Disclaimer: Inuyasha belongs to Takahashi Rumiko-sama!!! Goddess of manga!

Belonging nowhere

By miyamoto yui

Part 17 – Seth no monogatari. (The story of Seth.)

"Sesshomaru-sama…" Jaken said again as his teeth chattered. As he tried to find another path while running to warn Rin about Sesshomaru, he had wondered what was whispered to his master's ear.

"Was that really him?" he had wondered, but he had seen it with his own two eyes how Sesshomaru-sama had transformed into such a vampire in front of him!

Then, it was then that he realized whom he was dealing with. This was what Sesshomaru was trying to hide them from all these years. The 'true' youkai's natural sense:

The one that craved for the taste of human blood.

Silence. The baby stopped kicking and became 'normal' once more. Rin couldn't understand if the baby was telling her that it was over or that something was beginning. Something worse than she could have every possibly imagined.

"Rin-san…" the pretty, young woman with the distinctive mole on her left cheek said as she brought more water for Rin. "…are you all right?"

Rin cautiously took the water.

For some reason, Rin had never liked this girl Nana for she had a strange aura. She could not express this towards Kinnosuke for he trusted this woman very much. There was something though that always bothered her though, but Rin thought maybe it was just more obvious today because she wasn't feeling well.

"Are all the others safe?" Rin asked while looking at her with calm eyes while trying not to convey her uneasiness.

Nana, actually, was very kind, but for the past two months, there was just something about her that had changed and truly rubbed Rin the wrong way. Rin couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she something wasn't quite right. It wasn't as it should have been, as if the puzzle piece had been deceivingly in the place of the proper one

"Yes," she smiled with relief as she wrung the cold cloth on her hands.

"Then, we also must go when Kinnosuke comes," Rin said as she looked towards the doorway.

Quietly, Nana nodded. "Until then, may I tell you a short story?"

"All right…" Rin said while slightly bowing her head confused.

Why did things seem to be slowing down for some odd reason?

"It's too quiet…" she thought to herself as Nana cleared her throat.

"I was passing by yesterday to ask you something when I heard Jaken-san had said something about someone named Seth. I'm sure you've not heard this story yet. Not many people in this generation know it," Nana said with a mysterious tone to her voice. "But _I_ do. Do _you_ want to know the real story of the one called Seth?"

Rin nodded, but her heart was beating loudly within her chest to warn her maybe she had opened Pandora's box instead. She blinked with suspicious eyes while thinking, "She speaks like she's older than I am…"

"There was a young woman who fell in love with a youkai." Nana smiled as she looked at Rin, then she continued, "This woman had watched this youkai since she was a little girl. At the time, the youkai was a little boy. As to how really old he was, she didn't really know.

"She had wanted to play with him, thinking he was human since his face held no marks of him being youkai at all except the fact that his hair was not a normal, young color. But she had thought it was just that different people had different kinds of hair, strange as it should have been to her.

"The youkai paid no attention to her at all until one day, she didn't bug him at all. She wasn't there by the river trying to carry pails of water as she usually did. He watched her whenever she did this for he thought she was very beautiful because she always seemed to smile whenever she touched the water.

"One day, when they were teenagers, she told him how she felt about him, but he had much heartache about loving a human. For how could he love a human if he thought they were below him? That's what he had been taught, but this girl had been kind to him all these years that he couldn't see her in any other way."

Rin looked curiously at Nana while trying to understand what she was trying to say to her. She was touched by the similarities to her own situation.

"But one day, the woman turned on him."

"Why?" Rin asked with a concerned expression.

"He had ended up killing people from her village. She was the village head and so she could never look at him the same way again. She didn't even question him as she looked at him accusingly. In response, he looked at her trying to give her an explanation but he knew anything he would have said was futile by then. So, he left without saying anything at all to her."

"What caused for him to do this?" Rin now was very afraid of the bad feeling she had been developing throughout the whole story as if a bad aftertaste had mutated within her mouth.

It was then that Nana smiled widely in an evil way and said, "It's in his nature."

"Nana-san…" Rin mumbled as Nana said, "Kinnosuke's not here, but whom we are truly waiting for is coming."

"What?!" Rin shouted as her arm was taken by force and burned her skin a little as she sweatdropped and bit her lip in pain, but didn't shout out anything.

"I have missed you, Seth," a tall, young man had said with a sad smile on his face.

He wore a torn kimono showing his legs, but with green, black boots made from a frog's hardened skin. His eyes were almond-shaped like a woman's and he stood in front of Kinnosuke's village with a white ribbon in his hands.

Seth's* smiled widely as the crusty blood was floating like small, red snowflakes to the ground. He dusted off his cloak a bit. "Why are you in my way, Aoki?"

He grinned at him confidently. "I have to make sure that you aren't controlled by that wench."

"Wench?" Seth's eyebrow twitched as he gave a furtive look at his old comrade.

"The human woman," Aoki answered without hesitation. His tone went lower with anger. "She had made you blind."

Seth's anger multiplied by ten-fold.

From Kinnosuke's dwelling, Nana's scalding hand held onto Rin's arm firmly. Rin then was pushed out into the dirt as Seth and Aoki looked at one another.

Rin knew instinctively that with one blow, this fight would be finished…

…but something was blocking her way.

Why was something blocking her sight of Sesshomaru?

What was wrong with this situation? With her Sesshomaru?

…was it really him?

"All that blood!" she thought to her herself, startled.

As the dirt began to settle, Rin gasped as Nana narrated proudly, "Watch carefully, Rin…"

Aoki finally moved. He ran and jumped with his ribbon directly aimed at wrapping around Sesshomaru's neck.

Rin, at that moment, looked away, but Nana grabbed her head of hair and pulled her head to look straight into Sesshomaru's direction. "See the TRUTH!"

At that moment, Sesshomaru's hand went through Aoki's chest in a split second, even faster than a blink of an eye. "Sess!"

"No one could ever shout out his full name when they died." Nana then threw her hand away with disgust and pleasure at the same time as she looked proudly at her blood-thirsty Seth. "They could only say 'Sess' for Sesshomaru."

Rin's eyes began to water with a shocked expression as she saw Sesshomaru in contorted patterns of broken pieces of glass. Sesshomaru gave her a side-glance with his lips closed and his expression totally blank.

With no love.

With no fear of hate.

He wasn't Sesshomaru-sama. No, he couldn't be!

She thought to herself, "This was what you feared, wasn't it? But I could have never imagined…"

At that moment, all she could feel was that he had truly broken her heart as the blood in her body began to feel as if it was stopping its flow for her face was getting paler by the minute.

Nana smiled and laughed. "And what does Sess sound to you, Rin?"

Still in a frightened and a state of disbelief, Rin was beyond disturbed. Not hearing anything around her but piercing silence inside of her head, she barely whispered because half of herself had been killed at that moment, "Seth…"

She continued to stare at Seth not believing anything…

Nothing at all.

Tsuzuku…

--

Author's note: Okee, I'm amused by little things, and I figured out a cool way for Sesshomaru to develop the name Seth (a name I've always liked for some reason, and 'City of Angels' the movie helped a LOT for me to like it even more). ^____^ ß-is proud of herself (a rarity in itself).

* smiling from ear to ear * You guys are some of the sweetest readers I've ever had. You've been so supportive and I truly appreciate all the feedback. (Yes, contrary to a lot of people's thoughts, I read ALL REVIEWS submitted!) From corrections to your thoughts, I really do take these into consideration. ^____^ So, here's the last chapter before my temporary hiatus to AX.

*This is Sesshomaru, only in another mode, k? To avoid discreptancies, I will use each 'name' to represent Sesshomaru's 'personality' even though it is _not_ split or anything of the sort. That's why the best way to put it is a 'mode' he's in.