"Now that she had nothing to lose, she was free…"

-Paulo Coelho

Imbalance

"All I have to do is jump…" the young woman slurred under her breath. "If I jump, I'll be free. If I jump, it's over. What's worse than working for him? To die… Dying would be…" A relief. Part of her wanted to let those words slip out on the tip of her tongue, they were just there, but part of her wanted to ignore the voice at the edge of her mind coaxing her towards the edge of the building. She stumbled forward, her knees knocking against one another, partly in fear, and partly because of the third beer she was drinking at the time. It wasn't enough to get her drunk, but she certainly was feeling the poison in her bloodstream.

A cigarette in one hand, a beer in the second, her tight dress riding up her legs, the money stashed in the purse she left by the stairway, her hair falling in front of her eyes and out of the elaborate coiffure that she had put up for the party that night, the music still blasting away in the club below, but most importantly, the burn on her back… She knew that her life had hit rock bottom, and that no matter what she did, there was no way she could swim back up to the top: she was drowning in this life. For all she cared, she was already dead.

"I could take pills…" she muttered. "I'm already intoxicated… That should be enough to do me off." She set the beer down on the ledge of the building and turned around so that she could sit down on it, slowly twirling her legs around over the side. When she looked down at the street, she inhaled sharply, both awed and terrified of the concrete below her. The streets were quiet, it was three in the morning, after all, but they seemed so calm, so peaceful… So opposite to turmoil that she faced every day when she had to head in for "work", when she had to earn back all the money that had be leant to her, when she was reminded that she was not her own person, but a pawn, easily expendable, and anything but alive and free.

A gentle breeze caressed her face, almost as if it were kissing her cheeks, her salty eyes, her swollen red lips, whispering to her that everything would be okay, and for a moment, she felt at peace. The edges of her lips curled up to a small smile. She began to pump her legs, feeling slightly like a child again that sat on a swing, feeling the smack of the wall against her heels and watching as one shoe fell off and plummeted to the ground, which resulted in a small smirk.

"Damn, those shoes were expensive… If he knew that I lost one…" She shook her head and sighed. No, I won't think of him now. This is me trying to get away from him, I won't let him ruin this for me, too. She took in one last inhale from the cigarette, flicked it down into the streets, watching at the burning ember cascaded down, knowing that her body would be next. At least her soul, she'd be free. The tips of her fingers curled along the side of the edge, getting ready to push forward as she took one last breath. Get ready to fly, sweetheart…

"What are you doing?"

The young woman abruptly jumped in her spot, shocked by the appearance of a second voice. The initial thought was that he sent one of his hounds after her to keep watch and make sure she didn't do anything out of line, and immediately when she turned around, she realized that the man's face was unrecognizable. Well, he seemed familiar, but she certainly hadn't seen him before, at least not in her work place. His features were soft, but at the same time, his eyes contained a hardness that only a callous man could have. She flickered her eyes on him, inspecting him, seeing if he was possibly a new member, and as she did so she gathered as much information on his character as possible. He was wearing a jacket, but she noticed immediately that he was wearing scrub pants, so he was either a doctor or a nurse: He wasn't wearing a wedding ring, so he couldn't have been married either, and he seemed to be quite young, perhaps his mid twenties, so he wasn't young enough to be a new recruit: she decided he wasn't one of her boss's men.

"I'm… I'm enjoying the view," the lie felt forced. She wasn't exactly expecting company, and she could tell by the look on his face that he knew. The man walked toward her, calm and collected, as if the scenario was as simple as buying an ice-cream.

"Don't come closer!"-the man stopped in his tracks-"This isn't any of your business, so I suggest you leave now!" She scooted closer the end of the ledge, biting her lip as she rocked forward.

"No. It's not my business," he responded, beginning to waltz over to her once more, far more slowly, as if she wouldn't notice.

"Then why are you here?" she barked at him, not bothering to turn around and see him fully.

"Because I'm a surgeon, and I saw you sitting on the ledge. It did not seem that the police were coming, so I figured I'd have to take care of the situation on my own." The doctor was almost at the ledge of the building, preparing to remove his jacket.

"They let you in in that?" she muttered.

"They must've thought I was a dancer."

The desperate woman chuckled, still not turning to make eye contact with him as he brought himself beside her, leaning along the edge of the building himself as if he were leaning over the rails of a ship on a cruise.

"You can't stop me," she whispered. "I need to do this."

"You need to kill yourself?"

"You wouldn't understand. This is… This is my only chance to get away."

"What's your name?" the surgeon asked, looking down at his hands and then back out to the sky. The wind picked up again and she felt it all along her body, through her hair, and she smiled again.

"Please leave," the young woman looked at him, with pleading eyes. "Please. I need to do this alone."

"You don't want to be alone when you die," he seemed to hum the words, as if they balanced perfectly on his lips. The young woman shook her head, struggling to hold back a laugh.

"You're naïve, aren't you," she finally looked over at him, bearing a smile on her face, but he seemed to be serious, with no change of emotion over his looks.

"I see people die alone every day. I think I know what I'm talking about," the harsh tone in his voice caused her to look away. Her fingers pushed up against the edge, and she felt his hand wrap around her wrist. "Don't. You have a reason to live."

"How many people did you see die today?" she whispered, looking down her at her own feet, continuing to swing them.

"No one died on my watch today, at least, not yet. I just got off work, the last thing I need is to call an ambulance and have to work on you on a table if you survive the fall," his eyes gestured down to the street, "which will be painful."

"The fall's too high for me to survive it," she snickered.

"You seem to have had something to drink, so no. It's possible for you to survive this fall. It will hurt like hell, but it's possible," he explained. It sounded like a lie, they both knew a five story drop would kill her, and he was simply trying to use scare-tactics to stop her, and it seemed to be for a selfish reason, too, which only angered her.

The smack of her lips resonated through the air, the hum of disappointment that rang off them pierced the surgeon's ears. Tears welled up in her eyes and she bit her lip as she turned away from her, pulling her wrist out of his grip and immediately going up to dry her eyes. Her mascara was running down the underside of her eyes, she was starting to dry heave, and her body was shaking from head to toe.

"You don't want to do this," he whispered, leaning in closer to her, attempting to make eye contact again. The calm in his voice seemed to run down her spine, the flavor of his words, but it couldn't change the movement of the wind as it brushed through her hair and along her skin, reminding her of her reasoning.

"But I do want to be free."

She could see in her peripherals the change in his face, almost shock—at least she knew he had emotions, he seemed to be simply a calm beast.

"If you die, there's no guarantee that what awaits you on the other side will be any better than what you have now. Or if there will be anything at all," he stated matter-of-factly, "In fact, most patients when they wake up from a near-death experience say that they felt or saw nothing at all. So if freedom is your goal… I'm not sure how far you'll get with it."

"You don't know where I've been!" she twisted her head around and snapped at him, eyes burning with the fury of fire, teeth clenching in a continuous growl as she panted, her finger tips digging into the stone. "You don't know how I've been living. I'm trapped. There's no way out."

"I'm asking you not to jump off of that ledge tonight," the young surgeon explained. "Give yourself one more chance."

She turned her head back to the street, glaring down at the road with a hate that seemed to roar from the inside. The surgeon held out his hand to her and she flickered her eyes over to them, smooth and clean, before looking back up into his calm eyes, they were a dark brown, at least at the edges, growing lighter toward the middle with hints of gold resonating in the irises. She was drawn in by the seemingly unmoved eyes, as if his calm had somehow transferred over to her. Her eyes drew over his face, it was slim, his lips barely parted as he breathed in and out, his complexion seemingly fair against his sheen, dark black hair that was tied back to keep it out of his face.

"Come on."

Reluctantly, she placed her hand in his and he immediately drew one arm around her waist to help her climb off of the edge of the building; she stumbled upon making contact with the ground, holding onto him for balance. The young woman removed her remaining platform so that she would at least be level when she walked, handling the alcohol would've been hard enough. He proceeded to put the jacket he had taken off earlier around her shoulders, rubbing her arms as if she were cold.

"We should get you to a hospital," the surgeon inclined. "You should be kept in a facility, until you're feeling better at least."

"No."

"Pardon me?"

"No, no hospitals." She began to shake again in his fingertips. "No hospitals, he'll find me… If I go to a hospital, he'll… He can find me if I'm in a hospital, and if he knows what I tried to do… I can't!" her statements gradually turned into fragments, which turned more into belligerent cries, her eyes opened wide, staring at him with such an extreme desperation.

"Fine, no hospitals," he agreed, and the young woman breathed in a sigh of relief. "But I don't felt comfortable leaving you alone right now." This statement resulted in a glare, which he didn't bother to acknowledge. "So you can stay the night in my apartment. I'll keep my house-sitter, he won't mind. And I can make sure you stay… Alive," he paused before the last word, as if it made him slightly uncomfortable.

"I don't need a baby-sitter," she muttered, grabbing the jacket and pulling it tighter around her body.

"Really? Because you were about to throw yourself off of a five story building. You either go to a hospital-," panic returned to the woman's eyes, "-or you come home with me and I help you out until you wake up tomorrow. You choose."

The two stood there for a moment, the young woman still gnawing at her lip in the process of deciding, before she looked up to him and nodded her head in agreement. "I'll come home with you, if you promise that I can leave tomorrow," she compromised. The strange surgeon nodded in agreement before walking off without her, she started over at him, almost awe struck by his behavior. The surgeon barely cast a look over his shoulder.

"Are you going to come?"

"Of-… Of course!" she commented, baffled by the statement, and proceeded to follow after him, feeling almost awkward about the interaction.

"You never told me what your name was," he stated as he walked through the door.

"I'm Kagura," the young woman introduced herself, she looked up at the stranger, almost questioning the fact that he seemed to pause for a moment before continuing his path down the poorly lit stairwell, the lights flickering in a eerie manner, not that Kagura wasn't used to living spaces as such, but the surgeon did seem slightly uncomfortable. "And you are?"

"My name is Sesshomaru. When you get to my apartment, you'll meet my housekeeper and my daughter, although, she is probably asleep… But my housekeeper has never been good at getting her to comply. They are Jaken and Rin respectively, although, I would appreciate it if you did not address my daughter." Kagura was immediately insulted by the statement, her nose scrunched up into a scowl, and she immediately went to shout at the surgeon, but he quickly turned around and stared her down with his calm gaze. "It's not meant to be offensive. It's just that she gets distracted easily and I don't want her to get any ideas about you."

What's –that- supposed to me?

"Fine," she growled. "I promise not to talk to your daughter."

"Unless she talks to you first, then she'll think there's something wrong with her if you don't involve yourself in a conversation."

Is it possible for this guy to seem any more condescending? She heard the thought echo in her mind, but part of her also knew that he was the reason she was alive, which made it nearly impossible to hate him (not completely impossible, though).

Kagura stopped in the stairway, looking down as Sesshomaru opened the door to the exit. He stared back up at her with questioning eyes.

"Why are you doing this?" she questioned, tension quickly rising in her body. She knew better than to get herself into situations where she had to pay off a debt or owe anything, but for whatever reason, this man had a certain familiarity and immediately seemed to gain her trust, or at least, seem like someone that would be the least of her worries.

"I told you, I didn't see anyone die today, which would've been a record for me. I'd like to keep it that way. Let's go."