Kagome felt something warm prodding her arm. She shrugged it off and rolled over beneath the tangled blankets. Her senses were rising from the abyss of sleep. She felt a body curled against hers, the yellow warmth of the fire, and the cold grays of the sky washing over her face. She stretched under the covers and remembered that she was naked. Linking that to the warm skin pressed against her back, she cracked open a bleary eye. Light assaulted her senses, while the thing prodded her arm again. Irritated, she swatted it away.
"Awaken, Kagome. We are departing now." A deep voice floated quietly around her.
Consciousness hit her like a train. Sesshomaru. Her eyes flew open and she stifled a gasp. Inuyasha lay to her side, the blankets rising and falling as he snored lightly in his sleep. Her clammy hands gripped the covers and drew them into her chest. She sat up to face the doorway and saw Sesshomaru casually standing there, dressed in modern clothes. She remembered in a split second what she had to do, and what she had done.
Inuyasha… Guilt sprouted in her gut as she remembered the night before. She recalled his 'I love you's', and she remembered her misleading actions. She felt grimy shame coat her skin. Partly glad that Sesshomaru allowed her an avenue out of the situation, she nodded to him. His eyes flickered between their bodies before he turned around.
He waited outside the hut as she dressed quickly and clumsily. Before leaving she looked at Inuyasha, splayed across the bedding with a contented look on his face. He deserved a goodbye. "Inuyasha?"
The Hanyou's eyelashes fluttered as his eyes snapped open. He gave her a warm, half-asleep look. "Hey Kagome. Why are you dressed?" Love threaded its way through every one of his coarse words.
She saw his devotion and wanted to run away. She dreaded facing her mistake, her wordless lie. Standing frozen before Inuyasha, she burned with guilt. Her feet felt glued to the boards. "Sesshomaru." She said.
Inuyasha's face fell. He sat up in a sad rush of air. "Oh." Habit pushed him to grasp the space where his sword once sat. Kagome was voicelessly begging him not to do anything rash. She shook her head, ruffling her tangled hair. Inuyasha wanted to run his fingers through her knots and straighten them out, one by one. He wished that he could feel her hair, her skin, and her lips forever. But she had to leave, and she didn't want violence. He'd do anything for her—even watch her go. "Keep safe." He felt like a part of his soul was going to desert him and never come back.
"I will." She stood still in the doorway, memorizing him with sad eyes.
"I love you, Kagome." As he threw the words out some part of him hoped that they would tie her to him, so he'd never have to see her walk away. He watched her beautiful face and waited for a response.
"I…" Her words faltered. The fire crackled, the morning birds trilled, and Kagome wanted to cry. She couldn't force this last lie past her lips; she couldn't hurt him again. "I'll miss you." That truth did little to fill the gaping silence where her words should have been. "Goodbye." She turned away before he could respond. She ran, past the snow, the bare trees, and the cold air. She pushed herself until her lungs strained and she had to stop and sit in a silent spot in the woods. There she looked up at the clouds, wispy and gray, woven out of sorrow and the promise of rain. Kagome wept.
Sesshomaru followed. He saw her collapse onto the ground. Teardrops dripped from her pained face and sunk into the shallow snow. He drifted into her line of vision and sat across from her. He could still smell the remnants of sex littering her body. "What is upsetting you?" He asked.
Kagome looked up at him with puffy, red eyes. Surprised at his concern, she tried to compose herself. "I don't know." Another wave of tears swamped her. She faced the ground, embarrassed to be seen in such a pathetic position.
"You're mourning the priestess's death?"
She swallowed the lump in her throat and cracked open her dry lips. "Yeah."
Sesshomaru inched closer, until her was only a foot away from her. Kagome watched him curiously. "Kaede was her name?"
"Yes."
He tried to find words of comfort. Unfortunately, having never been comforted before, he wasn't sure of what to say. He thought of the old woman, her spirit grasping onto life as death drained her shell. "It was her time."
Kagome wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand and sat up a little straighter. "That's what she said."
Sesshomaru pictured all the humans of the world rising and falling like the tide; pooling back into the ocean, then splashing out in a burst of light and life. He saw them live and die, born from each other's flesh in the blink of an eye. He saw the cycle. "She is right. Death is inevitable."
"Even yours?"
No--he stood alone and watched the world turn. Sunsets flew over the clouds as the cycle repeated over and over, year after year. "Not mine." On some days, he wished he could dive in.
Kagome observed the Taiyoukai seated close to her. Even within arm's reach, he seemed distant. His eyes were still, focused steadily on her face. No emotions were there: he seemed like an empty and beautiful doll, wandering forever with bored, glassy eyes. She saw Kaede's last moment playing over and over in her head, and wondered if he envied the old woman. "How long will you live?" She asked.
"Until I kill myself."
Her eyes flew wide open and settled on Sesshomaru's calm face. "Kill yourself?"
"Did you not hear?"
She looked down at the snow, and the frail grass buried underneath. "I heard."
Sesshomaru peered at his hands. He didn't often look at his body, and he wasn't surprised by what he saw. Flawless, elegant fingers tapered down into a smooth palm. No wrinkles crossed his perfect skin—the skin he'd had since the cusp of adulthood. Once he'd reached the appearance of someone in their twentieth year, he'd simply stopped aging. Time would not kill him; he would never die a natural death. "Sickness may strike." The scent of his mother's rotting body filled his nose. "It is rare though; it kills only a couple demons a millennia. I am too strong for it to injure me."
"How do you know?" Kagome asked, all thoughts of Inuyasha temporarily forgotten.
His gaze flickered away from her open face. He looked instead at the distant landscape: the light dusting of snow lying atop skeletal branches, forming jagged black and white patterns against the foggy air. "When I was young, a disease infected our castle. I had a mild fever—nothing more. It killed most adult demons within days. To my knowledge, I am the strongest demon in this era."
She wondered what it would be like--that feeling of invincibility. "Do you like it? Living for so long, I mean."
Sesshomaru shrugged his heavy shoulders. "I have not known anything else."
"I suppose not." She paused, looking over his beautiful skin and deadly claws. "I'd love to be able to be that important."
He saw her wistful gaze following the lines of his body. "Do you fear the time before you were born?" His question came out in a smooth, planned manner; but he had asked it in a spur-of-the-moment urge to reassure the human.
She tried not to seem confused. "No. Of course not."
"Then why do you fear what will arrive after death?"
Kagome sat still for a few breaths, considering his words. She didn't know why she feared it. "You don't understand." Her life was falling towards… what? Was it the not knowing that drove people to cry out in nightmares? "It's because I don't know…" Her mind's logical side faltered, unable to rearrange this human puzzle into something manageable, speakable. Her thoughts twisted into a black knot in her mouth, so she settled for not trying to explain it at all. "You aren't human. You can't understand."
He didn't. All of his life he'd seen death strike his lands, while he stood stoically and remembered his curse. The 'could' was torture. 'I could use Tensaiga, I could...' But it failed every time, and he walked alone with his burden. But then--she didn't see it as a curse, did she? "You do not understand either." She wouldn't live long enough to watching him wander forever.
Neither understood. So Sesshomaru switched the topic to something he could grasp.. "You slept with my half-brother."
Her problems came crashing down onto her. She closed off her body: arms crossed, back curled, head tilted down, legs twisted together. "I did." The Taiyoukai pulled the truth from her with his honest, strong statements. Cornered, she sat and dreaded his inevitable disgust and rejection. She didn't question why she cared about what he thought.
"Why?"
The question left her a bit relieved. Sesshomaru would dig deeper into her motives—he wouldn't judge, not right away. "I missed him."
Sesshomaru narrowed his eyes, as if he saw the half-truth she was feeding him. "Did you?"
Kagome's head lifted up. A new—or perhaps old—determination filled her. She was going to get through this. Inuyasha would heal, she would heal, and they would laugh about sex in thirty years, when he was new and she was falling apart. "I missed parts of him." This mistake won't last forever. "His reassurance, I missed." Always a light at the end of the tunnel. "And his touch, really, also." It's going to be okay. "I miss what he gave me." The truth fell onto the snow, and Kagome saw it with sad eyes. "I loved his love… not him." Can you miss something you've never had?
"You used him." The sterile words broke Kagome's self-assuring mantras. She'd used him. Suddenly, she wanted to scratch at her guilty, wrong skin until it all peeled away and she was left clean, fresh and pure.
"I have used women." Sesshomaru stated, free of any emotion.
Kagome wasn't surprised. 'Would he be that detached in bed,' she wondered. 'Or would he pretend?' "You don't feel guilt?"
Sesshomaru's empty eyes trialed over her curves, barely visible beneath layers of clothing and crossed arms. "It was a mutual exchange. We shared physical pleasures. Emotions are their own. I am not responsible for what other's think."
"Oh." So he was free of guilt. "You don't regret anything, then?"
"I regret. A gift, though, is not something to dwell on." He swooped up, out of the snow. Standing before her, he offered his hand. "Inuyasha was thankful?"
She took up on his offer to help her up, relieved that he was still willing to touch her stained skin. "Yes, he was grateful."
They were close to the well, so they started walking towards it. Sesshomaru seemed to sense that Kagome wanted to go home and escape. "If he was thankful, you have given him something."
Kagome sloshed through the damp snow. A few powdery flakes floated down from the sky. "But he gave me so much more…" I love you, Kagome. Inuyasha's words ran through her mind. I love you...
"He was willing to give you his love. You are not responsible for what he throws away."
She wondered if love was another thing that Sesshomaru couldn't grasp. She'd never realized before how human Inuyasha was in comparison to his brother. Sesshomaru seemed on a different plane altogether. "I don't know what to think." She said. The cold air surrounded her, and she wished that she'd brought a heavier jacket. Her face was freezing, her hand was icy. Just one palm though; she looked down to see Sesshomaru's beautiful hand still holding her own. Both embarrassed and flattered, she quickly untangled her fingers. He didn't react.
"If you do not know what to think…" Sesshomaru thought of the book in his pocket, the girl at his side, and the world contained in a tiny, wooden well. "Accept it. And try to understand."
Kagome looked at the demon by her side, marching with long, light strides. The cover-up had mostly flaked off; his marks seemed like shadows of what they once were. His thick eyelashes trembled with each step, and for a moment she was absorbed in his beauty. The fact that this powerful, nearly immortal creature was willingly walking next to her filled her with a strange sort of pride. She tried not to think about how hideous she must be in comparison.
They arrived at well: her escape, her problems, her freedom and her fate squished into one endless dark hole. Feet lifted off of the snow and trailed puddles onto splintering wood. He stood on the rim and watched her fall into the blackness.
"I had a child, once."
Sesshomaru's confession surprised Kagome so much that she nearly slipped and cut her hand. Repositioning the carrot, she started chopping again. She held her breath and waited for him to continue.
"She was a human girl." He followed her uneven cuts with his eyes while he spoke. "I didn't want her at first."
The fact that the child was human startled Kagome again; she jerked her attention away from the knife flashing under her fingertips. Sesshomaru marched to her side from his seat at the kitchen table. Wordlessly, he stole the knife from her hands and brushed her aside. Leaning over the cutting board, he paused while Kagome lingered at his side. "You may sit. I will cut the vegetables."
She obeyed with a smile and a 'thank you.'
"You will remove an appendage if you continue." He swiftly diced up a carrot for the stew. Kagome had promised she'd prepare dinner for her family. Reluctantly, they'd been herded into the family room to wait for her specialty: a bunch of random vegetables thrown into boiling water. It was an excuse to spend some time alone and deal with the events of the previous day. Sesshomaru, however, wasn't willing to detach himself from her side. She watched him rinse another carrot, and decided that it wasn't all that bad.
"I was injured when she came upon me." His hair swished from side to side with the movements of his arms above the counter. He stood near to the sink, straight-backed in his pale sweater. "Inuyasha had… well I'm sure you recall that fight."
She watched the blade demolish another carrot. "How long did it take for your arm to grow back?"
"Two years, perhaps two and a half." He pushed the solid orange chunks over to the side and plucked a few mushrooms out of a brown paper bag. An assortment of plants lay sprawled along the countertop. "The child," he continued, "Offered me food. She was so naïve that I couldn't bring myself to harm her. So I ignored her." The blue evening light spilled through the window and flooded the small room. His skin and hair seemed whiter in the twilight; he looked ethereal and out of place next to the sink and fridge. He smiled a little as he fingered a potato. "She was dead, the next time I saw her."
"Dead?" Kagome was sure that she wasn't hearing him right. Either that or he was lying, which he never really did.
"Yes. Quite dead." He shaved a potato while gazing out the window. "I was standing over her body—it was a mess—and Tenseiga pulsed."
"The sword tha—"
He glanced at her, a bit impatiently. "Yes. The one my father left to me." The sound of a knife hitting the cutting board filled the room. "I withdrew and used it." Sesshomaru paused and set down the knife. He jerked up the sleeves of his shirt then commenced chopping, with his forearms exposed. "The child was alive. She followed me for four years."
"Were you like her father, then?"
"No. I don't know what I was to her."
Kagome fixed her eyes on his arms descending up and down in a steady rhythm. A few veins were visible, trailing down silky skin to his wrist. Muscles flexed with each motion. "What was the girl to you?"
"A curiosity. She was different." One vegetable remained. Before Kagome could warn him, he cut straight through the layers of flaky beige skin. Immediately he dropped the knife and backed away from it. "You eat that?" He asked, revolted. He covered the lower half of his face with his hand.
"Yup." She swiftly arrived at his side and took over dicing the vegetable. "It's called an onion."
Sesshomaru's eyes were watering. Looking like he was trying not to gag, he strode away from the smell to sit at the table. "Her name was Rin." He continued.
Kagome thought that he had a habit of spilling his secrets at the oddest of times. "Where is she now?" She hoped that Sesshomaru wouldn't say anything grotesque.
"I left her at a human household when she started to mature. I did not want an adolescent with me."
She dropped the chopped vegetables into the pot and flicked on the heat. "Why?"
"I did not want to become attached."
Kagome cleared away the peelings and cores. She then wiped her hands on her jeans and sauntered over to join Sesshomaru at the table. He wrinkled his nose, and she remembered that to him she must reek of onions. She retreated to wash her hands self-consciously. "Why didn't you want to become attached? Do you mean romantically?"
He didn't answer right away, and Kagome wondered if it was a stupid question. "Not romantically. Generally, I did not want to be dependant on Rin."
"Why?" She asked again.
"She is human."
That sparked Kagome's fury: the reminder that Sesshomaru held this nonsensical, immature prejudice. She twirled around and stalked over to him, hands dripping. "And what is wrong with being human?" She frowned and waited for his response.
Sesshomaru looked into her angry eyes, sadness shining through his gaze. "They die."
"Oh." Kagome felt like the biggest moron. Had she misjudged him? She realized that his long lifespan was a double-edged sword; she saw him trudging through life forever, denied the right to a natural death, and denied the right to grow old with companions. 'How many people has he watched fade away?' For a moment Kagome pitied the invincible demon, alone carrying his gift and his curse.
"The water is boiling."
Kagome turned to watch over the stew and set the table. Sesshomaru reminded himself that even though Rin would be dead in his near future, 'She was with me then. That is what maters.' He told himself that, as dinner was served and the family talked. 'She was with me then', while the plates were cleaned and her brother left. He told himself that all night, while Kagome slept soundly in her room. He almost believed it.
A/N -- Special thanks goes out to Rejhan and Naien, for being such loyal reviewers. Thanks to Nilee too, for bringing Rin into the story. Because I've reformatted the chapters, people who've already reviewed earlier may not be able to do so again (not until chapter 10, anyway.) Sorry to those who've tried! Just review anonymously if it's not working for you.
As always, comments/ suggestions/ compliments are welcome.
