Disclaimer: Inuyasha is by the wonderful Takahashi Rumiko-sama. I love her works and so I write fanfics as an appreciation of her hard-work and imagination. (Now, I hope I do them justice. ^^;;;)
Belonging nowhere
By miyamoto yui
Part 4 - afraid of you, afraid of me.
Rustle, rustle.
Blinking his eyes tiredly, Sesshomaru found a young woman sitting by his side. Strangely, he could not see her face at all because her hair was blocking most of her profile. He continued to gaze at her as the kind woman patted his head with a cold cloth as she tried to treat the wounds on his face on his arms.
He gave her a curious expression as he was about to take his chin off the cup of her soft hand. He didn't want to be touched. By anyone.

Sesshomaru stopped as he found himself catching a glimpse of the girl's gentle eyes.

Her eyes looked so familiar to him...

This woman looked human and had a scent of one, but she had one streak of red that indicated she was a youkai. It did not make much sense to him and so he just continued to stare at him, half wanting to and half not.

"Why are you helping me?" his eyes said to her.

"Because you were injured," she answered plainly, but he couldn't fully see her face.

The woman with long, black hair in a braid leaned her figure forward as she said, "Please do not move."

"I don't need your help," he defiantly said.

"I'm sure you don't." Weirdly, she had answered that with a hurt tone.
She then got up and thrust a bowl of drinking water onto his lips.

He drank as some streams fell on the sides of his cheek and down his neck.
Without discretion, she wiped the sides of his mouth with her fingers. "Thank you very much," she said.
The woman took another cloth and patted his cheek and neck.

"..." was all he could react with.

"I know it was you who had saved me," she said as she turned to one-side with her hands folded.

It's her...
_that_ woman...

At that moment, the woman's face turned to him and smiled. Leaning forward, she touched her lips to his. "Sesshomaru-sama...don't ever leave me..."

Surprised, Sesshomaru accepted the kiss to find it was not whom he had thought it was...
"Rin," Sesshomaru's said as soon as he opened his eyes abruptly, waking himself from his dream.

Shaking his head, he found the stars were still out and that there was still a bit of time before the dawn.
"That dream..." he whispered to himself.

It was dream that had come to him so many years ago. Right after his brother had been enchanted by the priestess Kikyou, he became more apathetic to humans. It even came to the point that he could not stand seeing them or their scent.
There was no way he would become weak such as his father and his brother and so he had gone around the island trying to become stronger than they could have ever been. That was until this particular dream kept on repeating in his mind. It added a story little by little until...

Now, he found that the girl said, "Sesshomaru-sama...don't ever leave me..."

It was unmistakably Rin's voice...
And some part of him wanted to nod his head and say that he wouldn't. But someone like himself couldn't guarantee something like that...

At that moment, Sesshomaru sighed and looked up at the moon again, as he had done before he temporarily napped. He remembered the years of long ago when his father was alive. His heart was still bitter that his father had gotten with another woman right after his mother's death.
He wouldn't have cared for that was how all living things were, needing to be with someone or something to comfort them through their life. But his father had been watching a certain woman in the royal court. She was a beautiful woman who had long hair and was well versed with poetry.
She had been writing poetry when someone had approached her. That's where it all began...

And Sesshomaru had been disgusted. Only doing what his father asked him and nothing more, he was ashamed that his father had fallen for someone so below their own kind.

But now, as he looked at Rin, he was making the same 'mistake'?

Was he really?

The girl he had met many years ago was small, helpless, and mute. And yet, she was still the same in a way, only older. Yet, she gradually had grown to be independent and talkative.

Were they truly the same person?

And what was so special about this girl that he found himself so moved by her? Going back to find her, fighting Naraku to win her back...

...waiting for her to grow up.

He couldn't understand anything when it came to Rin and yet he was never flustered by anything else.
It was only her that mixed him up.
It was he who had said to Jaken, "She belongs nowhere."
Except, he knew very well that that applied to everyone.

He was the same.
Trying to prove to Rin that he cared without tell her. Was it possible?

What did she truly see in him? The heartless Sesshomaru...
"Sesshomaru's father...and a human???" an oni, who was talking to his attendant, had joked as Sesshomaru was passing by. Whether or not he knew that the devil himself was passing, he didn't know.

Sesshomaru kept on walking and paid no attention to this. His eyes just became slits as he had heard the oni say, "And they are having a child?"

"..." It was then that Sesshomaru had left without a word, trying to appear that he didn't care.

He was frustrated that his father and that woman, and their soon-to-be child, didn't know their place in the world. And because of them, his own position in the youkai world was being questioned...

"Maybe you're also like your father who-" a water youkai had teased, thinking that he could beat Sesshomaru.
He was dead wrong and Sesshomaru took his throat into one hand. "You don't talk about my father or myself in that manner."

Without a second thought, he crushed the water youkai's throat and left with a little dab of water in the raging river.
Then, he thought about a certain person, Sesshomaru erased it temporarily from his mind and looked at Rin, whose arms were still warmly snug next to him.
"How come you don't get older and look any different?" Rin had said kneeled next to Sesshomaru.
Jaken shook his head and ran in front of Rin to say, "Are you an idiot, child?! How can you ask this dumb question!"
"I am not dumb, Jaken-sama!" she shouted as she pouted with her hands in fists.

At that moment, Sesshomaru reached out to her and patted her head.

"It is because I _am_ a youkai." In a joke, he opened his mouth to show her his teeth with a deadpan expression on his face.

Rin laughed and showed him her own teeth. "I don't have fangs."

Jaken sighed in annoyance at the whole occurrence.
Then, his jaw dropped at what he saw before him.

For the first time, Sesshomaru smiled. He smiled at Rin as he asked, "Are you not afraid of me?"
Rin shook her head as she pulled Sesshomaru's face. Then, she kissed him softly on the cheek. "No, I could never be afraid of Sesshomaru-sama."

"R-RIN!!!!" Jaken shouted.

Sesshomaru lifted his hand and laughed. Then, he patted Rin's head once more. "You're such a strange child."

Enwrapped with his sadness, his eyes turned to that of a concerned man for his lover. Sesshomaru then leaned close to Rin and kissed her lips gently.
She stirred, but kept her smile, the one he had always loved, upon her face.

Then, the look of concern faded away as he gravely thought while looking at the sky,
"The dawn has come, and we can never be the way we used to be."

Tsuzuku...

--

Author's note: I don't know why ff.net is formatting this weird, but please bear with it. ^_^
Thanks for reading so far. I know it's going slow, but I like going back and forth. I really wanted to make it that you see Sesshomaru's side of the whole story, as well as Rin's.