InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Collected Works ❯ Beguile ( Chapter 61 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Title: Beguile
Author: LuxKen27
Universe: Canon (post manga)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Rating: T
Warnings: Angst
Word Count: 755
Summary: Sesshoumaru contemplates just what Kagura meant to him, five hundred years after her death.

Entry for: inuyashaquotes July 2009, Week 3:
“Nature's first green is gold, / Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower / But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf. / So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day. / Nothing Gold can stay.” - Robert Frost

Disclaimer: The Inuyasha concept, story, and characters are copyright Rumiko Takahashi and Viz Media.
“Disarm” lyrics © 1993 Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins)

It was just another ordinary day, like so many other ordinary days. He’d lived a lifetime of ordinary days – two or three times over, in human years – and he’d long since thought he’d seen and heard it all.

But, this companion always had a way of surprising him.

“I’ve always wondered,” Kagome mused aloud, quite out of the blue on that oh-so-ordinary afternoon, “what did Kagura mean to you?”

His world abruptly tilted on its axis, yet she calmly continued to eat her corn flakes, as if blissfully unaware of how violently she had just thrown him into the past.

A past he’d spent the last five hundred years trying to forget.

His gaze fell to the table, but he was unable to make out the plates or bowls or utensils that graced it. Instead, there were flashes of memory, fleeting fragments of images that bled one into the other, blurring his vision. Reaching back that far – beyond Kagome, beyond Rin, beyond Bakusaiga and his mother’s painful lessons in compassion – touched a dark corner of his soul. It was the one instance where he’d allowed his emotion to get the better of him, where he’d wielded and broken a blade over an unworthy youkai opponent, where he’d permitted an enemy to savor his weakness.

Kagura…

But most of all, she represented unrepentant failure.

By the time he’d realized her desire – her need – for him, it had been too late to save her.

They had nothing in common; he had despised her from the first time he’d laid eyes on her.

She was another incarnation of that foul beast Naraku, sent at his bidding, to kill at his will.

He was the perfect product of two powerful, full-blooded youkai lines; he took orders from absolutely no one.

She had no heart, and yet wished recklessly for one.

His heart had shuttered long before, captive of a complicated childhood and his father’s sudden death.

She was desperate in her intentions; foolish in her actions; thoughtless in her deeds. Her essence was the wind, and she was driven by passion she could not quite contain.

He was stoic, cunning, methodical. He saw through traps even when he stepped into them; he’d long ago learned to leash those powerful emotions that lead to fruitless battle.

And yet…for all their differences, they were the same.

Both wished to defeat Naraku. Both sought power to that end; she had even led him to Tokijin and declared it his, though it was made from the broken body of her brother-incarnation. They had worked together, from afar, chasing ghosts and puppets and leftover pieces, seeking her creator’s heart, all while knowing each would further their own ends by destroying it.

It was the little things…if only he’d paid attention…

…the way she sought him out, offering her Shikon shards in exchange for his help in defeating Naraku…

…the way she always seemed to know where he was, no matter how far he wandered, or how slow his progress…

…the way she flattered him unnecessarily for saving her life, gazing at him coyly, gratefully, soaked and half-nude…

He would’ve seen it sooner – that which bound them together:

They both wished to escape the chains of their parentage.

She, born of the obstinately evil Naraku, a free spirit enslaved to a relentless master, was no different from he, born of a royal mother and a decidedly distant father, one who didn’t entrust his taiyoukai status implicitly to his son. Both chased destinies just beyond their reach, equal turns tragic and frustrating. She wanted nothing more than freedom; he coveted nothing less than absolute power.

She had been willing to die in pursuit of his goal, and he…?

“Sesshoumaru?”

The voice sliced through his heavy reverie; he glanced up, golden eyes meeting their sapphire match across a cluttered, modern-day breakfast table. Kagome’s brow creased with concern and she chewed worryingly on her lower lip, looking very guilty for even asking after a former love.

Was that was she was to him?

Could he even define the impact she’d had on him?

Or was he forever doomed to remember nothing more sharply than her disarmingly blissful smile as she faded away in death, like so many petals on the wind?

“Nothing,” he finally replied, sliding his hand over the curve of his companion’s neck, pulling her close, burying his face in the hollow curve of her shoulder. His free arm snaked around her waist, completing the tight, sudden embrace. “And everything.”