Dying to Live
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi, but as always, I do claim all the unique plot and original characters as mine.
The kitsune gnawed his lip with his pointed canines as long minutes passed that Kohaku did not emerge from the building. The villagers started passing buckets, and two of the tallest boys were throwing the water through the gaping hole in the wood, but the smoke only increased. It wasn't clear the fire had abated at all even with the water. People around the fox were crying. He listened and heard that the cow, maddened with the smell of smoke, could not be pulled from the fire. Two of the chickens seemed to have vanished too, possibly pulled from a gap in the building by one of the zombic wolves.
The moments passed tensely. Ginta, Hakkaku, and Hachi had walked over a few minutes before. Hachi immediately slumped nearby in a shocked daze. The rest of the allies watched over Sesshomaru, who hadn't showed his face or really moved at all since taking to the ground on his knees. As none of them knew the former demon at all well, they chose to leave him be. Shippou worried though for Rin, whom their group had come to like. Again, he unthinkingly worried the fabric of his blood-blackened, crepe silk sleeves. He hadn't noticed, but he was standing in a posture almost certainly learned from Inuyasha, arms crossed tightly over his chest. The fox barely noticed when Hakkaku came to stand beside him.
"How long has it been since he went in?" Hakkaku asked, glancing around. Stars still hung in the sky. Yet, like any good wolf demon, the wolf youkai was attuned to the placement of even the new moon, dark as it was, and could recognize the night was beginning to come to an end.
"I'm at a count of about 200 now," Shippou said, having been tracking the passing time by counting silently in his head. It hadn't been too long... but then again, the bodies of humans were comparatively fragile...
Just then the shouts of a few villagers heightened behind the two demons, tearing their attention from the building.
"Nooo! Emiko! My Emikoooo" A woman shrieked from where the villagers had gathered toward the edge of the village. They had clustered there to make way for the bucket brigade. Gesturing to Ginta to stay by Sesshomaru, Shippou and Hakkaku rushed toward the screams, where the villagers were backing away.
The scene was horrifying: a knot of the monstrous wolf demons had shockingly returned. Two of them were dragging a female child, probably barely five-years-old, by her arm and shoulder to the dark treeline. The child's body had gone slack. The mother cried bloody-murder. More villagers dragged the woman backward again toward the village hall, while about five more wolves snapped at the crowd.
Automatically, Shippou and Hakkaku dashed forward. They swung threateningly at the monsters, whose eyes glinted evilly under the dwindling starlight.
"Hakkaku, is there anyway we can reach the child?" Shippou cried to his companion, who slashed bloodily across the face of one of the wolves. The mohawked youkai panted in fatigue still left over from the earlier leg of the battle.
Just as Hakkaku and Shippou paused to confer, the mother of the taken girl wailed from behind somewhere. In his distraction at the mother's fitful crying, two of the wolves skirted around Hakkaku's reach. The beasts barreled dangerously toward the bucket brigade.
"NO!" Hakkaku and Shippou shouted, at once giving chase. Villagers darted away in crazy directions, and buckets flew left and right. Water splashed across the ground, and even hitting Sesshomaru, Hachi, and Ginta who were nearby.
"Hey, you two, get up! Those monsters are back," Ginta panicked, as he watched the evil wolves slip by Shippou and Hakkaku from a distance. The wolf demon kicked Hachi and Sesshomaru in their backs quickly with the side of his foot to get their attention. Hachi had already snapped from his stupor, as he was hit by the water. Smoke bombs readied in his shaking claws at the encroaching threat of death alighting the pudgy demon's instincts.
The allies ran toward the fight, but frozen, Sesshomaru remained on the ground.
:
Perhaps this is where I will die? The question floated through his mind, but Sesshomaru couldn't really be bothered to care just then, even to welcome death. His middle still ached. He started to guess the pain in his gut was no longer caused by the low blow he'd received from the slayer. He felt his stomach doing something unfamiliar, going into knots and loops. He guessed it might feel like this, if some larger being held him upside down and then turned him over, again and again.
Were the kami playing some kind of game with him? This felt like some kind of sick joke, like he was a toy in some more powerful actor's hands, moving the pieces around in circles now outside of the former Lord of the West's control.
It sickened him. The knots in his stomach tightened more. He kept his head lowered as he grappled with the unsettling sensation. Involuntarily, his fingers dug into the dirt beneath him and his teeth gnashed in his head.
Why?
Why had he not been more careful about Rin?
Why had he not stayed beside her in the village hall?
Sure he had sensed her annoyance with him since the stunt he'd pulled at the wedding of his ridiculous half-brother. Indeed, he recognized that she'd intentionally ignored him. Predictably, she had come to prefer talking to the proud, young demon slayer around the campfire at night.
And Sesshomaru had told himself that was good - it aligned with the plan he had in mind for Rin. He had wanted her to grow close to benefactors other than himself - that was why he'd bought her the new fashionable clothes, right? Distancing himself from her was the right thing to do, even if inexplicable feelings of bitterness at seeing her enjoy conversing with the slayer drove Sesshomaru deeper into it. The motivation, though illogical, was unimportant as long as it helped sever her connection to him, he convinced himself.
Really, guilt filled him that he hadn't done it sooner. It should have been that way when he went to try to kill the monk and walk his way into being stabbed-to-death on the end of his father's fang in Inuyasha's hands. Then she could have cared less about his death, maybe even despised him - not tried to save him again!
But no, comprehension dawned now in Sesshomaru - with his judgment clouded by mortality, he had evidently made a costly mistake. Sesshomaru, The Man, had started to find that he did not want to be parted from this human girl.
Her efforts to talk to him and get to know him in the inns and on the roads they'd traveled that winter had done something to him. Her smiles and cheerful encouragement had eased the pain and distracted him from his shame and self-loathing.
The once great Lord of the West could no longer deny what he had so lazily allowed to initiate: feelings. Feelings that he should not have had, did not want to have - no, could not have. So that here he was, kneeling in the dirt. He had had strayed from his plan, but somehow Rin was paying for it.
She would pay for his error that in his weakness he did not dump her in the village and fight his brother to his own death.
Now, Rin was only here because he was here where he should not have been. She was only alone and trapped defenseless in the burning building in front of him because of him. But it was worse than that - she was only alive – again, because of him - and now she would die because of him.
Sesshomaru's face burned and his eyes pricked in a way he'd never known before as the wheels in his head continued to turn. It was his first experience with self-hatred. He had been so foolish – he had believed he had not owed anything to anyone because that is how it should have been. Now he had begun to understand upon getting to know the girl, his intervention in Rin's life had been arrogant. He had posed himself as a hero to her, making her dependent on him. More reasons to hate the blasted Tenseiga yet again, but it just wasn't possible to blame it all on the damned sword.
His weak fingernails felt like they were bleeding as they scratched the dirt with his growing rage. He couldn't look up, he could hardly think. If it hadn't been for the sound of choked coughing, he wouldn't have noticed at all as someone came stumbling out of the thick smoke escaping from the gap in the hall's wall.
Eyes wide, his head snapped up on his neck, as the demon slayer stepped from the building as if in slow motion. Black ash darkened every inch of his body and moonlight caught in the smoke rising off of his shoulders as if he was an actual devil just stepped out of the bowels of hell. Sesshomaru's eyes darted immediately to the limp body in the youth's arms.
Shock stole the kneeling man's breath away, as Kohaku staggered up to him. Looking worn-out, the slayer glanced around taking in the scene before him before leaning down and hoarsely stating, "Take her."
Unthinkingly, Sesshomaru didn't waste a minute in accepting the girl's body into his arms. Still tortured by his contemplation, he couldn't have resisted the urge to take the little human if he had wanted. Shaking, he lightly put his dirt covered fingertips to the girl's blackened cheek and lightly brushed. A sigh of relief when he discovered it was only ash – her skin wasn't burned. He checked the rest of her quickly, and then did something he had never done in centuries of life – he craned his face down until his cheek was to her nose and mouth. Sesshomaru – once The Bringer of Death – was eager to check for signs of life in the collapsed being before him.
Weakly, her breath feathered his skin. By the hells, she lives, he thought, light-headed as another wave of unfamiliar emotion rushed him.
His initial check of Rin finished, he looked up and around for Kohaku. He stared wordlessly as the fire flickered from the building, illuminating the slayer's face – this young, vulnerable human male, who had run into the blaze to save a girl he didn't know whether he could find. Though Kohaku had only just finished one brush with death, his expression was again determined.
While anger still panged in Sesshomaru for the punch he'd taken from the slayer, the long-haired man's lips parted in unguarded fascination. He observed, while the youth agilely drew the kusarigama from his back in one hand. The other hand flicked open a small pouch covered by a hard tortoise shell hung by the breast of his armor.
Kohaku raised something to his face in his closed hand and tugged at it with his teeth. Sesshomaru guessed that he spat some kind of cap into the grass directly after, as he upended a small bottle over the steel of his weapon. A small amount of fluid shone in the vicious, fiery light. The youth backed up to the flames licking out out of the structure now. The blade ignited in a flash, becoming encased in flame.
Clever, Sesshomaru thought, still in unusual awe. The youth must have drenched it in an accelerant like oil.
The monk's brother-in-law lifted his burning weapon high over his head, as he pulled out the the second sickle holstered on his back. It too he held in the raging inferno escaping from the village hall. The light-weight farming tool quickly turned to a red-hot brand in the dim nightlight.
The slayer's silhouette cast a dramatic foil to the flaming barbs lifting into the night sky behind him as the hall roof burst with fire. Though human, the brave slayer cut a formidable image just then. Unbidden, Sesshomaru's blood ran a bit colder. Too overwhelmed to keep up a pretense of not caring, Sesshomaru couldn't look away as the youth dashed into the violent fray.