A/N: This story is a complete re-upload of the original. One day, the FF gods decided to do away with the ability to create page breaks using "-" and thusly my story was ruined. I'm lazy, and never felt like fixing it. Today I've handled that situation by introducing "…" as a definitive page break and I've also loaded a new chapter for your viewing pleasure. I combined the original Chapters 1 and 2,as well, so you know. I will be leaving most of the old Author's Notes up as they were relevant at the time of the original posting. Happy reading.
Old A/N: I don't own Inu Yasha. A little background on this story: I'm in the midst of writing another Sessh/Rin Fic as we speak, but I had two different ideas that were similar but just did not coincide with each other. I didn't want to torture poor Rin too much, because I hate stories like that, so I simply had to split them. If you read both stories, (the other is titled "A Proper Place to Die," and can be found by copying and pasting this into your browser .net/s/5897214/1/A_Proper_Place_To_Die) you will see similarities. But they are definitely two different stories that are written in different-ish ways. I will work on both stories and hopefully you will see updates quickly. I am actually deployed right now and have NOOOO desire to be writing fics at all! I have my own original story that I'm working on, but I am caught up in all this Sessh/Rin romance and just can't help myself! That being said, I only have so much time to work on everything, and I kinda have to make some tough decisions sometimes.
Hope you enjoy the story, and once again, for those who haven't read my other fic, you will totes see little to no Japanese intermixed in anything that I write. It is one of my pet peeves; I'm like pick an effing language! If you would, however, like a Japanese version of this story, please feel free to ask and I will consider it. *smiles*
· · · — — — · · · · · · — — — · · · · · · — — — · · ·
Reckless is what he had called her.
The only word that he spoke as he strode past her.
He unsheathed his sword, the Bakusaiga, and shoved it into the stomach of the disgusting man who's filthy hand was upon her shoulder. The man hadn't even the time to register just who his murderer was before the life in his eyes died. His grip on her shoulder tightened, just for a moment, and then Sesshomaru wrenched his sword out of him; the man's guts spewed forth and then disintegrated. The damage traveled upward; his hands crumbled and became dust, his face cracked and then erupted, and what was soon left of him was merely a pile of sweaty clothes and sandals.
She did not move. "What are you doing here?" She asked emotionlessly, her lips barely parted. Her face set. She had not followed him with her eyes, to where his long legs continued to carry him, just as far away from her as he had always been.
He did not reply.
She was certain he had continued onward.
She had been sitting upon the florid earth in a forest between two neighboring towns; her back against a tree that was otherwise dying if not for only three golden leaves at the tip of its highest branch. It was night time, and in no way was it safe for an unaccompanied human female to wander the darkness alone. She hadn't cared; she did not care, anymore, where her feet took her and where she made her rest.
But sure enough, a male villager had found his way to her. She didn't attempt to fight him as he touched her face, speaking slurred words to her through drunken lips, his flask of saké posted faithfully on his hip.
Plunging his slimy tongue into her mouth, he had kissed her. And when she didn't respond he slapped her. Her head snapped forcefully to the side, she felt the sting of his finger tips only distantly, and then he grabbed her by the hair and demanded she respect him; his foul, acrid breath seeping into her nose and bits of spit flecking her. Her continued silence seemed to make him even more irate. He grabbed hold of his saké and took a long drink, then splashed some in her face.
She remembered closing her eyes then, with no intention of reopening them, when she heard rustling fabric, felt him grab the back of her head, and gagged as he shoved himself into her mouth; saké still dripping from her wet face, falling drop by drop to stain her tattered purple kosode.
It was only then that Sesshomaru had appeared, and for the first time in years she felt her heart beat in her chest. A solid thump so sudden that she wasn't sure exactly just what had transpired, and in the first seconds of her observing him the man before her had become only a memory.
Rin exhaled and leaned forward, digging the man's drink out of the folds of his clothes. She pressed it to her lips, feeling the familiar burn as it entered her throat, spreading welcomed numbness from there on downward.
She was dying. Sickness plagued her insides like thunder in the heavens, and there was no herb or magic capable of curing her. She was going to die. And for a girl who had grown accustomed to losing everything at a very young age, it had not taken her long to come to a resolution.
She would not lose at this.
She would beat death to it.
Rin took another sip of saké and leaned her head back against her tree, eyes closed.
She was reckless.
Unfeeling.
A monster she had allowed herself to become.
She had torn herself away from her friends, the life she knew, on the day she made her fifteenth year, the day she awoke ill and Kaede had been unable to create neither a salve nor serum to heal her; determined that she would not lose anything else to just one more thing she could not control.
Sesshomaru's face popped into Rin's mind, "reckless," he had called her; had spoken only that word to her. She had not seen him in years. She had run from everything, including him, her first friend, and the last person she ever allowed to abandon her first.
"…person." She mumbled under her breath, in the process of downing the longest sip of saké yet when the flask was knocked out of her hands. She snapped her eyes open. Sesshomaru was standing above her, lowering his foot back to the forest floor, his amber eyes gleaming in the light of the waxing crescent moon.
"I did not save you, for you to kill yourself." He said flatly, and she stared up at him. After all these years she could still not help but be impressed by him, in much the same way she had been when she was but a small child under his care. How tall he was, even now, compared to her. His calmness. His absolute fearlessness. How he was so much unlike herself, or how she had been, not so very long ago.
She placed a hand to her cheek, remembering the time he once touched her there. "I've never asked you to save me, Lord Sesshomaru. In fact, the only thing I've ever asked you to do, you did not do." She said, finding her feet drunkenly and standing. She did not come to his shoulder. "Why are you here?" She asked once more, peering up at him, her black hair fluttering into her face wildly, leaving her dead eyes in shadow.
Sesshomaru used the long fingers of a sharply nailed hand to shove the hair away, staring into Rin's eyes as if trying to find something that wasn't there. She did not move, but snapped her eyes shut stubbornly.
"Then do as you wish. I will not interfere again." And with that he dropped her face and turned his back upon her, walking away; long strides that would once again take him out of her life.
"Sesshomaru! Wait!" She shouted suddenly, sloppily walking the new distance between them. He stopped, granting her only his profile in recognition of her request. She could see but a single side of his cheek, the outline of his thin lips, one half of the markings upon his stoic face that told the story of his royal demon lineage.
"You didn't wait for me years ago…why now?" She asked. And before he could turn away and continue onward she placed her numb fingers upon the cloth of his obi and pressed herself into his arms. And before he could deny her, she kissed him.
· · · — — — · · · · · · — — — · · · · · · — — — · · ·
It was she who had received his curse. He knew that now.
Regardless of all the time he spent ignoring the truth. He observed it in her eyes. And it angered him. For if only she would put the foolish notion out of her mind she would live.
She could not love him.
He would not let her.
Sesshomaru wrenched his mouth away from Rin's, but for a moment he allowed her to linger in his grasp as all manner of silently infectious thoughts contorted themselves throughout his mind.
Why.
Why had it been her, the human of all else?
Punished for thoughtlessly loving him, by the curse of a demon whom he had killed centuries before she was even born.
"Death be unto you, unloved and alone, spread forth from the one thing that should cause life. Spare me now, great dog demon, and my curse will not be dealt your hand. But kill me, and all that is of you will rot from the inside."
Sesshomaru remembered the enchantment. Remembered the slight smile he gave as he rendered the demon lifeless, tearing its bear-like head from the man's body it rested on. Remembered how stupid it had been for the demon to think he would ever care about love.
Maybe that was why his hands remained around Rin now, holding her lightly at the waist, because he felt the slightest bit of guilt that her life had been in his hands from before the day it had even formed, and he had sacrificed it then, without concern for the girl it would later destroy.
She could not love him.
He would not let her.
Then again, whatever foolish way in which she chose to waste her time was of no consequence. She would die regardless; drinking herself to death. She had already died now; allowing all manner of things to occur upon her with no resistance in her feeble human heart.
Did he care? At any rate? Just how it happened?
Did he care that he had saved her life, years ago, just for her to die anyway? And because of him?
Sesshomaru set her away from himself; his face unrevealing of any of his inner thoughts, his eyes a gleam of sharp, cunning amber. Neither of them spoke. Standing apart from one another as the wind blew so that Sesshomaru's sleek silver hair fanned out in front of him, and Rin's wafted gently behind her; their clothing whipping around them audibly in the same breeze that tore those remaining three golden leaves up above their heads from the branch in which they hung.
The leaves wafted to the ground, settling between their feet, and then they both began walking, a slight sway in Rin's drunken step.
And for a moment they were just as they had been once upon a time.
· · · — — — · · · · · · — — — · · · · · · — — — · · ·
"I am going to the village of my birth, Lord Sesshomaru." Said Rin, quite undisturbed by all that had just transpired. Her cheeks were flushed, the sway of her walk sloppy, yet somehow graceful, well placed. She removed a silver flask from the pocket of her kosode and took a long sip of rice wine, still carefully stepping over rock and fallen tree branch. "I am going to die the way I should have seven years ago."
The left corner of her mouth tilted upward crookedly, the remains of a dimple only slightly visible upon her sallow cheek. She had grown into an attractive young woman, and now was only a sickly shell of that former self. Still, beauty emanated from her. From her long thin limbs and up to her wild hair, past apple red lips and large brown eyes burdened by sorrow.
No man had come across her path without looking into those eyes and extending her their help, their service, hoping to aid her, assist her in some way so that she would curve her lips into a smile and those sad brown eyes would achieve some form of light. But they couldn't see, didn't know, that what she needed saving from was herself.
"You are a fool." Said Sesshomaru after a mile spent in complete silence except for the rustling of leaves and Rin's own solid breaths, accompanied by the occasional swish of wine down her throat.
"Lord Sesshomaru," replied Rin, raising thin fingers to her neck and tracing several old scars along the nape of it, the teeth marks of wolves. There was no inflection in her simple voice as she continued, "you interfered with my death seven years ago. It did not leave you unchanged."
At this Sesshomaru looked sideways at her, his amber eyes sharply upon hers.
"Because you took me from Death, Death took something from you. You can never be the same, Lord Sesshomaru, unless fate is reset. Accompany me on my journey, make sure I reach my destination, and you can have just what it is that you desire, to be exactly as you once were."