She's asleep when he finds her room, but he stops in the doorway, his eyes fixed on her sleeping face.

It's bandaged and bruised.

He can't breathe, is suddenly shaking. She's alive. She's tough. She's survived so much worse. But she's also vulnerable and fragile and such a temporary thing, and that reality crushes him with its unkindness.

Before he realizes it, he's crossing the room, the beep of the monitor pounding in his ears as he sits on her bed.

She stirs. "Sesshoumaru?"

Unsteady as his own is, he takes her hand. "Here."

Her eyes open and immediately soften.