Nefarious

Chapter 20:  Hikari no Wana (Trap of Light)

Anger and understanding warred within Sesshoumaru and even though his anger was strong, he knew what the result of that war would be - the understanding would win out.

It was a new realization, this understanding.  Because at its roots it was really nothing more than sympathy.  He sympathized with the slayer, despite the fact that she had proven that in order to save one close to her she would have shed Rin's life.  Of course, she didn't know that the child wouldn't have died due to his mother's interference, but that didn't really matter.

Not that the woman had made that decision easily - that was quite obvious in her scent.  Anguish and guilt, shame and regret had roiled through her but she had nonetheless made the decision.

That was why he was angry.  

Rin was his.  His to protect, and nothing was allowed to harm her.

But the understanding, the sympathy... they came because he was not one to lie to himself, and if the situation had been reversed and he had been required to make just such a choice, Rin's life for the houshi's that was so important to the slayer, he would have done so in a heartbeat.

Another emotion hid within the others he was being assaulted by, and that was approval.  He felt a strong approval at the fierce sense of honor that the woman had shown in admitting to her near-offense and the offer of her life in return for what would be considered an insult to his house and name.

Not many had such honor, and especially not humans, but the taijiya had obviously been raised in a much different manner than just being a female in a normally male-dominated occupation.  Apparently her sire had raised both his son and his daughter with the highest standards of honor and as warriors of great skill and passion.

For humans.  Of course the young woman was no match for his prowess, for he had centuries more training on her and youkai abilities that she did not have, but for a human and most especially a woman she was a strong and determined opponent, and he could only find it in himself to respect that.

He sighed inwardly as he realized that his ruminations had already won the war between his empathy and his anger, and simply set the matter aside as he and the taijiya and monk on the nekomata ushered the children - her brother and Rin, escorted by Jaken - outside of Naraku's disintegrating body.  

He paused in his turn to go back inside to finish the battle against the spider as Rin's sweet voice feathered over him gently.

"Sango-sama,” she called, and he watched enigmatically as the slayer turned to look at the young girl with guilt and sorrow.

"Yes, Rin?"  She asked softly, her tone gentle.

"You'll need this,” the little girl replied, holding out the slayer's poison-filtering mask to return to her.  "Thank you for letting me use it!"

He made no comment as the older woman hesitantly took the mask with a muffled sob of shame.  "You're welcome, Rin,” she said slowly, trying to smile at the small girl that seemed to have the innate talent of softening the hardest beings so easily.  

Like himself, as he had once been.  Of course, a great deal of his change had already been in progress due to Kagome's influence - another female with the ability to gentle the most ruthless heart.

The needed moment passed as Kohaku spoke.  "Take care of my sister, houshi-sama,"  he said, and Sesshoumaru watched from the corner of his eye as the monk nodded once with enviable firmness for one who was very close to death from the toxins in his system.

"Aa.  I will, Kohaku,"  he returned, and with that the last chance to say their goodbyes without actually saying them was gone and Ah-Uhn turned and flew away as he continued back inside the hanyou's bloated body - a body already trying to slough parts of itself off in an attempt to stop Bakusaiga's power from disintegrating it from the inside out.  The nekomata followed after a moment and the rent in Naraku's form caused by his brother's meido disappeared, blocking the daylight outside from their sight once more.

The battle was almost over.  All of Naraku's remaining enemies were now gathered to stand against him, and Sesshoumaru glanced over at his brother, who was standing on a transformed and floating kitsune as he held Kagome protectively to his side.  A thrill of anger ghosted through him, but it faded after a moment.  His brother had taken on the duty of protecting the miko from the very beginning of this misadventure, and until Naraku was dead he could not take over that place.  He couldn't be more pleased that outcome was almost upon them - especially when he caught Kagome's sidelong glance at him as they all hovered in front of what remained of the hanyou Naraku.

He almost shook his head at the spider's folly in thinking that he could gain power in such a cowardly and easy way as wishing on a jewel for it.  Power that was not worked for and of oneself was worth nothing.  It was generally weak and easily stolen by others wishing to take the same easy path.

He had never had a use for such a thing, and it was not like he needed it in any case.  

His own power was suddenly being buffeted by an aura of power that rivaled his own in intensity as it swirled through the area like a mighty gale, and he glanced at Kagome once more, finding her eyes still on him.  He cocked a brow and then touched the bond between them - the bond that shouldn't be this strong, since they were not yet bound as youkai mates were - but somehow was.

"Do not worry, Kagome.  Our time is almost arrived.  We only have this last duty to fulfill,” he said directly into her mind, and watched with interest as the seconds that had passed during his rapid thoughts caught up with her and she blinked, and then blushed with a small, shy smile in his direction.

"Hai,” she answered back inside, where no others could eavesdrop on their private moment.  "Soon," she acknowledged, once more affirming in that way the fate between them and that she would not deny his claim of her once the hanyou was gone.

Which all brought them to now, as they faced off against their greatest enemy and the puppeteer whose honorless machinations over fifty years had assured that this moment would eventually come.

He drew Bakusaiga.

"It is time to finish this, hanyou,"  he stated with elegant derision as he gazed with clear eyes at what remained of the foolish being that had placed all his hopes on a betrayal-stained trinket - one that he'd assumed was nothing more than a receptacle holding the combined power of Midoriko and the youkai souls she'd entrapped within her own.

Bakana.

The jewel had proven its own duplicitous nature and now the spider was the slave and the gem the master.  It was almost sad.

Almost... but not quite.

Kagome knew what Sesshoumaru was thinking and while she agreed with some of it there was one thing she couldn't help but feel towards Naraku that none of the others could - and that was a sad compassion.  

The others could only see Naraku's actions over the last fifty years - and what those actions had wrought.

And while he definitely would be punished for those actions Kagome saw deeper than the others did, because she saw the hanyou with eyes that understood why he'd made the choices he had.  She knew that it was the desire for love and happiness that had driven him to do the things that he had - it was just that he'd gone about getting things the wrong way because at the core of it he didn't really understand what love was all about.

While the desire for Kikyou had been Onigumo's and not the desire of the youkai he'd given his body to, eventually that desire had infected all of the hanyou and he had been forced to find a way to separate his heart from the rest of him so that he could then try to obey the demands of the wicked youkai that formed the other part of him.  The desire for power.

But the spider had finally discovered the lie that cloaked the sweetly beckoning beacon of power that was the Shikon no Tama.  For the truth of the matter was that the gem was sentient and fully self-aware, and it desired something.  Something that it needed someone else to accomplish for it.  

It wanted a wish of its own.

What that wish was, was anyone's guess.  But it had found a willing though blinded slave in Naraku, and now the end it desired was that much closer.  

Where Naraku had focused on Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha as his main opponents, the truth that the Shikon knew was that it was Kagome that was the true enemy - she was the only one that could destroy it, and so it decided that she had to be the one destroyed.  It was simple survival instincts, after all, to destroy a threat to one's life, and the jewel was just as alive as everyone gathered against it, just in a different way than they were.

Kagome knew of its antipathy, though the others already thought the greatest threat from the gem towards her was already gone with Magatsuhi's ignominious defeat.  But she was far too linked to it to be fooled, and she was prepared for it to try some final trick to destroy her and the blazing purity everyone claimed was so much a part of her.

Harming her was one thing.  But she would protect the others, all those she cared for without holding anything back, and she knew that was the real reason she was so dangerous to the jewel - her desire to protect.

Do you have something to protect?

She'd heard that question roiling through Sesshoumaru's agitated spirit since she'd met him, and she shook her head a little at the oddly ironic words.

Yes... I have people to protect, she thought as she switched her attention from Sesshoumaru and her thoughts, thoughts that had only taken mere seconds to flit through her mind, to Naraku as he began to mock them.

And I will.

~oOo~

So it was love that was your greatest weakness, Sesshoumaru thought as he watched the last bit of Naraku die and pass on into the next world. And it was love that brought you low...

There had been many surprising revelations in this last bit of the final battle with the spider.  One was that it was the desire for just that emotion that had driven the human bandit to offer his body to the demons gathering around him.  He had wanted the human priestess Kikyou... but the demons had wanted the thing she guarded.

The Shikon no Tama.

Thus it was that the day of the great betrayal had come and the newly birthed hanyou Naraku forced them onto the paths that his actions had created - paths that had led them all here, to watch as he died in solitary splendor.  It was the same way he'd lived.

Now that betrayal was revenged and the fifty years of half-life that Inuyasha had endured was over.  Things could now go back to the way that they'd been meant to be.

The second thing they'd learned was that his suppositions on the jewel had been correct.  It was the one truly calling the shots and not Naraku at all.  And it had forced him to make a wish... a wish that it wanted, and not the spider at all.

But Sesshoumaru wasn't sure what a gem would want.  There were so many possibilities, after all.  

"What could the Shikon no Tama possibly have had the hanyou wish for?"  he murmured aloud as he thought things through, paying no attention to the monk, who was announcing that his wind tunnel was indeed gone, which meant that Naraku was also now gone.

Sesshoumaru's eyes wandered absently over those gathered around the hono kui no ido until they came to Kagome's smiling face and paused.  The Shikon no Tama feared her, as well it should.  His brow furrowed as something seemed to be trying to get his attention, some detail or thing that he was missing.  The evil spirit of the Shikon no Tama sealed her power away when she was a pup because it feared her...  That thought echoed around inside his mind for a few moments, and then just as he felt an odd disturbance in the energy fields of the earth the answer came to him, bursting into his mind as power began to gather behind the little miko.

The Shikon no Tama will wish her life away!  It fears her and so she is its target - it is she that has been its target since the very beginning of all of this, and Naraku was but a puppet to gain it that which it desired...

Kagome's complete destruction as a living being and as a sentient life force.

Before he could even move towards her the magic swelled and then burst into life behind her, and even as the eyes of everyone gathered widened in panic Kagome was sucked into the beautiful darkness that had opened behind her.

Sesshoumaru's dazed eyes stared at where his brother had just failed to catch Kagome before the meido closed, a torn cry of, "No!" echoing around the meadow as his mind finally saw everything that had happened with the correct perspective.

It had all been about her.  All of it, since the very beginning.

The Shikon no Tama did not respect anything, not even the kami, and it played with things in its attempts to gain what it wanted that had always and only been the province of the gods.  

It had gone so far as to play with time itself, and now it had created paradox.

And it had all been to destroy the one thing in the entirety of the kami's creation that could destroy it, take its life away - and that one thing was Kagome.

"I know what it wants.  What Naraku's wish was, and why the jewel wants the thing that it does."

Though his voice wasn't raised everyone in the meadow heard it and the babbling came to a stop as sudden silence almost seemed as though it were sucking the air out of the whole area.

"What?"  Inuyasha finally said, his voice falling flat in the heavy air around the well and all those near it.

"We have all been fools,” the daiyoukai said with disgust, becoming angry at the machinations of a gem that had dared to use him in its plots.  "Everything that has happened, it has all been about Kagome.  From the very beginning, Inuyasha.  It was after her all along.  The Shikon no Tama is a living entity, with a will and a wish of its own.  Like every living thing it wishes to remain living - and that means that Kagome has to die... because only she can kill it."

Noise once more erupted around him as everyone began talking and yelling at once, but Sesshoumaru didn't react, still puzzling out the last bits of a plot that had crossed time and every other boundary the gods had ever set between such things as time and their created subjects.  

Why did the jewel go so far as to warp time itself to its use, a no doubt difficult feat, just to send Kagome here to this particular time?  Why did it not just find a way to take her life and soul in her native time?

His brow furrowed as he dropped his gaze to stare into the hole in the ground that had once been the bone-eater's well, just now noticing that it was even gone.  

Gone...

The jewel created this well as a doorway into Kagome's era. And now it is gone...

... because it is not needed anymore.

No!

Sesshoumaru didn't even ask, he simply reached forward and wrapped his hand around the hilt of the Tessaiga, yanking it from Inuyasha's waist before the startled hanyou could even react.  Ignoring the fact that the sword wasn't burning his hand this time, he quickly pulled at the meido energy within the sword and then swung it, leaping high into the air so as to be able to create the portal away from the others so he wouldn't accidentally drag anyone into the darkness with him.

"Meido zangetsuha!"  he snarled, pouring more of his power through the sword than he had ever considered accessing for anyone else's sake.  But this was for his claimed female, the woman he'd chosen... the girl he'd come to love.  All of his energy wasn't too much to ask to get her back alive.

As soon as the huge crescent had opened beneath him he tossed the Tessaiga back to his still-stunned brother and prepared to let the energy of the meido engulf him.  But he paused as he saw his brother tense and crouch as though to join him in entering the portal.

"No, Inuyasha-” he began, but the hanyou interrupted before he could finish.

"Shut the fuck up, Sesshoumaru!  I promised to protect her!"  he shouted.

"That vow has now passed,” he returned almost gently before the meido magic whisked him away.  "Naraku is dead... and Kagome has now become mine to protect, not yours."

Inuyasha froze at those words, and as he stared at his brother in shock the meido faded away...

Taking Sesshoumaru with it.

The frozen hanyou wished it had taken his words with it, too.

Because he was right.

Inuyasha no longer had any claim over Kagome.

Sesshoumaru did.

~oOo~

"All that time, this was a trap of light.  Because the Shikon no Tama wants life - eternal life.  And the only way to do that is to capture the purest form of energy...  light.  Kagome's light."  If it can reach its goal, Kagome's trapped soul will grant the jewel just that... immortality.

I will never allow that.

"I will not allow this blasphemy,” he growled as he drew Tenseiga and swung it at the endless youkai attacking him.  The sword flared with a light even brighter than Tokijin's Dragon Strike, to his surprise, and the waves of youkai fell before him, vanishing.  He stared at the katana in astonishment, and then disgust fell over his face... disgust with himself.

How long it has taken for me to see.  And I had always held myself up as fairly intelligent.  It appears I was wrong.

He couldn't believe that he'd been so blind all along.  Not just to this, but to everything, not the least of which was his father and the fangs of the Inu no Taisho.  

"That was why father had to go to Totosai to create his weapons from his fangs... because there was too much power in him and in them to create them from within as I did Bakusaiga.  And the fang that carried the majority of that power was... the Tenseiga all along, not the Tessaiga!  The fang of heaven is an endless sword, because for it time does not exist,” he said to himself as he swung the singing sword against yet more youkai by rote, his mind too busy puzzling things out to their ultimate conclusion to really pay attention to such low scum.

It was what one of them said before he could swing at them that changed that particular fact.

"You are looking for the priestess, but it is a pointless attempt.  You will never find her in time to stop what has been meant to happen since the moment she was born and birthed us back into the living world."

Eyes sharpening dangerously on the dead creature, Sesshoumaru checked his swing and stopped, poised on the verge of delivering a blow that would send this dead beast back to the underworld where it belonged.

"What nonsense do you speak of?"  he asked haughtily, his tone warning the youkai that his patience was at an end.  And like anything of the dead, the youkai under the blade feared Tenseiga, because it was the only weapon that could harm it by sending it back into the netherworld and away from the living one.

So he answered.

"The Shikon no Tama has trapped the priestess Kagome here and will overwhelm her with the one thing she truly fears... being trapped in darkness away from her loved ones.  When she inevitably gives in to her despair she will become a fallen priestess and we will have taken not only her life but more importantly, her soul.  With it, we will live forever."

"And her fate?"  The daiyoukai asked, finding himself curious, though it was a curiosity tinged heavily with the rage he felt towards the jewel and was well on its way to becoming wrath for what it was attempting to do.

"Kagome will be forced to fight forever inside us, the energy her soul produces fueling our life and our power.  It is her fate, a fate that was set in stone the moment she was born, trapping our power within her and sealing us!  Kagome was born for the use of the Shikon no Tama, and now she will fulfill that purpose by fighting Naraku inside us forever.  It is what she was born for!" the creature gloated, and with a scornful scoff and a curl of his well-bred lip, Sesshoumaru released his tensed body and finished the swing he had previously started, destroying the entire swarm of vermin with little true effort but much fury.

"That is not what Kagome was born for,” he denied authoritatively, in that moment standing taller than he ever had before because he knew deep down that what he was about to say was nothing more nor less than the intractable truth.  "Kagome taught me many things - and the most important thing was that love is not a weakness.  That protecting others does not make one weak.  It is hatred and spilling pointless blood, savagery and the search for power that makes you weak, because your own power is all that you need and lives taken for such petty reasons only makes you a tyrant, another Naraku.  No, Kagome was not born to linger here in this hell.  Kagome was born for me... and I for her!"  He hissed, his voice raised defiantly even as he moved the still-brilliantly glowing Tenseiga into position again.

The jewel took him up on his challenge.

And the battle began anew.

~oOo~

"Will you wish?"

Kagome looked up and stared at the jewel floating before her with distrust and suspicion written all over her features.  It was still pierced by her arrow, and was the only other thing in this cloying darkness besides herself.

It wants me to wish.  But why?  Her thoughts turned to Kikyou and Naraku. The jewel never grants your true wish!  I know Naraku's true wish was a modest one - he wished for love.  And the jewel betrayed him.  

So what is it after?

She shook her head, the movement almost unnoticed in the featureless darkness surrounding her.

"I will not wish."

"Come, priestess - do you not desire to go home?  To see your family again?  That place and time is where you belong, after all.  Would you see eternity spent here in this place satisfying?  I think not.  So wish.  Wish for your home...” the androgynous voice of the gem trailed off, and Kagome had the sudden thought that it was peering into her soul.  "Ah... I see,” it said, satisfaction echoing loudly through the ether she was floating in.  "Then if that is the case, why do you not wish for him?  Wish to see Sesshoumaru - it is your deepest desire.  I can give it to you if you only wish for it."

The young woman still staring warily at it shook her head.  "No, I will not wish.  Sesshoumaru will come for me, though I don't know how.  He will come... I believe in him!"

There was a displeased hum from the living jewel.  "He will try, but he will not succeed.  Do you wish to see what he is doing at this very moment?"

Head shaking rapidly, Kagome closed her eyes to the temptation.  "You are a deceiver - how do I know what you would show me is even true?"

"You don't,” it whispered sibilantly, and Kagome started.  It had felt like it was behind her and speaking right into her ear.  "But there is this... I prefer to harm with the truth than a lie.  It is so much more... devastating to the person if what I show is true."

She pushed away from that feeling and narrowed her eyes as the gem chuckled.  That... is true.  It does like to use the truth - but only certain parts of it.  "Then show me if you care to, but don't expect me to fall for it and wish.  I'm not going to give you what you want."

"We shall see, little miko, we shall see,"  it replied even as the darkness surrounding them was pierced by more darkness - and Sesshoumaru, fighting hordes of youkai in a place that looked oddly similar to the void she was in.

"Sesshoumaru!"

~oOo~

Flashes of light broke the odd darkness of the meido Sesshoumaru was in, flashes that were the same azure as the sword that was gleaming fitfully in the dark.  He paused for a moment as the youkai horde had much thinned and looked around at the void thoughtfully.

The meido is endless, and Kagome could be anywhere inside it.  

"We are not in the meido, proud lord.  Do you not yet understand?  In Kagome's body we were reborn into the world, and now it is Kagome's turn to be reborn, so to speak, in our own birth.  In Kagome we will find eternal life, with her power and soul to fuel us we will become immortal in a way even you are not,” yet another of the endless lower youkai said, and with ferocious contempt Sesshoumaru swung Tenseiga and destroyed yet another horde with little effort.

His brow was furrowed, however, as he took in what the fool had told him, and it didn't take long for what it was saying to penetrate his frustration.  We are inside the jewel itself!  It will take her soul to fuel it and her body that is endless to give it a humanoid form.  It would be the Shikon no Tama made flesh in a stolen body.

Rage pierced the very air around him and he sent more power towards the endless-seeming hordes of lesser youkai even as his mind turned towards the puzzle of finding Kagome in this endless-seeming bleakness.

"Sesshoumaru!"

Every part of Sesshoumaru fell still for just a second, and then he shouted,” Kagome!  Kagome, do not make a wish!  Wait for me to find you.  Do you hear me?  Do not wish!"

"Sesshoumaru!"  He could hear the patent relief in her voice as she responded.  "Where are you?"

"We will never let you find her!"  More youkai roared, and Sesshoumaru went still, his youki buffeting the inner universe of the jewel with power more potent than it had at its command.  

"You do not have any say in the matter, vermin.  The girl is mine, and what is mine I do not allow any to take from me,” he said coldly.  "I know where she is now, and you cannot stop me from reaching her."

"All of this for a human female, Lord Sesshoumaru,” the youkai skull speaking to him said insinuatingly.  "Have you fallen so far that you have forgotten your own vow not to fall to the same fate as your father?"

Sesshoumaru didn't even deign to answer that ridiculous statement.  The jewel knew full well that Kagome wasn't 'human' and so its words were meaningless in the extreme.

He knew now, what he had to do.  Everything that had happened since he'd met her, all of it had led to this moment.  He looked down at his own clawed hand holding Tenseiga as it pulsed hungrily, and shook his head at the vagaries of fate.

It was all so simple now, his mind sharply clear, every thought precise and cuttingly cold as power untold and previously untapped from within him flooded Tenseiga until the sword was glowing too brightly to look at.

When the sword was vibrating with the influx of youki energy, Sesshoumaru swung it with force.  

"Heed my will, Tenseiga, and take me to Kagome,” he said softly as he finished the swing.

A light grew from the sword and penetrated the darkness, and Sesshoumaru watched coolly as another meido opened.  Without further ado he leapt into the new rift, and light flashed all around him, blinding him.

It was warm and effervescent...

It was Kagome.