Standard disclaimer applies.
Summary: Sesshoumaru is being haunted by an awfully familiar looking ghost, who wont stop haunting him until he agrees to help her out! So what's a demon lord supposed to do? Help the human ghost, or be haunted the rest of his life…?
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Rude Awakening
By: Luna
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If Sesshoumaru didn't know any better, he'd think he was being stalked.
He didn't feel anyone around him, and he was far too superior to be fooled. But ever since that morning that he woke up with Rin already chattering and Jaken already squawking, he'd felt as if eyes were watching him, following him, judging him. For what, Sesshoumaru didn't know, and when he didn't feel anyone in the immediate area he told himself he was being far too fanciful. No one would dare spy on him. Naraku never even spied on him.
And so his day continued on. He traveled over his lands, occasionally stopping so Rin could find something to eat and rest, or whenever he was bored with the scenery and decided to allow Rin to play. And still he felt those eyes, watching him. He sensed no threat, and since he believed they were after him, he felt no qualms about leaving Rin alone for a short while. He wanted to test his theory, about whether whoever was watching him would follow.
It did.
There was no malice that he could discern. Only curiosity, but he still couldn't figure out its source. He searched the area thoroughly, not only with his senses but physically patrolling all possible avenues. There was none. Maybe he was going crazy in his old age…
Sesshoumaru actually snorted out loud at that. No chance in hell. Sesshoumaru did not curse, so he did not use that word lightly. But it was a source of unease for him. He did not feel comfortable with whatever presence was following him. He didn't like not knowing who or what it was. He was not scared – Sesshoumaru does not even know what that emotion feels like, so he would not recognize it anyways – but it was still an unpleasant sensation.
He left Rin in his domain, then left to test a theory. He traveled over mountains, through valleys, even streaked across the sky. Still, that presence haunted him, a phantom image he only thought he saw out of the corner of his eye. The first time he had been walking straight forward, looking straight ahead, and had seen a flash of something white and flimsy out of the corner of his eye, and had swerved so sharply with his poisoned whip that the surrounding area was instantly obliterated. All trees and plant life within a twenty meter circle around him were suddenly reduced to firewood, blackened slightly by his poison.
There had been nothing, and Sesshoumaru had been left feeling angry and foolish. He did not like to waste energy. He did not like to waste anything, to be quite honest. And he certainly didn't like wasting his energy destroying the wild life when, in the end, there had been nothing there to kill in the first place.
The second time he had been streaking across the night sky, going no where in particular, when he felt something that almost felt like hands caressing his cheek, brushing hair out of his face. He had turned abruptly to look behind him while flying backwards, but only the inky sky above stared back. For a moment he thought he smelled moonbeams and wildflowers, but then it was gone.
He had landed in a field, not too far from his brother's village, and had simply lost his patience. "Show yourself," He had snarled. "I grow tired of these games."
"Ok!" A voice suddenly chirped, and just like that an image winked in front of him of a young girl floating a few feet above the ground. She was quite lovely with long wavy black tresses and eyes the color of the midnight sky, and wore a long white sleeping yukata. "Phew, I was wondering when you'd finally notice me."
Sesshoumaru looked through her… literally. "Explain yourself."
She gave him an arch look, and her milky skin shimmered a little in the moonlight. And yet… no light reflected off of her. No shadow marked her presence. Sesshoumaru could not even feel her aura or scent her. It was disturbing. "Well, I would think that obvious."
When he only stared at her, she huffed a little and crossed her arms. The bottom of her yukata was gaped enough at the knees to reveal her long, shapely calves and delicate little human feet. "For someone supposed to be so smart, you sure are slow on the uptake." Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes at her, and she rolled hers right back. "I'm a ghost, duh."
An oddly familiar ghost. "Who are you?"
She scowled at him. "I don't look even the tiniest bit familiar?"
Sesshoumaru stared at her blankly. If she had been following him around like he suspected she had been, then she should know he did not consort with humans (Rin being the only exception). And he certainly didn't consort with dead ones. "No."
She pouted. "My name is Kagome. Ring a bell?"
Not even a whistle. "You will explain why you have been following this Sesshoumaru."
At this, she smiled, sugary sweet. "Why, Sesshoumaru-sama, didn't you realize? I'm here to haunt you."
Sesshoumaru turned and started to walk away. He had better things to do than to speak to an insane dead girl. She floated right at his shoulder, chattering away. "Don't you even want to know why? Aren't you even a little curious? I've been following you around for days, Mr. High and Mighty. I know you're practically feline in your curiosity."
He waved his hand irritatingly through her face, scowling when her image only wavered like smoke for a second before reappearing, only this time not smiling so much. "Now that was just rude."
Marching seemed to lose some of its pleasure when you had someone hanging over ones shoulder, quite literally in Sesshoumaru's case. "What do you want? I suspect you'll demand something of this Sesshoumaru in order to rid me of your presence."
Kagome brightened. "Why, yes! Aren't you clever."
Her sarcasm was not appreciated. The tiniest tightening of his lips told his spectator that. She huffed. "I need your help, Sesshoumaru-sama."
He considered it less than a second. "No."
Shaking her head at his stubbornness, she simply sighed. "Ok, I guess we'll do this the hard way."
Sesshoumaru didn't consider what she must consider hard, so he ignored her in favor of speeding up his steps. He felt angry at himself for calling out to her in the first place, and cursed his foul curiosity. He should have been happy in his ignorance. Then Sesshoumaru scowled. Except for the fact that he was never happy in ignorance. Sesshoumaru never thought himself hard to please until that very moment.
And he had never thought himself suicidal until his ghost started singing, off key, something about a song that never ends. And it never did. She sang it over and over, her voice never dying out because she didn't have a body to tire, and she just sang while floating above his head and idly inspecting her nails, sometimes doing lazy loops in the air.
Sesshoumaru snarled, leaped up and slashed through her.
He was familiar with the feeling of literally going through a body, yet it was disconcerting to be in a body, yet be able to look at the person straight in the face and not feel anything. He landed, and she only smirked at him. "Stop trying so hard. All you have to do is agree to help me, and I'll leave you alone. You're only going to make yourself look stupid otherwise. No one else can see me, you know. If someone were to see you right now, they'd think you were talking to yourself."
He bared his fangs at her. Unfortunately, she was right. Fortunately, no one was around to see anyways. "What do you want?"
"You, of course. I think you're the only one able to help me out, and believe me, I don't want to stick around like this anymore than you want me to stick around at all. So you help me out, and I'll help you out. Quid pro quo, you know?"
Sesshoumaru didn't deign to answer, assuming she'll get to the point some time soon. But she only shrugged, looking a little ways towards Inuyasha's village. Then she turned abruptly away and beamed at him. "You might want to hurry back to Rin, Sesshoumaru-sama."
And then she winked out of sight just as suddenly as she appeared, only Sesshoumaru wasn't paying attention. He was too busy running. Rin was his human. She was his to keep alive, his to kill. No one had better lay a single finger on her head…
And no one had.
In fact, she was still playing in their camps little clearing, singing a tune she made up all by herself. Sesshoumaru turned and glared at the ethereal presence at his side and nearly snarled.
She just smiled beatifically back and fluttered her eyelashes at him.. "What? I just wanted to tease."
Sesshoumaru was not amused. He turned away from her, dismissing her from his mind as much as he could. "Rin, we are leaving."
"Ok, Sesshoumaru-sama!" Rin chirped, then ran to tag at his heels and smile her little gap tooth grin. "There are such pretty flowers this time of year, aren't there Sesshoumaru-sama?"
"Hn."
She seemed pleased with this answer and skipped behind him to annoy Jaken. The child seemed innocent, but she was ruthless in her teasing of Jaken. Sesshoumaru always found himself amused at her antics, but wouldn't let her know it. He heard the woman sigh behind him, and he slanted a cool glance at her from over his shoulder.
She just smiled prettily. "You like children, don't you?"
Sesshoumaru considered it. He didn't really dislike children, but he didn't exactly like them. They were just... there. Little urchins that were more times than not just grubby little things that were easy to please and were eager to please you. Well behaved ones were more tolerable than adult humans. He lifted a shoulder in a half shrug and continued walking.
"I like children." The woman confessed it like it was a sin. "I always thought I'd grow up and have a few of my own by now, but..." She trailed off, and the look in her eyes told him she was far, far away. "I guess some things just aren't meant to be."
"That happens when you die, I suppose." Sesshoumaru said blandly, feeling as if he were far away from his group to comfortably look as if he were talking to himself.
She didn't say anything for a few minutes. He waited, knowing that she wouldn't be able to stay silent for long; he was right. She said, "Don't you want to know what I need you to do?"
"This Sesshoumaru doesn't particularly care." If he could stand Jaken's presence for more than a hundred years, he could certainly stand hers. She was prettier than Jaken as well, so it really wasn't that much of a burden. And if some people often saw him talking to himself then... well, he was Sesshoumaru, and he'd just kill him if anyone dared snicker in his direction or call him crazy.
"You don't mind if I haunt for years and years and years?" She asked, a pout in her voice. Sesshoumaru wasn't looking at her, yet he could still easily imagine the look on her face.
"Not really, no." That was a lie. He would mind, but it would still be bearable. "Where is your grave?" So he could find her body and leave her with it.
"You won't be able to find me, Sesshoumaru." Her voice was sad. "I won't even be able to find myself. Not here."
He stopped and looked back, and for just a moment he was struck by how lovely she was. Her black hair waved long and loose around her shoulders and down her back, and her milky skin seemed so smooth, and not because of its see-through quality. She had long, shapely legs and pretty feet, and her hands were slim and graceful as was her swan like neck. It was a shame someone saw fit to kill her. She would have made a human very happy, he was sure. Humans toiled too long, worked too hard, and the women rarely were able to stand the strain and ended up having dry, weathered skin and work hardened hands. This woman must have been an aristocrat of some sort. She didn't look as if she worked a day in her life.
Yet that didn't seem true either. Her eyes... the clear, crystalline blue of her eyes reflected back pain. There was sadness floating in the depths of her eyes, and an aching weariness that made him wonder what had put it there. Sesshoumaru looked away.
Weeks passed, and the woman made no other mention of Sesshoumaru helping her. In fact, she seemed quite content to just exist, letting her soul linger in the In Between. You couldn't even call this purgatory because, really, earth wasn't all that bad. Unless the person in life absolutely hated earth, Sesshoumaru thought that maybe she felt this was a blessing. In a way he could understand her reasoning, if he used it from a humans perspective.
Humans were scared, constantly. Scared of dying, and scared of living. They feared about what they'd eat, if they'd eat, what to wear, what to say. They were scared of the unknown, yet they were scared of the what they did know, as well. They were complex life forms, yet so simple at the same time. Sesshoumaru did not truly understand them, but they were such a low level entity that he never really bothered to find out more than the basic generalization of them.
He didn't think this woman could be any different. She probably hadn't wanted to die. And now that she was, she was scared to move on. It made her weak, but she was human. Sesshoumaru could not think about being scared of anything. What was there to be afraid of? If there was one thing that Sesshoumaru was sure of, it was the fact that he was one hundred percent sure of himself. There was nothing he could not do if he chose, and nothing that he could not overcome.
"What do you fear?" The question was out before he really thought the question, but he watched her face intently nonetheless.
She looked surprised. "What do you mean?"
"You are unable to move on. Why? Is it because you are afraid?"
She looked sad again. "No. I can't move on because I can't. It's simply impossible to do so. Believe me, I've tried. I just can't seem to bridge the gap by myself."
Eyes narrowed, he waited. When she didn't continue, he huffed. "Explain."
She floated over to him, her hair pulling behind her from a nonexistent breeze, and smiled at him. "There's a favor I need to ask of you. Just one, and I promise I won't ask for anything else."
Sesshoumaru conceded, but he told himself it wasn't because her blue eyes seemed especially luminous as they stared up at him surrounded by thick eyelashes. "And your request is...?"
"Help me, Sesshoumaru." She whispered, and for a moment her image wavered, started to flicker. Fear streaked through her eyes. "Please, please help me."
"How?"
"Find me. Go to the Bone Eater's Well at the heart of Inuyasha's Forest." Her image wavered again, then he couldn't see her at all.
Sesshoumaru waited, but she did not reappear.
Her request might have seemed simple, yet the request for help could be stretched out to include a multiple of things, and a hoard of favors. The miko probably had known this, he thought with a frown. Very clever. He waited for a few days afterwards, but he only imagined her presence once, and even now he was doubtful if he had really seen her at all; surely she would have spoken to him otherwise.
Rin had been having a nightmare, and he had awoken from a light sleep to the sound of a lovely voice singing, and had opened his eyes in time to see the miko touch the blossoms surrounding Rin and make them bloom around his ward, and then she disappeared again. When he had blinked she was gone, and Rin was sleeping dreamlessly. By the fourth day he decided to investigate. It wasn't as if he had a whole lot to do, after all.
He left Rin and Jaken behind, letting them catch up at their own pace, and it hadn't been difficult to find the well. As he stared down into its depths, wondering what exactly he was supposed to do now, his brother appeared. It was odd, Sesshoumaru thought, that he didn't rush out and attack Sesshoumaru without finding out what he wanted first. Inuyasha had the idiotic tendency to kill first and ask questions later; he rarely thought anything through. Right now, however, he had merely walked out of the forest instead of burst, and now regarded Sesshoumaru with weary eyes.
"What do you want, Sesshoumaru?" Inuyasha asked.
Sesshoumaru looked behind him, expecting his entourage, and was surprised when the hanyou was alone. "Where are your friends? Finally decided to abandon you, did they?"
Inuyasha flinched and didn't deny it, and Sesshoumaru had his answer. "Kagome's not here anymore." The half breed said. "And it's my fault."
Kagome.
Well, hell. No wonder she had looked familiar. Sesshoumaru sniffed and tossed his hair over his shoulder. "You killed her?"
"No." Inuyasha said miserably. "But I helped."
Why couldn't anyone just tell him what he wanted to know? It was like pulling teeth out of a cow. Pointless and annoying. "And you did this... how?"
"When Naraku died. I thought Kikyo did too, but she didn't. I smelled her coming, and I left everyone to find her..." Inuyasha had a faraway look to his eyes. "Kagome found us. Kikyo shot her with an arrow, the same kind that sealed me to the God Tree. I took Kagome back to her time because they have better healers there, but..."
"She died." Sesshoumaru stated, knowing the answer. He wondered at the heavy feeling near the vicinity of his heart, and the regret.
Inuyasha shook his head. "No. She's just... sleeping. Merely sleeping. And now she won't wake up."
A time traveler? Sesshoumaru thought, turning the idea over in his mind. It would explain a lot about her. "How do you get to her time?"
"The well." Inuyasha looked confused, wondering why his brother would ask things about a girl he could care less about. "You just... jump in. I wouldn't try it though," He warned when Sesshoumaru lightly jumped on the wells rim. "You can't get through. No one can except me and Kagome."
Sesshoumaru looked down into the well.
Jump. It was Kagome's voice.
Sesshoumaru leaped.
Blue illuminated the wells floor, yet nothing had happened. He had waited, magic burning his senses and his feet, but then it just faded away and he was still at the bottom of the well, looking at the floor and feeling oddly betrayed. The miko had lied. He jumped back out and left the clearing, and he didn't bother looking back.
Months went by and he had not heard from Kagome even once, and after a while he stopped looking. There hadn't been any reason to wait for her. She had been an interesting diversion, something that helped break up the repetitiveness of his existence. There may have been times in the weeks that she traveled with him that he had enjoyed her ghostly presence, but those times were gone, and it was high time he realized that.
Rin was dozing in the sunlight with Jaken splashing in the stream looking for fish (unsuccessfully), when he felt the presence of a flock of bird youkai flying overhead. He sent out a warning spike of his youki should they attempt to hunt either of his followers, and frowned when one in particular began a dive bomb. Stupid bird. Now he'd have to get up to kill it.
Just as he was about to kill it for daring to interrupt his day, something distinctly un-youkai started crashing through the tree tops, and suddenly he had an arm full of miko in his lap. She looked dazed for a moment before turning to wave crazily at the departing bird.
"Thank you!" She hollered, and when she turned expectantly back to Sesshoumaru his ears were still ringing.
When he only stared at her the miko huffed, then pouted. Her arms seemed so much smaller than her ghostly form, her face so much thinner. "Well, hello to you too."
Sesshoumaru reached up and slowly touched her cheek. "What happened to your face?"
The wide eyed look she had suddenly disappeared and she shot him a sour look out of irritated eyes. "I don't comment on your flaws." Because he didn't have any, Sesshoumaru thought. The miko continued on blithely. "You shouldn't comment on mine."
Sesshoumaru shook his head. "You are... thinner." Really, she was literally weightless to him. What had happened? Why was she here?
"I was in a coma." She said slowly. When she saw his confusion, she clarified. "I was asleep, but I couldn't wake up. When Kikyo shot me I thought I was a goner. I nearly was when Inuyasha jumped through the well and left my soul behind. Kikyo was there, ready to eat me up. Said my body couldn't survive without my soul anyways, and it was high time I returned to where I belonged. I.E, her. Crazy dead woman."
Sesshoumaru almost smiled. He had thought the same of her originally, but was wise enough not to mention it. "And yet you are not her."
"Most certainly not. 'Bout time someone realized that." She said with a smile. Then it faded, and she looked down at her hands. "I don't know how I escaped. But the next thing I knew you were there, and you were the only one that seemed to even know I was there. Inuyasha couldn't see me, and Kouga didn't even try. I think it means something." She wasn't looking at him.
"When you jumped down the well, it allowed me to pass through. It hurt going back to my body, more than I thought possible. Laying there for such a long time of inactivity had all my muscles wasting away, and then I couldn't get back to this time because I had to go through physical therapy." Whatever that was, Sesshoumaru thought.
She was still sitting in his lap, and he wondered if she was aware of it. Rin had awoken and was staring in confusion at Kagome, and Jaken was starting to trudge fishless back to camp. "Why are you here, miko? What do you want?"
The question struck him as familiar, and he realized he had asked her that a long time ago, when she first started to haunt him. He saw in her eyes she remembered it as well, and she gave him a slow, warm smile. "Why... you, of course."
Sesshoumaru rose, careful to set her gently on her feet. She was still so, so fragile. He did not want to break her. He watched her face for a moment before giving a singly nod. "That is... acceptable."
They stood staring at each other for a long moment, Sesshoumaru's eyes not so cold and remote as usual, and the miko was positively beaming. Then Sesshoumaru turned away. "Rin, come."
While Rin scrambled to catch up to him, Sesshoumaru felt Kagome's cool hand slip into his. It seems she had come back to haunt him, after all.
And, well, really. Sesshoumaru didn't really mind.
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This really was a pointless fic. I just had a bug in my head that wouldn't stop buzzing until I got it out on digital paper, so I did. I hope you all enjoyed it!
Luna