The Tale of Rin and Sesshomaru

The Last Journey

The years were kind to Rin. The influence of Tenseiga and Sesshomaru held the cruelties of age at bay, but she was still human, and her time on earth was finite. As she aged, her face remained unlined and her back unbowed, but her hair gradually turned from raven black to the purest snow white, which color pleased Rin no end. Gradually, her wanderings grew less and less wide-ranging, and she found that her travels never took her very far from the hill upon which Sesshomaru had made his last stand.

Nature had reclaimed much of that sorely mistreated place. The fury of the battle had redirected the course of a river, and cut a valley where none had been before, but aside from an area of grey-brown glass that remained around the hill itself, new life had sprung up all over the land. On the crest of the hill, a tree had sprouted, and it grew proud, tall, and strong. Its flowers were delicate in the spring and its leaves turned red in autumn, but even in the coldest winter it kept its leaves, and sheltered all who rested under it. It turned out to everyone's surprise that Jaken, for all his ineptitude as a stonemason, had quite a gift as a gardener, and in her last years they made a beautiful home on the little green hill. Rin loved to watch Jaken work, and it was his delight to wait upon her, and they passed the days in peace and contentment.

One beautiful spring day, Rin was taking her rest under the tree watching Jaken planting a new bed of flowers. The perfume of the air was sweet, and the flower petals fell like snowflakes in the gentle breezes. Suddenly, she heard Sesshomaru's voice, gently calling to her. "Rin. There is one more journey we must take."

She immediately rose. "Yes, Sesshomaru-sama. Jaken!" Jaken looked up from his weeding. "Sesshomaru-sama calls us—it's time to go."

Jaken rubbed his hands together with glee. "Yes, Rin-sama! How delightful!" And soon they were off.

Sesshomaru's directions guided Rin along a smooth road, with something new and lovely at each turn: a pond full of bathing song birds, a meadow of orange lilies, a babbling stream. She walked as much as she could, but rode most of the journey upon Aun's back. She spoke little, but her senses missed nothing, and Jaken's heart was warmed to see her smile so frequently.

Presently the verdant pastures gave way to a treacherous rocky mountain path. "Not much farther now," Sesshomaru's voice told her, and she let Aun fly the rest of the way.

In time they came to a great cavern; Rin dismounted and walked at Jaken's side into the mouth of the cavern, and soon they came to a great stone gate, guarded by two large and terrible stone figures.

Rin and Jaken paused, looking at the stone guardians; then, Rin shrugged her shoulders. "This must be where Sesshomaru-sama wants us to go, so we may as well greet these fine gentlemen." She stepped boldly into the pool of light in front of the gate.

With an ominous creaking, the two stone guardians came to life, and lumbered forward to bar the way. "Who would pass the gate to the next world?" they demanded.

Normally, when someone demanded Rin's name, she answered with a monosyllable or a drawn sword. Today, she sensed, was different. She lay her left hand comfortingly on Toukijin, drew herself up to her full height, and for the first and last time, proclaimed her name and her heritage: "I am Rin, daughter of Sesshomaru: guardian of the Tenseiga and of the soul-sword of the heir of the Inu no Taisho."

The stone guardians knelt before her. "Be welcome, great one; and be welcome the warrior that is in your care." They withdrew, and the great gate opened, and the light of the next world pierced the darkness. Both Jaken and Rin shaded their eyes, for even they, who seen and lived through so much, were afraid of that light.

Sesshomaru's voice filled the cavern. "Jaken. Wait here…Rin. It is time."

Rin knew that anything that Sesshomaru asked her to do, she could do without fear. She straightened her head, and boldly walked over the threshold, through the gate.

There was a flash of light, and Rin was momentarily blinded and disoriented. When her head cleared, she found herself in Sesshomaru's arms, just as she had the first day he had called her back to life with Tenseiga. But unlike the many years they had spent together since the day of the great battle, Sesshomaru was warm, and solid; and he held her with both arms—both arms, even the left arm that he had lost to a battle with his brother that had taken place before he and Rin had ever met.

Rin looked up into Sesshomaru's face and laughed, and then looked down at herself. Her aged body was gone; she had become a child again, just as she was on the day that she and Sesshomaru had first met in the forest.

They both stood up, and Sesshomaru reached down to where Rin had let her swords fall. He tossed them both to Jaken, who stood wide-eyed, unable to speak. "Jaken. Take Tenseiga to Inuyasha, and tell him that it is my wish that as long as he lives, our father's swords are never to be parted again, or set against each other in battle." Jaken nodded fiercely, his eyes filling with tears. "Toukijin I leave in your care. Do not be concerned about it; it will see to itself, and it will choose its own master, who will give it a new name."

Jaken nodded again, mutely. Rin's little girl voice piped cheerily, and it was a sound that Jaken had not realized he had missed so much. "Don't worry about us, Jaken-aniue. When the long night comes, don't be afraid. We'll be waiting for you. Good-bye for now!"

She and Sesshomaru turned and began walking into the light; the great gate slowly began closing. Sesshomaru looked over his shoulder as he walked, and said something that Jaken could never, in his wildest dreams, imagine that he would ever hear: "Jaken. Well done."

And as the great gate closed, the last sight Jaken saw of Sesshomaru and Rin was something he had never seen in all the years they had been together. Rin's little hand reached up and grasped the edge of Sesshomaru's kimono; but his great hand reached down and gently took hers.

And the stone gate closed; and Jaken was alone.

And so Jaken returned to his garden home. He built a little shrine under the tree on the place where Rin used to take her rest, and in it he placed Rin's crescent-moon wristbands and Sesshomaru's stole, which he had found outside the gate to the next world when he retrieved the swords; but he never called it a grave or a memorial. When asked what it was, he would chuckle, and say slyly, "Just a reminder of our days together—after all, why should they have a gravestone when they're not really gone?"

Jaken built another shrine to hold Toukijin, and just as Sesshomaru had said, the sword took care of itself. Only those that were pure in spirit and intention could bear its presence, and it would suffer no one to handle it but Jaken and Kagome. It waits there still, against the day that the proper hand will come to wield it.

In time, Jaken made the journey himself to the cave of the gate, and as they promised, his friends were waiting for him on the other side. The valley in which he and Rin had made their home remained a place of great beauty, and it was a place of rest and refreshment of spirit for any who could bear the aura of its guardian sword. As for the shrine to Rin and Sesshomaru: it never became the place of pomp and pilgrimage that Jaken had envisioned for such a mighty lord and lady; but every year, fresh flowers appeared at the little wooden shrine, placed by the only pilgrim to make the journey and remember the great youkai and the human daughter he adopted as his own: Sesshomaru's brother, Inuyasha.