Come morning, Kagome groggily got up. Sesshoumaru's silhouette was visible on the sliding door leading to the garden. She quickly dressed and sat down on the veranda beside him. They sat there, basking in the early morning rays, until their host came to get them for breakfast. As they enjoyed it, Kagome made light chitchat with the proprietor, telling him they were bound for Hiroshima next. Sesshoumaru seemed to tense up at that, almost imperceptibly, but as Kagome had been sneaking glances at him all morning, she caught it all the same.

They gathered their effects, thanked the host for his attentions and made to leave. Just before he lowered his helmet onto his head, Kagome fleetingly touched his arm, calling his attention.

'Are you ok?' she asked. She'd been getting used to seeing emotion on his face, but not like this.

He leveled her with a hard stare that lasted all of a heartbeat, before softening as he nodded. 'You?'

She nodded wholeheartedly. 'Yeah! Letting all this grief out like this has been really cathartic. In a way, I'm looking forward to seeing Shippou's grave, however wrong that sounds.' She barely caught herself adding that she would be disappointed to be done with the trip, though, and covered it up with an awkward giggle.

Sesshoumaru was staring at her weirdly, making her think he was judging her for jubilantly hoping to see her adopted son's resting place. She threw up her hands in her defense and started babbling about closure and being able to let go, trying to justify her outburst. Before she could embarrass herself further with her verbal incontinence, Sesshoumaru lightly put his fingers on her lips.

'I understand. Let's go see him.' He released her and got onto the bike. Kagome touched her own fingers to her lips, wondering at the tingling sensation. She was scared to consider what it meant, and decided to delay thinking it over until after she got home. With a sharp nod of confirmation to herself, she put on her own helmet and got on behind the man that had kickstarted her healing.

They arrived at their destination after their customary drive of about three hours, only shortly interrupted by a pit stop. As they drove into the city, Kagome realized how close her little foxling must have been to the epicenter. She quickly closed the lid to those thoughts, promising herself to deal with those emotions at the gravemarker. She was surprised that this time, Sesshoumaru steered the bike into a parking garage belonging to a hotel near the central station.

They checked in, went up to their rooms and freshened up before strolling over to their final destination. They turned into the Peace Park, passed the Peace Museum and soon were standing beside the Peace Memorial. As they stared up to the dome Kagome remembered from some middle school field trip, she suddenly felt confused.

'Why are we here?' she asked, turning to the stoic man beside her.

He continued staring ahead. 'To visit the ki-´

'I know why we're here, I meant, why are we here? What special significance does this place have to Shippou, besides being the place where he died?'

He stiffened beside her, but otherwise remained silent.

'All the others are at some place that meant something to them. Sango and Miroku at their village, InuYasha where he spent his last moment with Kikyou, Rin where she found you. Why is Shippou's grave here?'

Silence. She was just about to grab his arm and shake him, when he took a step forward, vaulted over the hedge and fence beyond it, and disappeared from view completely.

Wide eyed, Kagome stared at the empty space where his back had been visible not a second before. Wildly she glanced around if anyone else had seen this person vanish from sight, but no one so much as looked her way. Deciding there was nothing else for it, she stepped forward, trudged through the hedge and clumsily hoisted herself over the fence.

As soon as her feet touched the ground on the other side, she felt a barrier wash over her, and the sounds of the city became muddled, as if she was under water. She glanced back, noticing a faint shimmer overlaying the view of the city. She turned forwards again, and noticed Sesshoumaru standing just a few feet away. He was staring at her with a wariness she couldn't very well place, before leading the way into the atomic dome itself.

She called after him without expecting him to answer. Kagome hurriedly made her way to where he had disappeared into the building, yelling for an explanation as to what the hell was going on. Rounding a corner, she ran into his back.

'Gah! Gods, Sesshoumaru, here I was thinking we had grown closer. Would it please his lordship to tell me-'

'Kaaa..Kagome?' came a raspy voice from the shadows up ahead.

Her world tilted on its axis. Suddenly, she was aware of a second trace of youki all around her, tainting the air, the ground, the walls. The walls.. She noticed they were covered in patches of bright copper fur, all snaking their way to the point her companion was staring at. His shoulders were uncharacteristically slumped, she noted, as she stepped around him.

'Sesshoumaru, what…' she trailed off, suddenly seeing the horror ahead. The fur lead her gaze to a dysmorphous blob of discolored flesh, odd tufts of fur sticking out here and there. With a start, she saw there were five distinct trails of fur converging at the blob and realized they must have, at one point, been tails. Clasping her hands over her mouth lest she lose her lunch, she took a step closer. The mound of flesh quivered and turned slightly to the side, making a face come into view. At one point in time, she was sure he must've been very handsome, but now, all the proportions and positions were off. One bright green eye was roughly half the size of the other and drooped quite some inches lower than the other. The nose had all but fused with a cheek and the mouth seemed to be skewed vertically. Small protrusions on roughly each corner were all that was left of arms and legs, the odd finger and toe having somehow survived.

Kagome dropped to her knees and wept at what was left of Shippou. She heard the thing gurgling and cooing, apparently trying to soothe her. Only then did it fully dawn on her that he was still alive and somehow cognizant of her.

'Shippou?' she whispered through her tears.

A raspy laugh was her answer. 'Not my best look, eh?'

With a howl that sounded almost animalistic, she threw her arms around him. She sobbed into his grotesque approximation of a shoulder, doing her best not to be deterred by the squishiness of his skin.

'What happened?' she managed after some time.

Shippou grunted. 'Well, at some point, some uppity Austrian politician decided that Germany wasn't big enough to his liking, gathered some allies, and then, years later, some Americans thought it would be in the world's best interest to drop a bomb on this city, and it was just my luck that I should be here.'

Wiping her nose on her sleeve, she found herself smiling at his words. 'How did you become…like this?'

'Apparently, youki and nuclear energy don't mix very well. Also, being struck down by bakusaiga didn't help.'

'Bakusaiga?' she said, whipping around to the pale spectator in the back. He was avoiding her gaze again.

'Didn't he tell you?' Shippou turned to Sesshoumaru as far as he could before growling at him. 'You didn't tell her?!'

Kagome's question what she should have been told was drowned out by an answering growl. 'She would not have come if she knew.'

'Yes, she would! And she would have been able to prepare!'

'You know nothing of her hardships, kit,' Sesshoumaru spat.

'I am her hardship, dog!' Shippou countered.

They fell back to growling at each other, probably saying all there was to be said in some canine language. Kagome was getting increasingly frustrated and finally snapped, sending out a wave of sparkling purity to grab their attention. Once they were both staring at her, she fixed them both with an angry look.

'Care to inform me?' she ground out icily.

'Sesshoumaru brought you here to kill me.'

Kagome felt her blood run cold. She stared at the blob beside her before turning to the youkai across the room. 'What?' Her voice quivered.

'You explain, oh Lord. The gods know you should have,' Shippou ground out.

Sesshoumaru slumped a little, before drawing himself back up and facing her fully. With a look of cool determination that threw her back to the past, he started explaining. That he had found Shippou some days after the bomb had been dropped and he had still been alive. The blast had gravely wounded him, however, and the radiation had affected his youkai healing. His flesh was trying to repair itself at a faster rate than ever before, but didn't seem to know what went where. Parts of him had already started fusing to the walls and ground where he lay. He told her that the fox had asked him to end his misery, but that no amount of poison or injury seemed to be able to overpower his now hotwired healing. Every attempt had left him more and more disfigured, but alive still. Even bakusaiga, seemingly the perfect weapon for such a situation, had only slightly and briefly slowed down the regeneration.

He went on to explain that at his failure to end the life of the already unrecognizable youkai before him, he had remembered that it would not be long before a certain miko would come into existence. And that she might possess the power to purify her own adopted son and end his suffering.

Silence fell and stretched in the bare hall. Kagome felt conflicted. She didn't know if she should cry at the unfairness of it all, if she should laugh in their faces for their ludicrous suggestion or be angry that Sesshoumaru had kept all this from her all those months. She decided the latter would be easiest.

'You told me he had died,' she hissed at him.

'I did not. I told you he had been in Hiroshima.'

She stood from her spot on the ground and stomped over to prod a finger in his chest. 'That we would be visiting his grave!'

'Final resting place.'

'Stop being pedantic! Why didn't you tell me?'

'It would have destroyed you.'

'And you think handling it like this won't?!'

'I deemed it the lesser evil. This way, you were spared deliberating without end whether you would or would not.'

'And springing this on me would make the decision easier?'

'No. Seeing him would.'

She fumed, deliberated purifying the dog just for the sake of it. In the deep crevices of her mind, she could follow his reasoning, but hated him, hated them both for putting her in this situation. How would she be able to live with herself after this, after knowingly killing her beloved son? She had only barely survived knowing she would never see any of them again, but to be the executioner herself was too much. No, there was no way she was doing this, she wouldn't, she couldn't, she-

'Kagome?' Shippou whispered behind her, the pain clear in his voice. Her heart shattered.

She closed her eyes in resignation. She knew she had to, but resented anything and everything, everyone that had caused the dominoes of fate to fall in such a way as to lead up to this moment. She fixed Sesshoumaru with a hot glare, conveying all her anger. He never wavered under her stare, but she knew he understood that she was not done with him.

She turned around and faced Shippou. Her little Shippou, who had brought so much joy to the group, who had joined her in her sleeping bag on the coldest nights, who had been so proud to show her new tricks he had learned. Her little foxling, who had grown up and broken down without her, and now she would end him. He was crying, and trying to smile through his tears. She sat down on the ground next to him, threw her arms around him again and wept together with him. Finally, she touched her forehead to what was left of his.

'I'm so sorry I wasn't there,' she whispered, 'I'm sorry I never managed to learn how to heal. I'm sorry you have had to endure this for 50 years.'

'Don't be sorry, Kagome. I'm glad you weren't here, it was pretty bad.'

She snorted at the euphemism. Shippou managed a grin.

'If you want to blame anyone, blame him.' He gestured at Sesshoumaru with his eyes, lowering his voice to barely a whisper. 'Killing Perfection, my mutated ass. Couldn't even unalive a barely breathing youkai less than a quarter of his age.'

A warning growl was their indication that they had underestimated the other youkai's hearing, and they giggled despite everything. Kagome sat back, holding Shippou at arms length. Tears were still streaming down both their faces.

'This is what you want?'

'Yes. I'm sorry to have to ask this of you, but…' he struggled to get the words out, 'I'm in so much pain. All the time. It's all there is for me now, and I'm so tired.'

Kagome nodded and steeled herself. 'Please forgive me,' she whispered as she called her powers into her hands.

He smiled at her one last time. 'There is nothing to forgive.'

Sobbing, crying, howling, Kagome continued to gather her powers. She looked Shippou in the eyes, determined to stay in contact with him until the very end. He kept the contact, still smiling as she started to direct her powers into him, into his youki. It was slow at first, but the effect was spreading rapidly and with a last powerful surge that streamed over the grounds and walls around her, it was done.

Kagome sat with her arms still in the air, holding them up until muscle fatigue dropped them into her lap. She sat there for a long time, when suddenly, she was aware of the sounds of the city. The barrier was gone. She turned to Sesshoumaru and saw that the illusion wasn't working, despite the bracelet still on his wrist. It brought a new wave of tears to her eyes, but she angrily blinked them away. She stood up and stalked past him, out of the building and back into the park. It was night already, telling her that she had spent hours inside.

She heard Sesshoumaru come up behind her, and for a second, was happy that the night would cover up his most striking features, but anger directed at him soon squashed the feeling. Ignoring him, she walked out of the park, crossed the street and hailed a cab. She knew he was behind her on the sidewalk as she opened the car door.

'I'm going home. Don't follow or contact me,' she bit at him without turning around. She got in, told the cab driver to take her to the station and refused to look back.