Dying to Live
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.
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"Your heart admires the lowly flower
That dwells within our mountain bower.
Not long, alas! that flower may last
Torn by the mountain's angry blast."
-From "Young Violet" from The Tales of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
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Finally after dragging themselves out of bed the next morning with two hangovers ranging from mild to rather serious, Rin and Sesshomaru took off from the coziness of the rustic inn to begin the rest of their ride around the southern face of Mt. Fuji. Although he could tell the first day's ride was a little rough on Rin, who judging from the slight list in her riding posture for the first few hours was experiencing the rather serious hangover out of the two them, he noticed that she was in generally higher spirits than she had been before they reached the Mt. Fuji area. Over the next few days, she laughed and joked more than he had seen her do in months, and it seemed obvious to him that she had to be enjoying being among her own kind again; naturally, as they approached the Edo area, there were more human settlements with proper inns for Rin and Sesshomaru to take shelter in, each filled with other people with whom Rin could converse. Contrary to his original expectations, though, while Rin would chat pleasantly with other young women, and the occasional young man, in the communal areas of the rest houses and more frequent check points at which they stopped, she never failed to return early to their room in an effort to pull him into a few minutes of warm conversation before bed.
Sesshomaru was quite sure by now, though, that he was not much of a conversationalist compared to most humans. This was especially in comparison to the young men he had closely observed, as they nightly engaged Rin and her peers in small talk at the inns. Even the less handsome ones could usually bring a few sparkling giggles from the girls as effortlessly as an expert musician draws notes from a flute or harp. Good, she'll need to find someone else take care of her soon anyway. Let her be a little popular with the boys, he advised himself, stiffly restraining himself when he watched from across the dining area as one who looked like the cook's boy approached her by the rice server earlier that night.
Revisiting that moment from dinner, Sesshomaru could deduce even less why Rin kept toiling to work a few strained replies from him each night. Regardless, he realized that he appreciated it… The distraction of her increasingly effervescent companionship helped ease at least a little bit the almost constant pain he suffered as his tortured countdown dragged by to the time when they'd finally reach their destination… And I can finally carry out my last, dying—
But the rattle of the shoji interrupted his thoughts as it usually did this hour of the evening. "I'm back, Lord Sesshomaru!" Rin bubbled, as her glowing visage appeared at the opening in the door. She held two small, brown, clay cups, one hugged close to her body in the crook of her arm and the other in her free hand as she slid the door shut with the other. "I was talking with the cook's son at the water tap at the back of the inn, and he said he could slip me a couple sneaky cups of hot sake to warm us up before bed. You'll have a bit with me, won't you?" she said, her warm eyes pleading, as she carefully knelt beside Sesshomaru and lowered the cups to the table.
Oh well, I suppose you can always finish that line of thought later, Sesshomaru chided himself, knowing his own internal exasperation at the interruption was not even really genuine. "Sure," he agreed evenly, as he took the cup.
As Rin playfully clinked her cup against his, a recent effort she had undertaken to teach him how to toast, Sesshomaru understood something: that he didn't want to admit the way he felt the unclenching of something deep down in his chest when she finally sat down beside him each night… Because he really wanted to deny that he had started to feel impatient for her nightly return… And he wanted to deny that even more because it made him feel a little less like doing what he needed to do when he met his half-brother in a few days…
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Their trip continued, finally bringing them to the area of Yaga, barely a day or two's ride from Edo. They'd reach his half-brother's village in no more than three or four days, Sesshomaru figured as they trotted up to the local rest station about an hour before sunset.
The inn at the station was extremely plain, but nice. Chatter inside the little lodge's unusually organized canteen revealed that the territory had passed less than two years earlier into the capable hands of the local Lord Takizawa, a well-known, fervent, young convert to Pure Land Buddhism. Apparently famously dedicated to the service and care of his lands and the people living on them, at least in comparison to the lords of the surrounding territories, Lord Takizawa had taken up administration of the check points and inns along his section of the Big Road with impressive zeal. Rin and Sesshomaru had to agree: while the public rest station's inn was nowhere as charming as the first inn they stayed at in the Fuji region, at least one could get a decent hot dinner and a clean bed at a fair price. So later that night, Rin and Sesshomaru laid down side by side in soft, dry, down blankets.
They were in a common sleeping room shared by all of the tenants of the inn, so the two slept closer together than normal, causing Sesshomaru to feel a bit crowded and shamefully disappointed at missing his nightly routine with Rin; however, he took some solace in the fact that their close proximity allowed him to keep a good eye on her throughout the night. They exchanged brief, soft good-nights and did their best to drift off to the quiet whispers of mothers hushing their young children accompanied by the tap of cold rain on the roof tiles above. Glancing once more at Rin's back through his greyish-brown eyes, he found the rhythmic rise and fall of her body gentle with sleep since she had rolled over in between her covers. At that moment, Sesshomaru felt glad to be warm and indoors with her, a feeling he never would've guessed he'd have, not in hundreds of years.
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Dawn rose icily the next the morning as if the sun had frozen overnight beneath a thick sheet of steely, grey ice. As soon as Rin and Sesshomaru stepped outside, the sharp, damp air bit painfully at their cheeks and noses, the atmosphere all together uninviting after the nightlong frozen rains. Miraculously, the temperature had not remained low enough for the fallen water to actually turn to ice, so they forged forth, instead hampered by rocky mud and soupy, brown puddles.
After they had been riding a while, and he had watched one too many times as Rin uselessly tried to pull a bit tighter the knotted ribbons on her stole, Sesshomaru asked, "Did you sleep well, despite all the people last night?" He hoped talking might help distract the girl from the cold.
Rare as it still was for Sesshomaru to ever start any kind of conversation, Rin steadied herself a little from falling out of her saddle. "Oh, yes, I was fine," she piped up, enthusiastically. "How about you? Did you find it alright?"
"It was tolerable," he replied, finding to his dismay as usual that his typical economical way of speaking often put an early end to more inconsequential topics. He needed to save the conversation: "I suppose I prefer it when we have a private room," he added, and then noticed that the blood had risen high on Rin's cheeks. At least she doesn't look cold anymore, Sesshomaru thought.
"Oh, uh, I definitely like that better, too," she responded, her cheeks still rosy.
"Yes, well," he fumbled, sensing that the conversation was still going in the wrong direction somehow. "Hopefully, that little collection of hovels where my half-brother's gang wastes their time will have a decent place for you to stay."
"Oh, I'm sure it will be fine. Besides, Lady Kagome also lives there, and she doesn't seem like she'd stay anywhere that wasn't nice," she said, sounding more optimistic about it than he felt.
"Hn," he replied, as they found themselves at an interesting break in the path. A wide, long clearing between the trees littered with round, temari ball-sized rocks told of a forgotten creek that it seemed had been diverted elsewhere, leaving this stony bed now dry. The area for the original waterway had apparently been cleared away long ago by men, judging by the way that the trees on either of its former banks had had time to spread their highest branches in a thick, green canopy overhead that held out the dim winter sun.
"Looks like it used to be a run-off point for one of the local lord's lands… Maybe that Lord Takizawa had it redirected elsewhere," Rin observed from where they paused on the old westward bank.
"If it was done at all recently, then the ground could still be quite soft. Cross with care," he directed, as he eased his horse forward first.
"Right," Rin agreed, edging her little, dark brown mare after him. "Um, Lord Sesshomaru," she began a little hesitantly after couple minutes, when they were about mid-way across the creek bed, and it was obvious that the horses would be alright crossing. "Do really you think Inuyasha and Lady Kagome will actually be there when we get to their village?"
Sesshomaru didn't answer for a moment. "Yes. Or I will go find them. Mainly, I just need my half-brother's monk," he answered shortly.
Still, Rin tried to proceed carefully now that she had the chance. "Well, if I might ask, what do you plan to do when you find them?" she questioned. Just after, her horse snorted irritably, one of its hooves slipping slightly on a rock below.
Sesshomaru turned a bit in his saddle, partially to see that she was okay and partially to answer her. His expression was strangely stern all of sudden. "Rin, I don't—" he began, when suddenly his whole body dropped about a foot out of Rin's sight.
What happened next seemed to occur at first in slow motion according to Rin's memory. "No! NO!" Sesshomaru shouted over his horse's ear-splitting, confused whines, while he pulled hard on the beast's reigns and smacked its rump to no avail. "DON'T! DON'T" he yelled again, but Rin could already see that the animal's forelegs were crumpling one after the other into a forward-pitching kneel on the rocks.
"SESSHOMARU!" she shrieked, but momentum had already taken over, as the horse tumbled, screaming, head-first toward the ground. Unable to breathe, Rin saw as, almost unnaturally, the animal's huge head swung left before hitting the huge stones, causing its massive right shoulder to roll off the ground first. Fortunately, this allowed Sesshomaru to somersault down from the saddle before the rest of the heavy, thrashing body could crush his arms or legs into the creek bed. This didn't prevent mud and baseball sized rocks from being flung on top of him, though, as the horse fitfully struggled back onto its legs.
Rin had just opened her mouth to yell again, when Sesshomaru's voice rose painfully from the ground: "Rin, stop. Don't come any closer."
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Note: Whew, two chapters within the week: it must be a record! Reviews, please, sweet readers, reviews! As I've seen other fanfic writers point out before, reviews are the only way we get paid. Show the love! 3 Origamikungfu. PS. Big thanks to odango88 and Chocolattechan for their reviews on the previous chapter and to all of you who added this story to your favs and follows!