Dying to Live
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.
Rin cut through the crowd feeling overwhelmed by all the voices speaking in some kind futuristic Japanese she understood but couldn't really recognize. Although the older people seemed to be wearing regular kimono or other traditional clothes, the cut of the garments was strange to her, and some people –men and women alike— fashioned bright colors or awkwardly form-fitting trousers that did not seem too appropriate for a wedding. She felt a little relieved, though, that the dress code seemed to be so mixed, since it made it easier for her to blend in with the shades of burgundy, cream and moss green she wore. As she had spied for Sesshomaru from a seat at the back of the wedding ceremony, she even noticed that Inuyasha and Kagome and several members of their closest friends and family wore furs similar to hers, although in different colors. This seemed like it might be helpful for mixing in too until, as she and the other guests transferred from the shrine area to a large tent, people began asking her if she was related to the groom or the Hirai family. After having to disengage from these inquiries several times by just walking away from the conversation, she just left the pelt folded over an unoccupied chair in a corner of the tent. This improved things a little, but then she still a bit baffled that other guests kept stopping her to ask from which university she graduated (see Note 1)… she hoped they just had her confused with someone else.
And now it was almost four hours since she'd tumbled out of the well and crashed messily into a dusty collection on landscaping tools. After anxiously searching for wherever she'd dropped Tenseiga in all the mess, she finally gathered up the precious sword. She took several deep, calming breaths and wondered again what in all the gods' names was she getting into. Then in the darkness of the well-house, it had taken several minutes of careful picking and looking in a dirty, cracked, discarded sheet of glass to get all the dust off her clothes and out of her hair. After that she carefully cleaned out a nook behind a stack of old flower pots where she leaned the old fang to hide. Don't worry, I'll come back for you, she mentally comforted the sword before gently stroking its ancient sheath and departing.
Still, despite all her searching through the guests and her discreet efforts to look around the shrine property without being noticed by anyone who might recognize her, she still hadn't found any sign of Sesshomaru. This was both better and worse than what she had expected to find. He apparently hadn't killed or been killed yet, so she began to wonder if he was here at all.
Has he already come and gone back through the well? She glanced across the room to where she saw the monk talking to his wife and Kohaku; Rin had also noticed that the female demon slayer was round with child and remembered her early "sickness". Despite carrying out her search, Rin had tried to keep a special eye on all three of them, recalling how Sesshomaru had mentioned Miroku right before they'd been attacked by the horse thieves in the riverbed. Maybe I was wrong, maybe Sesshomaru wasn't planning on attacking the monk after all. Maybe he already talked him or changed his mind about whatever he was going to do and had already gone back to the village. She felt a little more hopeful at this thought; it was a lot better than the other possibility that she'd thought of: that the well had dumped him off at some other place and time she'd never find in a million years, possibly quite literally… Maybe I should just stop hiding and go ask to Miroku-san directly if he's seen him, she told herself, shaking the negative thoughts from her mind.
"So how do you know the bride and groom," a voice said next to her. She looked up to find a rather handsome young man about her age offering her a corny looking smile and some pink colored mystery liquid. The drink was in a cup made of thin, ugly looking material. She had made the mistake of lingering too long near a beverage table. Pretending like she didn't hear him, Rin turned silently and wandered away in the opposite direction. The young man's face turned sour, as he shuffled away with two, still-full cups of punch.
People here are so nosy, Rin observed, once again feeling miffed as she stopped next to one of the large round dinner tables, feeling she had gone far enough. Rin didn't realize, though, that she was about to meet one woman who could top it all.
"I just don't understand it—just don't understand it!" The crackling high-pitched strains of the old lady's voice came from a table a short distance from where Rin stood. There was no avoiding hearing what the woman was saying as she carried on. Rin inclined her attention in the woman's direction, interested in hearing what had the speaker in such high lather.
"How can they let such people into the family? Just walk away right when you're talking to them! And with such fresh words! I never— in all my years—!" Aunt Mari fumed, her over-permed, frizzy waves shaking around her unhappily pinched face. The way she glared from one to another of the aunties, it was as if she was practically daring them to disagree.
"Now, now, Mari," said another of the aunties who was reclining in her chair in a rather unseemly old-ladyish way. She waved her hand in lazy dismissal: "You liked the boy and his groomsman well enough when we talked to them earlier—"
"That was before I met that—that other one!" Mari spat, her ire boiling now. She began to shake her finger condemningly: "The boy might be fine now, but it's the family that will matter later, I tell you! The apple never falls far from the tree and that man I met just now was already rotten!"
"Sush, Mari," another old lady with a large liver spot on her cheek said in softer tones. She placed a frail hand on Mari's skinny wrist. "What's done is done—the marriage is over. You're going to embarrass someone. Besides, he might not even be a Hirai. You didn't really talk to him…"
Aunt Mari's frown-lines deepened, and she shook the other woman's hand off feistily. "Ha! I know he was! When you've lived as long as I have, and you've come to see hundreds of faces, I say to you, I know when two people share the same blood after just one look. He was definitely a relative of the groom—and I'll bet my life, a close one at that," she finished, squinting and wagging her index finger again for added effect.
"It is strange that the groom has so few blood relations here today. One would figure that even if the family is small, he must have at least a few more up north," pointed out another lady with stenciled on eyebrows and jaw-length hair dyed a slightly shocking and obviously unnatural shade of midnight purple.
"Ah! Finally, someone agrees with me!" Aunt Mari barked appreciatively at the woman with purple hair. "And there I was thinking I had finally found at least one other blood relative of the groom, so naturally I asked him so. And when he finally, deigned to make eye contact with his elder—like he should!—and I saw that bloodshot eye," at this point a couple the older women gasped right along with Rin, "and the scuffs on his face, naturally I asked about those too. And still he says nothing, so of course I put my hands on my hips, just like this, and I said, 'WELL?'"
At this point several of the women were leaning closer to Aunt Mari, clearly not having heard this part already. Rin found herself so pulled in by the need to know what Sesshomaru did next that she didn't want to interrupt just yet. Aunt Mari continued clearly relishing the attention: "Do you know what that indolent man said then? Hm? He said, 'Well, what?' The petulance! Of course, I said, 'Well, are you related to the groom or not?' His response was the final straw, I tell you: he looked down his nose at me like I was the vegetable woman or the street cleaner and says, "If I was, I wouldn't admit it." And then he walked away! Walked away, like that! I just never-"
"Excuse me," Rin said, leaning in between two of the aunties and inserting herself in the conversation. Aunt Mari's thin, greying eyebrows shot up under her wiry fringe at the interruption, but Rin had not been able to take it anymore.
"How long ago did you talk to that man?" Rin asked, anxiety rising up within her again.
"I beg your pardon—and who exactly are you?" Aunt Mari questioned, still plainly indignant. The other women silently looked on.
"I—I'm a member of the family, and I'm looking for him. Please tell me," Rin begged, realizing belatedly that saying that she was part of the family might cause the answer to come even slower.
"Ah-ha! Then maybe you can tell us! Are you and that man Hirais or not?" Aunt Mari asked, sinking her teeth into the opportunity.
Rin had just opened her mouth to attempt to answer that question as a commotion suddenly broke out at the front of the room. The clash of glass and metal filled the air.
"What was that?" Aunt Mari asked, the need know to all the details about this latest disturbance immediately gripping her; however, not everyone was distracted by the events at the front of the room.
A hunched little woman wearing enormous spectacles, who looked much older than even Aunt Mari and who was barely noticed before, suddenly raised her voice: "What do you think you are doing young lady?"
That's all it took: Aunt Mari's attention swung back to Rin, who had scrambled on top of her chair.
Is this it? Rin's mind called out. She scanned the crowd nervously for Sesshomaru, totally oblivious to the nagging censure being launched at her from below.
"What in all the—!" Aunt Mari exclaimed, her voice full of reproof as she began to get out of her chair to correct the strange young woman's horrendous manners.
Where are you, Lord Sesshomaru? Rin pled internally as her eyes swept over the scene surrounding the mess on the dance floor. Her vision had just reached the far end of the room when to the far right she heard what sounded like someone banging into one of the tables. Then…
SMASH.
Just a short distance ahead of the aunties' table and to the left, Inuyasha stood in frozen shock. Her attention pulled back by the much closer sound of the shattered glass, Rin's eyes fell on the sparkle of shards and spilled liquid that pooled at Inuyasha's feet. Beside him a servant holding a tray full of strangely shaped glasses cast a surprised and horrified look at the floor, his mouth moving in some kind of protest.
"Young lady, you'll come down this instant!" Aunt Mari's shrill reproach snagged back Rin's attention, as the elderly woman yanked with unexpected force on one of Rin's long, dangling sleeves.
So surprised, Rin could say nothing, but only glanced at the woman for half an instant before looking back up at Inuyasha, only to find that he had totally vanished from the crowd.
Darn it! I missed him, she cursed. He had to have left the tent. With a single determined tug, Rin pulled her sleeve back from Aunt Mari's gnarled clutches and launched herself from the chair toward the nearest exit.
Then, the eruption occurred. The other aunties covered their ears, as Aunt Mari's face burned crimson with her self-righteousness. Like a fish out of water, her mouth opened wide to blow: "HOW RUUUUUUDE! IN ALL MY YEARS—I NEVER! THEY'LL HEAR ABOUT THIS, THEY WILL!"
::
Miroku didn't really know what he had expected to happen when he finally saw Sesshomaru again. Maybe, he had rather hoped it wouldn't be like this.
It really was his fault, though, that he was probably going to be dead within the next few minutes. He hadn't gone back to check on Sesshomaru as he had promised. He hadn't devised any plan to get the demon's soul back in his body. And, finally, he hadn't made any preparation to defend himself for when Sesshomaru eventually came to kill him in cold blood, as he would and was obviously doing now that he'd recovered. No, it seemed that Miroku had made the mistake of finally wanting to simply relax and enjoy his life together with his friends and family now that everything seemed to be going so well for them all (even if he himself was a marked man, literally.) Would it have been too much to ask Sesshomaru to wait a little longer before murdering him? It would have been nice to look into the faces of his and Sango's newborn children at least once before he carried out the paternal family tradition of meeting an early end.
I'm so sorry, Sango, he thought as the steely, post-sunshine cold hitched painfully in his lungs, and he nearly missed skidding back down the slope leading up to the house. I know you'll be a great mother to our children, and Kagome and Inuyasha will give you lots of help, he told himself, trying to ignore the tears prickling the backs of his eyes. The monk realized that he was not done for yet, though. Even if he could not eventually save himself, he could try to lead Sesshomaru well out of the way of everyone else at the wedding. He wouldn't let Sesshomaru ruin his friends' wedding day by cutting him violently down in front of all their guests or, worse yet, injuring innocent bystanders. Thus, as soon as he looked up from the punch bowl into his attacker's pale, frozen glare—now only a fraction less terrifying emanating from dull brown rather than golden orbs—Miroku had spun immediately in the direction of Kagome's house.
Thinking fast, he realized that to lead Sesshomaru back toward the well fast enough would have required weaving through the entire tent of guests. Remembering that he knew no other places to run in the area surrounding Kagome's—especially the kind of deserted place he really needed—the only other option had been her house. Part of him even started to hope that, as he suddenly decided that he would make a dash for the front door to divert Sesshomaru further, that either Kagome or Inuyasha might have noticed his rushed exit from the tent and might be able to save him yet.
Scrambling, he boosted himself over the front yard fence, not daring to check how close behind Sesshomaru and his sword were. In several fast strides he leapt onto the porch, tried the front door latch, and was so relieved to slip inside and lock the door. Panting, he peeked out the little window beside the door only to find Sesshomaru nowhere in sight. What's taking him? He should have followed my foot prints in the snow, he worried. The monk started to panic that, lost, his assailant might have gone back to the wedding and in his frustration, use his blade on someone else. Then, in the silence of the fortunately empty house, he heard a muffled thud, thud, thud, coming from somewhere in back and then the deafening echo of:
KUN.
KUN.
KUN—
CRACKKK!
Although Miroku couldn't see it past the jog in the first floor hallway that ran from the front door, past the sitting room, to the kitchen and out the back door, he knew that was unmistakably the sound of the glass of the sliding back door exploding into a million pieces after being pummeled with the blunt-ended hilt of a battle sword.
And Miroku wasn't about to stay nearby to see it, either. Still woefully unarmed and with no back-up in sight, Miroku flew up the narrow bedroom stairs two at a time.
"MONK!" came the battle cry. The shaking and pounding of feet on the stairs was so loud and that Miroku knew Sesshomaru had to be close enough to reach out and grab him. At this point, his only hope was to prolong the attack, so without much thought, the Buddhist darted for the last room at the end of the hall and pathetically failed to slam the bedroom door in his pursuer's face. Sesshomaru instead burst into the room and slammed the door shut furiously behind him. Miroku found himself backed into Souta's bedroom desk, totally defenseless.
"Sesshomaru, let me explain—" Miroku began in a barely calm tone, clinging to a last hope of talking his would-be killer down.
"There's nothing to talk about, the human version of the Lord of the West replied in his signature, emotionally frosty voice as he brought his blade crashing down toward Miroku's skull.
Reaching blindly around behind his back, Miroku grabbed the first metallic thing his hand landed upon: the flexible neck of Souta's desk lamp. Strengthened by pure fear, he tore the lamp from its position on the desk, its cord flying instantly free of its socket, and by some miracle, he managed to block Sesshomaru's swing. The head and the base of the little bendy-necked lamp in either of Miroku's hands, the moldable metal neck just barely broke the force of the sword as it flexed. The sharp edge of the blade stopped so close to the spot between the monk's eyes that he could have licked it, if he'd dared.
For a moment, Sesshomaru looked almost as shocked as Miroku. The Lord of the West wasn't accustomed to missing such an easy mark, which gave Miroku the fraction of a second he needed to dodge out of the way of the weapon. Released from its hold, the blade fell into the desktop with a morbid sounding clunk, and Miroku ducked under Sesshomaru's arm toward the other end of the room.
Still quaking from the last attack, Miroku held up the lamp by its base to defend himself, while Sesshomaru spun on him again with an angry snarl. "Please, listen!" Miroku shouted frantically. "You were almost dead! Rin begged me to save—!"
The blade flashed before Miroku's eyes again. He felt its breeze against his left ear, as he shifted out of the way just in time to not find out what it was like for Van Gogh to lose an ear.
"I didn't need saving!" Sesshomaru uncharacteristically bristled. Miroku barely notice though as he fought down the vertigo of nearly being maimed.
He didn't know how, but Miroku managed to control his voice again, before quickly blurting out, "You don't know what you're doing – if you kill me now, you'll destroy us both!" Please let him want to preserve himself at least, the monk silently prayed.
"You've already destroyed me," Sesshomaru replied drily.
The worst possible situation: he doesn't care about a thing now. Miroku wanted to choke. Of course he didn't; for Lord Sesshomaru of the Western Lands, who was above all self-possessed and who loathed every human (inexplicably barring only one, apparently making the girl a negligible exception) Miroku had made him into the worst possible thing imaginable. But it wasn't permanent (probably)—that was the last hope.
Sesshomaru's sword came crashing toward his chest this time. Miroku swung the lamp wildly across himself. The blade thankfully caught against the sweep of the light's bendable neck, but Sesshomaru knocked it clean out of Miroku's hands. Its little light bulb shattered in a dismal sort of climax against the floor. Still, Miroku had to try to save himself if he could.
"I can help you," Miroku tried again, as he shakily felt along the bookshelf behind him for anything else with which to shield his body. Dammit! Only books! "The soul binding sutra is only a temporary solution!" the words tumbled out of his mouth anxiously. He worried that he didn't sound at all convincing until Sesshomaru's expression contorted into the scariest look Miroku could have imagined on him at that moment: a smile.
Really, it was more of a wry, lopsided smirk, but it was the careless abandon that punctuated Sesshomaru's whole bearing as he momentarily dropped the sword to his side that was most unsettling to Miroku. A chill ran down Miroku's back as Sesshomaru lowered his head so that his raged bangs obscured his eyes, and a strange sound roiled out from his chest. Was that some kind of… chuckle? Miroku wondered, already half-mad with terror.
"Hn, and about to be more 'temporary' than you thought, monk," the silky voice abruptly replied as, almost if on cue, someone barreled deafeningly up the stairs. "MIIIIROOOKUUUU?!" shouted the familiar, gruff voice.
Inuyasha. Miroku felt suddenly overwhelmed with emotion that his friend had come to help him after all; however, he barely dared to breathe at that moment let alone call out to his friend. He wondered how Sesshomaru knew of Inuyasha's approach. Perhaps even as a human, his hearing was still just a bit better than average. For a moment, he and Sesshomaru just faced each other as Inuyasha's footsteps thundered down the hall, as he rapidly checked each of the other bedrooms. Finally, a hand fell on the knob of Souta's door, and it rattled sharply, shaking the whole door.
"MIROKU, ARE YA IN THERE?" Inuyasha's muffled voice shouted through the door. "MIROKU!"
"And almost perfect timing," Sesshomaru sighed with startling calm. Then slightly louder, in an almost intentional voice, he added nonchalantly, "Not what I planned, although now that halfblooded mutt will get to listen to you die by my sword. That should hopefully expedite the rest of the process a bit for me."
"What?" Miroku mumbled, totally dazed by Sesshomaru's last comment.
"What's goin' on in there? Whose voice is that?" Inuyasha shouted again, sounding alarmed this time, and shaking the door even harder in its frame. "Miroku, open the fucking door!—it's locked!"
Miroku had barely uttered the word "I—" when in one feral motion, Sesshomaru lunged with a single-handed stab straight for his heart.
Is this the end?
:
Later on, even Miroku had no idea how he'd managed to block the attack as he had: snatching a thick book off the shelf behind him and letting it open between his hands, he snapped it shut on the blade as its pointed tip pierced through the binding. No one could have been more astonished that it had worked than Miroku, not even Sesshomaru. A second later, his arms still quivered from the force of holding back Sesshomaru's forward drive. Amitabha, Buddha of Infinite Light, today must not be my day to die, Miroku marveled at his second amazingly lucky move in mere minutes. Outside, Inuyasha continued to bang and shout at the door. This had to be Miroku's chance.
He caught Sesshomaru still totally blown away from having his killing move utterly smothered between the pages of a common, human's book. Releasing an unintelligible, guttural scream, the Buddhist simultaneously twisted and pulled down on the sword trapped between the closed pages, nearly bringing Sesshomaru down too with the awkward motion that brought the sword to the floor in a loud clatter with the impaled book.
In two long strides, Miroku's hands were twisting the door knob, as Sesshomaru's hands nearly reached to twist the monk's neck from behind. The lock clicked in its slot, and Miroku had just shouted with his face practically pressed to the door, "Inuyasha, it's unlock—", when Inuyasha plowed through the door with one shoulder forward, obviously aiming to knock it in.
The grain of the door closed in on Miroku's vision fast before the base of his skull cracked loudly against something flat and immovable. Suddenly, his eyes filled with stars.
:
"Damned monk," Inuyasha cursed and slammed the door shut, as he watched the monk fall in a crumpled heap from the wall into which the opened door had bashed his head. Quickly spotting that nothing more than a bloody nose (Never mind a concussion, the monk's skull is thick, Inuyasha thought) apparently affected his friend, Inuyasha turned his gaze on Sesshomaru. He widened his stance, his dark eyebrows angled into an angry glare, and Sesshomaru noticed he had his left thumb poised to flick Tessaiga clear of its sheath at a moment's notice; in his haste Inuyasha hadn't had time to fasten it to his hip, so instead he held it at ready.
"Now, who the hell are you and what do you think you're doing here?" his half-brother demanded in his usual, indelicate way.
Sesshomaru seethed inside at the irony of Inuyasha's question. Still, he maintained his calm exterior except for an irritable eyebrow twitch. "If you have to ask," he stated dully, followed by a deft stamp of his left foot on the edge of the slain book that righted it so that the hilt of his sword levered up and into his opened hand. "Then I'm not sure it will be worth much to be vanquished by you after all." And with that, he yanked his sword free of the book's spine and relentlessly rained down repeated slashes on Inuyasha.
Who is this guy? Inuyasha's mind questioned, as he parried and swept aside the quick succession of attacks. Who would fight him with such palatable anger like this? The desperate, reckless swipes were charged with such emotion that something told him this assault had to be personal. It was also clear to Inuyasha that Miroku had only been the opening act; had this guy actually attacked the monk in the same manner, there wasn't a chance Miroku would have survived. No, these swings were specifically meant for Inuyasha.
At last their blades locked, and Inuyasha gritted his teeth and fought to stay the man's sword just for a minute. They were pretty evenly matched in close quarter techniques and strength, at least at first, but something strange was happening to the man, and his power seemed to be slipping from him rapidly. Now that they were paused, Inuyasha saw how the guy's shoulders rounded slightly and rose and fell a bit too quickly, revealing fatigue and a weird lag in his respiration. Startled by his opponent's bizarrely deteriorating condition, Inuyasha blurted out the retort with an unintended hint of concern: "Hey, what're you pulling? What the hell's wrong with you?"
Sesshomaru growled deeply and bore down on Inuyasha, drawing a little more energy from his freshly stoked anger. This fight had drawn on longer than he had planned, and he had wasted too much energy on the monk. The plan was coming undone: why wasn't Inuyasha overpowering him? He looked to be in his human form even… Skinny and chipped, Tessaiga too lacked all of its usual strength and was almost not even a match for Sesshomaru's vulgar, borrowed, mortal weapon. Perfect, Sesshomaru felt like raging at his continued misfortune. Obviously, his half-brother's idiotic nature had defied his comprehension yet again.
"I could ask you the same," Sesshomaru spat, leaning hard on his blade. He would fight to ignore that haunting, tightening pain in his chest just a little longer. Even with Inuyasha weak as he seemed to be, for Sesshomaru to give up too soon or to let Inuyasha slay him without first properly identifying him would only negate the last few shreds of honor Sesshomaru hoped to gain by dying at the hands of a semi-worthy opponent (in the absence of one, he had decided some time ago that the hanyou would have to do…)
"What happened to your demonic energy, cur? Tessaiga shouldn't be in this pathetic state, even in your halfblooded hands," the stranger spat the rest of his insult at Inuyasha.
Inuyasha also strongly disliked using Tessaiga untransformed, but it was the only weapon he'd ever bothered to carry in his life. He hadn't expected to need to defend his new family from any major attacks he couldn't handle with just brute force in the modern era, but now he saw he was wrong. This fucking, presumptuous asshole! Inuyasha wanted to shout as the blood rushed furiously to his face. Thinks he knows all about my sword! Then suddenly, it hit him.
That's crazy… No, that's impossible, Inuyasha thought, his grip on Tessaiga faltering slightly even at the mere idea of it… He lifted up Tessaiga's ancient sheath to create a two-handed block to relieve some of the pressure on his beat-up looking old blade and tried to get a better look at the person's face past their crossed blades.
"Well?" the stranger grimaced and pushed provocatively against their swords for emphasis.
Inuyasha recognized it then. Disdainful, arrogant, self-important… There was only one individual Inuyasha knew of with a bearing that irritating: "S-Sesshomaru?"
:::
Note 1: Japanese girls commonly wear hakama for their university graduation.
Note 2: Ha-HA! Another wedding chappy for you guys—it's taking more chapters to finish the wedding parts than I originally anticipated, but this is such a rich and important sequence of scenes in the story before the plot takes a change in tempo. I figured I could have made you all wait and just rolled it all into one mega-chapter, but to be honest, I've been too excited to wait! :P Hope you all enjoyed! Hugs and thanks for your support ~ you guys really make it worth it! Origamikungfu.