( D i s c l a i m e r ) nope
( A u t h o r' s N o t e ) It feels good to be posting again! Anyway, this is just a little Sesshoumaru x reincarnated!Kagura one-shot for my friend lynnxlady (Merry Christmas!). For those of you who are like "Reincarnated? Say what?", well, I'm not going to spoilerize, so play along. Also, I had this looked over by the bestest person ever Sabriel41. Without her, this probaby wouldn't have gotten finished for another month (love you!). And just a few notes:
River Styx: a mythical river that people have to cross after dying.
ichor: what gods are said to have instead of blood.
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( am-a-ranth ) a (red) flower that never fades.
Every time she finds him, it gets harder to say no.
Once a servant, always a servant. Fate curses her to more of the same in every life. In death that would be freedom, she forgets. Even in the grave, she is a slave to circumstance.
He meets her time and time again. A peasant child with defiant eyes, an impoverished pale-faced geisha, an attractive wife locked in the house, peering through a frost-stained window.
( Help me. )
It never ends, the cycle. She pleads, and he denies.
She dies, and he lives on.
He remembers the first time he succumbed. It was an icy afternoon. In the cold he could feel his heart shudder against its coffin of bones.
Next to a merchant's cart at the side of the street was an assortment of cages made of bamboo. As he walked by, a parrot started in its cage, and beat its wings against the bars, raining white feathers on the ground.
Sesshoumaru chanced a glance downward, and his eyes met those of a terrified cat.
Red eyes.
I thought it'd been a while since I'd seen you.
Once sleek and graceful, it trembled against the cold bars of its prison, its wide and sorrow-stained eyes pleading for help. Desperate, it mewled frantic, nonsensical cat-garble, and rubbed itself against the bars.
( Save me. )
"I'll take it," he told the merchant.
Fifty years later, he finds her in an alleyway with a cigarette and a pierced nose.
Still beautiful.
I never wanted to be a hero, he reminds himself.
"My parents hate me," she says in rush-whispers, eyes the mirror of those that haunt him. He can feel the heat of her breath against his neck, "My boyfriend thinks he owns me, and made me leave my house. He's a drunk, and hits me. I just want to get away."
( Please. )
"I'm sorry," Sesshoumaru apologizes, chest tight, words harsh, "I can't."
A week later he sees her name in the obituaries and tries to pretend his old heart doesn't ache.
I never wanted to be a hero.
He looks back on his life, and all he sees is her. Time and memory are faded and run together, a blur between each set of sad eyes.
When did my life become her?
He finds her again, sixteen and a school drop out working three jobs.
"I want to act," she tells him with sparkling eyes, as her greasy boss orders her back to work, and he almost-wishes that he could feel even a bit of that passion.
The passion that fuels her desire to be free.
Maybe it will be different this time.
"Come with me," he says.
It wasn't any different.
At first, it was abrasive to have a teenager living in his house, and shopping with her had been mortifying. But for the first time he saw her smile like she wasn't trying to hide something.
And that was enough.
He watched her grow under his care, and live, and learn what it meant to be happy.
( "Why did you help me?" she asks, trembling in the frigid morning breeze.
He smiles, and passes his hands over her narrow shoulders, shielding her skin from the cold, "To atone, I suppose."
"For what?" she asks, turning with a look of consternation that is so completely her that he almost chokes on the memories.
"It doesn't matter," he replies, and covers her lips with his, "because I'm glad I did it." )
But no one can live forever, no matter how much you want to protect them.
Not long after her twentieth birthday, she stepped off a curb while his back was turned.
( "Why did you do it?" he demands, helpless as he feels the life seep from her fingertips and back into the seam of time.
"Would you believe the wind told me to?" she asks with a half-smile as the reaper wraps his greedy fingers around her heart, and pulls her into the house of the dead, only to regurgitate her later into the same unhappily ever after. )
Decades later, Sesshoumaru still wears black, and is unable to ignore the bright red eyes of his waitress.
It'll never be any different, his sorrow-heavy heart reminds him.
Hope is something Sesshoumaru doesn't believe in, but hope is all he has.
When he brings her home that night, it's like she never left, and that hurts more than anything.
( "How did you know I don't like spiders?" )
A month later, when the screaming pain in his heart starts to fade to a dull roar, he finds her in the bathroom, murdered by a passing thief.
In the moonlight, she looks so peaceful. He envies her ability to forget.
After one too many visits to the graveyard, Sesshoumaru decides to break a promise.
If I can't ignore fate, than I'll defy it.
The coffin hasn't been buried yet. Tensaiga burns blue at her chest, begging him to move. With a sweep, life reluctantly flows through her veins once more.
Her red eyes flutter open, heavy with knowledge and memory, "Sesshoumaru," she breathes, a cordial greeting from the other side of the River Styx.
He almost-cringes, Killing Perfection; it's been so long since he's heard that name.
"Kagura," he returns, heart weighted and ready to burst.
She breathes slowly in and out, and lets hundreds of years of memory filter through her consciousness.
"You were there," she says with small words, in an almost-trance, "In every single life… you were there."
"I couldn't help it," he returns, "You're persistent."
She smiles languidly like a cat, "What now?" she asks.
"I found something I want to protect," he says.
Her smile fades, and her eyes darken, "I can't promise anything," she states, trying to ignore the weight of death on her chest and the omen of being reborn in a casket.
"Neither can I," he responds, almost caving under the burden of the ichor in his veins.
He puts his arms around her, and lifts her out of the ashes of her demise.
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The End.