Fraternal

6
-
You Wreck Me
 

Inuyasha snarled at Ros, the strange woman standing in his path. He crouched to attack her, but, holding up a hand, she spoke a word and suddenly Inuyasha found that he couldn't move at all...

He fought against whatever bound him, but found it was useless. He couldn't move his arms or legs, though he could still move his head and talk. "What the hell do you want?" he snarled.
 

"You are frightened." It was not a question.
 

"I'm not scared of you, bitch!"
 

"No. Chernobog," she said, and at his name Inuyasha felt a shiver run through him.

"I'm not scared of your brother either," he demanded. And he wasn't, he really wasn't... But something in him trembled.
 

"You're not, and yet you are." She knelt in front of him and looked up at him. "And that scares you even more, the thought that perhaps you do fear him, that everything you thought about yourself and your courage is a falsehood. And you think those who say they love you in fact tell you lies, and the only one who will speak truth to you is Chernobog himself."

Inuyasha stared at her. How... how did she know?
 

She smiled at him. "Do not worry. You are not crazy, or by any means a coward. It is a spell, one of my brother's personal favorites. He had me attach it to himself and he lays the seeds of it with words. It causes all it affects to fear him, but it works differently on different creatures. Humans usually simply flee in terror, but its effect on demons is far more insidious. It twists them, so that they desire to serve him. I imagine the effect on you is something of a combination of the two." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "You will not run from me? I wish to let you down, but there is still much I would discuss with you."
 

He nodded, and Ros released him from her hold. He stood for a moment, rubbing at his wrists. Her invisible restraints... another spell? "Sesshomaru didn't let it get to him," he said softly, not really meaning for her to hear him as he tried to reason through what had happened.

"Sesshomaru is immune to the effects of the spell."
 

Inuyasha looked at her, his thoughts suddenly pulled from his own issues, confusion and suspicion on his face. "Why?"
 

"It is a complicated, and somewhat long, story which I would rather not tell at the moment. There are other, far more pressing, matters we must discuss. Please, if you know, tell me how Sesshomaru came to loose his arm."
 

Inuyasha snorted; of course she'd want to know about that. "Well that's a story too. Why don't you start talking and then maybe I'll think about it?"
 

She rolled her eyes. "I will give you a condensed version, but it will only confuse you further, and then I really must know the answer to my question."
 

"Yeah whatever."
 

"The spell does not affect Sesshomaru because it does not affect me. Now, my story?"
 

"Hold on a minute," Inuyasha said, glaring at her. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
 

Ros sighed in exasperation. "Here." She took Inuyasha's hand and drew one clawlike fingernail across the back of her own hand. When the blood welled up, she held her hand out to Inuyasha. "Smell."
 

Still suspicious, Inuyasha smelled her. And smelled her again. There was something... familiar about the way she smelled. It was hard to tell, under the scent of Chernobog that blanketed her, but it was there in her blood... But he was satisfied enough that he let it drop, and he answered her flippantly, "I cut it off. After he ripped my eye out and tried to kill me."
 

Her eyes flew open wide. "You? Well," she grinned, the expression strange and refreshingly open. "That's even better than I thought."
 

--

Sesshomaru didn't want to admit it to himself, but he was worried. He had searched for Inuyasha, following the half breed's scent until it inexplicably vanished, but had found no trace of his brother. Deciding to switch tactics and return to him original plan, he tried to find Chernobog instead, but found that the forest had swallowed him as well and not even the merest trace of his incredibly pungent scent remained anywhere, even at their meeting place.
 

Frustration at his lack of success and the irritation of healing flesh making his face tender combined to fill Sesshomaru with an unusually destructive rage. He vented his anger on a hapless stand of pine trees and stalked away to stand at the edge of the cliff where he and Inuyasha had first met Chernobog. He closed his eyes and lifted his nose to the wind, hoping to find a trace, an echo even, of Inuyasha's scent that would give him a direction in which to search.
 

The wind answered him, and suddenly he could smell Inuyasha, behind him, coming toward him. He stepped back from the edge and whirled around, and there was his brother just stepping out of the forest. "Inuyasha," he said, going to him, but suddenly he found that he couldn't move.
 

Ros stepped out from behind a tree, her hand raised toward him. She spoke another word and Sesshomaru fell unwilling to his knees. He looked over at his brother, and repeated, unease growing in him, "Inuyasha?"

Inuyasha did not speak, instead he came toward Sesshomaru and, reaching down, withdrew the Tenseiga from its sheath. "Inuyasha," Sesshomaru growled warningly, throwing himself against his invisible bonds, and the anger in his voice was tinged with desperation. What had they done to his Inuyasha? He turned blazing eyes on Ros, but she ignored him, concentrating her attention on Tenseiga as Inuyasha laid the sword on the ground and then placed Tetsusaiga next to it. Inuyasha stood over the swords and held his arm out over them. Reaching up with his other arm, he placed one clawed fingertip against the underside of his arm and cut into his skin, letting his blood drip down across the two blades. Ros chanted in a language Sesshomaru didn't recognize, her eyes glowing softly with white light. As she spoke, the swords began to glow until, with a flash of light that made everyone look away, they merged, becoming one sword, its double edged blade a shining arc. Inuyasha knelt and picked up the sword in his hand. He looked at it, hefted it, felt its length, and looked over at Sesshomaru.

Sesshomaru narrowed his eyes, his face its usual mask of indifference, but inside he was torn. So, this was it. As Inuyasha came toward him, the sword in one hand, he closed his eyes briefly and then raised his head to meet his brother's intense gaze head on.

They looked at each other as Inuyasha came up to him and, removing the guard portion of his armor that swept back over his left arm, also pushed the cloth of his garments back revealing the severed stump of his arm. Inuyasha reached out his own left hand and placed it on his brother's right shoulder and, raising the sword, buried it in Sesshomaru's left shoulder. The demon vaguely heard Ros say something, but suddenly fire was coursing through his blood, radiating out from his shoulder and consuming him entirely.

He tried to suppress it, but the feeling overwhelmed him, building up in him, and as he slowly lost his battle it shattered his mask, pulling his lips back in a snarl of pain and ripped unwilling from his throat in a wild scream.

--