Author's Notes.

This used to be the first several chapters of this fic, I'm reorganizing it now because it erks me to no end. Please Read And Review. If you think my Sesshomaru doesn't have a lot of personality, please look harder. He really isn't the type to go explaining his feelings. Also, please think of this fic as you would an episode of Inu Yasha, which, by the way, I DO NOT OWN. It's based off the anime, because I rather prefer it to the Manga, and I also prefer choosing one or the other and not some strange combination of the two. Just one more thing, you will see little to no Japanese in any fic that I write, if you would like a Japanese version, however, feel free to let me know and I will happily consider obliging. I personally despise when authors use large amounts of foreign languages in stories meant for the readers of a particular language, long story. Hope you like.

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"I did not want to do this." I whispered, my eyes half closed and my face tilted toward the sickle moon.

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After Naraku was defeated I was sent to live with Lady Kaede in the village where the Bone Eater's Well belonged. I was young, but even then I understood that there would never be a similar division in the lives of Sesshomaru-sama and I, or the makeshift group we traveled with. I understood that the terrible hold both Naraku and Magatsuhiand even the Shikon Jewel had over our lives had been relinquished.

A cloud had been banished from above our heads, and at that very moment, just as you can never replace a fallen petal to its rose, we simply no longer fit.

I hadn't cried at first, when Kaede died. I was so young, and all I knew was that one more thing in my life had proved only to be transient. I felt emotions, lots of them, as I looked at her lifeless body upon the straw mat she had lain ill upon for weeks; a small smile upon her thin, wrinkled lips.

I ran into the forest, away from that smile, and those emotions, and every memory I had that I wanted to disappear, just as the life of the lady before me had.

As I finally stopped at an opening among Abdne trees, a solitary flush of color caught my eyes. It was a rose that had managed to grow among jagged rocks and stone, a solitary flush of color against its adverse surroundings.

I snatched it out of the ground and relieved it of its burden, five full, vibrant red petals. One for Jaken, another for Ah-un. One for Kohaku. One for Sesshomaru-sama. And finally one for me. They fell to my bare feet, and I stared at them for several long moments before I fell to my knees, onto the pointed bed of rocks before me, and immediately began trying to undo what I had just done.

When I finally realized I couldn't fix the flower before me, the first of what soon became hundreds of tears leaked from my eyes. I cried childishly and without stopping; my head bowed so that my dark hair covered my face, petals and stem in either hand.

Was it selfish of me to miss Naraku? To miss the hideous shadow of a man who had managed to unintentionally give me the greatest blessings of my life, only to take them away in his death? Did he know that his losing would acidicly seep through the very fibers of my friendships, of the threads that bound me to the others, so that they eventually became a whisper of themselves in my mind? A faint memory of the bond we once held? Did he know that I would one day mourn his passing? While I kneeled upon stone that cut my knees, clutching a dying rose in my fingertips; my Kimono wet from tears, my cheeks flushed and feverish from strain.

I sobbed, and gulped for air. I sobbed and gulped for air. I sobbed and gulped for air, and after what seemed like hours finally I only gulped, my tears spent. But no fresh air entered my lungs.

I looked up. Thick miasma had begun to curl its way through the trees, sentient and purposeful; I knew it was coming for me. Killing trees and destroying grass, I watched it advance, a purplish cloud of death and despair. It clung to me. Wrapping tightly around my face and forcing itself into my mouth and nostrils. I collapsed into the rock before me. Paralyzed. Wanting to run, but with legs that could not move.

The only things I saw before my darkened vision faded to black were those red rose petals. And then I was out. Certain I would never see anything again.

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When I awoke it was to squint through eyes that were swollen shut. I was naked, lying face first upon freezing paved stone, my kimono seemingly having dissolved into tattered pieces around me. There was no question in my mind, I knew I hadn't died and gone to heaven.

I put my trembling hands to the ground, noting that the effects of the miasma had not worn off. As I attempted to sit up, a cold voice rang high and clear, it dissipated strangely, as if swallowed up in the very structure of the room around me. I had not realized I was not alone.

"I did not tell you to move." It said…he said. It was a man. My body tensed, I immediately froze in place, half way between laying down and adjusting, and at a standstill as to whether or not I should instantly start running.

Something told me to stay; that there was nowhere to go. Or maybe it was his voice. His voice had not allowed room for negotiation.

I chanced a sideways glance, my head still inclined to the floor but my eyes sliding to my right. Miasma stood at bay; I was certain I was encircled. It was toxic, venomous even from this distance. It made the tips of my fingers and the skin of my back feel corrosive, as if it would soon dissolve from me just as my clothing had; it seared my swollen eyes and caught in my throat. Each short breath I took was acerbic, and I could not even force the air to reach my lungs without coughing it up again.

A hard object collided with my bare back and I was forced fully onto the stone once more, I felt my tendering skin burn and tear from the force. I let out a muffled scream through a mouthful of pavement. I felt a hand curl through my hair and I realized the object in my back was a foot. It soon became his knee, the man had swiftly knelt, his other knee upon the stone on my left side.

It was his hair that I saw first. A long golden braid adorned in golden threads and beads. He yanked my head away from the ground, and I looked into his face, my back bent upward uncomfortably; his knee had not moved.

He was ethereal, his skin shimmered, his eyes gleamed, and nothing of him seemed to exist in the quite the same sense that I did. He wore an ornate white robe, with metal armor in all the places of a warrior. His eyes were the same color as his hair, golden spheres with no pupils; a fleck of cerulean war paint beneath one eye.

"Who are you?" I croaked. My neck was bent in such a way that it obstructed my air way even more, with all the effort it took me to form even that simple sentence I felt what could only be warm blood drip from my mouth. The toll of the miasma would only get worse.

He threw me away from him with force that confirmed my suspicion that he was not human. I landed on my back; my body exposed in a way no human man had ever seen it before, and certainly no demon. I cried out in pain and jerked to cover myself, but suddenly his orders repeated themselves to me, "I did not tell you to move." My arms recoiled, snapping to the ground on either side of me. I was not entirely certain that I committed this action of my own volition. But maybe I had… Hadn't I?

"I am but a ghost." He said, he had not moved since throwing me, I could see he stood quite still, his armors shimmering with no light to aid them except for his own otherworldly gleam, no expression on a face that could be considered charming. He moved closer to me, and then closer, but it was as if he only crossed any distance every other second; his leg extending without him having taken a step to make it do so. "I am the first demon, Rennesaiga."

He came closer once more, "I am going to kill you." He said.

Somehow, I had figured as much.