Rewrite of chapter three, since me and Misty both decided the first version was kinda wimpy. This includes the full Dead Sesshy scene.
It was not often that the Lord of the Western Lands was caught off guard. Moments of weakness were something he'd fought against for centuries. It was fitting then, he supposed, that one such moment would be lead to his death. And at the hands of his half-brother, no less. Of course, it was not as though the wind demon hadn't had a hand in it as well. He thought vaguely of how he might repay her in the afterlife.
Sesshoumaru greeted limbo with his usual look of idle indifference. He stood calmly surveying the small garden, waiting for the gods to choose his path. A soft breeze blew through his hair, sending ripples in the pond just to his left. It was strange that They would take so long to place him. After all, a lifetime of hatred and bloodshed was not heavenly material.
The breeze passed over him once more, carrying a familiar scent. He turned, a brief flicker of recognition crossing his pale features.
"Sesshoumaru."
He regarded the tall imposing figure with a steady gaze. Gold eyes betrayed nothing in emotions, but it was clear by the pause that the taiyoukai was composing himself.
"Chichiue."
"I'm here as your judge."
Silence.
"Have you nothing to say for yourself? Have you no regrets?"
"My only regret is not killing the hanyou."
The great lord's eyes softened slightly in pity. "It is pitiful that even in death you are filled with hatred, Sesshoumaru."
Sesshoumaru's eyes remained fixed on the calm pond. "I do not fear an eternity in hell."
"Tenseiga was forged for a reason, and you inheriting it was no mistake."
"The sword proved useful on several occasions. It was an honorable blade."
Palpable anger flared up around the elder Inuyoukai. "The way you lived your life has tarnished that honorable blade!"
"Would you have been pleased if I had spent my days reviving worthless lives?"
"It would have pleased me if you had shown an ounce of compassion towards those around you. You hated your own brother, and that is why you are standing here with me now."
Sesshoumaru's eyes shifted lazily from the pond to his father's face. "I owe Inuyasha nothing. And I owe humans even less."
Something akin to amusement crinkled the golden eyes of the Inu No taishou. "Then you won't miss the little girl you saved? You won't wonder what will become of her now that she is alone and defenseless while you slave away in the fiery pits of hell, will you?"
Sesshoumaru's eyes moved back to the pond. "Her future is not my concern."
"Then what is your concern? The pursuit of strength and power? Sesshoumaru, you wasted your life, and let every opportunity for redemption pass you by. It should irk you to know that even a half-breed like Inuyasha has defeated you at something as trivial as compassion. Do not blame him for your death. In the end, it will always be your indifference that destroys you."
Something seethed deep inside Sesshoumaru. It did irk him. Not that he thought kindness worthwhile, but that his father thought it so. To be seen as Inuyasha's inferior in anything was unacceptable. Empathy had nothing to do with strength.
"Inuyasha does not have honor or compassion. He has claws and sword he doesn't deserve."
"The thing Inuyasha didn't deserve was your hatred. You wasted your life. You spent it all hating your brother, hating yourself and hating everything around you. You loathed him for something he couldn't control, you made yourself miserable with jealousy and prejudice, even before I died. What did you gain? You'll never find peace; you'll never stop making yourself miserable." There was a fearful finality to that statement, firm but full of regret. "I pity you, son."
And that was the last thing Sesshoumaru understood before the world around him blurred and became strange.
"Inuyasha!"
No response.
"Inuyasha!"
Still nothing.
"Inuyasha, if you don't tell me where you are right now, I'm going to say the word and follow the sound of your head slamming into the ground until I find you."
Inuyasha cursed under his breath. "I'm over here," he shouted from his tree branch, "Happy now?"
"Almost. Come down here."
"Make me!" He didn't look as bad as he had before, but that wasn't saying much.
"Inuyasha..."
"Leave me alone."
"No. You're the one who dragged me here in the first place."
"You can go back now, okay?"
"At least let me bandage up your injuries. You're still..."
"I'm FINE, damn it," Inuyasha practically snarled.
"No you're not."
"Yes, I am. My demon blood already healed all of it."
"I just want to talk to you, Inuyasha."
"Leave me alone."
"You're impossible, you know that? Sit."
Inuyasha came crashing down at her command. "Bitch," he yelled, "What the hell did you do that for?"
"Inuyasha, will you just calm down and talk to me?" Kagome said, walking over to where Inuyasha sat and joining him.
Inuyasha looked away.
"Well?"
"Fine, what do you want to talk about?"
"Inuyasha, what if there was a way to bring Sesshoumaru back?"
Inuyasha refused to face her, tucking his hands into his long sleeves and folding his arms tightly to himself.
Kagome eyed his defensive posture warily before speaking. "Well?"
"Bring him back?" Inuyasha repeated after a pause, "That's impossible. Even if I knew how to use it, Tenseiga's broken."
"Miroku and I talked it over, and we came up with this: Totosai fixed Tetsusaiga. He can probably fix Tenseiga too, and tell you how it works. Then you can bring Sesshoumaru back, he can go off to wherever it is he goes when he's not picking a fight. How does that sound?" Kagome smiled tremulously, trying to keep her tone light.
Inuyasha contemplated the ground in silence.
"Inuyasha, do you... want to bring him back? I know you two never got along, but do you really want him dead?"
Inuyasha mumbled something too quietly for her to make out.
"Inuyasha?"
"He stopped me from killing Sango. If he hadn't attacked me when he did, she'd be dead now. I don't know why he did it. He probably just thought it was the best chance he had to kill me, but I owe him something for that, because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I killed someone else I cared about." The speech poured out of Inuyasha's mouth after the first words like water out of a jug, and dried up. His voice lowered at the end so that she could barely hear him.
Kagome's eyes softened. Inuyasha rarely, if ever, talked bluntly about how he felt, and while nothing he said came as a real surprise, hearing him admit it was something. "Inuyasha..." She very carefully reached out to rest her hand on his elbow.
He shrugged her off and turned his head, and she knew his moment of weakness was gone. "That's all there is to it, okay? I don't care about Sesshoumaru. I don't have any reason to care about him, except what I owe him."
Kagome winced inwardly. Whenever she thought she was getting somewhere with him, he retreated back into rudeness and irritability. It was frustrating, to say the least. "So what do you want to do? Leave him like that?"
"I don't know, damnit," Inuyasha spat impatiently, "What do you think?"
Kagome closed her eyes and took a breath. "He's your brother. It's not my place to say," she said tiredly. She didn't want to fight with him.
Inuyasha scowled. "Why the hell should I go through all that trouble for him? That bastard."
Kagome recognized his exaggerated glower for what it was. He didn't want to admit he cared, and he didn't want to look like a wimp. It amazed her how much he resembled a two-year-old sometimes. She wasn't going to get anywhere with him if she didn't try something drastic.
She pulled herself to her feet, dusted the dirt off her uniform, and turned to leave. She threw one last glance at him over her shoulder. "It's not like we needed him anyway, is it?"
His eyebrows rose up into his silvery bangs briefly, but he quickly recovered, closing his eyes and looking away with his lips pursed in his petulant manner.
"It's not like he didn't hate Naraku almost as much as you do."
The golden eyes were open and glaring now, but he didn't respond.
"It's not like he was a taiyoukai with two extremely powerful swords."
Inuyasha cocked his head at her like a puppy, still glaring, and Kagome tried not to let her amusement show. A mild "keh" slipped through Inuyasha's frowning lips. "We don't need his help. I can kick Naraku's ass on my own."
Kagome almost growled. She had definitely been spending too much time around Inuyasha. How else could she mess with that pointy-eared head of his?
"Come on, Inuyasha. Do you want to let Naraku win?"
Inuyasha sputtered. What the hell are you talking about?"
"If you don't revive Sesshoumaru, you'll just be losing to another one of his sick games."
Inuyasha's expression darkened. "Naraku," He ground out. She knew his mind would be lost to painful memories if she didn't keep him focused on the problem at hand.
"Don't give him the satisfaction, Inuyasha," Kagome said softly.
Inspiration struck the hanyou. He sprang to his feet and turned on Kagome with wild eyes. "We have to revive Sesshoumaru!"
Kagome fought the urge to fall over.
"When I kill my bastard brother, I want to do it myself!" he said vehemently, "And I'm sure as hell not going to let Naraku take any of the credit!"
Kagome fought a similar urge to whack him over the head and sighed.
"Heh," Inuyasha said to himself, "We'd better go find Totosai, then. Come on."
With that, he grabbed Kagome by the wrist and started dragging her away. It wasn't until they were almost out of the woods that Kagome realized that Inuyasha was dragging her away from Kaede's village and their friends.
"Inuyasha!" she yelled, "What the heck do you think you're doing?"
"We're going to find Totosai," Inuyasha said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Inuyasha, you idiot! We can't go yet!"
"Why the hell not?"
"For one thing, we don't have Tenseiga!"
"Oh."
Kagome shook her head. "How about we go back to get supplies, Tenseiga and my bike? We can leave tomorrow morning, since it's getting late anyway."
Inuyasha made a soft annoyed sound.
Kagome rolled her eyes. "What? We can't travel in the middle of the night! Just come back, and we'll get going early tomorrow."
The hanyou sighed, and looked away. "Fine," he said moodily, "But we're leaving at dawn tomorrow."
Kagome bit back a sarcastic retort. Inuyasha had been pained and upset a few hours ago; so much so that he'd dragged her away from school, something that would normally earn him a score of "sit" commands. Whether or not he'd deliberately waited for her to be exiting the classroom when the halls were relatively empty she couldn't say, but the fact that he had dragged her out of school spoke volumes. He probably wouldn't be able to give her a good reason for her coming with him if she asked, but she wasn't planning on asking.
"Fine, Inuyasha," she said resignedly, "have it your way."
Inuyasha held her to her word the next morning, following her home (so she wouldn't forget or take too long, he said) and waking her up well before the sun actually rose (because they had to get ready, he said) and very nearly getting them out of the village without saying goodbye to anyone.
Kagome insisted on that, though. So Inuyasha had stood away on the outskirts of the village, watching as Kagome said the goodbyes for both of them.
"Rin is worried."
"Eh?" the wrinkled toad demon looked up from the pile of wood he was valiantly trying to coax into a fire, "Don't distract me, girl, you're the one who said she was hungry!"
Rin sighed, stood up, walked around a bit, spun on one heel until she fell down, and sighed.
"Jaken-sama, why isn't Sesshoumaru-sama back yet?"
Jaken glared at her and said nothing.
Rin sighed. "Jaken-sama..."
"What?!"
"Where did Sesshoumaru-sama go?"
"Stop asking stupid questions," Jaken snapped, clearly annoyed with the would-be fire.
"Jaken-sa..."
Jaken grabbed the Staff of Two Heads, aimed it at the pile of wood and with a triumphant cackle proceeded to light the fire.
A few seconds later, Rin and Jaken stared at the vaporized ashes. "You always do that..."
Reviewer Responses, this time by Misty!
Transcendent: You've turned into a real piss ant lately haven't you? The first scene was written as two related scenes meshed together, it was meant to be intertwined to make it more interesting to read. Linear stories suck. Alma can defend herself, but I for one am not a raving wild fangirl. I'm a closet fangirl, meaning I have several attractive anime characters locked in my closet. Erm, maybe the story's Alma's baby, but it sure as hell didn't come out from between my legs. Alma primarily wrote this chapter, I just read it over...I think I'm more of a Sesshoumaru fangirl than anything else...and it's hard enough coordinating our schedules and moods to write, we're not adding a third editor into the mix. If you want to pick apart the grammar for each chapter though, feel free. Once again Vee, thank you for an extensive review that is of little to no value. You gotta stop substituting quantity for quality.
Niamh: I love you too dear. And you aren't a poo-head anymore, thanks to your wonderful review. Anyway, about the original stuff, I'm planning on starting a website with things like that on it. However, it's near the bottom of a very long list. Maybe after Thanksgiving I'll have something together.
Talysmin: If you want eccentric perverse details you have to go read Pathos, Alma's trying to teach me how to write like a normal person. However, I get to take over a bit more soon...be afraid...
Well, she just conked out on me, so I'll do the rest...
KuraSun: We're trying, believe me, but the thing that we hoped would make this a good story (Our very different styles of writing) is actually making it hard to write quickly, not to mention the fact that we distract each other. So we're trying, but be patient.
rachael: you hate us? We're so upset! It hurts our feelings, you know that? We might just go cry in a corner and never write anything ever again, and then how would you feel?
FairDrea : well, that's why we went back and made this chapter longer. We do listen to criticism, and try to act on it to improve the story as much as possible. But we're not answering any questions, you'll just have to wait and see.
The Bloody Queen of Hearts : you'll just have to wait and see. Tough luck, huh?
Das Blume: hey, as long as you're making an attempt to analyze the fic, you're on our good sides. Thing is, when Kagome was confronting her buds, Risa is just standing there, because she's that kind of person. Kagome didn't even realize they was in the same class, for crying out loud! And as for Fluffy just watching, well, he was just waiting for a good moment to strike. Sometimes people do just sit back and watch stuff happen.
Shini-neko-chan: Thank you for the complements. As for the link to Misty's profile, here it is:
http: www. fanfiction. net/ u/ 64219/ (remove the spaces)
And if for some reason that doesn't work, well, she's the only Misty on my favorites list.
Insert obligatory request for reviews/attention here.