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
- 15
- 16
- 17
Kagome studied her face in the bathroom mirror as she tried to decide whether or not she should tie back her hair. It didn’t help that as she had gotten older she’d only started to look more like Kikyou in the face. She’d thought she was past all of those old insecurities, but it seemed like maybe they were still lingering in some deep dark corner of her heart.
Her eyes met his as he came to stand behind her. “Kagome, is Kagome, no matter what she’s wearing,” he said quietly as he put his hands on her shoulders.
She nodded. She knew it was stupid. Kikyou was dead, really dead and InuYasha loved her for herself. She looked at the ribbon in her hand and then back at herself and even though she knew he meant what he’d said she still couldn’t bring herself to tie back her hair. She put it down and picked up the brush.
He took it from her with a snort and ran it through her hair several times. “It suits you better like this anyway, and you don’t look as much like her as you think you do, not anymore and not to me.”
“I know I’m being stupid, feeling this way,” she admitted.
“Yeah you are,” he agreed. She scowled but he ignored her, setting the brush down and wrapping his arms around her waist. “Tell me what I can say to get rid of these doubts, because we can’t afford them, not today.”
Her eyes widened. He was right. Naraku would love nothing more than to turn them against each other and no doubt he would try to prey on their old fears to try and do just that. She searched her heart and there was no part of her that didn’t believe unfailingly in InuYasha and his love for her. Was she just falling into old habits as they got ready to face a familiar enemy? Was that just the sort of thing Naraku would be counting on? If so then he was going to be in for a big surprise, because it wasn’t going to work this time.
The corners of InuYasha’s lips turned upwards. “That’s better.”
She turned in his arms and hugged him tightly. “I’m sorry. Old habits.”
“Just remember that no matter what he says, he has no fucking idea what he’s talking about,” he told her. “The only person who really knows how I feel besides me is you, and so you don’t forget, no hiding today from either one of us.”
She nodded against him. “InuYasha, I wouldn’t give up meeting you not for anything.”
“Keh, me neither,” he replied. “Now, are you ready to go? Sesshomaru is waiting for us downstairs.”
They were still a few blocks from her old high school when the car stopped.
“I was able to have a three block radius around the school evacuated on the pretense of a gas leak,” Sesshomaru told them. “Though it would be preferable not to level a city block and the school with the Tetsusaiga, I thought it best to keep that option open to us all things considered.”
It was eerie walking down the deserted streets which only served to compound the growing dread inside her. She stepped closer to InuYasha letting the familiar feel of his youki act as buffer against the wrongness in the air. He slipped his hand into hers and she was grateful for the contact. She could feel his confidence and reassurance and love and she envied not for the first time his ability to lock his fear away and then to use it to make himself stronger, more determined. How lucky was she to have a mate with such a courageous heart, to have such a man to stand by her, to face down hell with her and never once blink?
“Only half as lucky as I am, woman,” he said quietly but with great affection.
Sesshomaru glanced at them. “I should have expected the bond between you to be strong enough to allow such a level of communication. Can you speak directly?”
“Um, it’s not really words, but more like I can feel what he’s thinking, I guess,” Kagome tried.
“She was feeling lucky and proud and jealous and a bunch of other less defined emotions and I could sort of hear where those feelings were coming from,” InuYasha offered with a shrug. “I don’t know how to explain it better than that.”
“Hn, in any case it is an advantage we can use,” Sesshomaru said. “Do not hesitate to coordinate your abilities. I will adapt and InuYasha cannot help but to give instinctual clues that I will recognize but Naraku will not.”
InuYasha smirked. “So what you’re saying is to do what we do and you’ll follow my lead for once.”
“Do not grow accustomed to the idea since it will indeed only be for once as you put it,” Sesshomaru replied.
Kagome shivered and both brothers growled as they reached the entrance to the school grounds.There was a familiar haze in the air and the grass and trees were all brown and shriveled as the miasma killed every living thing it touched. The only small consolation was that it seemed to be contained within the walls that surrounded the school.
InuYasha looked at Kagome. “You take it slow and make sure it can’t touch you or we’re going to have to purify the area with a holy arrow or try a reiki wrapped kaze no kizu.”
She nodded and stepped forward, relieved as the dark clouds receded away from her as her reiki purified the air around her. When she turned to InuYasha she noticed that the same thing was happening to him, the miasma appearing to retreat thanks to the blanket of her power that was somehow draped over her hanyou.
“Keh, that’s my girl,” InuYasha said with a smirk. “That bastard doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Should I try and see if I can get Sesshomaru too?” Kagome asked.
“There is no need,” Sesshomaru said stepped up beside them a sort of green tint making his youki visible. “His poison cannot touch me.”
They approached the building together. The side door to the gym was open in a clear invitation. InuYasha took the lead as they headed inside and Sesshomaru the rear. Naraku was there waiting for them a giant web of carnage on the wall behind him and a great hole in the floor at his feet.
“Thank you for responding so promptly to my invitation,” Naraku said. “So wonderful that you dressed for the occasion, Kagome. Are you ready to surrender yourself and the jewel to me?”
“You’ll never touch her, you bastard,” InuYasha snarled.
“The jewel is gone, Naraku,” Kagome told him. “I purified it so that it no longer exists.”
“Lies!” the evil hanyou spat. “You are nothing. Weak. Inferior. You could not have done what Kikyou could not! Isn’t that right, InuYasha?”
“Keh, this song and dance is getting old,” InuYasha replied. “The jewel is gone, Kagome is mine and it’s time for you to die.”
InuYasha grabbed Kagome and jumped back as an impossible number of lesser youkai began pouring from the hole in the ground. Where the hell were they all coming from? Surely in her world where youkai were thought to be nothing more than legends suck mindless vermin would be extinct. He glanced at Sesshomaru who was clearly taken aback.
“What’s the matter, Sesshomaru-sama, of great Youkai no Taishou? Do you not approve of my little underground breeding experiment?” Naraku taunted. “You have grown weak and complacent, not fit to rule over the youkai. I look forward to taking you place.”
Sesshomaru was unmoved by Naraku’s attempts to anger him. The words of a filthy abomination such as him meant less than nothing to one such as him. He was prepared to prove his taunts wrong but was forced instead to defend the doorway that led outside as the lesser youkai attempted to leave through it.

“I leave him to you, InuYasha,” Sesshomaru called. “I must see to it that no lesser youkai escape this building. The risk of exposure is too great and this Sesshomaru does not feel like wasting his time on such a pathetic creature.”
InuYasha drew his sword. “You hear that bastard. It’s me and you and only one of us is leaving here alive this time.”
Kagome pulled back and arrow intent on firing into the chasm that was still spilling out youkai, but as she readied her shot Naraku struck out at her and she was forced to dive out of the way. Her arrow went flying off towards the wall and Inuyasha roared, slicing through the offending tentacle and helping her to her feet. He sent another towards them but this one sizzled and burned away before it could reach them.
“That’s a neat trick, wench,” InuYasha said. “Keep doing that so the bastard can’t touch you.”
“If I do then I can’t protect you from the miasma or anything else,” she told him. “It’s taking all my power to keep the reiki around me strong enough that he can’t pierce it.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Just keep yourself covered while I kill this asshole once and for all.”
She hated it but nodded. She knew he would fight better if he was certain she was safe and he’d proven before that he could survive Naraku’s miasma. InuYasha sent out his kongoshouha towards Naraku’s main body as he charged forward. The diamond spears tore through him and though he didn’t seem to be able to regenerate as quickly as he had when he possessed parts of the shikon no tama he had clearly found other methods over the last five centuries both to regenerate and absorb other youkai and their powers.
It was nerve wracking watching him fight, seeing him being injured time after time, even if none of them were severe. He brought his sword down and fired off a controlled kaze no kizu which had the already weakened floor shaking beneath her feet and the back wall of the gym crumbling. She stumbled back losing control of her powers for a brief second allowing a piece of Naraku through. She swung up her bow and blocked but the force of the attack and the lack of spiritual energy in the bow meant that she survived but it didn’t.
“Kagome!” InuYasha cried, knowing she was okay, but wanting to admonish her to be more careful. He snarled and blasted out a few meido which while missing Naraku did manage to swallow up a large portion of the writhing mass surrounding him. “Focus on me, asshole!”
Kagome felt so useless as Sesshomaru seemed to be everywhere at once, taking out huge swaths of youkai at a time, appearing first in one place and then another to keep them from escaping through the door and now the holes in the walls as well. Then there was InuYasha who was taking a hell of a beating as he tried to get close enough to strike at Naraku directly. Time seemed to slow and her heart nearly stopped as she saw what InuYasha did not in his determination to kill the evil hanyou.
He heard Kagome scream his name as he went careening through the air. He hit what was left of the wall with enough force to crack his ribs and he felt something in his leg give way. He slashed at the writhing mass of tentacles that came at him as he looked for his sword. A quick glance told him that his brother had problems of his own to deal with and wouldn’t be coming to the rescue.
He felt Kagome’s fear rise up as she cried out again. No matter how many times he cut through the disgusting appendages more appeared and he was being slowly enveloped. He could feel Kagome considering offering him the protection of her power even if it was taking every single bit of it to keep the bastard from being able to touch her.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” he yelled as their eyes met.
She looked at her broken bow. Sesshomaru was holding off the hordes of lesser youkai but it was all he could do as they all but blocked him completely from view. She looked back at InuYasha who couldn’t stand but was still fighting and knew that she had to do something. She sent him all of her love and then shut him out completely.
“Don’t you do anything stupid, bitch!” he snarled. “Damn it, Kagome!”
She smiled then and reached into her very soul, called upon every last bit of her power and on her love and cast it outwards in a burst of blinding light. She pushed as Naraku screamed, harder, reach deeper and willed her power to wipe clean the taint of his evil from the world. She could feel her heart slowing, her spirit fading and somewhere very far away InuYasha was calling out her, his youki slamming against the barrier in her mind between them. She let it fall as she let go of her power, wanting to be able to feel him just incase the price of defeating Naraku once and for all was to be her death, to be able to encourage him to live with her last breaths.
She slipped to the floor, falling over among the rubble and the dust. She could feel his fear and his love and vowed to fight for every breath, for every heartbeat, for him. She wanted to live, to be his wife and spend the rest of her life at his side and she would not give up that dream without a fight. She felt him again then stronger this time and letting her know that she wasn’t allowed to die that she owed him forever. Her last thought was or forever with him as the world went dark.
InuYasha dragged himself over to where Kagome had fallen, ignoring the pain shooting through his badly broken leg which was the most serious of his injuries. He quickly pushed aside all the debris that had fallen on her and gently wiped the dust from her cheeks. He gathered her up into his arms and listened for the faint beating of her heart, waited for her to take each shallow breath.
“She still lives,” Sesshomaru said.
“Barely,” InuYasha replied without looking away from her face. Her heart stumbled in her chest and he looked up at his brother. “If she doesn’t make it…”
“By her own strength or by that of our father, she will live,” Sesshomaru told him.
InuYasha pushed back the hair from her face as he nodded. “My leg is broken.”
“If you will permit me, I will carry her to the car and then return to assist you,” Sesshomaru offered.
“Keh, just get me up on my feet,” InuYasha said. “I won’t be able to move quick but it won’t be the first time I’ve had to walk on a broken leg.”
“Very well,” Sesshomaru replied.
InuYasha held onto Kagome as his brother lifted him to his feet. He stood with all his weight on one leg and then reluctantly allowed Sesshomaru to take Kagome from his arms. “Oi, be careful with her.”
Sesshomaru just gave a short nod and then turned and walked away. InuYasha clenched his jaw and forced himself to follow using the Tetsusaiga as a cane to avoid having to put all his weight on his broken leg. Looks like he was going to have to set it himself because Kagome sure as hell wasn’t in any condition to help him. His chest hurt just thinking about how little he could feel from her. She was fading, but he refused to let her go, holding onto the thin thread he could feel between them and trying to bolster it with his own youki. Naraku was dead and they were finally free to start their life together he be damned if he was going to lose her now.
He held her, his face buried against her throat the entire ride back to the shrine, not caring that his brother could hear his soft whines or whispered pleas as she took one impossibly slow breath after another. The space between her heart beats felt like forever, but she hadn’t given up yet so neither would he and he would let her know that he was with her that he loved and needed her no matter who might hear him.
When they arrived he was once again he was forced to relinquish her to his brother so that he could carry her up the stairs. He dreaded the thought of having to face her mother who had trusted him to protect her. Would she regret her faith in him upon seeing Kagome’s condition? Could he bear it if she did?
They entered the kitchen and she turned, her eyes widening, hands twisting in her apron. “Is she?”
“Alive,” InuYasha said. “Barely, but she’s holding on.”
Asami let out a slow breath. “What can I do?”
“Sesshomaru can take her up to our room,” InuYasha replied. “We should get her cleaned up and I need something to splint my leg with once I set it.”
“Once that is done, I suggest you remain at her side,” Sesshomaru said. “The nearer you are the steadier her heart beats.”
“In that case you should go up with her,” Asami said. “I’ll get everything together and bring it to your room.”
InuYasha nodded and followed his brother up to the room he shared with Kagome.
Once she was laid carefully on the bed Sesshomaru turned to him. “Sit beside her and I will set your leg before I leave to see to the clean up at the school. I trust her mother can assist you once that has been accomplished.”
“Keh, yeah,” InuYasha replied.
He sat down and braced his good leg on the floor, laying the other out straight in front of him along the bed. He tightened his jaw and took a deep breath as his brother took hold of his injured legs. His fang pierced his lip as he felt the bone shifted and moved back into place. He flicked out his tongue and licked the blood away before it could run down his chin.
“Should you find yourself in need of the Tenseiga, call and I will return at once,” Sesshomaru said. “I also would not be opposed to being kept updated on her condition even should she not require the use of my sword.”
InuYasha smirked. “She really grows on you doesn’t she?”
“Hn, I do not know if I would go so far, but she fought well and has more than proven herself worthy the be the sister in law of this Sesshomaru,” he replied.
InuYasha rolled her eyes. “You might not be a bastard anymore but you are still a pompous ass. Probably for the best though since I might not recognize you otherwise.”
“And you are still as impudent as ever,” Sesshomaru said as he turned to leave.
“Oi, thanks,” InuYasha said quietly.
Sesshomaru inclined his head slightly before disappearing out the door and InuYasha then returned his focus to his mate. He couldn’t do much more than sit beside her and hold her hand until her mother arrived with something to splint his legs and the things he needed to take care of her. She was so drawn and pale as if she had expended her very life force with her powers and it scared the shit out of him.
“InuYasha?” Asami said from the door.
He looked at her, could see the worry lining her face and was filled with guilt. “I’m sorry. I promised you I’d protect her.”
Her face softened and she came over to him, kneeling down, setting her burden on the floor. She began to slide the straps of the splint under his leg. “Oh, no you don’t young man. This is not your fault and she’s still here isn’t she? I may not know what happened but I do know my daughter and she definitely wouldn’t want you to blame yourself. She’s strong and she will definitely pull through if for no other reason than not wanting to leave you.”
“She saved us,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t going well and one minute I was crashing against a broken wall breaking my leg, Tetsusaiga out of reach, and the bastard pressing the attack and then next Kagome’s reiki exploded from her and it was over.”
Asami smiled a little as she tightened the straps. “So what you’re saying is that she was protecting you like you have done for her so many times. I bet it would make her very happy to know she finally got to save you for once.”
“Keh, she’s been doing that every damn day since she got me off that tree,” he admitted. “I just, she’s barely there and I’m holding onto her as hard as I can, but I don’t know if it’s going to be enough.”
Asami stood up and hugged him. “I have faith in you and in her.” She straightened and smoothed her skirt with her hands. “I’ll go get some water and rags to get her cleaned up with.”
The worked together removing her hakui and her hakama and then wiping her down with damp towels. He couldn’t help but see the way her mother’s eyes lingered on her gaunt face and the dark circles under her eyes and even though he knew that she was right, that Kagome wouldn’t want him to feel guilty and that he never would have been able to stop her from using her power to save him no matter what the personal cost might have been, he still couldn’t keep from feeling that way. He was supposed to protect her, not the other way around.
He lifted her carefully so her mother could put on her pajama top and then brushed the hair back from her face. His heart clenched in his chest as she opened her eyes, blinking up at them. “Don’t try to move, woman. Save your strength.”
“Naraku?” she said her voice barely audible, even to him.
“You did it, aisai,” he told her. “He’s gone, for good this time. My and Sesshomaru are fine, so don’t worry about anything but laying there and getting better.”
“Scared,” she mumbled.
“Don’t be. I’m right here and I’m not letting you go,” he assured her.
“No, you,” she tried. “Not going anywhere without you. You don’t worry.”
“I won’t let him brood, darling,” Asami told her. “You leave him to me and focus on your recovery. Sleep now and I’ll have a nice big pot of oden waiting for you when you wake up.”
Kagome smiled a little and closed her eyes, turning her head towards InuYasha, pressing her nose up against his hip. He laid his hand on her head, his heart full. That she would be worried about him when it was her that had nearly died was just so Kagome. There was no way he wasn’t going to worry, but he would try not to let it consume him. He would have faith in her and her promise to always stay by his side.
- 15
- 16
- 17
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Strength