Authors Notes: Once again, I don't own Inu Yasha. Furthermore, I figured I should explain why I repeat myself sometimes in my writing. It's actually because it just reminds me of the Inu Yasha cartoon. Like why did all of you just repeat the same thing about the Shikon Jewel 7 times? So yeah, that's where that comes from. This is just a short chapter really quick, I'm quite distracted by another Sessh/Rin fic I'm in the process of writing. I will be posting it soon. Be looking out for "Reckless," coming soon to a near you.

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A fire erupted in his heart, his mind, even in the depths of his barely opened eyes. Paining him to answer the question of just what he was doing. Just what could he be thinking, to place his lips upon this human's?

His father's face flashed before his eyes, weak in life and in death as he lost everything. As he died to save the human bilge that became the mother of the only link he had to the once great dog-demon.

He was nothing like him. He would never be. So pathetic a demon to render his life worthless all for a human. A human that would soon be dead anyway, would have been dead sooner rather than later regardless, simply because that was the way of her kind. He knew this. He had accepted this. And more importantly, he did not care.

Sesshomaru snapped his face away, his throat burning. His lips tingling. The tips of his fingers numb. Rin leaned her head forward, coughing up more blood.

"Sesshomaru-sama…" She suddenly whispered, her voice faint. But he had already seen it. Thick purplish miasma had begun to churn itself into haunting shapes all around them, bodies rising from the ground with grossly disfigured appendages and strangely disjointed limbs. Sesshomaru covered Rin's mouth and nose with his hand, his eyes sharply focused on a figure in the distance, one with a long plait of golden hair, and large pupil-less eyes.

He advanced, his mouth a thin smudge of color stretched too wide, as if it were hung on a hinge like some grotesque puppet. He was smiling.

"You will not take what is already mine, Dog Demon." He said methodically, "what she has already begun to give me." And before Sesshomaru could move to draw his Tenseiga once more, Rin had dissolved through his finger tips with a feeble cry, and the miasma army was upon him.

Slaughtering them in his wake, he tore after Rennesaiga, who now held a limp Rin tucked under his arm. A sword in his free hand. It did not take Sesshomaru long to reach him, the clang of sword upon sword causing every woodland creature in the near vicinity who had not yet died of poison to flee.

Rennesaiga lunged and Sesshomaru parried, facing Rennesaiga's back and prepared to shove his sword into him once more, much the same way he already had. But Rennesaiga was faster now, more alive now, than he had been when first they met. He whipped around, holding Rin in front of Sesshomaru's blade by her hair. Sesshomaru recoiled his sword more quickly than he expected himself to.

"I should mention," crooned Rennesaiga, dangling Rin like a child's rag doll, "that if I die, she dies. For she is a part of me now, has been since the first minute of the hour she entered my castle. Weak, desperate, pitiful as all humans are, she was unable to take all of herself back from me. Everything I took from her is mine now, so shall be everything I will take."

Sesshomaru growled, poised to attack once more, his Tenseiga flaring, his body already leaned forward, but Rennesaiga continued, " You should be happy, shouldn't you, Dog Demon?" I am taking her off of your hands," and Sesshomaru stopped, a frown creasing his lips. It was in that moment that Rennesaiga smirked and dissolved, just as quietly as he had arrived. Rin still dangling in his hands.

--

I crouched upon my knees amongst the members or Rennesaiga's court. My head lowered to the ground as I tried to ignore the discomfort of the position. On either side of me were his soul-less minions, waiting to be beckoned by him and ordered to complete some menial task.

My skin was sore, bleeding in places from where it had begun to deteriorate. The nails upon my hands were chipping away, leaving tender pink flesh beneath the places where they once were. My hair was overlong, reminiscent of the wild branches of a swaying willow tree. I could no longer talk, my voice had been stripped from me by the very atmosphere in this place.

But I was still alive.

I could tell Rennesaiga was becoming impatient.

It had been seven days since he stole me from Sesshomaru-sama.

Seven days that I remained within the walls of his miasma filled castle and not succumb to its power.

Seven days since Sesshomaru-sama placed a kiss upon my lips.

I blushed slightly. A small flush upon my drained, pale cheeks as I remembered the feeling of our lips pressed together.

I knew it was that memory that was keeping me alive, even as my body died.

--

Sesshomaru had not attempted to return to Rennesaiga's castle.

If he killed the demon, he would kill the girl by association. He pursed his thin lips, staring down at his left hand upon his knee as he sat near the edge of the steaming hot spring from which Rin had been stolen. His back to the very rock she had sat upon.

Around him thickets of thorny roses had begun to spring up, dead upon their branches from the moment they budded. Ominously foreshadowing the rise of the demon who once remained trapped within a single flower.

If he did not kill the demon, the demon would kill her. He raised that hand to his lips, holding it there. Maybe she was already dead. And wasn't that just as well? She had lived, she would die. There was nothing more to it now than how much time it took to get from one to the other.

Unless he considered the moments in between.

Unless he considered the fact that right now, if Rin had not died already, she was suffering. And he was rather certain indeed, that she was still quite alive. And he knew it was because she was unable to die. Because in that kiss he placed upon her lips, she had given him a much bigger part of herself than she had ever given Rennesaiga.

But he did not want it.

He did not want anything of the human's.

He would not accept it.

The girl could not relinquish her soul to Rennesaiga so long as she loved him. So long as part of it remained with him. But only if he kept it. Fostered it. Allowed her love to become a part of him as well. And he would not do it.

He would not even entertain the idea that perhaps he already had. That even by allowing her to remain among him as a child he had begun to accept some miniscule amount of her being into himself. And that over the years it had grown into him and of him, so that she was to him just as his Tenseiga or Bakusaiga were.

Suddenly his eyes narrowed. He would not let Renessaiga have what belonged to him.