Title: Remembering the Wind

Author: landofthekwt

Rating: PG-13

Prompt: Up in the Air (Inuyasha Fanfic#219)

Word Count:803

Pairing Sesshoumaru/Kagura

Genre: Staring into Space

Warning: Character Death

Summary: Sesshoumaru remembers Kagura

He stared into the heavens. She had always been there with her sarcastic wit and bombastic temper. Following him from the time he forged Tokujin till her death at the hands of Naraku It was appropriate that Tokujin should break in defense of Kagura.

No longer would she wander by to tell him that his sword was ready or to yell at him when he would not join in her fight to be free from Naraku. Whistfully, he wondered if she would still be alive if he had joined her that day instead of challenging her to do it herself.

Neither his threats, his sarcasm nor his derision seemed to have any affect on her willingness to return to him. Despite stealing Rin and delivering her to Naraku, she still returned to him knowing that he might take her head for what she had done.

She seemed to have a genuine desire to see him. All others were afraid of him. Even Inuyasha avoided him. When Rin found her with a hole in her chest, she had come all that way because she wanted to see him one last time before she died.

At the end she had genuinely happy to see him. She had smiled as her body disintegrated from the miasma knowing that he had come specifically for her. He had seen the pain she had suffered in the false life which Naraku had foisted on her. At the end she had her wish and returned to her true form where she could be the free wind at last.

Totosai said that what Tenseiga recognized what he felt for her as compassion, but what did the sword know. He had enraged her and infuriated her by his refusal to help her. He had spurned her offers of help so many times that when he had accepted her offer she had genuinely surprised.

Was he sorry that she had died? He certainly came to her with the intention of saving her. It surprised and disappointed him that Tenseiga was not willing to save her life, but he accepted her smile and her parting words to mean whatever she had gone through and wherever she was going was worth it because he had come for her.

What he felt for Kagura was being the two of them. Moryomaru's claim that her death had been wasted. had angered him. It was not Moryomaru's place to determine the value of Kagura's life. She was priceless whether she achieved any goal that Moryomaru thought was valuable.

The sword viewed what he felt as compassion. He simply refused to allow another to determine the value of a life for him. Kagura would always hold a place in his heart even though they had never even touched.

She had touched him in a place where he had never been touched before. Made him feel things that he had never felt before. Naraku had given Kagura her heart back before she died. He felt that in dying she had given her heart to him.

For the first time he felt something for another being. Was willing to sacrifice himself for another being. Was unwilling to let another determine how he felt about another person. Was that compassion? He did not think so, but then he had no experience in such matters.

All he knew was that when he thought of Kagura he felt something warm in that heart that he discovered. At the same time he found that he felt an ache in that same heart knowing that he would never see her again in this life.

Never would she annoy him with her demands. Never would she irritate him with her gossip regarding Naraku. Never would she bore him with her offer of power. Never would she come to steal Rin or fly to him just to see him one more time.

Never .It had such finality. He did not believe in his own death. Her death shook him to the core. The idea that something important to him could die bothered him. He could not put her or her death out of his mind.

He stared into the sky. She was not entirely gone. Her scent was still on the wind. It surrounded him and filled up his senses, but it was insubstantial. She might have become the Wind, but she was no longer the Kagura that he had known and he missed her. He felt a tug at his hakama. Looking down he saw Rin holding up one of Kagura's feathers.

" Rin thought that Lord Sesshoumaru missed Kagura. Maybe if Lord Seshoumaru remembered Kagura he won't be so lonely."

Lord Sesshoumaru bent down and Rin put the feather behind his ear. They stood on the hillside for the remainder of the night remembering Kagura together.