A/N: Reposted from my other account, but with huge edits.
Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha
The sound of running feet could be heard on the soft dirt of the forest floor, but only if one's ears were keen enough to hear it. Sesshomaru's were and he followed the footsteps and the girl they belonged to effortlessly. He could see her in his mind's eye as she ran: her long, black hair, matted with tangles and leaves streaming out behind her, her breast heaving with every breath, the calculating glance she threw over her shoulder as she ran, scanning the path behind her for signs of pursuit, and the Soul Skimmers that followed.
She cried out as she hit him full-force in the chest and fell to the ground, surprise and shock apparent on her lovely face. Sesshomaru smiled down at her but she sat still, resigned.
"I hate it when they try to run."
The girl looked up and stared at Sesshomaru, her black eyes meeting his golden ones with a hint of indignation. "And why is that?" she asked him.
"It is just a waste of time. They always get caught in the end. Don't they, Kikyou…"
"Do you love me?" Rin had asked.
Sesshomaru had turned and glared at her from over his shoulder. After a moment's pause where he seemed to be thinking it over, he'd said firmly, but not meanly, "No."
Rin waited for Sesshomaru's return in an abandoned shed and tried not to think about what he had said. Trouble was, it always kept popping into her head when she least expected it. As she ate the last loaf of bread or gathered sticks to make a fire, each ordinary task seemed burdened by the weight of his denial.
Her stomach growled and she pressed a small hand to it defiantly. Lord Sesshomaru had told her he would be back in a few hours, but that had been over a day ago, and Rin was out of food and patience. With a sick feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with being hungry, she wondered if he'd even come back at all. She dismissed the feeling with a shake of her head. He'd come back, he always did.
She could always go out and look for him, but once again, that queasy feeling flared up in the pit of her stomach. Rin had seen what he could do to grown men twice her size. She didn't think that he'd ever hurt her physically, but she wouldn't disobey him to find out. He had told her to wait, so wait she would with an empty stomach and a heavy heart.
Rin sighed. It was stupid of her to put her life in the hands of a demon, she knew, but she couldn't help herself. She trusted him. She'd trusted him when he'd saved her life ten years before, so why not now? And she'd do almost anything to make him trust her in return, even tell him she loved him.
Blood. Blood on his hands and on the body at his feet. "Why? Why him? He is but a mere half-breed! Surely, you don't love him!"
Kikyou, tears streaming down her face as she pointed her arrow at his heart, her eyes just as beautiful in their fury. "What do you care whom I love? You told me yourself you would have nothing to do with a filthy mortal like me! What gives you the right to care?"
And Rin. Rin was there too, but she was small again, as she had been when he had first met her. "Do you love me?"
Sesshomaru's eyes opened. "No, I don't love anyone," he said into the night. He watched the invisible knives slice through the tough skin on his forearms. Lies, they said in sanguine ink. He let the blood trickle down through his fingers, warm and welcoming.
The cuts healed almost as soon as they appeared, but it didn't make them hurt any less. And there was always a never ending cycle of fresh cuts to replace the scars.
Kikyou paced back and forth in the cave where Sesshomaru had imprisoned her. Her mind raced with bits of memories and new thoughts. She didn't know why he had captured her now, after all these years of knowing she was out there somewhere. And why didn't he just finish her right then and there instead of confining her to this cave with shields the Soul Skimmers had no hope of penetrating.
She sat down, exhausted. Without new souls to restore her strength, she'd most certainly perish.
Why, when Kikyou had looked into his eyes, why had they seemed softer, more humane, so unlike the cold, heartless orbs of a demon? Someone loves him, loves him enough to break the curse she had put on his heart almost seventy years ago.
She stiffened as she felt a presence entering the shields around her prison. "Sesshomaru," she said, acknowledging the shadow that towered in the mouth of the cave.
Without a word, he moved towards Kikyou and placed before her a cup of hot tea and a small loaf of bread before sitting on the ground, his back against the wall opposite her. He watched her eat with a glacial stare, but Kikyou knew his thoughts were elsewhere.
"Something is different," he said suddenly, quietly.
Kikyou nodded and put the cup to her lips. She took a sip and cringed inwardly at the tea's bitter taste. Setting the cup back down on the ground, she watched the demon as he watched her. "And you think I have answers for you."
"I once thought this curse was the best thing that had ever happened to me…"
She nodded once more. "To love is to agonize."
"But now the agony is in not being able to," he continued miserably, the look on his face one of rarely seen anguish. "How is it that I have been dead for so long, only to be revived now? Tell me how!" he demanded.
Kikyou looked down and studied the dusting of flour on the top of her bread as she recited, "You may freely love again once you know the true torture of being loved unconditionally."
His eyes hardened and flashed like gemstones. "So this tearing feeling in my chest, is that what you call love? And the knives?" He showed her his still healing forearms, the once deep cuts now nothing more than angry red lines across his pale skin. "Or is it all just another one of your tricks?"
"Would you rather the curse not be lifted?" Kikyou spat. "Is it really so terrible to love someone that you'd rather be a heartless monster writhing in pain the rest of your pathetic life instead of admitting that you can feel?"
In one fluid motion, Sesshomaru leaped to his feet and slapped Kikyou across the face. He stood over her, his chest heaving. The demon blood in him said to go ahead and destroy her, she was nothing more than a sack of bones and dust. But he did not. Instead, he stared down at her as she looked up at him with mixed emotions in her eyes and a growing red mark on her cheek.
"Go," he said to her. Kikyou could feel him lower the shields and the awaiting Soul Skimmers rushed towards the cave, fresh souls in their pincers.
Kikyou stood with as much dignity as she could muster and walked past him silently out into the cool night air.
"He loves me… He loves me not… He loves me…"
Rin let her fingers linger over the last petal. "He loves me not," she said resolutely, plucking the petal and letting it and the stem slip from her fingers to her lap.
She rested her head in her hands and tried to ignore the rumbling in her stomach, but it was slowly becoming more than she could take and she couldn't decide which made her more sick: Being hungry or the fact that Lord Sesshomaru had not yet returned.
"That's it," Rin said aloud. She stood and brushed the flower remnants from her skirt. Resolutely, she ventured outside and into the woods, intent on finding her Lord.
Sesshomaru lay on the cool cave floor as the knives etched patterns into the skin on his torso, staining his robe a dirty brown. He couldn't help but to think he deserved it a little. He thought back to that night almost seventy years before.
A pale-haired body had lain at Sesshomaru's feet and his hands had been covered in the other man's blood. His breath, white and foggy in the crisp night air, had slowed as his stomach poured his life's blood onto the pure, white snow.
And as Sesshomaru had raised his claws to deliver the final blow, a shout had rung through the forest, followed by the creak of a bow as an arrow was cocked.
"Leave Inuyasha be!" she had said so forcefully.
"No," he had growled at the priestess.
With a twang, she had released the arrow, which missed Sesshomaru's head by mere inches and lodged itself in a tree's thick trunk behind him.
Immediately, another arrow took its place. "Next time, I won't miss."
Sesshomaru had lowered his hands slowly and stared down at them as if in a daze. "Why? Why him? He is but a mere half-breed! Surely, you don't love him!"
She had aimed the arrow at his heart, the bow steady even though her hands were shaking. Tears streamed down her beautiful face, but her eyes had burned with devotion to Inuyasha like they had once burned for Sesshomaru. "What do you care whom I love? You told me yourself you would have nothing to do with a filthy mortal like me! What gives you the right to care?"
The second arrow had left the bow with just a twitch of her finger and hit Sesshomaru squarely in the chest. He had stumbled and fell to his knees as a coldness that seemed to emanate from the arrowhead in his chest spread throughout his body.
"You tore my heart to shreds. For that, Sesshomaru, I curse you!"
Back in the cave, Sesshomaru placed his hand over his heart, where a burning sensation heated his skin and flooded his body with unfamiliar emotions and thought about what Kikyou had said. "Is it really so terrible to love someone that you'd rather be a heartless monster writhing in pain the rest of your pathetic life instead of admitting that you can feel?"
He honestly didn't know.
"How dare he!" Kikyou fumed to the Soul Skimmers as they, indifferent to everything but their task, guided souls into the priestess's body. "How dare he lay a hand on me as if I were merely some mortal wench."
She watched her reflection in the stream at her feet. Her chest heaved with effort to contain her anger. A Soul Skimmer nuzzled at her ear and she was immediately distracted.
"So she approaches?" Kikyou asked the Soul Skimmer, who gave no reply. "I knew it was only a matter of time…"
"Thank the Gods!" Rin dropped to her knees on the rocky bank of a small stream and dipped her hands in the cool water, slurping the liquid from her cupped palms. But her relief was short-lived.
She stiffened only moments before something sharp pressed into the tender flesh at the back of her neck. "Who are you and what business have you here?" a feminine voice demanded.
Rin panicked. She tried to remember what Lord Sesshomaru had told her to do should anyone ask her name. "M-my name is Satsu," Rin lied with some difficulty. "I'm a washer woman from the village."
The woman behind her made an amused chortle in the back of her throat. "You are a washer woman, you say?" Rin nodded. "Then were are the clothes you intend to wash?"
Rin's eyes widened and the woman laughed. "I have a feeling that I know who you really are." The sharp object pressed harder against Rin's neck. "You stink of demon, Rin," the woman spat.
Tears sprung at the corners of Rin's eyes and she tried desperately to blink them away to no avail. They ran like little rivers down her cheeks. "P-please!" she begged. "I mean no trespass against you, m'lady. I was only getting water from the stream!"
But the woman just laughed again, a cruel laugh. "Let's see whose name you cry with your dying breath…"
A choked sob tore from Rin's throat. "Sesshomaru!" she screamed as the arrowhead was stabbed through her neck.
Sesshomaru tensed and stopped moving. Through the rustle of the wind in the trees, he thought he heard someone calling his name. A sense of foreboding stole through him that was worse than any burning sensation he had ever experienced.
His lips parted and through them escaped a whisper, "Rin…"
Without a second thought he rose up into the sky on a great burst of air. He closed his eyes and thought about where he wanted to go and pictured her face light up at his approach. Take me to Rin.
Immediately, he was set down next to a stream, but the woman he saw before him was not Rin.
"What have you done with her, Kikyou?" he snarled, the flames in his chest flaring up and the knives biting into his skin with vigor like never before. He ignored the pain and pushed the priestess roughly aside, revealing Rin's lifeless body, crumpled in a heap next to the stream.
"No," he fell to his knees beside Rin. Blood still trickled from the gash in her neck, but the flow had slowed considerably. Sesshomaru pulled the small body to his chest and held it there, oblivious that the knives were working their magic on his face now, scratching line after line across his cheeks and forehead.
Kikyou stood over him, watching, with a bitter smile on her lips and said nothing.
Sesshomaru looked down at Rin's body. Her terrified eyes were glassy and her mouth was open, his name on her lips as she died. Rage mounted inside his chest to compete with the fire that Kikyou's curse had caused.
With a cry of rage, Sesshomaru leaped from the ground and attacked Kikyou, his hands around her throat. He lifted her off the ground and threw her down, her back colliding with a tree trunk and crushing the bag of arrows slung over her shoulder. "What have you done?" he yelled again.
Kikyou winced and tried to stand, but Sesshomaru was at her throat again, his left hand tightening around her windpipe as he positioned the claws of his right hand against her breast over heart. He paused and she stared up at him from underneath lowered lashes.
"You lack the courage of your convictions," she whispered viciously. "Do it!"*
Sesshomaru smiled and flexed his claws once before running his hand through her chest, twisting his fingers around where her heart was supposed to be and wrenching his hand back out. In his fist was nothing but dust, the same as what poured from the opening in her chest. He let the dust slip between his fingers slowly and watched the souls Kikyou had stolen escape from her body as she turned into ashes at his feet.
One soul in particular lingered, flitting about Sesshomaru's face. He smiled. "Rin," he said softly. The orb glowed brighter for a moment before manifesting itself into Rin's shape. Her soul stood before him, just staring into his amber eyes silently. "I'm sorry." He reached out to touch her cheek, but his hand went right through her glowing skin.
Sesshomaru sighed sadly and returned his arm to his side. "I should have told you sooner, but… I love you."
Rin gave him a small smile and rose up on her tiptoes to kiss him gently on the lips and then she was gone.
He licked his lips, his mouth tingling where she had touched him. The fire in his chest was replaced by a loneliness that he had never known. If this was the price of love, he thought, he would rather take the knives.
*Bonus points to anyone who can tell me the movie I borrowed that quote from