an eyebrow at her son. "If it had disintegrated you would be dead, there is no way around that. Your father made sure of it."

Sesshomaru and Yukari cast each other dismayed looks. Or, as dismayed as they could get, which wasn't really that clear at all.

"And don't tell me that any poison would actually hurt her. You and she ate your way through my cupboard of different poisons when you were small, believing them to be some sorts of juices and sweets. You two are practically impervious to poison." She sniffed her nose delicately, as if it were a personal insult to her that they had eaten their way through it. "And she is no more human than I am." She added haughtily towards the end.

"Doesn't change the fact that she is dying." Inuyasha decided to point out in that moment and everyone shot him a glare that told him to shut up. He gulped and Kagome patted his arm reassuringly.

"Well, what do you propose as the reason for our combined deaths then?" Sesshomaru asked sarcastically.

"You both believe that she is dying and are trying to terminate the bond so that only she dies and not you, which is utter and complete rubbish of course. Trying to do what you are at the moment is what's killing her and will eventually kill you. So just stop it."

She sent both of them a look, one that clearly stated that 'you are idiots. Stop being so stupid so that I don't get infected by your stupidity as well.' Sesshomaru resisted the urge to gape at her.

"Come on Rina, let's go back to the castle. Lunch is waiting for us." And Lady Satomi spun around and created a bubble so that they could travel back to their home.

Rina did gape at her.

"But Lady Satomi-"

"Rina. We're going. Now." And Rina got up with a heavy sigh, whispered something into her best friend's ear and then stepped into the bottle.

"I expect to see you all soon for your inauguration into the demon court." Lady Satomi said, looking at them all with an expression that could not be misread.

And they were gone, leaving behind the silence that had bene there at the beginning too.

~.~.~.~.~

"How do you will someone to get better?" Inuyasha asked a couple of minutes after Lady Satomi and Rina had left.

"Well not by crowding the person who is meant to do so." Kagome replied.

"Let's go home?" Sango asked, not even attempting to hide the relief on her face.

"Yeah, that sounds good." Miroku smiled.

"Sesshomaru." Sesshomaru turned to see Inuyasha standing there, waiting for him to turn around. "See you soon." And Inuyasha turned around and joined the others as they walked away, Kagome shyly linking an arm with him as they continued down the road.

Kohaku smirked, finally they had acted on their affections.

It was the closest that Inuyasha would ever get to telling his brother to better still be alive so that they could meet again. Which inadversably was also telling him to do what his mother had told him to do and 'will' Yukari to stay alive.

Sesshomaru was surprised when Yukari's hand fell into his lap. He turned around quickly only to see a small smile on her face as she lay there with her eyes closed.

"Okay." He knew what she wanted to tell him by doing so and he accepted it.

They would be fine.

Somehow.

~.~.~.~.~

The journey back to their own village wasn't as long as the journey to the Slayer's village had been, nor did it feel so strenuous. It was actually rather comforting, travelling along the roads at their own paces.

The world around really did seem to pause as they passed by. Inuyasha and Kagome were holding hands the entire way, never letting the other out of their sights for long. With Naraku gone (at least temporarily) peace had returned to the countryside.

Not much talking had been done while they were travelling, everyone being immersed in their own thoughts as they contemplated what had happened. Naraku and Kikyo being gone was a problem, but it was one that they could not solve at the moment, especially seeing as Sango would be giving birth quite soon.

"What bond was Lady Satomi speaking of?" Kagome asked as they were rounding the last corner on the road to their village. It had plagued her non-stop the entire way back. It had annoyed her even before that when she had seen how close Sesshomaru and Yukari had always stayed to one another.

"I'm not sure." Inuyasha looked at Kagome tenderly for a minute before concentrating back on the road. "Sesshomaru never really tells me anything and I believe that the 'bond' that my stepmother was talking of is something that she, at least indirectly, inflicted on them."

"And I doubt he'll ever really tell us what it is." Miroku added and Sango nodded. It was rather hard to imagine Sesshomaru opening up to them.

"There's the village!" Shippo's excited cry distracted them from any further conversation on the topic and they grinned as they hurried to get to the village.

They were finally home.

~.~.~.~.~

"Ayumi!" The cry of her name pulled Ayumi from her work and she glanced up to see Kagome running towards her.

"Kagome?" She carefully put down the cloth that she had been about to hang up and ran towards her friend, meeting her halfway. After dropping something a couple of weeks ago, Kaede had scolded her non-stop that if she was going to leave her work for something else, then she should at least put it down properly and not drop it and possibly break it.

She had learnt her lesson.

"When did you get back?" Ayumi looked her friend up and down, checking for any wounds or other injuries and felt relief course through her as she realised that everything was okay.

"Just now. We saw you standing out here, doing the washing, so we came to meet you first." Ayumi peered around Kagome as she said that and noticed Inuyasha, Miroku, Sango and the two demons come towards her as well.

"Kaede's going to be pleased that you're back. We were quite worried about you." Ayumi looked at her friend sternly and Kagome felt a the stare penetrate her.

"We're all fine Ayumi. Seriously, everyone is fine." Kagome smiled and slowly Ayumi returned the smile, glad that her friend really was back and that she was completely fine. Plus, she appeared to be glowing for some reason or the other and Ayumi would bet everything that she currently owned (which wasn't a lot) that it had something to do with Inuyasha.

But she would interrogate her friend later. For now, they had to get to Kaede and reassure her that everyone was well.

They walked through the village, people greeting them all as they walked down the streets and Ayumi told them about everything that had happened in the three months that they had been gone.

Apparently that was quite a lot because she had a lot of tales to tell. The farmer that lived a bit more into the forest had been attacked by demons and was currently living in the village with a friend. He was fine, only slightly injured, and he lamented the loss of his crop more than the wounds that he had gained. Inuyasha and Miroku immediately said that they would look into it.

The crops were doing well and it looked like this year would be a good year for the village. Ayumi had learned a lot about farming in the last three months so she used quite a few technical terms that Kagome did not understand. Inuyasha explained it all to her though as they walked and she smiled at him, grateful for his explanations.

Ayumi grinned. Oh, she was so going to grill Kagome on the whole thing with Inuyasha later. Even a blind person could see that they were head-over-heels for one another.

Uri had apparently given birth to a healthy baby boy and Ayumi gushed about how great it was, being there and helping someone give birth. Miroku and Inuyasha distanced themselves a bit during that conversation, not really wishing to be a part of it. It was during that time that Rin spotted them and launched herself at them, chatting happily with them and embellishing Ayumi's stories as well.

Therefore they reached Kaede's cottage in no time and the old woman was overjoyed to see them again.

"I knew ye would make it back safely." She smiled before inviting them all in and making tea. Once they had all settled they sat down and told everyone present of what had happened.

"My sister is alive?" Kaede was pale.

"Yes. It appears that her current reincarnation was used by the demons or something to revive her. There was something strange about her though." Kagome replied.

"What was it?" Kaede was unhappy. Just when her sister had finally achieved that long awaited peace, she was ripped from it and pulled back into the present world. It was cruel and made her angry at the demons. The dead should be allowed to rest.

"She felt...pure from what I could sense." Kagome furrowed her brows. "It's something that I don't quite understand. It was the same with Naraku. Neither felt inherently evil or even remotely close to what demons usually feel like. Both felt almost...child-like." Kagome didn't look pleased with the explanation herself.

"And she's gone?" Kaede wanted to reconfirm that in particular.

"Yes. She and Naraku left through some sort of portal." Inuyasha was the one who replied this time.

"But we cannot be exactly sure what it was. To us it looked as if they were walking into, or rather through, a wall." Miroku added.

"And Midoriko got sucked in as well." Sango's comment followed her husband's.

"Midoriko?" Kaede's eyes widened. "As in the priestess Midoriko who created the Shikon no Tama in the first place?"

"The one and only." Shippo nodded and that launched the whole story of them travelling to the past and meeting Midoriko there, of finding out about her intense hatred for demons and about Sesshomaru clearing some of the confusion up due to Yukari's vision.

"Lord Sesshomaru is alright?" Rin asked, her eyes bright as she inquired about her adoptive father's health.

"Yeah, he's fine. I think Yukari just needs to heal and then they'll both be annoying each other again." Inuyasha muttered and Kagome jabbed him in the side. Not as harshly as she had done before though.

"What do you mean, Lady Yukari just needs to heal?" Rin looked perplexed.

And that spanned the story of the very strange link-bond thing that Sesshomaru and Yukari apparently had that nobody quite understood and of how she got injured in the first place.

By the time that they had finished their story, the sun had set and the stars were twinkling in the sky above. Kaede looked out of the window and then looked back at the weary travellers in front of her, all worn out from their journey.

"Ye all need to go to bed, your journey was long and ye are all tired." Kaede looked at them sternly and Sango smiled slightly.

"Best idea that I have heard in a long time." Sango said, absolutely exhausted. She had dozed off here and there as the evening had gone on, her back and feet killing her. She would never admit it but the pregnancy was hard on her and she knew that on the way back, everyone had travelled a lot slower than they normally would have because of her.

She hated admitting that she had a weakness but she appreciated their concern nonetheless.

As they all went to bed, right in Kaede's cottage as nobody could really be bothered to get up and move once again, Kaede smiled. Once everyone was settled and sleep had stolen them away she stepped out into the night, her old joints creaking slightly as she sat down on a bench near her cottage.

It would snow soon, she could feel that in her bones. But she also knew that she wouldn't be able to get any sleep tonight. While she normally did not get any visions, the dream that had visited her a month ago caused her great worry. And after hearing of her sister and Naraku today, that worry had just amplified.

Her sister and Naraku would return.

And that other woman was probably Midoriko.

She didn't know who the other demon was though, but she could feel that he would possibly be the most dangerous foe ever to walk this earth.

The only question that remained was when would this all occur?