Thanks to Vivian who betaed up until this chapter, and to Amku who will be my beta from the next chapter to the end! L P, please p.m. or email me! Your email address did not process properly when your review was posted. Sorry for all the weird formatting issues in earlier versions of the chapter.

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Bird on a wire

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four

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February 6, 2006
Rin

Rin folded the edge of her nylon seat belt against her shoulder and watched Sesshoumaru under the shadows of her lashes. He had ceased typing messages into his phone and appeared to be looking out the window at the passing city. From her angle, she couldn't see his eyes behind his glasses, but as a creeping feeling rose on the back of her neck, she realized that he was watching her in the reflection as certainly as she was watching him.

"Umm, Sesshoumaru-san. I heard from Jaken-san that we are going to visit the priest of the Higurashi shrine."

"Yes. Higurashi Sota," came her answer. The short response came as little surprise; after all, Rin had already begun to learn that emotional flatness was a consistent trait of his. He had barely spoken at dinner the previous night after inquiring about her purchases, though it was obvious he noticed her presence. At least this is how it seemed to Rin. She had clung to her seat at the table, terrified that he would comment on her terrible table manners or find her new clothes unflattering or too expensive and demand they be returned. Only by dessert had she reached the conclusion that he wasn't angry with her, but that it was in his nature to watch new things in his environment with a steady, liquid amber gaze, and he simply didn't seem to care one way or another about what she did or didn't do.

But he was her guardian by his own insistence, and she was living in his home. Her new home. They were family, and surely that meant they could speak to one another, at least.

"So, how do you know Higurashi-boushi*?" she asked him conversationally.

"His sister married my half-brother," he answered, and Rin lit up.

"You have siblings?"

"No," said Sesshoumaru, tone flat. "He's dead."

Rin recoiled. "I'm sorry-" she began.

"Don't be. It was a long time ago. We were never close."

"It must have been hard, though, for his wife..."

"She is also dead."

"So young?" Rin asked before she could stop herself. Sesshoumaru appeared placid in spite of her outburst, but also as if he were lost in thought. Finally, he answered.

"Her family lost her before her time."

Rin had no idea what to say to that, so she went silent and wrapped the edge of her skirt around her knees as she shifted on her seat. The air conditioner and the sound of the engine seemed quiet from the black leather backseat of the car, as if it were pristine, a sanctuary from the street. Rin dwelled on her guardian's words, feeling as though she were missing something. Sesshoumaru had said that he had never been close to his half-brother, but if that were true, then why was he visiting someone as distantly related to him as his half-brother's widow's brother?

As the car ascended the expressway, Rin gazed out over the suburbs of western Tokyo. The roads unfolded in front of her like lines on a map, only they were buried by buildings, and she did not know where any of them led.

The arrival to their destination, however, was anything but anticlimactic. Higurashi shrine had been established on top of a hill, and, following, it was a large and imposing monument. Rin could see a tree towering from behind it, adding to the already impressive shrine an even grander impression of both age and permanence. Getting to the building commanded a show of humble mortal transience, which Rin was quickly reminded of after she was forced to climb hundreds of steps to meet her destination. When she arrived, she was slightly displeased to find that her host was already waiting for them, and only she was out of breath, but she tried not to let it show.

"So, your name is Rin?" asked the young priest as he waved her into the shrine proper. He couldn't be more than a few years older than her, Rin thought in wonder. His body wasn't as big or impressive as Sesshoumaru's, even though he seemed to have lean muscles and the height of an adult. He wore his shoulder length black hair in a low ponytail, which seemed way too cool for a priest, but from the way that he had greeted Sesshoumaru without smiling - with nothing more than a nod and a name, really - she was starting to feel that there was something strange about him beyond just his appearance.

"Yes. I am Inutaisho Rin," she answered politely, and to mask her disquiet she looked him straight in the eye. "Are you Higurashi-boushi? Sesshoumaru-san's relative?"

"Of course." The boy smiled, but then he looked just as taken aback. "Related? Well.. I guess we are."

Rin furrowed her brow. "You either are or you aren't, right?"

"Rin..." said Sesshoumaru with a warning note to his voice. But the priest just scratched his head.

"Yeah, I guess we're family after all. It's just… It's too much a part of the past for me to consider it often," said the priest faintly. He turned his attention, then, from her to his sister's brother-in-law. "I brought out the albums," he said to Sesshoumaru. "They're just inside if you'd like to take a look."

"I would prefer to take care of our other business first."

Rin clutched her hands behind her back and held them tightly as if the action could hold down her curiosity. What was Sesshoumaru talking about? If it was just 'business' business that he had come to the shrine for, it wouldn't make much sense for him to have brought her along.

"Rin."

"Yes?"

"Wait inside. We will be back shortly."

Rin watched the pair walk away.

She reluctantly entered the priest's family's two-storied house through a sliding door and found her way past the breakfast room into the living room, where she saw an inviting pale blue couch. No sooner than she had sat down and an old, fat calico cat rubbed against her legs. Rin leaned down and stretched out her hand to pat it on the head.

"Hello, dear," she said. But no sooner had she touched it than it began to totter on its paws, and meowing pathetically, plopped onto its side.

"Uh-"

"Don't mind him," came the voice of an old man from behind her. "He's an old, useless cat."

Rin sat up quickly. "I'm sorry, I-"

"Are you one of Kagome's friends?" asked the man. He was hunched over with grey, wandering eyes that reminded Rin suddenly of a dog she had met once in her apartment complex. It had been old and demented, but subtly. Bent, they had called him, because he had been hit once with a stick and never regained the proper shape to his mind.

"Pardon?" she asked. "…Kagome? Do you mean like the food brand?" asked Rin, racking her brain and coming up with no other guesses. The man tutted.

"No, no! Not that," he wailed as he walked around the couch, and settled in a chair across from Rin. "She was my granddaughter. A very kind girl."

"Oh! You mean Sesshoumaru's sister-in-law!" Rin exclaimed, and re-evaluated the man in front of her. Of course, he would have to be Kagome's, and the present shrine priest's, grandfather. "Do you have any pictures of her?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." The old man swept his hand out over the coffee table between them. "My son just took out some old wedding pictures this morning…"

Rin scooted to the edge of her cushion to take a better look. A large yellow book sat out on the coffee table beside a few untied scrolls with coffee stains over flowing script. She saw the English for "album" written in the corner, and realized that the book must be the same one as Sesshoumaru had requested Higurashi-boushi procure for him. On impulse, she picked up the photo album, and was surprised to find it quite light in her hand. "May I look at them?" she asked as she opened the cover. The old man's reply - probably affirmative and long-winded - was lost to her as she looked down at the first image.

Her legs felt weak, and she sat down on the low sofa that had nudged her at the back of her knees. Her eyes remained fixed to the photographs. They seemed both new and terribly old, like she had stumbled upon the pictures from a photo shoot of a period drama. A wedding party stood together in kimono and hakama, which in itself was not unusual. However, there were unnecessary anachronisms, like the topknot that the man in the corner wore, and the tall Buddhist staff in the the hand of the a purple-robed man.

"There's Kagome, of course." The proud grandfather pointed to the young woman in an intricate wedding kimono. She looked a lot like her brother, though more tired. Her hair was obviously very long.

"And there's her husband, Inuyasha."

Rin peered at the groom skeptically. He was good-looking enough, and in shape, but he appeared to be wearing a strange costume. He had white hair, even longer than his wife, and some sort of strange hat on that made it look as if he were wearing cat ears. In spite of all of it, for some reason, Rin felt a rush of disappointment. It were as if the man were missing something, as if he had just fallen short of some expectation she hadn't known she'd had.

"He doesn't look much like his brother," Rin said. "His brother is Sesshoumaru-san, isn't it?"

"Sesshouma-who?"

Rin shook her head and moved on, bringing her finger to the plastic veneer over the photo to trace face after solemn face. "Where are you and Higurashi-boushi?" she asked. "And the rest of Kagome's family?"

The old man's face, which had been filled with pride, drooped. "We weren't invited to the ceremony," he lamented.

"Oh. I'm… I'm sorry," Rin said sincerely. Yet it made sense, now that she thought about it. If Kagome had been estranged from her family, that would probably explain why Higurashi-boushi hadn't been quick to call Sesshoumaru his relative. Rin turned the page to uncover a photo of the married couple standing together at the bottom of a flight of stone-hewn stairs.

"This is the shrine," said Rin, pointing.

"Yes, yes." Kagome's grandfather rubbed the skin around his foggy brown eyes, and his wrinkles lengthened. "It looks more or less the same even now, isn't it? Even after five hundred years, give or take a few..."

"Five hundred years?" Rin furrowed her brow.

"Why, that's when the picture was taken, mind you-"

"Ah! Grandpa's telling tales again, isn't he?" interrupted a mild voice from behind the couch. Rin spun around, slamming the album shut as if she had been caught red-handed in a cookie jar. A tall, auburn-haired boy stood behind the couch with folded arms and a wide, tight-lipped smile underneath sparkling sea-green eyes. "These pictures were from the matsuri* a few years back, weren't they?"

Rin found herself captivated by the man who'd just come into the room. He appeared to be somewhere around Higurashi-boushi's age, or maybe even a few years younger. His face was clearer, paler, and his features more refined. Her interest in him stemmed from an undefinable similarity to Sesshoumaru that he possessed. Was he foreign, maybe? Like the image of the bizarrely wigged half-brother, it troubled her as much as it excited her.

"Telling tales!" Grandpa protested meanwhile. "I would never! I'm telling Kagome's friend about the wedding!"

"Oh. You knew Kagome, too?" the man's eyes softened as he looked at her, and Rin felt a pang of sympathy. He obviously had known and been fond of the dead girl in the photographs. Rin shook her head, seeing no recourse but the truth.

"No, I don't - didn't - actually know Kagome," she revealed. "Grandpa just assumed…"

"Then, in that case, I bet these pictures aren't interesting to you." The boy's sentimental moment vanished as he gave her a friendly wink. "We might as well just put them away and introduce ourselves. I'm Shippo."

"Nice to meet you," said Rin, her thoughts still struggling to sort themselves out as he inclined his head to her in introduction.

"Grandpa here sometimes loses track of what's what," the boy explained. Grandpa sat muttering to himself on his chair, his weathered hand resting on the photo album as if it tenderly protect it. Rin knew for certain in that moment that whether the pictures had been from a wedding or a matsuri made little difference. She didn't want to see any more pictures that made her feel so lost. She rose to her feet, her hands fisted at her sides.

"I'm sorry," she said. "But I feel kind of ill. I'm going to go back to the car and wait there. Please tell Sesshoumaru-san for me."

"Sure, we'll tell him," the red-headed boy allowed in obvious confusion. He walked around the couch to join her. "Is there anything we can do? Give you some painkiller, maybe?"

"I know a few herbal remedies that-" The old man started, sounding ready to rattle off from memory a page from an ancient cookbook, but Rin cut him off.

"No, it's fine. Thank you."

She hurried to the door, and stepped out into the cloudy day, her heart pounding. She looked around. The shrine grounds were static and austere, without a single petitioner in sight. A thick-trunked tree held a solemn vigil in the center of the courtyard. Rin suspected that just as it had watched over Kagome and her husband at their marriage ceremony (or the festival, or whatever it was), that it was fixing her, too, with its ancient spirit eyes.

Rin turned away from it quickly, as her discomfort grew. She felt as if something was being hid from her, just beyond the gates and buildings, but she couldn't work out what. Nor could she work out why, when she'd looked at the pictures in the album, she'd had the feeling that the truth might just burst out from inside of her.

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Jaken

The pocket of Jaken's private world collapsed from around him like a punctured tire when the back door of the short limousine opened without warning. As a small human girl slipped into the backseat with a drawn-out sigh, Jaken rushed to close his magazine.

"Rin!" he exclaimed shrilly over the enka music on the radio. "You're back early!"

She collapsed in the backseat with a drawn-out sigh. Jaken saw from his rear view mirror that she had a drawn, wan look to her face. When she did not immediately reply, he craned his neck to see her with his own eyes. "…Rin?"

"Hello Jaken," she said to him quietly. "Can you take me to a vending machine or a convenient store for a drink? I'm really thirsty."

"There's water in the back seat."

With a nod, Rin opened the ice cooler between the two back seats and began scooping ice pellets into one of the glass cups. Jaken watched greedily, his head still turned over his shoulder as far as it could go. Human's use of ice in drinks had always seemed to him like one of their better ideas. Seeing ice in a cup reminded him of the taste of icicle tips hanging over the edge of a river bank at winter. He could feel, as if it were something he could taste on the back of his tongue, the chilly peace that always covered his banks as dew frosted over exposed river rocks in the mornings.

"Jaken." The girl leaned forward in her seat, her posture beseeching. He knew the words she would ask before they came off of her lips.

"He is not back yet," he interrupted her. "My master, Sesshoumaru-sama, should be back shortly. He's usually gone no longer than twenty minutes for these visits. After all, he keeps a very tight schedule."

"But that seems too short," Rin frowned, sitting back with a petulant air. "After all, isn't he visiting his family? I would expect they would have a lot to talk about when they saw each other…"

Jaken took out a cloth from an inner pocket of his jacket and used it to polish his glasses. "No, they don't. They are very different from us," he said vaguely.

"How so?"

They're human, Jaken wanted to say, but the promise he'd made to his lord kept the words shut up in his throat. A sneaky idea, however, wormed its way into his head. "What do you know about Lord Sesshoumaru?" he re-directed her.

"He's my guardian," Rin answered. "Why?"

"And is that all you can say about him?" he prodded. "Any other attributes of note?"

Jaken took satisfaction in the confusion that briefly crossed over her face as a result of his words. "He's… reticent," she said eventually.

"Hmm. Interesting that you would say that even now, when you should have gotten to know him better over the past few days. All the same, you're right. But he used to be much more sullen, and less kind. He has changed over the years in many ways."

Rin snapped her fingers. "That's right! You've known him and his family for a long time, haven't you, Jaken. What sort of a man is he?"

Jaken's feathers were ruffled by this, of course. He would never stoop to calling his Master a man. The idea of it offended him so deeply that he felt bile rising in the back of his throat, and he had to grab onto the steering wheel to steady himself. If only his lord would allow him to tell Rin the truth… To show her the awesome power that their Master wielded, and how much he deserved their respect...

If only his lord would tell her, instead of forcing him to speak in riddles that no longer came to him so easily as they had in his past.

"My master surpasses any other I have ever met. I would be honored to die again for Lord Sesshoumaru," he declared. "A thousand times, if it were necessary."

"I don't mean to pry, but I was wondering… Sesshoumaru-san saved you too, didn't he?"

"Yes," Jaken managed, trying to sound nonplussed. But he was floored.

He was being held by the skin of his neck, covered in beads of sweat erupting from his pores. Like his own pool of water. The air was catching on his webbed toes, dangling above the ground. He closed his eyes, too ashamed to face the one whom had bested his skill and was going to murder him and his clan; for this, at least, he deserved to die. But then a whip came out from the darkness, swinging out like a fishing line and catching onto his captor, blasting him into tiny specks of light. A life for a life and Jaken was free to continue ruling his people. Yet in that glorious, darkest moment, he knew that he had been saved to serve.

And somehow, Rin could see the mark of that event in him. She had known without ever even being told of Sesshoumaru's inhuman strength of muscle and of spirit. She had always been so astute for a human.

"What did you say?" Rin looked at him, puzzled.

Snapped from his reverie, Jaken echoed in her confusion. "…What?" he asked her groggily."

My 'being human'. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Err…" Jaken couldn't remember saying that at all, and pulled at the tie around his neck nervously. Why did the car suddenly feel so hot?

"…I don't know what you're talking abut, you foolish girl," he scoffed, masking his discomfort. "I didn't say anything like that, except… Ah! Look over there! It's Lord Sesshoumaru!"

Predictably, Rin whipped her head toward the car window, and Jaken straightened in his seat, placing his hands firmly on the sides of the wheel. And so he had been again. His Lord was advancing toward them, his gait flowing like the surface of a placid river, the soles of his feet constantly a half-centimeter above the ground - a singular example of his perfect power under tight control. And control was the most precious salvation that Jaken could imagine.

In his leather briefcase, Jaken knew, Sesshoumaru carried precious gifts in tow for the both of them. Gifts that would keep Rin from ever needing to ask what it mattered to be human or not. Gifts that would keep everyone from asking.

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Sesshoumaru

As much as Sesshoumaru preferred working with Sota Higurashi-boushi, especially as opposed to the boy's now-retired grandfather, he never felt quite right after their meetings. It reminded him of the feeling of being gouged out by a demon's sword; of standing too close to a priestess with an arrow pulled back tightly on her bow. Had it not been absolutely necessary, he would have never submitted himself to a spiritual onslaught that made him feel and look so weak. But his white flag had gone up with the rising of wide, black sails on the ocean horizons off of Shizuoka a century and a half ago.

Power, he reminded himself, was more lethal when it was kept in reserve, to be unleashed at the proper time, and in the proper way. It had never been wrapped up in his physical strength alone, and this is what protected him where it had failed so many others. He was capable of change, if not humility in the wake of forces larger than himself. He had yet to encounter such a force more than once in his life, and she sat beside him in the back of a pitch-black Bentley that careened through his lands, restless and cold beneath layers of concrete and waste.

A fang hanging from his necklace itched awkwardly as it laid upon his chest, reminding him incidentally that he had not been ruling so well as he would have liked.

When Jaken reached the corner of Roppongi Hills avenue and the lower strip of the mall an hour later, Sesshoumaru signaled him to pull over. "Rin," he said as his car door automatically swung open. "We will walk back from here."

The girl was evidently stunned by his sudden address, but scrambled out of the side of the car, hardly aware of the danger of passing vehicles. "Bye, Jaken," she called out before closing the door firmly behind herself.

He joined her on the sidewalk and took a moment to observe her as he could not while she had faced away from him toward the window. She was bundled up in a scarf that reached all the way to her chin. She looked tired, but not cold; the smell of a light sweat on her brow and her hands revealed that she was anxious.

He came to her side and they began walking together.

It was early afternoon now. The number of humans in suits had increased, as it was the end of their lunch hours and they had to return to their work. The study resumed much like every other day that Sesshoumaru walked the Hill. The salarymen looked burdened beyond their years, though he passed a few of them dragging cigarettes and laughing with their coworkers so enthusiastically that it seemed as if they hung the value of their existence upon the act itself. He watched the women prowling in stiletto boots, with painstakingly coifed long hair and designer purses hanging off of their shoulders. It was more than they could afford, he reflected, all of it; the endless pursuit of beauty stole from them a few hours every day of their already fleeting youth. The sense of emptiness, the meaninglessness, and the despair laid over all of the humans - men and women alike - like a background haze. It was this alone that hadn't changed over the hundreds of years he had been alive. Human life, in whatever form those lives ultimately took, was doomed from the start.

And then, of course, there was Rin.

He stared at his charge, at the top of her head where the ebony hairs broke out from the skin of her scalp and caught in the sun, shining vividly. She had done nothing to make it so bright except to follow him from the car into the sunlight. She was different from those other humans, he thought fiercely. If only because she was his.

Why?

"You have been very quiet," he said finally. Rin did not immediately meet his eyes, but instead her gaze wandered from tree to tree.

"I've been thinking."

"What about?"

"Different things…" she trailed off. Frustrated, Sesshoumaru tried again.

"You may… talk around me," he said.

"About what?"

"Anything that pleases you."

"Anything?" Rin now paused in her step, turning to look directly into his eyes. He was taken aback by the boldness of the action just for a moment before the feeling was replaced with pride when he realized that she was unabashedly observing him as he had been doing to her all day. He stared back at her, waiting for her to finish her last she nodded, her lips pursed as a result of her deep consideration. "You know," she said finally. "Your eyes are actually quite a strange shape, almost cat like. It seems as if they could see right inside of me."

"They cannot."

She laughed, not bothering to cover her mouth as she did. "I'm glad to hear it. But are you sure you won't be upset if I just… just talk about stupid things? Really, most boys I know hate it when girls just go off and..."

"I am not a boy," Sesshoumaru answered simply, unwilling to mask his disdain. Rin, however, didn't seem to be bothered by his frown, but smiled up at him anyway.

"I know that," she said, more softly, "But I'm not really sure what a man is like either. I didn't grow up with a father, though some of my friends used to say that it didn't make much difference, because they barely saw them."

Rin rubbed her hands together. Sesshoumaru wondered if she had become cold, and was considering the merits of offering her something of his for her to wear when she asked him, "Did you know your father well?"

The question was so abrupt that it took Sesshoumaru a moment to properly contemplate.

"Yes. As well as I could have, perhaps."

"What was he like? A man's man, I bet."

Sesshoumaru wasn't familiar with the expression. Neither was he familiar with contemplating his father. He remembered his father with some frequency - he couldn't help it, now that he lived so immersed in the world of humans that his father had loved and fought to protect - but he had spent little time pondering his father's character.

"You don't remember?" Rin asked after his long silence.

"No, I do. My father was... charming."

"So you take after your mother," Rin said, giving him an outrageous smirk. But while Sesshoumaru humored her - to be honest, he was amused - soon after the words had left her lips, her teasing expression faded. The conversation wavered and threatened to fall apart. Rin continued walking beside him, but now she did so in a closed-off sort of way, looking around herself - and particularly at her feet - with a strange and unsettling expression that appeared to be one of loss. Sesshoumaru imagined he might have once understood what Rin was thinking, just from context alone, but he had long ago forgotten how to read the meaning in her eyes. He worried that the conversation was going to slip away, and that she would, too. So he reached out to the first thing that came to his mind - besides the rebuttal, 'As a matter of fact, I take after my father increasingly, and not for reasons of charm.'

"What do you like doing?" he asked her.

"You mean for fun?"

Sesshoumaru couldn't think of how else the question could be interpreted, so he remained silent.

"Well..." Rin admitted slowly as they passed under the barren canopy of an oak tree. "I do like taking walks."

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*the suffix -boushi refers to a priest

*matsuri - a festival