(Edited 5 May 2013)

Dying to Live

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha

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PART I: LIVING TO DIE

Why am I fighting to live if I 'm just living to fight?

Why am I trying to see when there ain't nothing in sight?

Why am I trying to give when no one gives me a try?

Why am I dying to live if I'm just living to die?

-Edgar Winter in "Dying to Live"

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The breeze danced playfully through the tangled grasses of the open field by the castle, as Sesshomaru stood blankly surveying the plain. His last encounter with his half-breed brother replayed through his thoughts. Every time he even thought about Inuyasha he became enraged with thoughts of the snowy night when their father had asked him whom he had to protect.

He, Sesshomaru, protecting someone? Absurd.

Thinking of it, he unsheathed his fang and held it out, its point skyward. The blade gleamed in the sun, casting scattered rays of light across the dog demon's face.

How useless. His father had been a fool. It sickened Sesshomaru to know that he had been sired by a demon who had possessed fantastic power, but was nothing but a love-sick romantic. Overwhelmed with disgust, he grasped the handle crushingly.

"I protect no one!" he seethed furiously, angrily thrusting Tenseiga down.

Obediently, the sword pierced the earth. It rang out in pain as the long blade careened back and forth, overpowered by the force.

As Sesshomaru continued to glare hatefully at the quivering fang, he detected a small sound from behind him.

Turning only but a little, he looked over his shoulder out of the corner of his eye. There stood Rin, small and quiet, previously unnoticed by him. Her large, brown eyes glistened sadly with tears. The air shifted softly through her loose, black hair.

Sesshomaru stared at her dumbly across the grass. A tear rolled down the bridge of Rin's nose and slid off the tip when she sniffled. She spun around to escape through the knotted grass. Dragging the clouds across the sun, the breeze cantered fleetingly after her, leaving Sesshomaru alone.

:

"The human is gone, my lord!" Jaken reported gleefully, as he bowed faithfully before his lord and master.

"But, that selfish girl!" the demon with huge, bulging eyes continued. "When she left, she must have stolen one of your horses, for you're one short, my lord! We should track her down! She should not get away with such a crime!"

"Let her go, Jaken," Sesshomaru replied stiffly.

The servant's face fell with a "Wha-?" at his master's calm, unaltered demeanor.

"It is not my business whether the girl wishes to come or go. She never had any obligation to me, nor I to her," the demon stated.

"But—!"

"I wish to be alone. Leave, Jaken."

"Y-yes, my lord. As you wish!" Jaken obediently stuttered and scurried from the large room.

The room was unusually big with large, white, square pads built into its lacquer-wood paneled floors. Originally the chamber had been used as a dining hall, and guests knelt around tables on the pads. But a demon lord had no need for such a trivial room, and so it was left empty and completely unfurnished. At either end of the long hall were wood paned, rice paper covered sliding doors. For several minutes after Jaken had cowered from the room dragging the heavy door shut behind him, Sesshomaru remained standing in the center of one of the pads. He stood up very straight with his feet spread shoulder-width apart and his arms crossed before him, thinking. His memories traveled to the first time he had used the Tenseiga. That was the day he chose to bring the little, orphaned mute-girl back to life. To bring Rin back from the dead. It had been done on nothing but a stroke of desire to test the power of the sword. Yet, she had stayed with him for all of that time…

"My, if his Lordship is not caught in some very deep thought."

Sesshomaru started slightly at the dark tone of the woman's voice. He turned slowly to find her standing behind him. The youkai found it strange that his keen hearing had not warned him sooner of her presence. "I do apologize, I am afraid that I am quite rude to have disturbed your contemplation my Lord, in fact, I enjoy a man who can think on his feet," she continued. Her words came like thick, rich syrup and she formed her sentences in the way of the states' elite.

However, the demon eyed her carefully as she advanced, for despite her impressive linguistics, nothing could be seen of the stranger's body: every part was draped in delicately crafted fabrics. Even her eyes were shielded from view by a fold of cloth.

Having surveyed her thoroughly, Sesshomaru lazily turned his sight from her with disregard. He spoke with no effort: "Return from where you came, woman, for I am no man, and this castle is no shelter."

"Good, I seek neither!" the woman answered roughly, and Sesshomaru glanced back at her. The traveler had tossed back her garments to reveal a pale, thin, be-clawed hand and had surged at him.

Finding the attack less than threatening, Sesshomaru decided to save the would-be assailant her dramatics and simply destroy her now. He unleashed his acidic whip on her, which twisted around her exposed arm. The woman halted and produced another clawed hand to clutch her presently restrained arm. She seemed to tremble slightly in pain as the line of acid burned away the flesh.

She continued to grimace against the corrosion, but when she spoke it was apparent that the words passed through an unseen smile. "You think you are so clever, but I knew that you would use this move." With a sudden burst of strength, the she-demon yanked back on the whip of acid, which had become the rope she would use to bring Lord Sesshomaru to his knees.

:

Rin had ridden for hours, passing in and out of a world where rain showers constantly chased one another like children playing tag on a summer's eve. Yet, she stopped only once to change horses after her borrowed mount had begun to foam. She thought sadly of the poor, broken beast, even as she realized how fiercely she was pushing the new mare. Noticing a patch of luminous green in the graying afternoon light, she slowed the chestnut-coated horse between two trees growing on opposite sides of the gravel road. As she dismounted to the sounds of the mare's slowly easing breaths, she surveyed the grass. But the girl's fingers shook as she reached for the reigns and bridle. She still wanted to go. To leave the fantasies of her childish heart behind and seek something real… Idling only filled her heart with fear of the cowardice that lurked to press her back into more years of languish in a heartless demon's shadow. But was he really heartless, or just cold of heart that maybe she could… No. Heartless.

The girl crouched beside the horse's mighty, strong head and examined its glistening, deep muddy-brown eyes. They looked so warm. Her own brown eyes looked to the ground and her long, ragged, disheveled raven locks twisted about her face as a sudden gust of warm wind swirled about them. She glanced at her hair as it swayed back and forth before her eyes, catching on their dark lashes. It had been so long since she lived among other humans. Mother used to cut her hair and lengthen the hems of her yukata… Now her hair grew unruly and torn at the ends like that of a demon's and the wind chilled her wrists, unprotected by outgrown sleeves…

But as she lusted more deeply to shed savage ways for civilization, the gusts increased and swirled harder as they reflected off the two trees by the road. Rin emitted a small whine as she fought to pull herself up against the animal's muscular body. Though, she remained gripped by her desire to press forward into the racing storm clouds converging upon her, she knew she could not. So, unwillingly, she turned her face away from debris lifting on the wind toward the direction from whence she came. Her eyes contemptibly fell at the foot of the hilly road and wandered back up it. The chaotic fighting of the winds broke and the victor carried the defeated in a sustained rush back into the hills. Rin's expression remained blank and staring as the current pushed past her like a river, now completely unchanging in its flow. She remounted the mare without question, and followed the wind's mischievous path back into the hills.

::

The air in the village was tainted with a fowl scent that evening, as that night's breeze slowly began to pour in between the little huts. But everything was alright for those who stood around the blazing funeral pyre. On it, the body of Onigumo was disappearing before Kagome's eyes forever. Kaede showed her how to purify the body so that its tortured soul could finally reach reincarnation. There was no mistake: both Onigumo and Naraku were dead, and the Shikon-no-Tama was, at last, whole again. It had taken them almost six years to do it, two years of which Kagome had traveled tirelessly, deferring her decision to go back to school for college like her friends Eri and Ayumi had, while Yuka had also gone on with her life to get a job... and a serious boyfriend.

Deciding to commit all her time and energy into finishing the quest for the jewel had seemed like the most natural thing to Kagome when she finished high school. Her grades had been less than spectacular considering all the time she had been out of school for her visits to the feudal era, so applying to 2-year colleges, not even the regular universities, appeared to be a pretty dark task. Likewise, getting a job in retail or any other hourly position seemed totally out of the question, if she still planned to keep hunting the jewel; if she missed work as much as she had missed school, she wouldn't have a job for very long. So she decided the only option was to finish her duties as a priestess first, for which Sango, Miroku, Shippo, and Kaede were only too happy, for none of them wanted to see their dear friend go nor could they imagine trying to finish the task without her. Most importantly, "Who else could keep Inuyasha in check?", they had asked at the time. To this, Inuyasha had merely harumphed in his usual way and stubbornly muttered something ambiguously, non-committal like "Of course, she can't leave yet!" Which brought her to the next major concern she faced that night: the beginning of her life now that the quest to destroy Naraku and complete the Shikon Jewel were through.

That's why with the little round jewel gleaming in the moonlight, as it dangled about her neck on a plain piece of yarn, the young miko stared into the dancing flames, lost in thought. She thought neither of the freed soul of Onigumo nor of the final damnation that the rotten demonic spirit of Naraku would face; instead, she replayed a conversation that had passed some time ago, but remained constantly in her thoughts.

"Inuyasha, look!" She rested on the edge of a large cool stone in the middle of a sunny afternoon. Her feet hung over the side into a shallow, little pool of water that had collected beside the forest creek in a rain shower the night before. Tiny silver minnows darted about as she sunk her toes into the warm grey silt.

He came to her side, even though she saw the arrogant annoyance in his eyes. "What?" he asked sharply.

"The jewel: there's only one piece left missing. I had forgotten how beautiful it was when it was still whole." She let her eyes wander over the nearly perfect sphere.

"Yeah, well it's not whole yet," he scoffed and then added, "Besides don't look so closely at it like that. It does things to people's minds."

She continued to admire it over the rhythm of the water dashing over the pebbles in the creek. "Is that so? Well then what about you, Inuyasha?"

"Huh?" He had been watching the small fish playing around the paleness of the girl's ankles. "What about me?"

"Did you ever look at the Shikon-no-Tama too closely?" The current continued to brush across the pebbles, and a toad called from the rushes.

"No, of course not! Before I even saw it, I knew that I wanted it. And before long I'll finally have it," he said and threw a flat stone across the top of the pool. The shiny, little fish dispersed and disappeared into the silt when it jumped on the glassy surface above them.

A heron that had been fishing nearby lifted out of the water with a shrill call, and another answered it from somewhere within the green trees. Then, nothing more was said.

Now as the leaves began to fall grey and brown from the trees around her, Kagome sighed over that familiar annoyance that played often at her companion's facial expression. For the first few years of their close, though rather stunted relationship, she avoided seriously questioning its presence. But particularly within the last several months, as they slowly closed in on Naraku in order to get the very last pieces of the jewel, she found herself focusing more on the half-demon's feelings toward her. To her despair, her observations indicated that barely anything had changed between them in the past two years they had traveled full-time together; if anything, he seemed suspiciously more agitated around her in the final weeks before they finally tracked down Naraku.

The Shikon-no-Tama rested heavily on her chest as she sighed for what felt like the hundredth time that night. Definitely, it was time to move on.

:

For miles, the slapping of freely swinging shudders and the rattling of partially opened doors echoed over the plains. Despite her feverish riding, the sun still fell from the sky more than an hour before Rin arrived. The manor was perched precariously upon the rocky landscape beyond the wide meadows. The sweet smell of the sun-dried grasses filled her head, but betrayed the scene before her: a cold, dark, and deserted mansion. As she dismounted, something twisted up deep within her, like a cord winding around and binding all her innards. Walking up to the gaping black entrance, which seemed to want to swallow her up like a giant mouth, Rin's sweat ran cold, and she was mesmerized by the steady beating of a fluttering wooden shutter.

Everything was amiss. Had he perhaps moved suddenly, leaving the shell of the mansion up-turned and ghostly-vacant? Rin peered deeply through squinting eyes into the night-shade of the front parlor, only to turn instinctively in horror and notice violent gouges at all edges of the door frame and across the paneled floors…as if something had been clawing…clawing. Immediately, the pace of her frozen heart quickened until the girl felt almost choked. Her shaking fingers skittered along the wall, feeling for a hanging lamp and a piece of flint. She sensed her own breath running ragged past her lips as she found and lit the flame.

Heavily dug scratches swirled across the floor, leading the girl through the center of the house. Then the scrapes blurred to smeared crimson. Blood. With a primitive lunge, Rin crossed to the corner of the nearly empty room and drew a dagger from the ancient sheath of a long passed warrior. She held it poised in the air above her shoulder, much like a scorpion readying its venomous tail. She crept deeper and more carefully. The bloodied floor panels creaked and light from the lantern slid through partially opened doors to reveal folds of cloth fanned across darkly lacquered wood.

The familiar pattern of his clothes caught in her vision.

Shunning all caution, Rin pounded forward to throw open the battle-torn doors. She slid across the paneled-wood into a kneeling position beside him; the dagger and lantern clattered sharply against the hard wood. Chilled perspiration now poured down her face, and she noticed not her own wailing while her pale hands shifted through his robes with terror. Her body lurched backward suddenly and she was overcome with the urge to heave as bile rose in her throat. The body…was…the skin: grey and wilted…the wretched distortion…her eyes could barely recognize or comprehend.

"Why you wicked wretch! What have you done to Lord Sesshomaru?" Jaken's awful, enraged whine filled the room from all sides, as he wielded his staff in Rin's direction. "How dare you return to do this?" However, despite his sharpness, the little servant was taken well aback when the girl turned to him, her tear-stained face twisting in rage.

Her voice wavered: "How could you let this happen to him?" The short demon stared in mute fear. "ANSWER ME!" she shrieked.

He began to stutter broken fragments about "dismissal" and "walking in the evening" and "only for an hour…or two," while she neglected him to wipe at newly fallen tears in between deep wheezing-wails. But both fell suddenly silent and snapped to attention, as a tortured breath rose painfully from the beaten body sprawled over the floor. His chest lifted slightly, although clearly constricted. While Jaken stood stony in disbelief, Rin, bolstered into action by this small shred of clinging life, sprang to stand.

Ordering Jaken not to leave until she returned, the girl strode from the mansion on the rocks.

::

A ray of gold light poured through a small crack in the wall of the village hut. Inuyasha awoke to its warmth against his face the morning after the funeral. He stood groggily, beginning to realize just how deeply he had slept for the first time in a few years, despite keeping his customary sitting-post by the door. Looking about the inside of the one-room travelers' hut in the morning glow, he noticed its emptiness. Kagome was gone. All of her things were absent, too. But two things he did see were a fold of paper in the center of the floor and the coveted Shikon jewel dangling in front of his chest on a plain piece of yarn. Grasping the little sphere as it hung from his neck like a secret and grabbing the note written in the priestess' hand, he hurried from the hut.

In the dewy morning air, he picked his way through the village already quivering with the work of many hands in gardens, fields, and at cooking pits. Kaede was already at the jinja found at the far edge of the village. The hanyou rushed to her side, already producing the note and revealing the jewel. It was so perfectly round in his questioning, opened palm. Kikyo's younger sister looked up at him quizzically and accepted the note to read to him. But as her unpatched eye worked over the neatly formed characters on the slip of paper, her expression grew stern. Her mind floated back to her conversation with the young miko the prior night.

"Well, I guess now that Naraku is gone and the jewel is returned to normal, I don't have much left to do here," Kagome stated through the silent autumn night as she pondered the golden color of the tea in her cup.

"No, child, don't be silly," the old shrine maiden responded warmly, "of course you are always welcome here. You are the heroine of the villagers."

"Yeah, I guess so," the girl said with a melancholy smile, and she sipped quietly from the cup.

After that Kagome rose to leave for the night, but her thanks and farewell now seemed more pronounced with finality to Kaede than they had the night before. The note lying in her wrinkled hands corroborated her present fear. The jewel hanging from the half-demon's neck confirmed it.

"It would seem that Kagome has left," Kaede stated finally.

"Well, yeah, duh. I can see that, but why do I have the jewel? The note says why, right?" Inuyasha questioned as Kaede turned back to preparing the shrine altar for the return of the Shikon-no-Tama.

"No. I assumed that was something that the two of ye discussed," Kaede responded in a harshly detached tone.

"She didn't say anything to me. All that was there was that note. Now what does it say, woman?" he demanded, becoming irritated.

"It is an order for you not to follow her, ever."

"What? What's that supposed to mean?" he sputtered.

"Kagome is not coming back. I did not realize it last night, but now, I am sure." She continued dusting.

"Well she's out of her mind if she thinks she just gets to leave without saying nothing to me about it!" He stormed from the shrine steps and into the forest. In moments, he dove into the ancient well surrounded by trees. But when he launched off of the bottom of it and aimed to come out at the Higarashi shrine, the closed wooden doors repelled him and he fell back to the floor of the Bone Eater's Well, sore and confused.

:

He wandered back to the village at twilight. He had wasted the whole day in the forest as rain fell constantly for hours after noon, and he tried to understand what was happening. He concluded at length, from her explicitly sudden departure, that the girl had no desire to return to the feudal period ever again.

Entering Kaede's hut uninvited after dark, he came to sit dripping next to the fire. She seemed to expect him, and poured him a cup of her hot, lustrous tea. They sipped in quiet for several minutes. He set his cup down and reached inside his damp, scarlet-colored collar.

"Here, it's not mine." He held out the jewel, staring seriously at his host.

"What, don't ye still want it, Inuyasha?" she questioned, startled.

"I do…. But you should have it. It was Kikyo's," he replied. She took it from him gingerly, and he rose to go.

"Inuyasha," she said as the hanyou reached to pull back the door covering. "Thank you."

Soundlessly, he slipped out into the rain.