A/N: Sorry to my readers, I know me shifting these chapters around will throw you guys off a little bit, but it has to be done. Love ya guys. Keep R&R. I don't own Inu Yasha.

"Not just any one can pick my flower, child. It's purpose is to ward me, trap me in my least existent of states in the very atmosphere around it and cure my miasma for miles around. Many before you have stumbled through the forest there; and many have noticed the treat of the reddest of roses, embedded in a graveyard of stones. But only those with the purest of souls have ever been able to pluck it; allowing me and my hollow castle to metastasize around them, just as I am to you now. The priest who planted my rose new not how to kill me, but only to vanquish me, foolishly believing that one day someone with the ability to truly destroy the only demon ever known to harbor a soul would pluck it and at last remove me from this world."

"So then…shouldn't you be happy with me?" I asked him, sobbing, more blood oozing from my mouth. "I freed you…I set you free!"

He was upon me at last, kneeling inches away from my face. I wanted to cover myself, my naked body. I wanted to be back at Kaede's bedside, I wanted to run.

"No." Was his simple reply. "For my soul to fully return to this world I must absorb the souls of others, just as I have with every poor human who has ever wandered into this place before you. My term here will at last end with my amalgamation of your soul, and you will remain here in my stead, forever more in the world of the Everliving."

"NO!" I coughed, ripping my lips free from the blood that had begun to dry upon them.

"I must break your spirit," Rennesaiga said, "and then, hopeless, defenseless, tired, and alone, you will offer it to me."

He reached out for me, as if to touch my face, and suddenly the paralyses I seemed to have been suffering from dissolved. I toppled backward out of his reach, and then, with one terrified look at the miasma, I plunged into it.

~*~*~*~*

I ran as fast as I could, coughing up blood, barely able to open my now bleeding eyes. I tripped over an object and fell to my face, my hands barely breaking my fall. I felt my nose snap as it struck against the stone. Without hesitating I leapt back to my feet, still coughing, still crying blood, the skin of my hands now rough as if they had been scoured clean; the miasma was deteriorating my skin. I vaguely noted that exactly what I had fallen over was a girl, even younger than I, scrubbing the floor of Rennesaiga's castle wordlessly. I looked back at her as I ran, her skin was peeling away from her face and there were no whites to her eyes. I knew her soul had departed from her long ago.

I kept running, horrified. I don't know for how much longer I ran before I realized that the miasma around me had begun to take shape, to form itself into structures that soon resembled people. It was forming itself into the shape of my feelings, of my memories, of my fears, and before me as I ran scenes of my childhood played as if they were strung by the composer of a grand orchestra.

Next to the demons who murdered my parents were the wolves who murdered me. Beyond them were the townspeople who mocked me as a love-less child. And beyond them was Sesshomaru; grey and skeletal in the miasma version of him that was killing me as I ran. I whispered his name, said it to myself, as if he could save me now. I ran through the demons, who dispersed around me, the wolves, who chased me, and the mocking townspeople whose out stretched hands curled around me, their fingers seeping into my mouth, choking me with the miasma once more.

I never made it to Sesshomaru.

Rennesaiga had caught up to me at last, wrenching an arm under my neck and holding me close to him. "Who is that man?" he whispered into my ear, I realized with some amount of dread that he seemed slightly less ethereal than before. Did that mean he had come closer, in just those few minutes, to breaking my spirit? "When I am done with you, it will be him that I kill next. I will use his despair over your death to fuel the relinquishing of his own soul."

"Sesshomaru doesn't have a soul." I snapped, suddenly bitter over the memory of him leaving me in Kaede's village, another bloody tear splashed down my face.

The miasma began to reform, replaying the scene before my eyes. I had not realized, nearly three years ago, just how angry I was at my lord. I re-watched the memory of him walking out of my life in anguish, watched Jaken on his hills and Ah-un trailing steadily behind them and remembered that they were his true companions, not I. He had finally shed his burden, the day he left me behind. I let out an aggravated grunt of rage. I watched the thirteen year old me held back by an aging Kaede as I cried. I had not wanted him to leave me. The first friend I ever had. The first person I had ever loved in any capacity of the sentiment.

Rennesaiga was behind me now, restraining me in much the same way I had been that day, yet there were no calming condolences from him. He held me by my neck and I jabbed at him weakly; kicking and attempting not to cry. Before me I could see now that there was more to this place than just miasma and pavement. We were in what appeared to be a great hall, and facing an open veranda with a long black banister that elegantly curved the length of it, where beyond it the green grass and fresh air that I had strayed from remained, some amount of miles in the distance, just out of the radius of Rennesaiga's miasma.

If I could only get there.

"Give up." Rennesaiga crooned in my ear, he kissed my cheek and where his lips were my skin burned. I struggled against him more, but once again the miasma had begun to swirl, to curl around me. Prying my lips apart and forcing its way into my nose; forming more bad memories and choking me with them.

To my surprise Rennesaiga pressed on toward the veranda, with me still caught in his vice like grip. "Is this where you thought you were going," he growled into my ear, "you thought you were going to leave? Just looking at it brought a thread of false hope into your foolish little heart, didn't it?"

I knew he must be right, it had. For his movements were suddenly jerky again, my hope had worked to give him less solidity. But it did not cause him to stop pressing forward, closer and closer to the veranda. Maybe if I just kept looking at it, kept hoping I could escape, he would weaken, his grip would lapse, and I would be able to run at last.

We reached the banister, and his grip did slacken. For a moment I thought I had my chance. And then he bent me over the railing.

-----

Hours ago now, Sesshomaru had tilted his head. Inclined to believe he had heard someone call his name. Perhaps not just someone, but someone in particular. He did not hear it again, but he did not need to. He was always sure of himself; certain about all things and at all times.

Rin had called his name.

He had left the young girl to be cared for by another human. It had been a wise decision. She would not live forever. She needed to settle down, experience the life of a normal human. Choose a mate, breed and die like the rest of her species before she got too far along in her lifespan to do so. It was a well-known fact of human life. They did not seem disturbed by it, and so he was not. Or had not been, until he met the little girl he had at one time allowed to become his ward.

There had been a time, even after he had left her with her keeper, that he had come to visit her often. He had brought her gifts from his travels, a toy here, and a treat there, mostly as atonement to himself. The first time he returned to her, it had been a simple courtesy visit. He had not wanted someone associated with himself to give him an unsatisfactory reputation. She had grown so much. As if by the blink of an eye. He wondered momentarily if she had ever grown as much in all the time she traveled with him. He returned again, just to mark her progress, and once more she had aged. Just that quickly. In time that passed to him like the days of a single week, she had developed from one of the most adolescent of human forms, to one of the most matured.

He couldn't help but wonder just how much longer she had before she would become dust in the earth just as her fathers' before her. One day it became more acceptable for him to stay away. He wouldn't watch the human die. Go from young ward to dead in a fraction of his life.

But she had called his name. He heard it from her lips and did not hesitate to go to it.

He had risen from the trunk of the tree he had been resting at and instantly took off in the opposite direction of the one he had been walking up until that point. Jaken leapt from Ah-un's hide, screaming for him to wait, he had not packed up camp. But Sesshomaru kept walking and that walk became a run.

He came upon Rin's scent and followed it further Northward, until the point when it suddenly stopped. Sesshomaru glared down. At his feet were the petals of a rose, and Rin's scent remained among them. He stooped to run a long-fingered hand across them, and then without warning he unleashed Tenseiga.