Affliction
By Miss Kagura
Chapter Seven – Poison


Rin survived the first week of chemotherapy, which both made her sick and helped her fight the cancer that threatened her life. Much to Sesshoumaru's relief, Rin got nothing but positive reports about Rin's reaction to the drugs. However, in accordance with Dr. Yamaguchi's treatment plan, after the first week, Rin was scheduled to have the tumor removed from her back.

The night before the surgery, Rin sat on a couch next to Sesshoumaru in the Common Room, where several other sick children were watching a movie. Sesshoumaru felt her lean on his arm, and by the time the movie was halfway over, Rin had converted his lap into a headrest.

"The Princess should simply kill the one who cursed her." Sesshoumaru commented.

A little girl sitting on the far end of the couch gasped. "Sleeping Beauty would never kill!"

Sesshoumaru arched his brows and watched the girl in amusement. "I suppose it is better that she be totally helpless, relying only on men to save her." Weren't these humans supposed to be socially advanced? Women were allowed to do everything else in this time, including becoming men, but they weren't allowed to fight back in children's 'movies?'

Minutes later, he heard Rin emit a dreamy sigh as the prince kissed Princess Aurora on the television screen.

"Rin." Sesshoumaru said. "You should know that if a man ever kisses you in your sleep, I will rip his arms off and beat him with them."

"But it's so romantic, Sesshoumaru-sama!" Rin exclaimed.

"Molestation is not romantic." Sesshoumaru replied.

The girl at the end of the couch scratched her chin. "What's molestation?"

"Ask your mother." Sesshoumaru replied as he glanced down at Rin, who was pursing her lips to avoid giggling at the taiyoukai. He saw the look in her eyes and knew he had amused her.

Rin sat up and drug her fingers through her hair, trying to straighten it out from lying on his lap. When she did, she held her hands up in front of her face in utter horror. "Sesshoumaru-sama?!" The hair tangled around her fingers had simply fallen out, and when Rin repeated the action, she only ended up with more hair in her grasp. "My hair!" The child slid off the couch and limped back to her room, sniffling.

Sesshoumaru quietly followed after her, and closed the door as she crawled into the bed. She lay on her side, with her back to him, but he could still smell her tears. "Leave me alone!" She cried. "Rin is going to be bald and ugly!" The taiyoukai sat on the edge of the bed and considered the fact that he would miss her thick brown hair.

"You are being silly, Rin." Sesshoumaru comfortingly said. "Hair is such a trivial thing."

"You wouldn't want to be bald either!" Rin whined as she rolled over onto her back, looking up at him. She was a ghost of the girl that he first met; her skin was pale, blotchy, bruised, and had bandages stuck to it where various needles had been stuck in her. The dark circles around her eyes contrasted against her skin, almost making Rin look like a raccoon. "Rin's hair was the last thing that made her feel pretty."

"It's just hair, Rin. Lifeless, pointless, and useless." Sesshoumaru said.

Rin snapped, and started crying and screaming all at once. "That's easy for you to say! It's not your hair that's falling out!" Her mouth snapped shut as Sesshoumaru's expression changed from the softened state it had been in for most of the week to something far colder and angry. "Sesshoumaru-sama…Rin did not mean to disrespect you."

Perplexed amber eyes stared out the window as a strange sensation coursed through his body, one that he could only describe as an instinctive sense of loss. Sesshoumaru had felt this once before during a lunar eclipse about 200 years ago, when his father had died. Did this mean someone else in close relation to him had fallen? Only one person could have been close enough to have caused such a reaction. "Rin, I need to leave. I may not be back before your operation."

Small hands gripped his shirt. "NO!" Rin screamed. "Don't leave Rin alone here!"

"I have no choice." Sesshoumaru calmly responded, chewing on the inside of his own mouth as he left the frightened girl alone.

Sesshoumaru hastily returned to the shrine and claimed his sword from Kagome's closet. Seconds later, he re-entered the Feudal Era, only to have his senses assaulted by a recent human massacre. Blood and death were thick on the air, and the village where Kaede lived with nothing more than smoldering ruins. Naraku's presence permeated the area, although Sesshoumaru could not sense his aura as he tracked the scent of his brother's blood.

Inuyasha's scent, along with several others from his pack, ended at the edge of a peculiar crater. Sesshoumaru knelt and lifted bloody soil to his nose, then scanned the area, his hand on Tenseiga. Wherever his brother was, he was dead or dying, judging from the rich smell of blood he left behind, probably from his liver. Had Inuyasha and Naraku gone somewhere else to finish the fight?

In the burned grass a few meters away, Sesshoumaru picked up a pink, shiny orb. Uneasiness settled in him as he realized what it meant; Naraku was dead and it was due to purification. Inuyasha hadn't finished the fight, and wasn't one to just let his little miko have all the fun. Kagome's scent, however, was nowhere in the immediate area, which made the situation even more puzzling.

He examined the jewel and noticed a tiny sliver of it was missing. A skeleton in a green-and-black taijiya uniform said the missing shard wasn't Kohaku's. There was a shard somewhere, and Naraku had probably chosen a very safe place to conceal it. One well protected…

The taiyoukai's mouth went dry as he realized exactly where the last shard was. "Rin…" Why hadn't the miko sensed it? Did the tumor somehow conceal the shard? What would happen in the morning when the tumor was cut from her body? His head jerked back in the direction of the well, knowing he couldn't get back without finding Kagome.

Long fingers combed through tall grass until Sesshoumaru found what he was looking for. He pushed it back when he found the purification arrow responsible for Naraku's demise and quickly set off into the woods in the direction that it came from.

It was an ingenious hiding place for Naraku's escape route; everyone knew that injuring Rin was an invitation for violence from the taiyoukai, who would protect her at all costs. Sesshoumaru ducked between a few trees and picked up on Kagome's trail, curling his nose at a change in her scent as he considered all the steep consequences he would face if he didn't get back to Rin soon.

When he caught up to Kagome, she was cradled in the arms of the wolf prince. "Kagome."

Kagome looked up at him, her face puffy and red from crying, the bow still clutched in one hand. "S-Sesshoumaru?" She let out a relieved sob and pushed out of Kouga's arms. "Take me home!" She screamed, falling to her knees in front of him as she hugged his legs in a manner not entirely unlike the little girl he left in Tokyo. In her arms, she had something wrapped up, and she clutched this bundle to her chest with one arm as she made incoherent pleas for the taiyoukai to take her home.

Kouga took a few steps back. "Kagome, don't you want to—"

"NO!" Kagome screamed. "All I wanted…was him."

Sesshoumaru sat on his haunches and let Kagome crawl onto his back. The hand still holding on to the bow wrapped around him, holding onto his chest as Kagome sobbed onto the fabric of his shirt. The sharp, inescapable pain she felt was almost tangible in the air around her, which he unfortunately had to share with her as he raced back to the well. He pitied her as a wet spot spread over his shoulder.

The one who was supposed to make her life worth living was dead.

"Do you even care that your brother is dead?" Kagome asked, sniffling.

Sesshoumaru's head craned back and he regarded the miko carefully. "No."

"No? How can you not care? He was your brother! Can't you pretend for one day that it means something to you?" Kagome asked. Bitterness laced her voice as she held on to the taiyoukai. Seeing him near the ailing Rin had given her exposure to a side of him that wasn't entirely intolerable, but at that moment, he was the same jerk he always had been.

"That is not your concern." Sesshoumaru jumped into the well and emerged in Tokyo, just as the sun was starting to come up. He left the miko in her pink haven, and then returned to the hospital, the smell of her tears haunting him as their scent still permeated his shoulder.

The first seventy years of his life seemed like a dream to him; he never got sick, he was never injured, and the majority of his time had been spent exploring the world.

Humans, who lived about that long, providing sickness or violence does not claim them early, had miserable lives. Their bodies deteriorated too soon, they were weak, and the fleeting sense of happiness they seemed to justify all of their suffering for apparently completely abandoned some of them.

For the first time in many years, Sesshoumaru remembered the beautiful hime who left her life and future to be with his father. They were never happy. Izayoi was very nearly killed by her pregnancy and his father was constantly fending off attackers. In the end, he ended up dying for her, and she ended up following shortly after, unable to protect her pup and herself from youkai. In a tragedy that seemed incapable of stopping, the relationship did nothing but leave an orphaned hanyou, who was more miserable than either of his parents had been.

The 'dreams' Kagome and Rin spoke of were supposed to make humanity a tolerable condition of life. Why did it occasionally lead to ruin and agony? Would the miko turn into a sad shell of a woman like his father's mistress had?

The smell of the hospital brought him out of his thoughts as he carefully slipped in through Rin's window and stood on the bed, knocking a ceiling tile out of place. Sesshoumaru slipped his Tenseiga in the cavity above the room and then pushed the tile back in place. He wasn't sure what to think about the fact he had apparently unintentionally brought Naraku into Kagome's time. On one hand, there were almost no youkai to fight Naraku. On the other hand, humans had devised so many interesting ways to kill one another that he didn't doubt Naraku would have a hard time trying to assert dominance in Tokyo.

The taiyoukai pursed his lips as he noticed the dying boy that had been in Rin's room for the past week was noticeably absent. His bed was made neatly and the chart that usually hung on the foot of his bed was gone as well. He reached up toward the ceiling when a hand grabbed his foot.

"You made it back." Rin said, smiling weakly at him.

"Did Henry…?" Sesshoumaru asked.

Rin rolled over curled her legs up. "Yes."

Sesshoumaru didn't know much about the boy, but he was aware that Henry had been ill most of his life and gone through several bouts of chemotherapy before his body finally caved in to the growth in his brain. By the time Henry had been moved into Rin's room a week before, he was blind and in nearly constant pain. "He didn't want to fight anymore." Rin said. "He was tired."

He didn't know what it was like to be sick or to face death as inevitability, and it made both things seem somehow worse than they actually were. Rin's understanding and acceptance confused him. Did she accept the grim conditions of her existence to strive for the promised happiness of fulfilling her dreams?

An anesthesiologist and Dr. Yamaguchi came into Rin's room at seven that morning and put Rin into a deep sleep. Once again, Sesshoumaru wasn't allowed to go past the doors to the surgery wing, but he sat near the entrance, on alert for any sign of Naraku's aura or scent.

Three hours passed.

Sesshoumaru read a bunch of magazines, gaining a vast amount of knowledge he doubted he would ever use. If necessary, however, he could bake a low-fat quiche or drop ten pounds in a weekend. When he ran out of publications marketed to grown women, he sat and quietly mulled over the issue of human suffering. Were some humans, like Henry, simply doomed to suffer and then die? A bitter taste filled his mouth as Sesshoumaru compiled a list of things Rin had suffered through, which included watching her family be slain, having to fend for herself from about the age of four, dying twice, and nearly being killed more times than he cared to think about.

With a sharp sigh, Sesshoumaru remembered the never ending mass of people entering and exiting the hospital the first time he entered it. All of them seemed depressed and sad; was this the reason? The children's hospital was an abrasive experience that made confronting human pain necessary.

He looked up. Five hours had passed and not a peep had come from the sadistic hanyou. He started to pace across the floor, but then went back to Rin's room and retrieved Tenseiga, which he unskillfully stuffed in his shirt, tracing the scent of the dead boy who had been in the other bed only hours before. With a flick of his wrist, a metal door opened, tearing the wall just slightly where he forced the deadbolt through the doorframe.

In the next room, Sesshoumaru sensed the electronic hum of camera devices, something Kagome had heavily lectured him about. A youki whip tore across the room and destroyed the devices in question before he flipped on the lights and walked down metal stairs into a small area nearly completely covered in metal. There was a metal table, and a strange looking cabinet on the wall that seemed to emanate the stench of death at an alarming rate. There were small doors all over the front of the cabinet, and several of them had medical charts hanging on them.

Long, hesitant fingers grasped the handle of one of the cabinet doors and pulled it open, revealing what was by far the most horrific thing about Modern Japan – a refrigerator for dead children. Sesshoumaru pulled the drawer out, and found himself staring at the tired, pale body of the peculiar foreign boy. "I have no reason to show you mercy."

Sesshoumaru pushed the drawer in and closed the door, turning his back on Henry. He knew he wouldn't regret it if he simply kept walking away. He unsheathed Tenseiga and opened the door again. Sesshoumaru pulled the drawer out again. "I have no reason not to show you mercy."

With one swipe of his sword, the ashen skin turned a golden sun-kissed color, and the numerous scars on his head disappeared. The tips of the boy's fingers twitched, and his blue eyes slowly opened, scanning the room around him as he sat up. "I can see…"

Blue met gold as Sesshoumaru regarded the boy with curious eyes. Rustling sounds and several pounding heartbeats from within the cabinet alerted him to the fact Tenseiga had apparently resurrected all of the children inside. He took a few steps back. "Henry, go find a nurse. Tell no one about this, understood?"

"Are you an angel?" The boy asked.

Sesshoumaru's lips curled into a cruel smile. There he was, wicked, cold taiyoukai, standing in the basement of a hospital in the wrong time, doing someone 'good' for all the wrong reasons, all while being mistaken for some benevolent celestial being.

The door slammed shut as the demon quickly returned his sword to its hiding place in Rin's room, and then resumed the task of keeping a silent watch in the operating room's waiting area. There was still no sign of Naraku, which made Sesshoumaru wonder why the hanyou hadn't chosen to make his presence known yet. Finally, after over ten hours of waiting, Rin's doctor emerged from behind the doors.

"I'm happy to report that we were able to fully remove the tumor. Rin did very well and is recovery nicely." Dr. Yamaguchi said. "The tumor itself is very…unique. It almost ruptured during surgery, but thanks to a new form of chemotherapy that stops cell division, we were able to halt that process."

Sesshoumaru bit back a smirk. Modern humans were certainly something to behold. The one who had very nearly torn his world apart had been disarmed and stopped by an old man with a needle and a medical degree.

Just as Rin was returned to her room to recover, the hospital seemed to explode with activity. The nurse he had threatened to dismember was getting an earful in the hallway about 'checking pulses' and 'signs of actual death.' "…What the hell is wrong with you? I have a bunch of living children who were put in the morgue!"

"But, he was dead!" She retorted. "And I wasn't the nurse on any of those other children. Something must have happened!"

Another doctor joined in the conversation. "She's right; believe what you want, but the Kiyomi girl died from being struck by a car. She doesn't have a scratch on her, much less a crushed abdominal cavity!"

Something walked right under his field of vision as he stared at the doctors at the end of the hallway. The door closed and his eyes fell to Henry. "I thought I recognized your voice." The boy said, realizing the one who resurrected him was the same man he had heard speak to the girl he shared the room with. "I won't tell."

"What are you doing?" Sesshoumaru asked as the boy cautiously returned to the uncomfortable, small bed.

'Never allow yourself to be defeated in battle. Wounds may heal, but you cannot be undefeated.' The words of Sesshoumaru's long-dead father echoed through his mind as Henry returned to the place he was defeated and destroyed in the bitter struggle for his own life. The poison of that defeat still lingered in his soul, even though his body was healed.

"Yes." Sesshoumaru's icy voice pierced the silence in the room. "The answer to your question…is yes."

"You're an angel? Why did you bring me back?" Henry asked.

"I resurrected you because you do not belong here. Leave, and don't ever come back." Sesshoumaru said, his voice steady and cold as he emotionally nudged the boy off his deathbed with a lie about his own identity.

Taking the words of his 'angel' to heart, Henry slid out from between the sheets and took one look over his shoulder, one last glance at the taiyoukai. The last thought he had as he left the room for the final time was that Rin have been a very special girl to have her very own guardian angel.

A few minutes later, Rin slowly woke up. "Is it over?"

"Yes, you've been asleep all day. It went well." Sesshoumaru said.

"Were you bored, having to wait on Rin?" Rin asked, casually reaching for the hand that had offered her so much comfort during the worst week of her life.

Sesshoumaru shrugged. "It wasn't quite as boring as you think." He softly replied.

Rin raked her fingers over her pillow, collecting the hair left behind. "Rin doesn't want to be ugly." The tone of her voice told him she didn't want to hear that losing her hair wouldn't make her less attractive. She felt almost lonely in her suffering, even though Sesshoumaru had been by her side nearly constantly since she was brought to the hospital.

Several hours later, in the Higurashi house, Kagome finally came out of her room for a glass of water. She was standing in the kitchen when she heard a local news anchor on the living room television.

"…Several children at the Tokyo Children's Health Center reportedly came back from the dead, according to one nurse. Representatives say no such thing occurred, and that the nurse in question is suffering from mental illness. Staff incompetency is being blamed for living children being placed in the hospital's morgue…"

The glass in her hand broke when it hit the floor. Sesshoumaru had used his Tenseiga! The initial fear that they would be found out as she remembered how utterly ridiculous it sounded to think someone might suspect a dog youkai with a sword was sauntering around the hospital, resurrecting the dead. She cleaned up the mess, wondering what drove the merciless, heartless taiyoukai to use the sword.

When Kagome went back upstairs, she saw the demon in question enter her bathroom wearing a robe. He had obviously just showered. "H-how is Rin?"

"Better. Sleeping." He replied as he picked up something in his hand. An electronic buzz filled the room as she realized what it was he held. The look in his eyes was deeper than Kagome had ever seen, and his expression was almost foreign. He swept the electric razor over his scalp, and ignored the beautiful silver locks that fell at his feet.

"Rin's hair is falling out, isn't it?" Kagome asked.

The heartbroken miko watched with tears rolling down her cheeks. She felt like she was watching Sesshoumaru break in slow motion, shedding the vanity and cruelty and apathy like the locks that cascaded to the floor. "She is the one that makes my life worth living."

Absolutely heartless in battle.

Utterly merciless at all times.

Completely devoted to one little human girl.

"You could use the jewel to wish her better." Kagome finally said.

Fiery amber eyes met hers. He had already retrieved the shard from the tumor and considered this possibility. "I already made a wish." The door closed in Kagome's face suddenly, and she returned to her room and lay down on the bed. She heard something behind her and sat up.

"Inuyasha?!"


Please Review!

Next Chapter: Father
Rin and Sesshoumaru have fluffy moments that lead to the conversation. Rin is still ill, despite the death of Naraku and the removal of her tumor. As she fights the leukemia, her doctor tells Sesshoumaru only a bone marrow transplant will save her…

Author's Note: Apparently, the easiest way to make people stop reviewing is to announce you're not writing a romance. Oh well.

Special thanks to: lilChristal, darlingloversx, lindajrjt, oldestmaiden, Elvin BlueEyes, InuJoey, Shiori The Lady Kazekage, shikonprincess15, ArizonaBay, Yideungbyung Kim, amberwolves, mangadreams, Camille H., TwilightVampire15, Queen of the Nymphs, and EspeonDark!