A.N.: Spoiler for Ch. 470 of the manga. Written for Week 65 at the livejournal community iyficcontest.
Disclaimer: Inuyasha and its characters (and even Sessmom, now :P) are property of Rumiko Takahashi.
Second Chances
o
She had seen them before, one time, decades ago – the small, stooped messengers from the other world, easily dispatched with a single stroke, so that once he began to stir she was already rolling her eyes at him, feeling both relieved and absurd.
She is watching for them, again.
It has already been long, almost certainly too long. Yet the light of the lone candle in the room reveals only him, where he'd been laid out before her, looking young in death.
Outside, the few guards left are shuffling about – fearful of her apparent insouciance, and despairing because they could sense that something was wrong. But inside there is only the waiting, the impending dusk, and the sword laying lengthwise across her lap.
The candlelight flickers with every even breath she draws, and next to it she is pale and silent like porcelain, sharp edges almost completely concealed. And even when it burns out to wisps of blue smoke in the small hours of the morning, she is still a stone statue, almost unmovable, almost calm to the core.
She watches.
And when the dawn breaks she will still be there – to slide open the door to the stares of the frightened guards, the sword useless and heavy in her hand, and the stone around her neck heavier still. Rain will have begun falling softly over the landscape, but when she speaks, her voice will be even calmer.
"Go and inform the others – the Inu no Taisho is dead."
o
So, to clarify a bit...when Sessmom revealed that Tenseiga could save each life only once, there was something about her expression that made me wonder whether she was speaking from personal experience. And this was the result.
...hope that it wasn't too speculative in any way.