Adult-FanFiction.org : Inuyasha / Yashahime

Strength	By : inufan625 Category: InuYasha > Het - Male/Female > InuYasha/Kagome Views: 9998 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha and will make no money from this work of fiction. This will apply to all chapters contained within.

Chapter List
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A/N: This story is complete. I am finally posting it here so updates should be pretty frequent until I get it all posted.

Kagome glanced at the clock on her bedside table and sighed. She had been studying for almost two hours and felt like she hadn't learned anything. She just knew that she was going to fail her final exams. The young woman shook her head. No. I can't think like that. I've come this far. All I have to do is pass next week, and I'll graduate. Then things will get easier.
Refocusing on her studies, Kagome felt a chill travel up her spine as if someone had just walked over her grave. Her body shuddered of its own accord, and she rubbed her hands along her upper arms trying to ward off the sensation. She glanced at the window, making sure that it was still closed, even if she couldn't bring herself to lock it on the off chance that InuYasha might decide to risk her wrath and come see her despite her warnings.
Even though she wanted him to stay away this week so that she could study, she didn't have it in her heart to do anything that might make him feel truly unwelcome. At the thought of her hanyou - well he wasn't really hers, but she figured she was at least allowed to think of him however she wanted to - again a strange unsettling feeling washed over her.
Her heart began to beat faster, and she forced herself to take a deep breath. Surely it was merely her overactive imagination causing her to worry, since in truth she had expected him to have come long before now if for nothing else but to threaten her about being on time when she returned.
She tried to concentrate on the text book in front of her, but it was no use. She was too preoccupied. Looking again at the clock, she decided that she would go to bed and hope things would go better after a good night's sleep. She changed into her pajamas and slipped under the blankets. Surprisingly enough, she fell asleep rather easily.
Kagome's eyes darted around her. A thick purple fog was slowly pressing in on her. Flashes, visions of crimson and black, flew past her. The piercing scream and the familiar cry of her name assailed her from every direction. Her heart pounded in her chest as she struggled to breathe in the oppressing mist, seeking him out. He needed her.
"Kagome!" the cry split the air and tore at her heart.
"InuYasha! InuYasha, where are you! I'm coming! Kami-sama, help me!" Kagome pleaded.
She ran and ran, but just when she thought she was getting close he would call for her again, sounding so desperate and so far away. Tears poured down her cheeks as his anguished screams reached her ears. She panted and a stitch in her side ached, but she couldn't stop looking for him.
"InuYasha! I can't find you!" Kagome cried. "Help me!"
She stilled suddenly, and her heart all but halted as she heard him, his laughter cruel and dark.
"Kukuku..." Naraku taunted. "Your friends deserted you on the one night you needed them most. How unfortunate for you. Tell me, InuYasha, how does it feel knowing that you will fail both of your miko... What... What's this? Kikyou!"
"I cannot let you kill him," Kikyou said. "It is time the world was rid of your evil once and for all."
"You think to destroy me?" Naraku laughed, but the laughter cut off abruptly.
Kagome had to shield her eyes as a blinding pink light exploded out in front of her. She could hear Naraku screaming in agony.
The miko from the future sat upright in bed, her heart racing. Her face was damp with sweat and tears, and her entire body was trembling. She closed her eyes to try and calm herself. The sun was just barely peeking over the horizon, but the terror that had settled over her refused to be chased away by its light.
She lay back down and stared at the ceiling wondering if her dream, her nightmare, had been just that, or if it had really happened. Her breath caught in her throat as her eyes were drawn toward her window as it slid open. A masculine grunt reached her, followed by the loud thump of a body hitting the floor beside her bed.
She fell to her knees beside the red clad hanyou. His breathing was shallow and weak, and he was covered from head to toe in blood, so much blood. She touched his face finding his skin cool and his face pale.
"InuYasha! Oh Kami-sama!" she cried. "Hold on, please hold on! I'm going to help you, just don't give up!" The young miko ran to her door and threw it open. "Mama! Mama! I need you, please!"
Asami Higurashi who had been just beginning to prepare breakfast dropped the pan in her hand and ran towards her daughter's panicked and pleading voice. She had never heard her daughter sound so desperate or so frightened before, and it terrified her.
She ran right past her father in law and her son, ignoring their questions, and straight up to her daughter's room. She stopped dead at finding Kagome kneeling beside the young hanyou from the past, hands pressed firmly over his abdomen, blood leaking from between her fingers.
"Oh Kami-sama preserve us," the older woman gasped. "Kagome..."
The young woman lifted her head, her eyes surprising clear and determined. She glanced to her brother and to her grandfather as they both appeared. "Souta, I need a bucket of water and several rags. Jii-chan, I need towels and the first aid kit from the bathroom. Mama, I need my medical kit from my bag and all of the bandages you can find. Cut some sheets up if you have to, but hurry. Now!"
At her shout, her family broke from their stupor and hurried off to do as she had ordered.
"Hold on, InuYasha," Kagome said softly leaning over and pressing her lips to his forehead. "Don't you dare die on me. I'll never forgive you."
Souta returned first, followed closely by her mother with the medical kit. He set the bucket by his sister. Kagome took a deep breath and pulled open his haori and under kimono. There in the center of the hanyou's abdomen was a gaping hole from which blood, nearly black, was seeping. The edges of the wound were black and the skin around it green.
Asami with a hand over her mouth watched her son turn and throw up into the trash can and her daughter swallow hard, jaw set with a grim determination. For the first time it really sank in that her daughter was not the same girl who fell through the well on her fifteenth birthday. This was her daughter, the miko, the healer, who traveled to the past and fought youkai, who had seen blood and death and who was stronger than she had ever imagined.
"We have to get these clothes off and clean him so I can see the rest of his injuries," Kagome said. She turned to her brother and forced him to look at her. "Souta, I never wanted you to see anything like this, and I could really use your help, but if you can't I'll understand, and I won't think less of you for it."
Her brother swallowed hard. "I can do it, Sis. Inu nii-chan would do it for me."
Kagome gave him a wan smile. "Mama. Jii-chan."
The old man who had returned with the towels and her mother both went to aid her. As gently as possible, they divested him of his clothing, and Kagome draped a single towel over his waist to give him as much privacy as she could afford under the circumstances. Then all four set to cleaning the battered young hanyou. Whenever a wound was revealed, a large bandage was placed over as a temporary solution.
Kagome then began to examine his most grievous wound. "Miasma... Mama, I need all the anti-venom and the strongest antiseptic we have."
Quickly her mother dug through their limited supplies and passed her daughter what she had requested.
"Souta, lift his head into your lap so I can give him this, and talk to him," Kagome instructed. "Let him know that he needs to keep fighting."
The boy nodded and quickly lifted his hero's head to rest in his lap, speaking quietly of how much he was needed. Kagome blushed while she slowly poured the anti-venom into InuYasha's mouth as her brother spoke of how much his nee-chan would miss him if he died, but made no protest.
She cleaned his stomach wound the best she could, allowing a bit of her power to purify as much of the miasma as she dared, without purifying his youki, and prayed that it would be enough as she bandaged it. Even if the wound looked clean, she knew that the poison was already in his blood.
Digging in her supplies, she pulled out a pair of needles and some thread. "His less serious wounds aren't healing," Kagome announced, as she examined the gash on his thigh. "Most likely because his body is working so hard to stay alive and to heal the most life threatening of his injuries."
Asami looked at the needle her daughter was holding out to her. "You want me to..."
Kagome gave her mother a short nod. "You can do it, Mama. I can't count the number of times he has saved me, been injured to protect me. I owe him my life, Mama, please..."
As soon as her mother took the needle, Kagome began stitching his wounds closed, starting with the most serious, glancing up from her work only once to see her mother diligently working on her hanyou's shoulder. Once all the open wounds had been closed, lathered with antibacterial ointment and covered with a bandage. Kagome moved to his other side and gripped his un-rent thigh, frowning as she examined him.
"It's broken. We have to set it," Kagome said. "Mama, Jii-chan, hold him still."
The young woman, now more thankful than ever for old Kaede's tutelage, steeled her countenance and gripped his leg, knowing how much it hurt to set a bone, but also knowing that it had to be done. She almost lost control of her emotions as a pitiful whine tore from her hanyou.
She quickly moved up to his head. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "We're done now." Kagome stroked his cheek and his hair gently as she looked down at him.
"Kagome?" her mother said quietly.
The girl looked up. "We should see if we can get him up onto the bed."
With extreme care the four Higurashi's managed to get InuYasha up onto the soft mattress without reopening any of his wounds. Kagome dug through her bag taking out several small pouches, and a mortar and pestle. With her family watching her curiously, she skillfully selected several herbs and ground them together. Carefully folding a sheet of paper from her notebook, she poured in the mixture and handed it to her mother.
"Mama, will you please mix three pinches into a cup of hot water?" she asked. "He'll need fluids to replace the blood he lost, and these herbs will also speed his healing and give him strength."
"Of course," the older woman agreed.
"We'll clean this up for you, Sis," Souta offered, gathering the bloody towels and clothes from the floor.
"Thank you," she whispered to both her brother and grandfather.
Kneeling beside her bed, Kagome waited for her mother to return. She needed to change and wash the blood from her hands, but couldn't leave InuYasha alone. She took his hand and noticed he was clutching something tightly in his fist.
She gasped at realizing it was the nearly complete shikon no tama. "What happened to you?"
Kagome pushed her questions aside though. Once InuYasha was well she could find out all she needed to, but for now she didn't have room in her heart to worry about anything but his recovery. She looked up as her mother approached and set a steaming cup on the bedside table.
"I-I-I need to change. Could you stay with him?" Kagome asked quietly. "I can't leave him all alone. He's never said, but I know... I know he fears being alone."
Her mother nodded and hugged her.
Kagome looked at herself in the mirror. There were dark smudges on her face from where she had pushed back her hair while treating InuYasha, and her hands... they were covered, covered with his blood. She turned away from her reflection and turned on the shower. Undressing quickly, she stepped into the hot water and began to scrub herself clean, as if washing away his blood would make what happened less real.
Not wanting to be away from him for too long, in case he woke up, in case it was the only time he woke, she made her shower a brief one. She dressed in a clean pair of pajamas and returned to her room to find her mother sitting on the edge of the bed, idly stroking one of the young hanyou's ears.
Her mother sensed her as she stood in the doorway and turned, a sad sort of smile on her lips. Something about her look was so familiar, and all at once Kagome found herself overwhelmed, yet again. Her body started to tremble and in one swift motion she threw herself at her mother's feet.
Warm arms wrapped around her as she sat, knees curled under her, her head in her mother's lap. "It's going to be all right, darling. Either way, it will be all right. Things happen as they were meant to. I believe that, and you should too."
Either way... Something about that triggered her memory and she realized why her mother's look had seemed so familiar. Daddy. Those four long days when her mother had stood vigil by a hospital bed when she was only eight, she had worn the same expression. Of course she hadn't forgotten that her father had died, but until that moment she hadn't remembered peering in through the window of the ICU, forced to say goodbye to her father through a sheet of glass. One visitor only, they had said. The risk of infection is too great. Small children carry too many germs.
"You really do?" Kagome asked. "Even after Daddy, you still feel that way?"
"Especially after," her mother replied. "I have to believe. Would it better to dismiss what happened as a freak accident, to think that there was no purpose to what happened? Should I ignore all the miraculous things that have happened as a result? No, I prefer to believe that all things have a purpose. Your father thought so, and I think it would disappoint him if I abandoned my beliefs because of what happened to him."
Kagome lifted her head and looked at her mother. Her expression gentle, understanding. "I love him, Mama."
Her mother cupped her cheek in one hand. "I know."
Tear spilled down Kagome's cheeks. "I don't want him to die."
Again her mother embraced her. "Neither do I, darling. Neither do I."
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