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Chapter 23
Katsumi Kuramiya decided at that moment that, her wounds aside, she would rather die than let Toga stand before her with life flowing in his body again. So she forced herself to stand. Forced herself to summon her power, sputtering and strained as it was, and forced her weary muscles to tighten around the fist she was making.
Katsumi Kuramiya forced herself to charge towards the former Cardinal Lord.
Katsumi Kuramiya screamed, blood and spittle launching into the air between her and her target, fist hunched close to her side before hurling itself at Toga.
Katsumi Kuramiya, for all her wrath, for all of the time she had spent cursing his name, could not summon strength enough to make it.
With a sickening crunch, the bones in her leg ground themselves against each other, collapsing under the weight of her body, and the Dragon of Temperament began to fall.
Her fall lasted centuries.
She fell, and she fell, and she fell, and Katsumi could not understand why the ground would not rise up to meet her. She could not understand why her humiliation and shame would not leave her. On the ground, at least, she could pretend she had failed to make it to Toga because her heart had gone still mid-charge. She could pretend that Megumi had grabbed her ankle or something. What was Megumi going to do, deny it? She was still as stupidly far from lucid as she had been before her beloved father figure had materialized.
Oh.
Once Katsumi's thoughts turned towards Toga, she suddenly understood why she had yet to fall: he had caught her. Despite her best attempt to rush him with killing intent, the inu had tenderly prevented her collapse. Katsumi could not understand what the hell had goaded him to do so. She could not understand why even centuries after their last encounter he refused to tense even slightly. Why couldn't he just put up his walls? Why couldn't he just be even a little bit wary of her? Why couldn't he just put up a fight? It was frustrating to be taken so lightly. It was frustrating for her anger and her wrath and her hatred to be written off so easily. It was . . . it was . . .
. . . it was just like last time.
"I'm sorry, Katsumi," Toga murmured into her hair. Temperament's body went rigid as the warmth of his breath ghosted over her scalp. She couldn't decide what unnerved her more: the heat of it, or the words themselves. "For everything. I've failed you."
From the way that he held Katsumi, she could see Sesshomaru's face squint in blatant scrutiny of the words that his father was uttering. Of course, it didn't matter how quietly he spoke; inus would always be inus. Nosy little bitches. It wasn't Toga's voice that roused Katsumi though or even the way Sesshomaru looked at the scene unfolding with thinly veiled distrust. It was Megumi's voice, dream-like and airy.
"Toga-sama," she breathed, voice muffled as her words were embraced by the dirt her face was still planted in. Something about the fact that Megumi wasn't even physically aware of her surroundings right now filled Katsumi with near-suffocating levels of irritation. Quite frankly, everything was pissing her off right now.
The Dragon snapped into action, twisting her torso and wrenching herself free of Toga's grasp. Staggering over to where Megumi lay pathetically in the dirt, she bent over and grabbed as much of her fine black hair as she could manage and yanked. Megumi gasped in pain, eyes fluttering open and specks of dirt tumbling down her face as her head was forcefully uprooted from the ground.
"Listen," Katsumi snarled, before throwing the hair she'd bunched up in a fist back down. Megumi's head went with it and thudded against the ground, but it was enough. The Twin Dragon of Timidity was groaning and pulling her discarded limbs closer to her body as she struggled to sit upright.
Neither of the inus moved to help her . . . and neither did Katsumi.
Despite all of the pain in her leg, as her bones struggled to support her weight, Katsumi commanded her body to turn away from Megumi and towards Toga. Her fight with Megumi could wait. Hell, so could her thing with Sesshomaru. They were all old news to her now that her original prize was standing before her once again. Katsumi's scowl deepened so strongly as she locked eyes with the resurrected inu daiyoukai that she could see her furrowed brows at the top of her field of vision. "Do you expect me to forgive you after everything Ryūkotsusei put me through, stealing my power until he crimsoned his own eyes, torturing me constantly with his mind games, starving my very senses until I wasn't even confident in my ability to control my own body? You never looked for me! Ryūkotsusei's spy just told you that stupid fucking lie about how I died by that cliff and that was the fucking end of it!"
"I did look, Katsumi. I searched for you three times: the first when you went missing, the second when Megumi did, and the third when I learned it was Ryūkotsusei who had kept you hidden all those years."
Katsumi's words died in her throat.
He had looked?
"It was to reclaim my long-lost daughter that I fought Ryūkotsusei, my dear Katsumi. But I learned that my unborn child and Izayoi were in danger, so I put off reaching you until I saved them. I made a choice and it was not you. And for that, for dying before I could save you, I am sorry."
"I am sorry."
How many times had Megumi dreamed of Toga, only to wake and forget the way his voice sounded? She was ashamed to admit that she had not remembered for centuries now. Had it been more gravelly, or rumbly? Had his voice slid over words easier when he talked lower, or louder? Megumi couldn't remember. She could picture him speaking to her over the years with perfect ease, but for the life of her, she could not describe how he had sounded.
"I am sorry."
Was that really Toga's voice? It was so earthy . . . so full of something primordial . . . and so empty.
Megumi wondered if she was dreaming. She ought to be; Katsumi and Toga were here too. How long had she been in this dream? She didn't like it. She couldn't understand what these people were doing here, or how long they would stay. Megumi's back itched like crazy and her head felt alarmingly light. Do heads always feel this light in dreams?
Well . . . Megumi supposed it didn't matter. As long as she was dreaming, she could worry about those things later. Hadn't she been fighting Katsumi just before this? Maybe she won, then. Maybe she was just so exhausted from their clash that she had entered a deep, deep sleep. That would certainly make sense: she'd had her fair share of peculiar dreams after a long day of combat before. A peculiar tendril of electricity sparked down the length of her spine as a new possibility dawned on her: perhaps she was dead. Perhaps they were all dead and were meeting here together.
Wherever here was.
So had Megumi and Katsumi proved to be too equal a match, then? Distantly, Megumi found herself relaxing. She could make her peace with coming to the end of her life on such random terms. That would mean that Rin would be safe. Her seal would never be broken entirely, of course, but the only person capable of manipulating it was now permanently out of the equation thanks to Megumi's hard work. All Sesshomaru had to do now was find Rin, take her back home, and everything would be okay again. It would be a shame that they never had a chance to make up, but Megumi had done an unforgivable thing to him and Toga, so it wasn't like he'd want to see her again anyway . . .
"This One does not understand."
Megumi's head whipped around to see behind her and immediately flared up with pain. Her vision went black and white, and for a second she had to blink stupidly, mouth agape from the pain, as she fought for her vision to return. The inkblots that were blinding her dissipated a moment later, and in their place, the current Lord of the Western Lands was standing a mere seven paces behind her.
Megumi was suddenly very, very awake.
As her consciousness settled back in between her ears, Megumi's level of alarm climbed higher and higher. So, she wasn't dead. She wasn't dreaming. Which meant that somehow, someway, Katsumi, Toga, and now Sesshomaru were all gathered around her. Katsumi wasn't trying to attack Toga. Toga wasn't embracing his son. Sesshomaru wasn't actively trying to ignore her–on second thought, he most definitely was. He wouldn't even look at her: instead, his eyes were locked onto the visage of his late father. As Megumi's head swiveled to look at Toga, then Katsumi, then Sesshomaru, then Toga again, she was starting to feel like the only person to arrive late. Megumi hated having to play catchup.
What was the last thing they said?
"This One does not understand."
"I am sorry."
"Listen."
Megumi's heart lurched into her throat. "I am sorry." Almost as if her very body had become too tight for her, Megumi found herself fighting the onslaught of a sudden suffocating tightness as her chest constricted around her as she realized that despite being lost herself, Toga had only searched for Katsumi. While she had been helpless, chained to the piss-stained boards of the brig for years, Toga hadn't even considered coming to save her. Even as Megumi had cried out for him until her voice cracked and her lips bled, as people she had once trusted took turns carving their names into her delicate skin, Toga still hadn't looked for her.
Megumi had never felt as alone as she did then.
The silence that threatened to swallow her whole shattered in two as Katsumi suddenly sobbed.
"It's my fault," Katsumi breathed. Her shoulders shook like a young girl's shoulders might have as she fought to control her emotional output. Katsumi swayed on her feet, and for a second it looked like Toga wanted to reach out and steady her–a sight that made Megumi's heart squeeze–but Toga only shifted closer to the other dragon. "Had I not cursed you to abandon all you loved for a human and to give her a child, to die for them, you would have been able to find me–or Megumi." Megumi wished she hadn't mentioned her name; but apparently, Katsumi wasn't done referencing her yet. "You wouldn't have died so early. Megumi never would have had to waste so much power counter-cursing you so that after death your sons would have a chance to fix their bonds with you."
Megumi had her reclaimed memories to thank for giving her a head start in processing the words of her primordial counterpart. And Katsumi was right, she realized. Toga wouldn't have had to leave his fight with Ryūkotsusei had Katsumi's curse not commanded his very soul to do so. Katsumi could have been found, could have been rescued, had she never made that curse in the first place. None of them would be in this situation right now had she simply talked to Toga and Megumi when she hunted them down in the woods all those centuries ago.
All of this was because of one stupid mistake from one stupid little girl.
But after watching Toga take another slow, careful step towards Katsumi with his arms tentatively opened to her–an invitation–Megumi realized that it wasn't Katsumi that was stupid. She had locked away her heart and had made it strong by assuming the worst for all of those years. She hadn't allowed herself to hold onto stupid, childish hope that perhaps something had come up to prevent their mutual father figure from arriving at her aid. Because she had prepared for the worst, she had nothing to lose. And because the reality was much sweeter and healing than Katsumi had imagined, fate had actually given her something to gain.
Megumi hadn't prepared for the worst, so when it stood before her in the form of Katsumi's memories and Toga's confession, it left her gutted. The very thing she had built her life believing was crumbling before her and nobody seemed to give a damn.
So that was it, then. There was her answer. She had always wanted to ask Toga why he had never come for her–
Now, she had her answer.
For the first time since she'd found herself in this place, Megumi wanted to flee. It was such a rare feeling for the elder dragon that at first she had no idea what to make of it. But as she watched Katsumi and Toga, as she watched them reach the same conclusion she had, Megumi suddenly understood why her body was itching to leave. To be anywhere but here.
To run.
Her heart had had enough.
Megumi struggled to her feet, a pain so deep she swore she could feel it in her spine nearly paralyzing her as she fought to stand upright, but she pushed her body to bend to her will anyways. Damn the consequences; Megumi had seen enough. She had seen all she could take. As she turned away from her celestial rival, Megumi's eyes met briefly with the molten gold ones resting in the sharp face of the daiyoukai standing a ways behind her. Just as she couldn't understand his expression the last time she saw him, on that hill dotted with flower buds, she couldn't understand it now.
She hoped he could understand that hers said goodbye.
Megumi set off at a sprint, tears threatening to make their way through her ducts and onto her eyes if she did not run fast enough. In her peripheral vision, she could see Sesshomaru turn towards her; but by that point she was already partially airborne and too far into her transformation to back out now. Seldom in her life had Megumi been stupidly reckless. She knew the limits of the draconic spirit that resided within her; knew the amount that she could safely harness without turning her power into a cheap ticket to the afterlife. The minute Megumi had fully transformed she knew that she would be damn lucky if she ever woke up a second time. Megumi understood now that Katsumi had, quite frankly, almost killed her.
And still, Megumi pushed on.
She wasn't sure if it was the pain in her back as the air currents ghosted through her open and marred flesh, or perhaps the pain in her heart as she fought to see anything but that image of Katsumi and Toga before her, but it blinded her almost completely to her surroundings. Megumi's tail thrashed against the tops of trees and her claws thudded against the thick bark of passing trunks, but still, she forced herself on.
Megumi didn't give a damn where she landed, so long as she flew until she couldn't remember anything anymore.
Ginger and grapefruit and copper.
It was her, and yet something else entirely. Her blood-tainted scent struck him as haunted: much like her eyes did when she had passed his side and climbed into the air. They were hollow and dull. Practically lifeless. Gone was the woman he had grown accustomed to having at his side. In her place, he found himself greeted with a paltry husk.
No; greeted wasn't the right word.
Her scent had been grapefruit and ginger and goodbyes.
Sesshomaru knew, down to the very marrow of his bones, that Megumi did not intend to come back.
Perhaps he would regret not pursuing her sooner, but could he really be at fault for hesitating? The last time they had shared space, it ended in a dispute. How exactly is someone like himself supposed to reconcile after such a thing? Inu pride was not something he could turn off on a whim.
Inuyasha's face flashed before his eyes.
"They'll want space, to clear their head, and then they'll want you to come after them."
Maybe . . .
The inu daiyoukai was abruptly pulled out of his thoughts when the strange woman–whom his father had referred to as Katsumi Kuramiya–staggered closer to him, hand outstretched. He was tempted to send some very obvious don't come any closer signals, but for the time being chose to refrain from doing so. After all, with how blatantly crippled she was at the moment due to the extent of her injuries, it wasn't likely that she would be able to pull anything that he couldn't predict and outwit. A part of him found it a tad difficult to remain unwary of her approach, though. Sesshomaru certainly had his theories: who would Megumi fight, if not the person who had harmed Rin? Who would he have found her fighting then, other than the very person she had suggested to Inuyasha that she was off to find? It made perfect sense. Sesshomaru couldn't help but remember when he had watched Megumi fight for the first time against the usagi demons in the forest. The demons had refereed to their master as kami-sama, hadn't they? And Sesshomaru had wondered just who the hell Megumi had had the gall to piss off.
If the woman shuffling towards him now was their beloved kami-sama, then they must have been weak indeed. And he had been a fool to assume that Megumi could've possibly angered true kami.
Still, despite everything that had transpired since that night, Sesshomaru found himself fighting a faint smile while he reminisced. Of course, recognizing that he wanted to smile made him hesitant to do so. Here he was, the greatest of the four Cardinal Lords, standing before his resurrected father and the woman that had maimed and kidnapped his ward, and he was thinking about some random ass lady and trying not to smile in fondness of the memories they had shared together.
Sesshomaru was becoming pitiful; if only Kimi could see him now. She'd certainly have something to say about his recent behavior, that's for damn sure.
"These belong to you," the woman said, her eyes burning straight through to his almost as if she was demanding to be seen by him. How peculiar a color were her irises. When was the last time he had seen such a deep red in a demon's eyes before? Sesshomaru squinted. There had been Ryūkotsusei, of course, but the more he mulled over it, the less inclined he was to lump this woman in with the lot of that dragon.
Dragon.
She had soared through the sky with Megumi, hadn't she? Could it be, then, that whatever Megumi was, Katsumi was the same?
The answer to his question materialized in his head the minute Katsumi's outstretched hand returned to him the very thing he had been missing, all these years:
His memories.
Toga-sama returned to the shiro with two young girls in tow. Megumi Madarame and Katsumi Kuramiya. Sparring with Megumi. Channeling his reluctance to having the invaders in his home into every blow. Wanting to hurt her; succeeding; and struggling to comprehend when she returned the next day for another round. It was obvious to him that she had been giving everything she had just to keep him at bay. Frankly, it had to be humiliating. There was no way she didn't feel the damage to her pride. He couldn't fathom someone being able to stomach that terrible of a beating on a regular basis and bear it with a smile.
And yet, she did.
Katsumi hated him. It was easier to interact with Katsumi than it was with Megumi. With the brunette, at least, he knew exactly what role he was supposed to play. She disliked him because he was too hard on Megumi in their matches. He disliked her because she had taken up residence in his home, at his father's side. It was simple. It was predictable. It was not the same with Megumi. He could not understand what she was thinking. He could not understand the nature of her relationship with Katsumi. He could not understand her relationship with himself, either. One minute it looked like there was an unusual amount of intimacy shared between the two dragons whenever they exchanged a glance. The next, there was something almost hungry in the way Megumi looked at him–chest heaving, stray hairs clinging to her forehead, eyes sparkling–whenever he so clearly displayed his superior will over hers during a fight.
A look of desire.
A look that evoked curiosity, then repulsion once he overheard Toga and Kimi's discussion of setting up one of the dragons to be his mate. He had had no success with the traditional matches. No one interested him. It was pointless, they said. Kimi suggested one of the dragons. Toga was nervous that he would see them too much as sisters for them to ever be viable matches. Kimi reminded him that Sesshomaru hardly considered himself close to his parents on a good day, much less some random strangers. Toga conceded that he already considered them to be like daughters to himself . . . and they agreed that he seemed unusually unwilling to harm a single hair on Katsumi's head . . . so perhaps, perhaps . . .
Sesshomaru remembered the day she went missing. Sesshomaru had watched her fight with Megumi–it was after they had sparred–and he had heard Toga and Megumi leave earlier that morning. He had not told Katsumi.
He had not stopped her when he watched her walk out of the shiro that night, not even to question her.
He had not known it was the last time he would see her alive.
Sesshomaru watched as Megumi lost that sparkle in her eyes. He watched as she began to skip the training sessions she had once shown up hours early for until she quit them altogether. She began to wander aimlessly, finding herself frequently standing before the room that once held her childhood companion.
Sesshomaru had shocked himself when he offered to be the first in line for Megumi's mind experiment. Why had he done that, he wondered?
When he came to, he did not understand why Megumi's eyes were tear-stained. He did not understand why she had been looking in his mind in the first place.
She was worse, after that.
Sesshomaru had a feeling that he was missing something important.
Eventually, she stopped crossing his path altogether. He was the heir to his father's legacy after all: unless sought for, Sesshomaru was far too busy a man to be encountered by chance. He hadn't even noticed her and Toga's absence the second time until Kimi had pointed it out three days later.
Not long after that, they encountered an intruder. Sesshomaru could not understand how the perpetrator had even entered the shiro in the first place considering she looked to be a mere human woman. A mere ningen, of course, with eyes full of flame.
She asked him what her name was.
He did not know.
How was he supposed to know?
There was that unsettling feeling again.
How was he supposed to know?
The woman laughed. It was the laughter that caught him off guard. The laughter was what had allowed her to slip past his defenses long enough to strike him. Was it with her hand? She wasn't even standing that close to him. And yet . . .
Yet . . .
Something weird was happening to him. The movement alarmed him. How could a stranger find and locate the weak point in his defense so easily?
She laughed again at his confusion.
I studied you, she told him.
While she fought, I watched. I watched and I learned. I watched and I remembered.
Wait . . . who was she?
Sesshomaru couldn't remember.
Sesshomaru couldn't remember anymore.
The inu daiyoukai groaned and raised a clawed hand to the side of his head. It ached where fifty years' worth of memories had returned to settle into his mind. He understood now, though. Why the woman standing before him had looked familiar. Why Megumi and Katsumi had fought, why they were so similar, why they had both been so sensitive to Toga's abandonment.
He understood, and he found himself wishing he could tell Megumi this.
Too little, too late.
"Sesshomaru." Toga was looking towards him now. He made no move to approach his son, but his eyes were full of determination. It was almost as if he was demanding to be heard. "Nearly two centuries ago I received a vision in the night. It was of Megumi. She was chained to a wall, surrounded by youkai that took turns carving kanji into her skin. At one point, she gasped out and looked up–looked directly at me–and called out, begging for me to find her, find us, save me, save us." Katsumi's eyes flickered to the ground. Sesshomaru wondered if she knew of the incident that Toga spoke of. The image of Megumi's scarred flesh danced in his mind. "I did not know if what I had seen had ever come to pass. But I left when I woke and journeyed to where I had foolishly omitted from my search, the only place in Japan left that I could think of: the ningen shiro of her birth. But Katsumi's commands took hold and it was not Megumi that I found, but Izayoi."
Sesshomaru's fingers twitched. "Why are you telling me this?"
"So that she may know the truth when you find her again." Toga smiled then, but it didn't look as warm as Sesshomaru remembered. It looked sadder than anything. "I have watched over you and Inuyasha, since my passing. You have grown into an excellent Lord, Sesshomaru. But you cannot rule your people with strength alone. Love is not something you should see as a weakness. It is not something you need to guard your heart against," Toga said, "and neither should she."
Sesshomaru nodded once, slowly, and offered no rebuttal.
When Katsumi stirred, raising her eyes from the ground and towards the Western Lord, Sesshomaru couldn't help but wonder what else she could possibly have to add to all that had already transpired. "My shiro is high up in the mountains, near but not exactly where Ryūkotsusei first built his lair. I am not yet sure how far from it Megumi and I traveled, but I'm sure it's reachable before dusk . . . injuries permitting."
Sesshomaru said nothing, and when it became apparent he would not verbally goad her into continuing, Katsumi resumed her speech.
"Rin is there. Let me return to my home and release her from my control. In time, once I am healed, I'll return her to your shiro."
"And why have you chosen to tell This One now?"
"So you can get to Megumi right away," Katsumi insisted. Sesshomaru did not understand the note of urgency laced in her tone. "When we use up our draconic spirit, we cease to exist. Too much of Timidity is no doubt working overtime to keep Megumi's wounds from turning fatal. It was stupid of her to transform yet again."
And suddenly, Sesshomaru understood.
"She knows the old man's dead . . . right? What the fuck did she mean by that?"
"I know not," Sesshomaru admitted, as his hand shifted towards where their father's fang hung at his side. "Unless she intends to join him."
Sesshomaru had not meant for his prediction to become reality. Truly, if he had just followed his instinct and swallowed his pride, he could have stopped her long before she was close to taking off again. He could have, and yet, he had not.
And now Megumi was dying.
Megumi was dying and the last thing she would know of him was his pride and his anger.
He could have stopped her.
Why didn't he stop her?
She was right there. She had looked at him.
And now she was gone.
Dying, alone.
"You have time," Toga interjected before his son's thoughts could spiral any further. "Go, and apologize."
"For the both of us," Katsumi added.
The air began to stir once more as Sesshomaru began to summon his cloud. "And what will become of you?"
Toga chuckled. "I'll return to dust, I imagine. It won't be long now."
Sesshomaru nodded. "Take your time . . . otousama."
Author's Note:
One chapter down, one more to go . . . can you believe how far we've come?
Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck with this story up until this point–it means the world to me. It makes me so happy to see that thousands of people have chosen to take time out of their busy lives to sit down and read my writing. Would you guys like to see an epilogue or just a final chapter? Let me know! I'll try and wrap up this story before the end of the month, but most likely, the final update won't come until November.
Have a great day everyone!
