私にうそをつく
"Do you have someone you want to protect, Sesshomaru?"
His eyes snapped open in the darkness. He did not stir or move, save for the steady rise and fall of his deep breath. Slowly, he let his eyes wander over to his companions, the Imp, human, and Dragon that rested against the tree opposite his own. They all slept peacefully.
Without a word he stood, pushing his only hand off the bark of the great forest tree and began a silent walk away from them.
"Where are you going?" came the soft whisper from Bokusenou. He ignored the tree demon, and Bokusenou sighed after him and closed his eyes once again. "I believe that child is even more stubborn than you, Toga."
As he walked, his mind whirled with questions. The night air did little to calm his troubled heart or compromised conscious. Not as he hoped it would. Images flashed before him, those he did not care for, those he would not care for, and those that he pretended he never cared for.
It had been nearly half a millennia, and he could not comprehend why he recalled such a trivial matter.
"Do you have someone you want to protect, Sesshomaru?"
His feet paused on the forest floor. Sesshomaru stared at the empty air before him, his face as expressionless as always. He stood as a statue, deep in thought. The air was still, as was the forest and all life within it.
His eyebrow twitched suddenly, and he leapt into the sky without a seconds pause. Maneuvering from treetop to treetop was an easy feat in the forest, even in the middle of the night when visibility was limited. However, he soon reached the point where the trees thinned, the grass grew, and finally a village came into sight with the rising of the red sun.
Sesshomaru sailed downward, slicing through the light zephyr and the rare beams of morning light. When he landed on the ground, it was without a sound. The village was closer than he'd anticipated, but he stood where he was anyway, the last trees of the forgotten forest several hundred yards behind him.
He closed his eyes. His aura flared, sending a shudder through the very earth. The grass swayed even though there was no wind, and the air pulsated. In a moment it had ended. The sky and woods and earth returned to normal, but Sesshomaru stood very still.
Then he felt it. Strange, he had always wondered how something so deadly could feel so sweet. In opposition to his own violent aura display, the morning birds began to chirp and sing, the sun broke out over the horizon at last, and the ground felt warmer by it.
Sesshomaru waited. Just as twilight had finally come to an end, he could sense her presence as she slipped away from the others at the village. Closing his eyes, he turned his face to the morning sky and breathed in the air, which had begun crackling pleasantly with the opposing energies. Soon he could smell her, and then hear her footsteps as she crossed the landscape.
"Good morning, Sesshomaru," she said. "I was surprised to feel your signal aura. It's been a long time."
He did not answer her at first, but took advantage of the silence to inhale her scent discreetly. It was comforting to him.
"Sesshomaru?"
He opened his eyes. "Do you have someone you want to protect, Kagome?"
Kagome blinked.
"Someone once asked me this question," he continued. "Someone who, until that day, I trusted and respected. Now I can never trust him again."
As it always did, the signaling auras finally ran out of their energy and the land was once again in its natural state. His eyes sought the Miko's, but she was looking at her feet with a sad smile. It was how he had parted from her last, and he did not like it.
"And?"
"And what?"
"What was your answer?"
The answer was no. He said nothing, and she nodded twice.
"I knew, you know?" she said. "Even then I came to comfort you. But no longer. Last time you asked me 'why?' Because of your answer, Sesshomaru."
She turned sharply to leave, but he reached out and grabbed her wrist, ignoring the opposing energy of their very natures as it burned and scarred his skin. "You can't just tell me that I mean nothing to you!" he yelled.
She yanked her hand away with a startled yelp of pain. Guilt coursed through his blood, but he did not waver his hard gaze. Kagome shook her head. "Then is this a good enough reason for you?" she asked, holding up her injured wrist and pointing to his hand.
"Kagome-"
"We can't even touch each other!" she hissed.
The moor rang with her words. "Then, hear me out," he whispered.
Kagome exhaled softly and brought her eyes up to meet his for the first time. "I'm listening."
He wasted no time. "At first I believed that you avoided me because of Inuyasha. We had become acquainted before the undead Priestess lost the remainder of her soul. When that happened, you comforted my half brother. He claimed he loved you."
Kagome gave a startled gasp and her other hand flew to grab her injured wrist meekly. "How-?"
"It was the fox demon child who told me. However, this Sesshomaru would have heard of it eventually, anyway. I thought that Inuyasha was lying to you, but he was not. But you lied to him."
"I did no such-!"
"You said you loved him."
Kagome fell silent once more.
"Yes, I know of that, too," he said. "You said you loved him. You lied, Kagome."
Kagome hung her head in shame.
"But I am just like you."
Her eyes snapped up, wide and round as the full moon.
"Kagome," he whispered, "I was lying when I said I loved you. But I would not be lying to say that now."
She stared at him. He stared back. Kagome took a step forward and raised her hand as if to place it on Sesshomaru's cheek. She hesitated and stepped away. "But still," she said. "You're just a cold-hearted as you always have been."
That hurt him.
"When I needed you to protect me most, you went and stabbed me in the back. So what of your promise to me? Was it invalid just because you lied about loving me?"
"I promised to protect you and I kept that promise," he said. "Naraku was going to kill you if I didn't do something, Kagome!"
"That isn't an excuse for offering the Sacred Jewel shards to him!" she yelled back. "If you were hurt and couldn't battle and I was on the verge of death, I would still never give them to him! Everything that I've worked for since I came here was wasted in a moment! I felt so useless! I wish that you'd have just let me die!"
The crackling energy that burned their skin was hardly noticeable while Sesshomaru's lips were on hers. She clung to him desperately, tears choking her eyes and a tightness threatening her throat. Sesshomaru was worse off – Kagome's holy powers were created to destroy demons like him, and even though they weren't activated, it still hurt.
At their first brush of lips, he felt as though acid had been poured straight into his bloodstream and flowed into his pumping heart. But he didn't care. It was brief but electrifying. For such a chaste kiss, they shouldn't have been breathing as heavily as they were, but their auras had taken a toll on them. He would fight, he promised himself. He would fight to get back the Sacred Jewel and regain the trust he lost.
"You say I am a demon," said Sesshomaru. "An Immortal being with strength and the glory to be alive for centuries. There have been times when I have asked myself if I could live without you."
She gasped softly, still out of breath, wonder on her face.
"I have come to the conclusion that I can," he confessed, and Kagome made to push him away. He grabbed her hand with his to stop her. "I have lived without you for seven hundred years. I could continue to live after you're gone. But…"
Kagome froze. He tightened his hand around hers.
"It is so hard for me to breathe when I am not next to you. Over time I will suffocate, and the hands wrapped around my neck would be yours. Kagome, I would have given my life to save you that time. I would have given anything to Naraku, just so I wouldn't be slowly choked over the next two thousand years of my life."
"And even though you say those words, you still have a negative answer to that question you asked me," she said.
"Do you have someone you want to protect, Sesshomaru?"
He closed his eyes. "When I was asked the question, the answer was no. When I lied to you, the answer was you. I realize what you meant when you said I was wrong for wanting to protect you. At first I did not understand why, but now I do."
"Have you found your answer then, Sesshomaru?" she whispered.
A smile, small and rare graced his lips as the coldness melted away from his face. "Myself," he said. "I and I first. You did not love me because I did not love myself. And the reason I couldn't protect you fully was because I could not protect myself."
Slowly, as the sun rose further into the sky, Kagome's angry expression softened as a heavenly smile shone through. "There," she whispered. "That is your answer."
Her hand moved to cup his cheek. Rather than violent sparks, there was now a pleasant warm feeling when their skin touched. Sesshomaru leaned into her hand and lightly gripped a strand of her hair in his.
"I may have been lying when I said I loved Inuyasha," she whispered, "But I certainly didn't lie when I said I loved you."
"Do you have someone you want to protect, Sesshomaru?"
The words his father has spoken to him on the night of Inuyasha's birth ran through his head one last time. Sesshomaru smiled softly and nodded with the breeze.
Weak ending :/ And it didn't make much sense, but I enjoyed writing it, nonetheless. Review, please?