Dying to Live

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

Note: Hey all this chapter was edited on 5 May 2013. I actually decided to move the first part of what was originally Chapter 10 to this chapter, because something didn't feel right about the flow of the story as I was trying to go forward. Except for the last sentence of this chapter now, nothing else was changed.

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Sesshomaru was starting to get frustrated with Rin. That was what the Lord of the Western Lands thought to himself, as he lie awake in the wee hours of the morning. He was reviewing what had come to pass since he regained consciousness, trying to determine what he should do going forward.

Over the last nine days since he first woke up, he had started to see that his recovery would take more effort than he originally thought. His initial tactic was just to rest, sleep, and move as little as possible, which had always worked for him before. However, he quickly saw that this did nothing to improve the soreness in his neck, back, and legs, so he concluded moving around might instead speed the process up. He didn't need any more rest; on the contrary, he needed to start building up his strength.

So, a week after his initial reawakening, restless, he woke early, similarly to today. Slowly and painstakingly, he focused on turning himself over on to his stomach, carefully trying not to disturb the delicate areas on his chest. Once he accomplished that, he spent the first two hours of daylight pushing himself up on to his elbows. From that position, until his strength ran out, he extended his arms to push his upper body up from the futon as much as possible. After accomplishing one very shaky, full push up he allowed himself to stop, as sweat rolled down from his temples. He could not believe how much his body had deteriorated; in fact, never before had he even contemplated this level of weakness. It just wouldn't do.

When Rin appeared a little while later with his breakfast of medicinal soup and tea, he notified her of his adjusted recuperation plans: he intended to begin walking as soon as possible, and he would require her help to do it. Noting that he needed a little more rest after his morning upper body training, he asked her to come back that afternoon and help him begin working out his legs. To this, he noticed that the girl nodded her agreement somewhat vaguely, and she had been listening only distractedly before that. He had even had to pause in his brief description of his plans, when she clumsily dropped his nearly empty tea cup on to the floor and subsequently hurried to blot the liquid off the tatami paneling. The thought occurred to him that she might be very tired, and so he suggested that he might rest and that she should too.

Later, she did come...eventually. Although he had expressed to her that he only needed a brief rest before he could practice again in the afternoon, the sun dipped low, almost completely obscured behind the tree tops before she returned to his room. And then she assisted him, but in a much unfocused way. If he asked her to help him move his knee up and to the left, then she moved it down and to the right. He tried not to get too upset with her as she seemed somehow over-stretched due to the demands of his invalidism. Yet, as she fumbled through his commands, he remembered how before he had fallen unconscious, he began to think that he might need to have a word with Rin about her difficult behavior. Sometimes he couldn't seem to figure out what put her into such agitated or dark moods. Some days she had been just down right unpleasant or even belligerent. It was so unlike her sweet and happy nature as a child. He couldn't mark the moment when the change had taken place, but she seemed strained in her relationship with him. Her acerbic attitude had actually reached a sort of fever-pitch when, suddenly, she had taken off the day of his attack. He didn't know what had made her return, but lying there in the predawn darkness, he considered asking her about it in due time.

He had figured whatever was bothering her would pass over by the next day, so as she made out of the room with his empty soup bowl and water cup, he asked her to come to his room again the next morning. However, once more she was tardy, apparently tied up with the washing this time. Trying to keep his cool despite his resurgent irritation, he told her to let Jaken do that next time, to which she mumbled something about trying to find him.

The morning's session then progressed in mediocrity as he accomplished, be it painfully, finally all of the motions that he had planned out for himself. Again, Rin assisted half-heartedly, which only spurred his impatience and urgent need to recover his strength, so as she got up to go, he suddenly had a desire to do one last thing: he would try to kneel.

He called her back, to which she returned with frustrating timidity. He told her in a rush, as he began feel the excitement of what he was about to attempt, that he wanted to use her to pull himself up. Her eyes widened a little, but she agreed. Still, she stood before him with her hands at her side.

He sighed loudly. "No, no," he told her, "you have to put your hands out," he grabbed her wrists and positioned them, "like this, so I can grab on to you." He looked up at her to check for her comprehension, but her face was just pale and blank.

The first attempt, he clumsily wound up slipping and tugging her sleeve, so that her collar shifted, exposing her right collar bone. She blushed and pulled back instantly so that he fell back on the futon, as she readjusted her clothing. Sharply, the Master of the West ordered her to roll back her sleeves and kneel down in front of him: "Yes, that's right. Now just come closer," he ordered, maneuvering her again.

The second time, Sesshomaru moved with frenzied speed. Mentally, he struggled to command his frozen muscles to contort and contract. The pain radiating from his chest seemed to reach right through to his spine, rapidly depleting his control over his lower muscles.

He clutched at her arms and shouted at her repeatedly to hold still and stop bending away. Unhappily, she protested that she couldn't help it. Growling, he abruptly reached out for her shoulder. He failed to notice that his other hand had once more dropped down inside her wide sleeve, which had come unrolled again in the in the struggle. Rin, however, immediately noticed, as she felt the front folds of her yukata separating. Instinctively, she leaned away from him again, but he was already unintentionally kneeling on her skirt as well, causing her to tumble backward. As Sesshomaru still held on to her shoulder, they toppled over in a heap, and he wound up with his cheek pressed into her chest. She flushed crimson from head to toe as he embarrassingly hurried to roll of off her.

It went without saying that practice was done for that day.

On the third day of his new recovery regiment, yesterday, Rin appeared very late with his breakfast and stayed only long enough to dispense it to him. Then she scurried off, saying that an issue had arisen at the stables that needed immediate attention. All day, Sesshomaru waited for her to have a free moment, but she didn't stop at all, and he didn't feel it would be productive for him to ask her help again so soon. So that day, he stayed in bed. Before he fell asleep he reached a decision: the next day he'd just do it himself.

So he fell asleep early that night and was now awake again at the present moment, just a bit before dawn. For a while, still remaining stationary, he just worked on slowly contracting and relaxing each of his muscles from his toes to his head. Everything was so stiff, and the responses so slow. He just couldn't understand what had happened to him. As soon as he regained his full mobility and strength, he was going to hunt down whoever had done this to him, beat it out of them how they did it, and then tear them into gruesome little shreds.

Next, just as the first dim glow of dawn radiated past the shutters lowered over the window, he managed to roll over as he had practiced. He pushed himself up on to his hands without too much difficulty. From there he trained his thoughts on moving his right knee, which he had only done so far with much assistance from Rin.

Just lift your knee. Just lift your knee and move it forward, he thought it like a mantra, imagining every little muscle from his lower abdomen to his lower leg mobilizing. Finally, shakily, he dragged the sleepy leg forward. With a little repositioning from his right hand while he balanced the rest of his upper body weight on his left, he managed to get his right leg and then the left under him, like a child preparing to crawl for the first time. He felt ridiculous: at least an hour's worth of work, and this is as much as the son of the great Inu no Taisho could accomplish?

No, he would walk today. He had to. His nose told him a full bath was needed desperately, while he longed to change into some clothes not permanently creased from sleep and his own perspiration.

It was all sort of a strange nightmare that could only end finally when he got himself up and about again, he told himself, as he creakily clawed his way across the tatami mats. His nails had started to grow a little bit thankfully, but he was disappointed to find that they were coming in weak and soft, their color ugly and yellowed. Exposure to moon and sunlight and a good hunt would take care of that though, he knew. It will have to, he thought as he clung to the heavy doorframe, readying himself to pull his body upright against it.

Ichi, ni, san, he counted and threw himself into it. For several minutes, he fought and sweated and pushed against the floor and grabbed at the door frame, until finally he stood, panting and clinging to the dark wood.

Slowly, carefully, he edged around to face the shoji. His knees and ankles trembled as if there were a small earthquake, but he was standing. Feeling the strain across his chest, he slid the shoji open. Momentarily, he was blinded by the normally soft morning light. His head spun comfortably at the stimulation, either from the light, or at being fully vertical for the first time in weeks, he didn't know. He took a few deep breaths, remembering his first bout of hyperventilation, not eager to repeat it. Thankfully, the spinning subsided.

He looked down the hall and felt another wave of discomfort at the scene. It was a particularly dark hall in the manor, windowless, but still he saw: swirling scratches and smeared blood... The evidence of the battle stretched all the way down the hall. Glancing to the side, he saw that even the door jamb he leaned on bore deep gouges. However, someone had obviously tried to rub away the blood stains, which were lighter on the frame than in the rest of the hallway.

A strange chill ran through him as he realized he had no recollection of the fight going past the dining room where he first spoke to the intruder, after her presumptuous entrance into his domain. She would pay for such flagrant disregard for his dominion and more still for the affront to his reputation. Maintaining any scrap of his honor now demanded swift and merciless punishment for the offender.

Still supported by the doorway, the Lord of the West stuck his head out into the corridor. Seeing no one around, he called a few times for Rin and Jaken, but no reply came. Peering down the hallway, he saw that all the doors were closed, accept the last, which was open just a crack and marked by a thin, escaping shaft of morning light. He guessed it must be Rin's.

Just as he was about to launch himself from the door toward a new holding place along the wall outside his room, he spotted something long and dark in the shadow of the door jamb. Leaning in the crevice between the wall and the wood was Tenseiga.

The worthless sword, he thought. It had done nothing for him when he was apparently being beaten to a pulp. Although, perhaps it could now, he smirked, wrapping his palm around the end of its hilt. Leaning his full weight on the sheathed blade, he found that it had finally found its true raison d'être in his life: it made an excellent cane! So with one hand latching from one wooden wall joint to the next and the other clutching Tenseiga, he hobbled down the hall toward the open door.

At last he made it, his breathing labored and his mouth dry from the exertion, but he made it. He stepped into the beam of whitish morning light leaking through the opening in the door, leaned against door frame, and slid back the shoji.

The small collection of personal effects on the dresser top and her faded red and orange kimono spread out on the futon confirmed that it was Rin's room. Once again, he spoke her name aloud to check to see if she was present, and certain that she wasn't, he invited himself in and limped over to her futon to wait for her. For several minutes he caught his breath and let the aching that covered his body diminish a bit. He was just growing bored of waiting, when the brief flicker of the wings of a bird landing and quickly taking off from the ledge outside her window grabbed his attention. He had not looked out the window at his land in months! Leaning unsteadily on Tenseiga this time, he managed to rise from Rin's futon without crossing the entire room on his hands and knees. Feeling very pleased with his progress, he was shuffling toward the window excitedly, when he saw out of the corner of his right eye the flutter of something dark in color.

"Rin?" he asked, thinking she had walked up behind him. However, as he looked over his shoulder, he noticed only her dresser mirror. It must have been his own reflection, something else which he hadn't seen in ages.

Oh, Kami, do I really want to see that right now? he asked himself sarcastically, knowing if he looked anything like he felt, he probably looked like an unbelievable mess. His curiosity won out though, and he backed up a couple steps to take another look.

Immediately, he began to squint at the figure in the mirror; the reflection he saw was so unexpected to him, there had to be something wrong, perhaps with his eye sight.

"What?" the word slipped between his lips. What is this? Who is that?! As suddenly as his sore neck would allow, he looked over his shoulder, disoriented, trying to see if there was anyone else there in the room.

No, there wasn't.

He fell into the dresser as he lunged to get closer to the mirror. Tenseiga clattered to the floor, and the mirror vibrated in its frame from the collision. His stomach flip-flopped as the stranger in the mirror drew closer too. Sick to his stomach, he pulled at the skin beside his mouth and watched as the disheveled stranger did the same. Never mind disheveled! Whose were those dark, hollow-looking eyes? That strange, sweaty, flushed face? And what about that greasy, dark mop of h-

Indeed, he had not even mentally processed the entire word before his hand began raking through the greasy bangs, which had been so resourcefully pushed back with their own natural oil to hold them. Yet, the young man's heart only really stopped, and he made the full connection when he pulled his shoulder length braid forward and really saw it for the first time: all his hair had been artfully, oh-so-practically bound up in long strips of silk, hiding each lock right down to the tips. His fingers rapidly clawed undone the silken knot and effortlessly, the thin strips of silk fell away allowing onyx-colored tresses to spill across Sesshomaru's shoulders.

No.

"Lord Sesshomaru?"

"No."

"What? Lord Sesshomaru, what are you-?" Rin began, unbelievably surprised and dread-filled to see him up and about so soon.

"What is this?!" he shouted madly, shaking a fistful of slate colored hair in her direction, where she still stood in the doorway. Her hair was still dripping from her bath and her cotton bathing yukata tied only loosely at her waist.

"I can explain," she responded, putting a steadying hand up.

"I doubt it! What happened to me?!" he strained, his throat tight with panic. His arms were beginning to quake from leaning his full weight on the dresser too long.

"Here, let me help you first," the girl said, noticing his fatigue. She threw down her damp bathing cloth and started toward him.

"No!" He cringed away. "Tell me now!"

"You were mortally wounded-" she tried to start.

"Then, you didn't find me like this? What did you do to me?" he yelled accusingly.

"Whatever attacked you must have taken or destroyed part your soul. We did the best we could. We replaced the missing piece with what was available at the time-" she tried to tell him, rushing the story.

"I don't understand what you're saying!" He spluttered fearfully, trying to deny this nightmare.

"You were dying! I had to do something!" Rin cried

"You're not making sense! What happened?" he demanded again.

"I found a Buddhist monk to revive you. He had to use human souls. It saved you, but it also… changed you, Lord Sesshomaru. You're human now. I'm so sorry," she said, her voice sounding thin even to herself.

"No, that's not possible... you lied to me," he moaned barely above a whisper, his arms and back bowing as he looked in the mirror. He looked like someone. Who was it?

"Yes," Rin, said her courage mounting, "but I saved you, too," she said more firmly.

He now realized who he now resembled more than ever: the one individual who drove him the craziest, his brother the half-human Inuyasha. This had to be the greatest punishment of all. "You've destroyed me. I'd be better off dead," he choked out.

"And this is exactly why I lied to you!" she countered, her voice rising again.

"You don't understand!" He yelled and pounded his fists against the dresser top with strength neither Rin nor he had expected.

"I was protecting you!" she protested.

"BUT I DON'T WANT TO BE PROTECTED!" he roared, and then his anger exploded. Suddenly, in a burst of adrenaline, his hands were on the brittle frame of the mirror, pulling it down.

Rin experienced the scene as if it were in slow-motion. She heard her own shocked squeak, as the mirror toppled toward the floor. Quickly, she covered her face with her hands and hopped back a step, all too aware of her bare feet. Glass exploded across the floor like torrential rains cascade down from the sky. Even the sound was deafening like the crack of thunder, right down to the tinkling of the last shard. At last she opened her eyes to find a few shiny splinters had come within millimeters of her toes, but none had touched her.

Although, she had lowered her hands from her eyes, her fingers remained pressed to her cheeks, as she absorbed the mess in stunned silence, unsure what to do next. She couldn't help but notice that Sesshomaru stood in the middle of a sea of splintered silver. Shards had landed on and all around his pale feet, but at the moment she hardly knew what to feel about him. She knew he wouldn't be happy when he found out, but she hadn't expected him to be so ungratefully nasty toward her. He had just thrown a mirror down in front of her and when she was half-dressed and had no shoes on, too.

Once more, she looked from the road map of broken glass on the floor back to the man in middle of all the wreckage. A bead of sweat rolled down his nose, as he panted and hung his head low over the dresser. He was obviously once again fighting just to remain erect. Mechanically, with the same base strength that had been keeping her going over the last two months, Rin swept up the bathing cloth which still lay near the door, unfolded it and threw it down over the glass between her futon and Sesshomaru. However, she refused to meet his eyes or say anything to him. Rather, she immediately dropped to the floor and began picking up shards of glass. She let her own long, damp, black tresses fall around her face, and she bit her lip until she thought it might bleed. There was no way she would let him see her upset, not now.

She listened, as he stumbled and crunched over the glass underneath the cloth and flopped back on her futon. For a while, he sat wheezing until he had control of his breathing, and then he struggled up off the blankets and limped out of the room. At last, she heard his uneven footsteps fade down the hallway, finally punctuated by the angry snap of his shoji door closing.

And then, unable to hold back any more tears, Rin sat down among the sparkling droplets covering her floor and cried.

:

The rest of the afternoon, after she picked up all of the glass from her bedroom floor, Rin spent in a full on catharsis. At last, she released all of the mixed emotions that had become bottled up and pressurized over the last few months. When eventually she felt like a wrung out sponge, she fell asleep in a heap on her futon not to wake up until after dark. Waking up in the pitch blackness, she panicked suddenly realizing that in her anger toward him, she had not brought Sesshomaru either his lunch or his dinner. Despite feeling trepidation at the thought of seeing him again after his earlier tantrum, Rin still scrambled down to the kitchen to make his soup and tea. However, when she nervously entered his room to give it to him, she found him already deep asleep, his perfect features now serene. A wave of irritation rippled through her, and she had to resist the urge to pour the bowl of soup over his beautiful, stupid head. She realized she loved him so much she wanted to pop, but at the moment she just didn't know what she was going to do with him, if he kept acting so nastily. Opting for maturity, she set the tray of liquid rations down beside his bed and crept out.

The next morning Rin woke even earlier and hurried through her bath, even though she still felt unbelievably exhausted from the previous day. She had decided that she still couldn't face Sesshomaru right away, so she promised herself that she would go out to the stables and visit Ah-Un for a while first; his quiet presence was always calming to her over the years, and she needed that now maybe more than ever.

Without waiting for her long hair to dry, she tossed a woven shawl over her head and set off the short distance down the rocks. The night had been cold, as winter was now coming on in earnest, and the morning was only marginally warmer. It was still enough for a dewy mist to hover over the earth, making everything look pale and ghostly in the morning light. As she picked her way along the narrow, grass-lined trail, chilled dew clung to her socks and the hem of her yukata. Lost in thought as the stable entrance came into view, she was thinking about everything that she had to catch up Ah-Un about (just because he couldn't talk back, didn't mean he didn't listen and deserve to know what was happening!) Still, she froze, when to her shock the breeze carried up the sound of someone's voice radiating from the stables.

"Come on! Come on!" came the voice in strained tones of irritation. Two forms, a smaller, limping one leading a larger, lumbering one melted out of the morning mist lingering by the stable door.

She realized quickly that Sesshomaru couldn't or just didn't see her on the foggy hillside. However, she saw and heard him all too clearly, as he emerged yanking on the two-headed demon's reigns. Her sheer disbelief at his brashness in coming outside in such cold, damp weather initially left her dumbstruck as the scene unfolded.

Sesshomaru growled, as he half-fell, half-pushed into the beast's muscular shoulder. Both of Ah-Un's heads looked down at him with a curious placidity that was so at odds with the man's agitation that it was almost comical.

"Don't look at me like that!" he snapped as he regained his balance with the help of what looked like the pole of a broomstick and tugged on the reigns again. "Even your power far exceeds mine now, so you resist me!" he scowled, more to himself.

He walked Ah-Un about 50 yards from the stable entrance and steered the beast around until he faced the building again. Sesshomaru commanded him to stay. A light breeze picked up and stirred the mist, as he backed up from creature about 10 yards, threw aside the make-shift cane and spread his arms wide.

He looked so exposed physically and emotionally, his torso completely unprotected and his face creased with all his pain and humiliation. Then he called out: "I beg you as my last remaining servant, end this pathetic existence. I cannot bare the shame of this desecration of my being. Help me die with some shred of my former honor!"

His cry echoed across the hills as he closed his eyes and tilted back his head with such finality. The sleeves of his dark yukata waved in the breeze like two funeral shrouds waiting for a body. Ah-Un merely bayed softly and looked around.

Rin wanted to yell out, and tell him how stupid he was, but the words were caught in her throat, stillborn. She couldn't speak, and she couldn't move. Only her eyes welled up with tears until her vision blurred, and the hot drops leaked over and splotched her cheeks. At last, she finally dragged the back of her hand across her eyes to clear them.

When she looked at the scene again, there stood only Sesshomaru, his pale face facing the grey morning sky and his sleeves rising and falling on the wind. Ah-Un was gone, though, nowhere to be seen.

Now, they really only had each other.