He held her broken body in his arms and rocked unceasingly, begging for help, for mercy, for anything.
"Kohaku…" someone started behind him.
He whipped around to face them, his face a ghastly expression of torment and pain.
"Bring me water! We have to save her, we cant let her die. Not again. Water!" he roared.
The young man fell back onto his bottom in shock but scrambled away quickly. The rest, including Kaito and Yuichi, watched him engrossed.
Kohaku was rarely a man of great emotion but this was….
"What are you waiting for? Bring cloth and find more herbs! Hurry!" Seirin encouraged.
Kohaku looked up to her, his eyes raw and expressive. "Thank you." he choked.
The slayers dispersed immediately taking action. All but Kaito and Yuichi who were too exhausted to move but watched the man they considered their brother with awe and distress.
He had cried her name loud enough for everyone to hear it and they knew, at least the two of them knew for certain, that this woman had to be none other than the phantom. For his sister was married and would not be traveling alone and the only other woman he mentioned with such preciousness was the phantom, the phantom who kept strange company but had saved him from himself. The phantom who made his nights warmer and battles shorter. The only woman that could make him blush, who by not even the sound of her name could reduce the man into a boy.
Rin.
Seirin watched in shock, her face flushed from her roots to her chin as she watched the man she admired over the living corpse of a woman he so clearly loved.
Yes, loved. In what way she did not know but she found that she both pitied and envied the pair before her. She watched how he cradled her, brushing her bloodied matted hair from her face, how he whispered soft words of reassurance to her; though she certainly could not hear. How his tears washed the grime from her face and how his unceasing his prayers covered her like a blanket, though she had never pegged him for a man of great faith.
Rin. That was what he had called her.
She couldn't help but wonder as she kneeled behind him and placed her arm on his shoulder in comfort, just who this woman was.
Of course.
Of course it was her because it was him.
It had taken the slayer very little to put it together; there weren't many beings in the world that could strike the kind of fear in grown men and slayers no less, with something as primitive as a shout of rage.
Sesshomaru, however, could.
He should have known in the way that he couldn't stand to be by the river for too long when they had found the brutalized woman, who he now knew was Rin. He should have known when his skin threatened to jump from his muscle when he heard the sound and attempted to discover what it was. He should have known the only woman aside from Sango and maybe Kagome that could do that kind of damage to an ogre was Rin; the product of their tutelage.
The minute Kaito and Yuichi had indicated an inu demon of great rage and power; it took but a second to realize who the girl was, because there could be no other possibility. The Kami had a bittersweet sense of humor and Kohaku was often the subject of their teases so naturally this would be how they would all reunite now.
She had plagued his mind for too many nights to count now, so much so that he could feel their reunion approaching. He worked harder, became stronger, and prayed that when he saw her next that they could part as friends and meet as lovers.
It was an ambitious goal, he had known this but it was not one he embarked on lightly. She was too good for him, for anyone but particularly too good for him a murderer by default. She should not be with one whose hands were so stained in blood but better him than…..than the alternative. Better than a being whose entire existence and empire was based on the destruction of life and the misery of others, how could one as white as snow stay unblemished in the river of red that a life with such a being promised? Surely the darkness would overwhelm the light until there was nothing left.
And yet, he couldn't even bring himself to truly believe that; for even as a child he could see the changes that she had brought upon the demon and knew them to be true.
He laughed bitterly into the crook of her neck as he held her.
He had been obsessed, haunted even by the thought of losing her to her Lord when they were but teenagers. He pushed his body to its limits training, becoming stronger and well versed in all things he could study but how could a mere boy, a mere man, a mere mortal compare to a being whose knowledge and power were based in millennia of experience? He couldn't and wouldn't. Sesshomaru could give her a life, she truly did not have the capacity to imagine but could he give her the love and fulfillment she so desperately sought from him?
No. Maybe. No. Maybe? Kami, no. Kami, please!
The thoughts had tortured him so much, he had been on a cycle of both resentment and understanding towards a man he only barely saw or knew. Until finally, he left.
He left everything he knew behind in pursuit of himself. After all, he could not only e a murderer, a slayer, a brother, or an admirer even. He had to be a person of his own, an individual. This had been his saving grace and though he found himself homesick at times, he did not regret it, it made him a man. It made him whole.
It was he in his letters to Rin, that inspired her to take a journey to find fulfillment on her own, though as a woman she would be given less leniency and opportunity. She agreed and he came home for a while to teach her all he knew, demon slaying, foraging, business bartering, map writing and reading.
He had learned then that her Lord had not visited her since before his own departure and though part of him was empathetic for her, he was pleased. Perhaps the demon had simply forgotten her or perhaps he cared about her enough to realize she would be better off without him. And he hoped in spite of his love for her, that Rin would come to this point too on her journeys but Kohaku was no fool.
Rin was determined, savvy, strong and beautiful. Nothing and no one would deny her, let alone a man. The world would be her oyster and the kami her guide as she sought her master and ultimate fulfillment. She would succeed and then she would choose.
Years later and they found themselves here. In the now.
And in the now, all of that seemed like so insignificant, so minuscule it was laughable.
What had she ever done to merit a death like this? A death like any of her deaths? They were entirely unbecoming of someone so genuinely good.
The world as they knew it then could not be just; for any and all death was unbecoming of one as good as Rin.
He stiffened as he pulled away from her as realization dawned on him.
Of course.
Of course. He was coming after all, power of the sword be damned, he would find a way to save her. This was fate as orchestrated by the Kami. He would always find her, always save her. In the way that she had been a gift to him, he was her gift from the Kami.
Kohaku lay her back onto the ground softly, the sound of her labored breathing but a whisper in the wind.
He would come for her; Sesshomaru would always come for her, no matter how long it had been. There was no doubt in his mind but not before destroying those responsible; if the ogres had been a threat before, they were well on their way to becoming an extinct part of history.
And me? The slayer thought, I will -
Screams erupted at the front of cave disrupting his thought. The battle had begun, he was here.
He could smell her blood on the earth, could feel her spirit calling to his and he went uninhibited to her. This was not a matter of who she was or who she had become; this was a matter of his power being tried. That anyone thought they could touch or destroy what was his, was something he would not stand for and for the egregious offence the offenders would be branded with his wrath, they would go pleading into the next realm. He would make it so that their very spirits were would still be writhing in pain in the next world so that they could forever rue the day that they tested him.
And that was precisely what he had done at the small camp of ogres. He had completely obliterated them and yet his fury was still untamed as he found that the blood that called to him was not there.
He had found an ogre who was covered in her blood, an obvious accomplice in her assault, and he made sure to save him for last, so that the foul vermin could see what was coming to him. The fact that her blood smelled more poignant on him than on the actual girl spoke volumes to the damage that had been done to her, so in spite of himself he cut the bloodbath short and searched for the second heavy scent of her blood.
He found her, later than he would have liked as her scent was becoming weaker, covered in herbs, and surrounded by other human scents and though it had not been his intention to come down in a fury he heard someone shout her name and a scrambling of people, before the first scents of rot hit his nose.
Rin.
Rin was rotting. Rin was dying. Leaving him. Abandoning him.
The youkai in him could not be contained. Rin!
In all of his terrifying glory, blood and water pouring over him like a ravine, the Lord of the West stood ready to claim his ward.
