He couldn't remember the last time he felt like this, and came to this place.

Then again, he never remembered this place except when he was stuck here, forgetting it the moment he opened his eyes to the waking world.

Wherever here was, anyways.

It was dark, barren, the sky covered in a gray fog that hid the sun, if there even was one in this creepy place. Towers of broken rocks and bones littered the landscape, reaching into the endless haze. He was alone, save the armor-clad skeleton whose feet he always woke up at.

Inuyasha glared up at the empty eyes of the dog demon's skull, the ruins left of his father's once great being. This was his fault, his blood that made him into a rage blind monster and when he was stuck here, with human emotions and appearance despite the absence of any moon let alone a blackened one, his rage at the man he never knew was immense.

"Well, Oyaji, quite the damn heir apparent ain't I?" He grumbled, "Losing to myself in a fight with some petty demon. Bet it ain't quite what you imagined for me when you whelped Mother, huh?" A soundless wind ruffled his long black hair, the only answer he would ever get it seemed.

"Course you ain't got anything to say. Sesshomaru was your real son, the one you trained and taught what it was to be Inu no Taisho. Me, I'm a by-product of your love for my mother. I never met the legacy my human blood could never live up to!"

Inuyasha felt his jaw clench and he reached for Tetsusaiga at his side only to find an empty scabbard. A human growl left his gritted teeth, and he threw the hunk of wood to the side.

"You think I care about your legacy, Oyaji?!" He cried out, "Everything I've ever done has been for myself! The only thing you ever gave me was that sword and I know the only reason Tetsusaiga is even mine is because I needed a seal. Because half-breeds are abominations that shouldn't even exist!" Despite himself, the young man felt a tear run down his cheek. "Did you watch? Did you see everything I had to live through because you were selfish and prideful enough to go down in flames? That SHE lived through because you weren't there to protect us!?"

Dark gray, nearly black eyes glared at the towering figure. He knew no answer would come. He knew no good could possibly come from yelling at someone whose voice had never said any of those things about him. But in the moment, he only knew his own anger and frustration at being so weak as to have ended back up here after what happened last time.

"Is that really what you're worried about at a time like this?"

Inuyasha looked up from his clenched fists and blinked. A voice, a man's voice as clear as though he were standing beside him, filled his human ears. He could feel, something, but without his hanyo senses, he couldn't locate the source of it, of the voice.

"Who's there?" He called out and suddenly, something from within the large black breast plate pulsed. Brilliant gold light flowed out from the cracks and weathered chinks in the ancient yokai armor. It collected together and started to take shape before his very eyes, making the prince take a step back, once again reaching for the sword that wasn't there. Inuyasha had no choice but to simply watch as a man emerged from the light.

He was tall, with broad shoulders, made even broader by the spiked armor plates resting over them. His kimono was white, with a blue pattern flowing across it, noble and clean like that of some kind of royalty. His hair was long and white, pulled up and out of the way by a black leather cord to reveal a pair of pointed yokai ears. His face was young, making him appear just a little older than Sesshomaru and he carried a great sword upon his back, nestled in a sheath between the tails of a long white mokomoko.

He narrowed his golden eyes as he took in the angry human form that stood before him. An insolent boy, acting like a brat in the face of his current struggles when it was not the time for that. However, there was of course the possibility that he did not realize the gravity of the situation.

"Interesting," the yokai said as the teenaged boy looked at him, "You must have been quite gravely injured, to make your way here," the boy tilted his head a little and picked up his discarded sword sheath, holding it like a club.

"Who the hell are you?" Inuyasha demanded and the yokai tilted his head, chuckling.

"You are not so dulled by human senses that you can't figure it out, are you?" he replied, "Surely Izayoi wouldn't have raised a fool." At the mention of his mother's name, the human half-demon lifted his sheath higher, prepared to hit the apparition.

"How do you know that name?" He spat out, gray eyes blazing, which only made the yokai laugh harder.

"So, you are quick to anger too, are you?" The man laughed as he walked nonchalantly around the transformed hanyo, "Thank the Kami one of you took after me in that sense. Your brother did not, and it often made him a little too," the Inu no Taisho paused a moment in thought as his youngest son began to go slack jawed in realization, "cautious and calculated. He does not see the world in the passion and fire that it has to offer. I'm sure you can agree."

Inuyasha blinked a moment before slowly lowering his makeshift weapon. His eyes widened a little as he took in this human like form of his father, the form that wasn't plastered across legendary murals and tapestries. He was very different, yet very much who he had expected from his mother's stories, in a way that made him question why he didn't realize it sooner.

"Oyaji?" he asks, his eyes wide and Toga glanced at him, the golden eyes gleaming at him like looking in a mirror.

"I prefer Chichi Oya or Otōsan, but I suppose compared to you Pup, I am the very definition of 'old man,'" the former emperor and general replied, "Now, I'll ask you again, is upholding my legacy really what you are concerned with right now? After all, you and I are both aware of why you are here."

"Keh," The prince scoffed as he stuffed his arms in his large sleeves, "I don't even know where here is. I just know I come here when the damn beast takes over."

"Interesting," Toga says, "So you hadn't realized. I suppose I really shouldn't be surprised. It isn't as though you were privy to much information, I would have been able to give you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Inuyasha asks and his father looks at him sternly, "The damn demon took over and I got stuck in the back of my mind. I don't need you to tell me that."

"This may appear like wherever your mind decided to go when it became lost, but I assure you, this is the first time you have actually been here," He chided, "You must have been very seriously injured to actually come to the border."

"Border?" he asks, and the Inu no Taisho looks back up at the skeleton that towered over them.

"The border between your world and the one I reside in," he replied, "You are here because you suffered a mortal wound, one that would have killed you had your beastly instincts not emerged when they did. As a result, the youki left your human soul here when it surged forward." Inuyasha stared at his hands, feeling that powerlessness sinking into him again.

"I, I was dying?" he asks and his father glances back at him. "The moth demon. He doused me in poison and slashed my stomach open. The bleeding, it wouldn't stop. It hurt worse than Sesshomaru's venom. I couldn't even hold myself up."

"Indeed," Toga replied, "Those vile insects are quite bothersome, and we are quite susceptible to their poison. As a hanyo, you stood no chance of recovery from such a wound. You are quite lucky the yokai within chose to emerge and aid you." Inuyasha laughs and throws his head back as he turns away from him.

"I'm lucky?!" He scoffs, "I'm lucky to be currently doing the Kami only knows to those around me in a blind rage I won't even remember? What kind of bullshit is that?"

"Are you that ungrateful to the gifts you were afforded, Pup?" Toga asked and Inuyasha glared at him.

"Do you think it's a gift to turn into a rabid beast? To have to live with the burden of lives you don't even remember taking? That's completely-"

"Let me go! I need to get the sword to him! I can't let him go on like this!"

Inuyasha's eyes left his father and he looked around rapidly, searching for the source of the voice. She sounded so close, but at the same time, far away. Toga raised an eyebrow at his son.

"What is wrong with you now?" He asked and the human form of his son looked back at him.

"You, you didn't hear her?" He asks and golden eyes just blink in response, completely unreadable.

"Hear who?" He responded and the young man felt his hand come up and hold onto his subjugation beads.

"Kagome," He whispered, "She's there, in the village I'm tearing apart."

"A friend of yours?" his father asks and Inuyasha turns up to the gray sky.

"Yeah, she's...I swore I just heard her call out," He murmurs, "But I couldn't have."

"I don't care! I have to try! I love him! I love him too much to let him continue to commit such crimes against his nature!"

Inuyasha felt his heart clench as he heard those words leave her strangled, sobbing voice. The unspoken truth he had been fighting for nearly the moment she woke up, injured and sobbing that he should just send her back as a disgrace to Higurashi. A small, knowing smile crossed the Inu no Taisho's face, revealing that at least this time, he had definitely heard Kagome's cry.

"Perhaps friend is not the correct term, is it Pup?" Toga said and his son just glared at him.

"Sesshomaru made us get married at winter's end," he ground out and Toga shook his head.

"Made you, eh? Then why do you seem so bothered by her being in the village?" he asks and Inuyasha looks angrily at the man who had never been there for him, "Speaking from experience, arranged marriages hardly mean anything above an alliance."

"Because-" he started, feeling his cheeks burning red with embarrassment despite the situation, "She isn't just some bitch I joined with to sire the next generation and be done with it. She's the guardian of the Shikon no Tama, the only one with a heart pure enough to make sure that the damn thing won't do any more damage than it already has. She's my friend and has shown me more kindness than a bastard like me could ever deserve." Inuyasha looked down, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat as he thought about what could possibly be happening to her right now, "Kagome's important."

"To Sesshomaru's treaty with the humans?" the elder yokai poked and the human turned on him, his fists balled at his sides.

"To me!" He snapped back, any embarrassment lost to anger and frustration at his father's prodding, "And I never, never wanted her to know the side of me currently slaughtering people right in front of her! For her to be that close to a monster who couldn't possibly recognize her. I could kill her!" His eyes closed and he looked away again, "I'm going to kill the woman I love all over again."

"Yet it was her, was it not, that caused you to change in the first place?" Toga asks and Inuyasha looks over at him, his eyes red from trying to fight back tears.

"I changed because I'm a useless half-breed who can't keep his own blood rage in check!" He yells out making the dog demon sigh and pull his arm back before backhanding his son. He let out a grunt and fell to his knees, his lip split from the force the spirit exerted.

"Your mother would have my hide for raising my hand to you like this, but I have heard enough of your whining!" he roars, his eyes bleeding red as his body pulsed with energy, still present despite the yokai having long since passed, "Do you think you are the only hanyo to suffer your fate? To be an orphan in a world that hates you, that is the fate of countless of your kind!"

"Of course it is!" Inuyasha yelled back, "I had to watch my mother cry every night over that life, a life she knew I would have."

"A life she feared you would have!" Toga replied, his anger fizzling away as he crossed his arms and looked at the prone form of the young man before him. With a sigh, he continued, "And for a time, you had that sad fate, one I had feared alongside her. But you have moved past that. You stood the test and were forged in the flames that made you the man you are today. You formed a connection, a bond between your birthright of Tetsusaiga and the demon within you. "

Inuyasha glanced at his sword sheath and sighed, feeling lost for any rebuttal. There was a point to all this, that since the day he chose to hold Tetsusaiga over using his own claws against his father's murderer, he had not been as prone to the transformations, the sword feeling like a part of his own body. Even now, here in his own mind as a human, he felt as though he were missing a piece of himself without Tetsusaiga at his side.

"But simply holding onto the blade is not what gives you that control," his father continues, making him look up again, "It is because you choose to keep that control and allow my fang to be an extension of your own body and not feed the yokai part of your soul. Yes, the blood rage is a curse, but it is a curse you can find the reins of and take control over. There was a reason you became a transformed beast today. And it was not because you were too weak to fight the yokai back any longer."

"Then why?" the prince asks, and Toga narrowed his eyes at the beads around his son's neck. Inuyasha's hand came back to them, and he could swear he felt Kagome's warmth radiating through them.

"Inuyasha. Inuyasha, it's me. It's Kagome."

As her voice came again, almost whispering in his ear, the prince looked up, wishing this were real, that he might be able to see her,

"Inuyasha, you need to take Tetsusaiga. You need to let the bloodlust recede. You don't need it anymore."

"Smart girl," Toga comments and Inuyasha can't help the smirk that lifted the corner of his lip the slightest bit, despite himself. She somehow knew enough to make the connection. However, as he looked back forward, he realized he could in fact see her.

She was there, battle ragged and her face streaked with tears. Her red kimono fluttered a little, the layers ripped and covered in dust and mud, his sword was gripped in her small hands. She was right in front of him, but at the same time, it was as though she were on another plane, her body more transparent than his father's ghostly form beside him.

He took a step towards her, and her body went rigid, the sword in her hand becoming slack as her hand rose to her chest. Her eyes were wide a moment before she took a small step forward, Tetsusaiga held towards him as though she were trying to hand it to him.

"No, Inuyasha, I'm not going to hurt you. I promise. Tetsusaiga is your sword, not mine! I brought it so the seal would push the demon back."

Her fingers trembled and as he took a step closer to her, he swore he heard her heartbeat speed up. He continued until he stood over her, his chest tightening as her blue eyes seemed to solidify for a moment, filled with glittering tears. He reached forward, as though to touch her, but his hand passed right through her arm as she cried desperately.

"Please, Inuyasha!" A strangled sob ripped out of her throat as she looked up at him, fear in her eyes, "Please, Koishi. Please take Tetsusaiga and come back to me. Please, come back to me!"

Another tear spilled from her eye, and she flinched, her eyes squeezing shut. Her soft scent, pale and dull, fell over Inuyasha as he once again surged forward, reaching up and wiping the tear away, her transparent cheek warm and soft under his calloused thumb. She seemingly leaned into his touch and opened her eyes, the fear replaced with a blazing hope, almost as though she were really feeling and seeing him too.

"Inuyasha?" her voice barely more than a whisper but seemingly clear and strong, "Do you, you recognize me?"

"Kagome," He ground out, his arms moving to her sides as he reached for her, longing to feel her close to him in this dark, lost place. It was like this horrible place was just beginning to fade and he could almost see a sun slowly making its evening descent behind her.

She was doing it, whatever it was that she was trying at. This was real and she was somehow pulling him back to the waking world. Back to her just as she commanded.

"Please, take Tetsusaiga. You need your sword."

Inuyasha glanced at the rusted blade in her hand, his fingers itching to grab it and return to the waking world, to leave this horrible place. But just as suddenly as she had appeared, she was ripped away from him, his fingers clenching at open air.

He was pushed back by some unseen force, falling on the ground, and grunting at the impact. The world around him solidified and he realized he was still there, in his father's grave. She was gone.

"Kagome!" He called out, scrambling to his feet "Kagome, where are you?!"

"Lord Se-"

His brother was there. He had come to uphold order, to take him down. The blood lust that had subsided as his wife had come to him was back with a vengeance, the yokai shoving his consciousness back down and out of sight. He undid everything and put Inuyasha right back where he started.

"Bastard!" He yelled, so loud it echoed through the gravesite, rocks trembling and pebbles falling from their spires.

"Inuyasha, no! You can't challenge him!"

Kagome's scream called back, and he growled as much as his human throat would allow. His hands tangled in his black hair as he grunted in frustration, beginning to pace the small patch of dirt he and his ghostly father stood upon.

"Now is not the time to let your anger get the better of you," Toga growls and the human boy glares at him.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?! Jump for joy?" He snapped back,

"You should be trying to remember why you changed in the first place," Toga said softly, "You cannot change what is happening in the world of the living right now, but the things you realize here will allow you to be better in the future." The dog demon tilted his head and studied the young man who was pacing in front of him, "Unless of course, you intend to remain here. It would be the more expedient option."

Inuyasha reached up and grabbed the beads strung on his neck. He could stay here? Just give up and stop living his failure of a life? Would that finally give him peace?

No one cared for him. Not really anyway. He was a stain to his brother and father's legacies. The wolves hardly tolerated him and the humans, well they certainly wouldn't miss him ordering them around. He'd always been alone, been fine with that. Would it really be any better than dying to go back to a world that didn't accept him for who and what he was?

Sure, he had a few friends, but at the end of the day, they would move on. They had other people to lean on. Koga, he had Ayame. Sango and Miroku, well they certainly smelled like one another enough to know they'd be okay left with one another to lean on. Hell, even Shippo had Kagome to look after him and support him if the poor orphan lost yet another person in his young life.

His fingers caught one of the jade fangs between them and he stopped pacing.

Kagome. She would be...

"Please, Inuyasha. Please, Koishi... come back to me!"

She was different from the rest. She never made him feel less for who he was. She was his friend, probably the first real one he had made who fully trusted him without hesitation. Someone he cared about, who he allowed closer than any other. Who cared about him, and shouted to the world that sentiment without a care for consequences?

Kagome, she would care if he decided to give up. She was there, waiting for him in the world of the living. She still needed him to be there, to protect her and the Shikon Jewel. And the idea of leaving her, losing her of his own choice...

For Inuyasha it was unthinkable.

"I can't," he whispered, "I can't stay, Oyaji." The elder yokai nodded and crossed his arms over his armored chest.

He already knew that would be the choice, the way his son kept reaching for the necklace that glowed with the young woman's reiki. He had lived for over a millennium. He knew what love looked and felt like. And if this boy he had never truly known was as much like him as Izayoi claimed, he would not let the one he loved go without doing everything in his power to remain by her side.

"What is the last thing you remember?" the former emperor asks softly, making the fingers on the beads still.

"Why the hell would you need to know that?" his son asks, and Toga gives him an even, challenging look.

"Because it is important," He states tartly, making Inuyasha sigh and sit down on one of the surrounding boulders. His hands went into his sleeves, and he looked at the ground, trying to find where to start.

"I felt myself growing weaker, dying," he replies, "The yokai was growling, so loud I could barely hear Miroku's voice, let alone think. I was stuck with a bleeding gut for what felt like an eternity, trying to figure out how the hell I was supposed to get myself and the monk out of there. But then, there was commotion outside the moth bastard's cocoon, I think he was starting to kill the village women. I couldn't help them. Our wives came and started fighting while we were trapped like a couple of useless fools. And then I helplessly sat there as I heard them grab Kagome and start dragging her to the moth and... she screamed." As he saw his father's raised brow, he scoffed, "That's it. It's like I blinked and then I was here with you. Nothing else. Don't expect some profound realization or nothin'."

"What did you feel then?" Toga asked and Inuyasha flung his hand away from his beads.

"Have you ever had a slash through your gut that won't stop bleeding?" He yells, "It fucking hurts! I felt pain and I felt weak! You wouldn't understand!" Toga let out a rough chuckle as he held out an arm in gesture towards his physical remains.

"Is that what you think?" he states, his voice flat as Inuyasha had come to familiarize with his brother, "Take a long hard look Boy! I have stood where you were standing." As he glared past his father, he caught something in the dull light. A ragged, open hole in the armor, something having pierced through the abdomen, only slightly higher than the wound he had been given by Gatenmaru.

"It was the night of a full moon, the first of that winter. Your mother, she was not accepted by the yokai of my court and being whelped at the time, I could not take her with me nor risk leaving her in the Western Palace alone. So, she returned to her homeland, to Gekkō, to wait out the final weeks of her confinement and deliver in relative safety. I had tasked Sesshomaru with watching over her while I went to deal with the conflicting yokai so that I might have brought her and our child to the safety of my stronghold as soon as she had healed from the delivery.

"I was near the den of Ryūkotsusei when your brother informed me of the tensions rising in Gekkō," Toga growls, "I had only just managed to put the dragon under seal, suffering that very wound in the process. And with no time to rest, I began the journey back to your mother who was very soon to give birth. Myoga, the old fool, pleaded with me not to, for the wound was life threatening, even for me. But I could not lay low. Not when it counted."

Inuyasha stared at the looming skeleton, unsure of what to say. He had heard this story before, from his mother's perspective. But the mortal princess' recollection of certain events was spotty, and with him being a young child when she told him, most details were glossed over, and he was simply told that the castle was attacked, and he had come to make sure the two of them escaped. That he was hurt and hadn't been able to follow them.

"Why?" He asked and the Inu no Taisho narrowed his eyes on his youngest son. Instead of answering, he continued his tale.

"When I arrived, Takemaru of Setsuna had ordered that Gekkō be burned to the ground with your mother and all her servants inside. You see, that complete waste of a soul was once your mother's betrothed. When your mother's labor began, triggered by the full moon being covered over by shadow, his fragile, futile ego snapped and he attacked her and her handmaidens, seizing Gekkō himself and ordering the soldiers to fire upon me when I arrived.

"Even in my weakened state, resistance by castle vassals was no match. They were quickly defeated. That arrogant mortal had the gull to stand before me and brag that he had killed your mother by striking her womb," Even so many years on, the pain of that arrogant bragging brought forth a rage in the former emperor that made his eyes bleed red a moment, turning very much like his son's own in demon form, a snarl curling across his face. Closing his eyes, he prepared to compose himself.

"Your birthright sundered his left arm in my anger. It would have been better had I been able to strike the killing blow, I will admit, but at the time, your mother was my only concern. I had to get to her, to the both of you, before the emissaries of the underworld had truly taken you.

"But the ignorant fool had been wrong. He had killed your mother, that much is true, but not you. No, you had managed to finish delivering yourself and had crawled up to her chest, wailing against the fading heat and silent corpse of the woman I cared for above all."

Inuyasha glanced at his father, expecting to see some sorrow or regret but instead, there was something else, much more intense there. A sense of pride? Was that what that was? Whatever it was, he was quite certain he had never been looked at like that before.

"For a moment I mourned the thought of perhaps allowing us to follow her into the Netherworld," Toga continued, "I had known before I had even entered that burning human castle that I was dying, and soon, from the combined injuries of Ryūkotsusei and the mortal samurai. I would not be there to protect you or her if I brought your mother back, and your life was never fated to be an easy one. No hanyo's is.

"But the moment I caught your scent, I knew, that you more than deserved that chance to try. All selfish thoughts of dying with my beloved ceased. I knew that I would never let a child of mine who had fought so hard just to take his first breath die in such misery. So, I raised Tenseiga and brought your mother back, knowing it was sapping away strength I did not have. I wrapped you both in the Robe of the Fire Rat you now wear and sent her off despite her protests as the stubborn scorned suitor entered the burning castle in an attempt to stop your mother's escape."

Toga turned to his son then, his golden eyes burning into the deep gray that was so like the boy's mother's, "With my last words to her, I named you for my own spirit, the one that would live on in you after I was gone."

Inuyasha looked away from the intense gold, literally shaking with the rushing emotions. In the form of a human, this was all far too much to handle.

"Why tell me this? What does it have to do with anything?!" He cried out, fighting back tears, "It was 200 years ago. Knowing what happened to you, why you weren't there? That won't help me get the hell out of here!"

"Stop already!" Kagome's voice called out over the rocks, further away than it had been before, but still clear and understandable. Toga sighed and shook his head. Clearly, the battle between his sons was not going well, at least from the young woman's perspective.

"I didn't tell you because I thought it would change what you thought of me," the elder yokai responded, "I told you so you could understand why you allowed this transformation to occur."

"Allowed?" Inuyasha asked. "You think I allowed the yokai to take me over."

"I know you did," the emperor responds, "You told me as much." The Daiyokai started to walk towards one of his worn, decaying boots and sat upon the toe. His mokomoko flowed around him and he shifted into a comfortable position as he stared down the black-haired boy, "You felt helpless. You heard your wife's scream and the next thing you knew you were stuck here with me. You were in a near death state for quite a while inside that cocoon before she got there from the sounds of it. If you were going to change because you were weak, I do believe you would have done so much sooner than a young woman coming from Musashi could have caught up with you."

"I," Inuyasha stopped and looked up at the towering dog demon's skull, the open maw of sharp fangs seeming to challenge him to deny the facts as the Inu no Taisho had laid them out, "You think I let the yokai take me over?"

"You said her scream is the last thing you remember," Toga replies, "I think her scream is what made you let go. You knew that you couldn't get to her, nor your sword, as you were. You felt helpless, as all beings do when the ones they must protect are out of their reach, and I nor even your brother are exceptions. You knew there was only one way, one last hope, to protect her from the moth demon and his bandits. Just as you were mine, my blood flowing in your veins was yours. You knew that even if you needed to be destroyed afterwards, this was the only way you could protect her in that moment."

Kagome's scream broke through the grave, trembling the rocks and rolling over the peaks. She sounded further away than before, but her voice was still clear, as though she were really there. He looked up towards where her voice had seemingly come from.

His father was right. More than anything, as he had realized the demon was the only way out, that it wasn't if, but when it would happen, his first thought had been Kagome. He had instructed Miroku to keep her away from him because he knew it was already happening, that he was drawing on his demon strength just to keep his head up. And as soon as he did hear her scream in pain, any fight of it had ceased.

"Do you have someone to protect?" his father prompted, and it was like she was right at his side once again.

"Oh Inuyasha," she whispered in his ear, her voice soft and full of worry.

"Yeah," He says, looking over at his father "I do. And I need to get back to her."

"Then you have finally found the answer," Toga says, "And there is nothing more for me to teach you here." He stood, a small smile on his face, "There is, however, one more thing I was asked to tell you."

"Asked?" Inuyasha repeated, "By who?" Toga sighed and shook his head.

"Someone who's spirit cannot tread this place, no matter how much she wanted to see you," he replied and the fond look on his father's face instantly told him exactly who it was.

"Mother?" He asked, "You've seen her?"

"Of course," he says, "She was my mate. When she passed, we were reunited in Nirvana. But that is unimportant right now. We don't have much time left and there is something she wished for me to tell you. Or I suppose, there is something she wished for you to have."

Inuyasha blinked at him with wide eyes and realized he was fading, becoming transparent as his father was. He could hear Kagome again, muffled now, as though he were falling asleep. He was healed enough now, and if Kagome were close with his sword, he would be pulled back from this place and back to her within mere moments.

And despite how much he wanted that, he also felt a sense of loss at knowing this was likely the last time he would see his father. At least, for a very, very long time. He needed to know what message she had sent here with his father.

He looked up at his father and nodded.

"Okay," He says, "Tell me what Mother wanted me to know."