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Through The Well	By : TheKaytla Category: InuYasha > Yaoi - Male/Male > InuYasha/Sessh?maru > InuYasha/Sessh?maru Views: 25850 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 9
Disclaimer: I do not own the series Inuyasha, nor its characters.They are property of Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Yomiuri TV, Sunrise, and Viz. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-One
- 2-Two
- 3-Three
- 4-Four
- 5-Five
- 6-Six
- 7-Seven
- 8-Eight
- 9-Nine
- 10-Ten
- 11-Eleven
- 12-Twelve
- 13-Thirteen
- 14-Fourteen
- 15-Fifteen
- 16-Sixteen
- 17-Seventeen
- 2
- 3
- 4
Chapter Three

Standing with one hand against the rough bark of a tree, Inuyasha looked back the way he'd come. After running with all haste away from his brother, he'd thought for a moment he'd heard that damn mangy wolf.

That would be the last thing he needed: another asshole messing with his head, getting up in his face. Maybe literally. If Sesshomaru had fucking kissed him - kissed him! - out of the blue, there was no telling what the fucking fleabag wolf might do.

He shivered. Last thing he needed.

Mouth set in a grim line, the hanyou turned away and pushed himself into a determined walk, hand clenched firmly around Tetsusaiga's hilt. If either of them came anywhere near him, he'd show 'em he was in no mood to be fucked around with. He had a mission.

But how the hell was he supposed to concentrate on it properly if he was worried about being ambushed with sexual harassment? And by the two people he hated most in the world, no less? Just how fucked up had the world become while he'd been floating in the well?

Gods, this was fucking with his head. He should be thinking about Kagome, not those two assholes. It was Kagome who needed his help.

Try as he might, however, his thoughts inevitably wandered back to what Sesshomaru had done. And the things he'd said. No matter how much he wanted to, he couldn't find a simple explanation to counter Sesshomaru's. No easy way to explain away this supposed death. Every theory had gaping holes in it.

And much as it galled Inuyasha to credit anything to his brother, he wasn't a liar. Straight forward and with no need to conceal his actions or motives (barring his annoying superiority complex, of course, when he got his rocks off making his little brother jump through hoops figuring things out), in his own way, he was as blunt and brusque as Inuyasha himself.

Someone had died. He could accept that. It happened all the time in the world. Humans killed each other over women, money, land, and a host of other reasons Inuyasha always thought stupid. Youkai killed humans and each other for territory, food, females... pretty much the same reasons, now that he thought about it. The world was a dangerous place, with all manner of beasts fighting for survival. So he could accept that someone, somewhere, had died.

He just couldn't - wouldn't - accept that it was her. Not without seeing some proof for himself. And until that was in front of him, cold, hard, irrefutable facts, he'd keep trying to prove she was alive.

It was just so... confusing. Everything Sesshomaru had said had been so real, yet so... alien at the same time. Almost like he was mixing two stories together. But that didn't make any damn sense! None of it did!

Like him dying in Sesshomaru's arms... What the hell had that been about? The only time Sesshomaru ever touched him - except the kissing thing he was going to stop thinking about right now - was when he was trying to disembowel or otherwise tear him up. There was absolutely no reason for Sesshomaru to even bat an eyelid if he was fucking dying, let alone hold him in his last moments. Hell, the bastard would probably be doing a fucking happy jig under that ice mask of his. Definitely not trying to revive him with the Tenseiga.

Unless he'd been pissed enough about something to want to kill him again.

"It doesn't make any sense!" he suddenly shouted, kicking a tree and startling a squirrel, which chattered angrily at him once it had retreated to higher ground. He glared at it.

"Fuck you, you little shit!" he growled. "Can't you see I'm having a fucking breakdown? Cut me some damn slack!"

He was about to kick the tree again when he realised he was shouting at a damn squirrel and quickly looked around to make sure no one was watching him lose his goddamned mind.

He stuffed his hands in the sleeves of his haori and left the squirrel and its tree behind, his mood dangerously low by this point. He needed to talk to someone he trusted, he decided. He obviously wasn't going to get anywhere by himself. Unless complete and utter brain breakage counted.

Kaede would do. She was an annoying old bag sometimes, but he had to admit he trusted her. She always seemed to know the right thing to say to make it better, or at least direct his thoughts along the right path. Besides, she was pretty much the only choice. If he really had lost years in the well, chances were, Miroku and Sango had moved on and settled down somewhere and he didn't have the time or patience to go running around the country to finally get his answers about the death a decade ago.

A sudden thought drew him up short. Death. What about Kaede? She'd been damn old when he'd last seen her, and if he'd really been stuck in the well for at least a decade... Human lives were so short and frail...

He shook his head. No. No more thinking about death. Until he saw it with his own eyes, she was as alive and annoyingly sarcastic and wise as always.

Ignoring the creeping presence of trepidation, Inuyasha finally took a look around, trying to gauge where he was. To his surprise, he realised he was closer to the village than he expected - more than halfway, in fact. If he wasn't mistaken, the Goshinboku stood in the next clearing, a silent, unchanging witness to everything that had happened since Kagome had freed him from the sealing arrow. The hanyou managed a faint, wry smile. It seemed his feet had known where he needed to go before the rest of him.

He made a concentrated effort not to look at the Goshinboku as he passed it. Sometimes he got so melancholy and pensive when he was simply near it, thinking of Kikyo and how they'd been torn apart, and even reflecting on all that had happened with Kagome as well. Even he could see that sometimes they'd walked a rocky road, and at times they'd even walked it far apart from each other. Yet somehow, they'd always come back together, no matter what happened. He refused to believe this time would be any different.

His feet landed on a familiar path wound through the trees by the villagers as they gathered herbs and produce in various seasons, and he knew he was close. Scents of the village floated to him on the breeze (as did, disconcertingly, his brother's tell tale stink, but since it smelt days, even weeks old, he decided to put it - temporarily - to the side; he could only handle one distressing question at a time).

Then he rounded a corner, and all thoughts of scents and deaths flew out of his mind.

Laying on the path, a basket of scattered herbs lying beside her, was undoubtedly Kaede. He couldn't see her face, but how could he mistake her? Everything was just as he remembered it; the same miko outfit, the greyed hair tied neatly at the nape, the very shape of her and, as he hurried close enough to drop to his knees beside her, the familiar scent, too, like herbs and warm fires.

With gentle hands, Inuyasha rolled Kaede onto her back. His fingers pressed against her throat to search for a pulse. She was still warm to the touch, but he could find no evidence of a heartbeat. His ears twitched madly, trying to filter out the natural sound of birds singing and leaves rustling, searching desperately for the sound of her breathing; he couldn't bear to see the sight of her so unnaturally still, no rise and fall of her chest.

Couldn't bear the thought that he'd finally found a familiar, trusted face when all else seemed twisted and unusual, and it was only to witness her final moments.

Then, suddenly, he caught the sound of a wheezed breath. He couldn't stop himself slapping her cheek sharply, calling her name, desperate to rouse some other kind of life in her. He stared at her face, more deeply lined than he remembered, and willed her to live. And slowly, her tired eyes opened.

"Inu.. yasha...?" she said, a smile teasing the corners of lips thinned with age. "I had thought it would be my sister who came to escort me to the other side, but I am happy to see ye in any case."

Inuyasha blinked. The other side? She thought she was dead? Well... he supposed he couldn't blame her, being as old as she was. He was surprised she could still walk even this far. Even he had to admit it wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

How the hell did he know he hadn't died in the well? Trapped inside as the magic ran out, even he wouldn't last long without food or water. For all he knew, this could all be some fucked up pre- or post-death delusion. Maybe even some kind of dream.

No, that didn't make as much sense as he'd first thought. Even if he was delusional, Kaede wasn't going to be sharing it with him. So if all this felt real, and he felt alive, then he was, and that meant she was, too. At least, that was the theory he was sticking to.

"You're not dead," he said decisively. "And neither am I."

Kaede looked surprised. "Be this a dream, then? For I know ye passed from this world long ago."

Despite all that had happened today, Inuyasha somehow managed to be amused that they'd had the same idea.

"Nope, not dreaming. I'm alive and kicking and seriously fucking confused about everything's that's happened in the last ten years, so you've got some questions to answer, old woman."

Kaede suddenly looked almost as confused as he felt. It struck him that he'd never seen her look like that before. She always seemed like she knew the answer to every question.

"But ye died, I know it," the old miko protested with surprising strength, despite her apparent close brush with death. "We all -" She was silenced suddenly by Inuyasha's hand pressed against her mouth.

"Don't go getting ahead of yourself, you old hag! You're just confusing the hell out of me even more!" Inuyasha pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. Damn it all to hell, this was going to give him a headache if he didn't lay down some ground rules. "Look, I'm asking the questions here. Nobody else. If I'm gonna get this shit straight in my head, you gotta let me ask about it in an order that makes sense to me, got it? Don't elaborate, just tell it to me straight. Nice and simple, yeah?"

Kaede nodded, and Inuyasha huffed out a sigh as he took his hand away from her mouth. "We'd better go back to the village. We got a long talk ahead of us; we're best off in your hut. It'll probably be dark before we're done. You think you can walk or do I gotta carry you?"

The old miko shook her head. "Help me to my feet and I think I can walk the rest of the way."

Inuyasha complied, steadying the old woman as she struggled to stand. It was only when she stood straight - or as straight as her age would allow her to - that Inuyasha was finally able to absorb how much time had changed Kaede. She was thinner than he remembered, and her hair as well, her skin more sallow. She herself suddenly became the strongest evidence of time lost in the well.

He felt an odd pain in his chest, looking at her. It was the first time he'd been close enough to someone for long enough to see the passage of time affect them, to see with his own eyes the hallmarks of the body's slow descent into death. He was reminded in sudden, painful clarity of his future: inevitable loneliness. Time would never wither him up like this; he'd look the same centuries from now, if he lived that long. A mortal might say he was the lucky one, frozen in his prime, but they didn't look at friends two centuries younger and know they'll have to watch them all grow old and die, and end up all alone.

To distract himself from going down a dangerous path in his mind, Inuyasha latched onto something innocuous as he continued to study Kaede's face: her eyes. Forever bright despite her age, but that wasn't what caught his attention. It was simply her eyes. Both of them.

He hadn't seen her without the patch in fifty years, not since she was a brat not much older than that crazy kid who hung around Sesshomaru. If he was honest, he'd expected it to look kinda horrific, what with how she never took the patch off, but it was actually.. unblemished. Not only that, but the eye itself looked perfectly normal. Since it had happened in the middle of a fight - one he started, no less - he'd always assumed there would be some damage to it, but...

Another question he didn't need crowding his mind. Again, he put it to the side, diverting his attention instead to scanning the ground. "Hey, where's your patch? Did it fall off when you fell?"

Kaede turned to blink at him. "Patch? Whatever do ye mean?"

"Y'know, for your eye. Though why you wear it when your eye looks fine is beyond me..."

"Inuyasha..." the old miko said slowly, as if she were talking to someone simple. "I have never worn a patch over one of my eyes. Why would I?"

A little lump of ice formed in Inuyasha's stomach, tendrils of cold spreading out like a frozen web. It was happening again; things were the same but different in a confusing and frightening way, and why did it have to affect Kaede, too? She was the group's rock; when everything else got screwed to hell, Kaede was always the same!

Trying to stay calm, Inuyasha swallowed with difficulty and pointed to her right eye. "You lost it. Couldn't see out of it. I don't know how it happened, exactly, but you lost that eye when I attacked the village fifty years ago. I always felt kinda guilty about it, but you never blamed me. You have to remember it. You have to tell me you can't see out of that damn eye."

Suddenly looking concerned, Kaede lifted her thin hands to lay them on Inuyasha's arms, gripping surprisingly tightly. "Inuyasha, from where comes this nonsense? Ye never attacked the village. It was all that foul demon, Naraku. Ye have done naught but protect this village for fifty years until the time of your death, just as ye promised Kikyo ye would as ye stood over her grave." Kaede paused, watching him critically. "Ye never broke that promise, Inuyasha. And Sesshomaru took it upon himself to continue in your stead after your death. Together, the two of ye have saved our village countless times."

Inuyasha was all but physically rocked under the barrage of information.. He stared blindly ahead of him, trying to absorb everything he'd just heard.

He hadn't attacked the village? Naraku had done it himself? He hadn't been sealed to the Goshinboku by Kikyo? Did that mean Naraku had been sealed instead? But then who would have unsealed him? Kagome? And, the most difficult thing by far to swallow, Sesshomaru had protected a bunch of humans in a small, rural village in the middle of nowhere?

What... in the world was going on?

_____________________

A/N: More questions, yay!

I actually wrote this chapter between 1-4am on Saturday, but didn't update when it was finished because I was barely awake by then and was worried it didn't make sense. >.> So I went to sleep, then did some babysitting, then went to an Evanescence gig, came home, read through and fixed the typos (with the help of the awesome Demitria Miriam), passed out again, and I'm updating it now, finally. XD

Hope you enjoy... and don't get too annoyed that I haven't started explaining things yet. xD It'll come soon, I promise. >.>
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Through The Well