Chapter 3- #20- The Road Home

Edit: I forgot to give you the soundtrack! Bad, Sephora, bad. There were only two songs I used, really, "Avalon" and "Ragtime", both by the fantastic Randy Newman.

So… "it's been a while" probably isn't fair to say here. And I'm sorry, I really am, and I really am gonna do better, I promise. I wrote this whole thing in just under five hours, so I'm getting a lot better. I just gotta churn out the next one and try to keep a steady pace.

Now that I'm in college, my schedule accommodates times for writing much better than it used to. Thus, I'm actually updating!

Thanks so very much to everyone who reviewed, favorite-ed, or alerted this fic: it means a lot to me. That said, this is the best out of the three, methinks. :)

I wanna dedicate this to the wonderful Rickashay. Last night I read some more of their wonderful SesshRin one-shots and got really inspired to kick my own butt into gear. Rickashay spits fics out like they're easy as pie, so they have my respect.

If you see a typo, put it in a review- I didn't have my beta read this one because I wanted to post right away. ;P

This ficlet is rated: T+ for gore and some seriously suggestive crap.

"…"- speech

"…"- SL (sign language)

…And that's all I'm gonna give you information wise.

The Road Home

He was not entirely sure how it had happened.

He was not a man with unknowns in his life. Similarly, he hated not knowing anything. And so he came to realize that it was not the loss of his hearing- though it had stung his taiyoukai pride to know he was suddenly handicapped- but the fact that hes unsure of how exactly he lost it that irritated him most. Irritated, because he was, of course, above plastering anger, or sadness, or some other trivial emotion on anything, let alone a small injury.

But yes, it, it…irritated him not knowing, not fully understanding. One moment he had been standing watch outside the bunker, as he always did, his uniform cleanly starched and pressed just the way he liked it, and the next moment the night sky was on fire, the shrill scream of a barrage of weaponry popping in his ears. And as the sky exploded and the ground was wrenched from beneath his feet, that mechanized screech was the last sound he heard.

Then darkness. Then the impossible bright white light of a sterile hospital room.

They said his battalion had left, they were unsure as to where they had gone. They were to take care of him until they received word from his commanding officer. As though he needed to be taken care of…

They wanted him to learn sign language. But what did he want with communication? He would learn sign language when it became of use to him as a soldier. It was of no other use to him.

But then there was her.

She wanted him to learn sign language so that they could "talk". She told him so quite boisterously on a little yellow post-it when she was invading his room with her lunch again. She would bounce on his bed, crumbs or pudding-cup wrappers falling off her tray and onto his bed trimmings as she tried to teach him what she knew. He often thought of yelling for her to get out, knowing that she would hear his words and have no retaliation for him, seeing as she was mute, and he was deaf and did not know sign language.

One day, when she had been flapping her hands at him nearly all morning, he decided to try it. He could tell from the feel of the words in his mouth that they had come out nearly perfectly, and that "get out" was pleasantly reverberating around the small white room.

She looked shocked. Sesshoumaru expected her to cry, but instead she smiled. And she began to laugh. He could not hear it, but he could tell it was mirthful, melodious laughter, like a gleeful child's. When she stopped laughing, she smiled at his stern face and furrowed brows. Then she held up her hands, made a few signs, and mouthed, "Get out". Figuring that this would at least be useful, he imitated her signs until she clapped her hands together happily; he had gotten it right.

With what he knew to be a properly cruel smirk on his face, he repeated the signs and glared at her. She smiled and bounced off of the bed. As she picked up her tray, she mouthed, "Next I'll teach you 'come in', when you start to miss me." And she flounced out of the room.

So he let her teach him how to sign.

Sesshoumaru was bored; he had nothing to do in the bland, colorless halls of the hospice. The war was many miles outside of the city, and until he would be called to rejoin the fight, he was stuck here.

She entertained him, at least; all sunshine and smiles as she tried to teach him what she knew, and he ignored her blatantly. She would pout, and huff, and fold her arms, and leave, only to return later when he could not help but pay attention to her lessons, boredom driving him near mad in her absence.

One day she went out to the farthest building in the small hospice complex, taking the laundry out. He felt something was wrong as the rain started to fall, sensed something amiss in the time it was taking her to fill the machines. So he stalked out into the storm, across the empty courtyard, and around the side of the furthest building.

Red filled his vision when he found her. Surrounded by four men, each with a knife or gun, one of them trying his best to push the small end of a baseball bat between her loins, enjoying how she locked her knees and cried out against the hand the held her mouth.

The first to charge him slipped in his own blood, a sagging lump in his pants all that was left of his manhood. The second followed after his friend, dropping his knife as he ran. The bullets from the third man's gun caught Sesshoumaru in the chest and abdomen, but the offender couldn't shoot once his hand was lying in a puddle in front of him, twitching fingers still grasping his handgun. The final man's knife made a deep cut along Sesshoumaru's stomach, but the wound Sesshoumaru left in his side would never heal. He watched the man limp after his followers and disappear around the hospice wall.

He turned to look at their victim. Soaking wet, shaking from fear and cold, tears and rain pouring down her face. She stood slowly, shakily: leaning on the wall for support, and looked up at him gradually. Then she smiled softly, tears still flowing down her cheeks.

Her hospital scrubs were tattered rags from the careful attention of thugs with knives, so he knew that a little of his blood could not make the situation any worse, and moved to pick her up. She pressed a hand to his face, worried for him, surveying his wounds. He did not know what to make of it. He could not understand how this small, fragile, human woman, tearful and frightened, who came so close to rape, could be fretting over his health.

It baffled him. Even after she refused his offer to carry her: it would aggravate his wounds, she said.

It baffled him. Even after she washed all traces of her attackers from her skin, and yet sat and watched the nurse apply bandages to his chest.

It baffled him. Even after she crawled into his bed to sleep, making sure to check his bandages before curling up in a ball at his side.

It baffled him. Even after he woke to find her gone, only to watch her breeze into the room with trays of breakfast for both of them.

Her name was Rin, and he had never seen the sun shine for a human as it shone for her. She lit up the halls with her smile, and when they met, day or night, he would say her name in his head, Rin, like a greeting. And every time she would look at him and smile her brightest smile, and he knew she had heard him.

She was frightened of thunderstorms and her alleyway encounter had not helped her fears. It stormed nearly a week straight after that night, and Rin was always with him, her arms wrapped around him, careful not to grip too tightly for fear his healed wounds would magically open again.

And when the rain stopped, and Rin no longer came to his bedside, Sesshoumaru felt empty. And it was perhaps not the fact that he felt, but the fact the he felt nothing that made him miss her so at night.

And then one night, she came back. It was raining, and she always liked rain without thunder or lightening. She smiled that smile he liked so much and kissed him gently, holding his face in her small human hands.

Rin always looked him in the eye. No other human, and indeed few youkai, had ever dared look him in they eye. But Rin always met his gaze with a smile before she kissed him, and after. She held his eyes until she was ready for him, when she would shut them slowly and lean her head into the crook of his neck, gripping him tightly. And he would lay her down and smother her body with kisses, loving her quietly. And he would feel her breathe, shudder, and moan, and it was a thousand times better than hearing her. And he would lose himself in her touch, in her fingers as they gripped his hair, in her mouth as she moved it along his body, in her love as he drowned in it.

For the first time Sesshoumaru could see something beyond destruction in his future. He could see Rin, smiling at him, filling a vase with flowers for him, as she did at the hospice. And twice a week, when the patients would don civilian clothes and venture out to the park across the street, Sesshoumaru would hold Rin to him the whole time, pressing his hand against her side jealously. She always laughed.

And then one day, it was over.

Sesshoumaru knew the instant the orderly told him he had a visitor. He knew before he saw his commanding officer reading a parenting magazine in the lobby, rolling a toothpick along his chapped lower lip.

He could not find Rin as he packed what few things he had in the pocket of his uniform. He scanned the halls for her, but she was nowhere to be found. As he accompanied the general to the door, the entire hospice watching him depart, he felt the floor beneath him quiver with strong footsteps.

When he turned, she was behind him, out of breath, frazzled, wearing a look of confused pain on her beautiful sun-kissed face. He bent to kiss her, not caring what anyone thought, and she threw her arms around him, holding him desperately.

When they broke, she was crying silently. She bent her middle and ring fingers and pressed the sign for "I love you" into his chest, looking up at him ardently. He pulled her to him and gripped her as tightly as he could without crushing her, breathing in the last of her scent, feeling her hair on his face, cherishing the weight of her body against his for the last time.

She leaned up on tiptoe, one hand in his hair, the other gripping his back. He mustered his will and whispered softly in her ear:

"I will come back for you."

Rin's tears began anew, and she clutched him to her as tightly as possible. When at last she released him, it was to kiss him one last desperate time. Then she let him go. And he could do nothing but turn and march out the door, leaving her behind him.

Rin stayed at the hospice, trained to be an orderly. She lived in a small apartment overlooking the park. She kept a fish. She smiled through every workday, enjoying helping the patients and spending time with them. She spent as much time in the hospice as she could on her days off, not wanting to go home where everything was surrounded by loneliness.

She received many suitors: patients, doctors, and visitors alike. The most persistent was a handsome young patient, Kohaku. Day in, day out, he made his advances. Day in, day out, she refused him politely, always in an effort to preserve their friendship. It wasn't long until one of the nurses told him the truth of the situation.

The next day, he asked her again, and she refused him again with a laugh and a friendly smile. As she walked away, he asked, "What if he doesn't come back?"

Rin stopped. Slowly, she turned around and signed, "He will".

Four years passed, the war came to an end and the sun was again in Rin's step. One day, as she busied herself with putting fresh flowers in the vases in patients' rooms, she heard her name called on the intercom. Someone to see her.

Her palms were sweaty as she walked down the hall, trying not to hope. She reached the rec room, faces of coworkers and patients watching her curiously. She met Kohaku's eyes and he smiled and nodded his head in the direction of the door.

Sesshoumaru had his back turned to her, draped in a long military overcoat, green and dusty, but she knew it was him. Her heart was beating so quickly she thought it might stop dead from exertion.

When he turned to her, she made a small, wet noise, and broke into a grin. He was haggard looking, fresh marks on his face and neck from the last battle he would ever see, clothes dusty and worn, and left arm completely missing. Sesshoumaru stood tall, regal and composed, looking straight into her eyes, a man torn to pieces who made her whole, and who was made whole in turn by her love. And Rin threw her arms around him and held him to her, and Sesshoumaru gripped her as tightly as he could, his brows furrowing as he clung to her, breathing her in.

And as the afternoon sun burst into the room, illuminating them, he whispered:

"I'm home."

Thanks for reading! Please review.