InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Fuyu no Shimekiri ❯ To Live Again ( Chapter 2 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter 2: To Live Again

"Kagome...."

He stared at her, unsure of what to do, what to say, or even if this was real. It couldn't really be her, could it? After a hundred years...?

She smiled then, and moved, finally breaking his gaze as she attempted to sit up, and he moved forward hesitantly at first, to steady her as she wavered for a moment, obviously a bit weak after laying in one position for so long.

She noticed his hesitance, and chuckling, reached out a somewhat shaky hand to touch him. "I'm really here, Sesshoumaru, you aren't seeing things. You called me, so I came." She shrugged unconcernedly at his confused expression. "You are youkai - how could the relatively small matter of my seeming resurrection surprise you?" She laughed as he frowned at her. "Is it because I am only a weak human, my Lord?"

"Hn."

Still chuckling softly, she shook her head. "Still as eloquent as ever, Lord of the West. I guess some things never change."

"Apparently not, miko. You have only just opened your eyes, and you are already mocking me - just as you used to do," he shot back. "It seems as though there are things that even time cannot change."

She shifted forward, and he released her as she managed to balance herself. He stepped back and stared at her again, and she raised a brow at him. He could tell that she was highly amused at his reaction to her awakening, and suddenly, it sunk in that she really was awake... and he felt the fool as he took in her laughing eyes and smiling countenance. It would not do for one such as he to lose his dignity - not even over her.

"You will explain yourself, miko. How is it that you are alive again?"

She rolled her eyes at his haughty tone... I came back for this? Sighing, she tried to order her thoughts. "I'm not really alive 'again', Lord Sesshoumaru. I wasn't really dead in the first place. I was only asleep."

He raised a single, slender brow. "Asleep? For a hundred years?"

"Yes. I guess you could say it was kind of like hibernation." At his suspicious look, she shrugged. "Look, I'm serious. I wanted to die - believe me, at that time, I did - but becoming the Shikon jewel kind of took that option away from me. It made me immortal, Lord Sesshoumaru... and death has no place in immortality."

"So the jewel granted you immortality," he mused, eyes locked consideringly on the far wall of the building. "But I thought that, once wished on, the jewel would become no more."

"Yeah, well, so did I," she muttered sheepishly, "along with everyone else involved with the stupid thing. But apparently, we were all wrong. The jewel cannot be wished out of existence, and so, it kept getting passed along from guardian to guardian... as one would grow old and die, the jewel would be handed to the next. But then Kikyou got ahold of it, and that's where things went wrong."

Glancing around at the room she was in, she turned and scooted herself to the edge of the stone and swung her legs over the side, then stopped. "I guess after that fiasco, the jewel got tired of trying to find new guardians every few decades, and having decided that I'd make an excellent protector, it decided to grant me immortality, therefore negating the need for constantly searching for a pure heart to keep itself safe."

Sesshoumaru considered her words, and agreed that it made more sense to find and keep one protector, versus its previous methods. At least this way, what happened with Naraku would not happen again. Turning his gaze back on her, he nodded, then spoke again.

"Why did you wake now, after all this time?"

"Now there's a question with a long answer, Lord Sesshoumaru. Do you think that we might move to somewhere more comfortable - and possibly find something to eat? I seem to be rather hungry," she said wryly, "and this stone slab is really not all that comfortable."

He flushed slightly, but managed to keep his face in its accustomed stoic expression. She's been awake for no more than ten minutes, and already I feel like a fool. Stepping forward again, he swept her up in his arms, ignoring her startled expression, and carried her out of the room. "Very well, miko, I will take you to a more comfortable place, and feed you as well. Then you will continue explaining."

Kagome watched with great interest as he moved swiftly across a large courtyard towards an interconnected series of buildings. It was apparent that she was on the grounds of his palace, and she found that she was highly curious. After all, she'd never seen his home, in fact, she'd never even realized that he had a home until now, since she'd only ever seen him traveling.

Even more interesting were the expressions on the faces of the people as they passed. She had the feeling that this was going to be a long afternoon, and resigned herself to spending her first day awake assuaging his curiousity.

Frowning, she realised that she also had a lot of questions for him. Hopefully, he'd deign to answer them. She stayed silent as he snapped out orders to bring food to his quarters to the servants that seemed to be hovering around, before continuing on through a very imposing set of doors into a huge room that was obviously his.

Looking up at him mischievously, she shook her head in mock sadness. "A little overkill, my Lord, wouldn't you say?"

His brows drew together as he settled her onto his futon, piling pillows behind her to prop her up. "What do you mean, miko?"

"All the weapons on the walls, Lord Sesshoumaru. I'm sure you have a dojo here in the shiro, and it's customary to line the walls of said room with weapons... so was it really necessary to line the walls of your sleeping quarters with them as well?" With a light laugh, she shook her head again. "And yet, it's so you. I cannot say that I'm at all surprised."

"Hn." He shrugged. "You are correct. It suited me... for a time. And even after I no longer cared for weapons and conquest, it was just easier to leave things as they were." He gave her a sly look, a small smirk crossing his lips. "That does not mean, however, that I have not changed, my Lady Miko. Now, there is only one type of conquest I am interested in - and one does not need weapons of iron and magic to gain the victory on that particular battlefield." He chuckled as a radiant blush crossed her face as she caught the meaning behind his words.

"Well, that's certainly different," she mumbled. "I can't remember you ever saying things like that before... at least, not to a lowly human such as myself."

He looked at her expressionlessly for a moment... then surprised the hell out of her with his next words. "I still have not, Kagome. You never were just a lowly human."

She smiled uncertainly up at him for a minute, then turned her head away, not sure what to make of that comment.

Sesshoumaru sat down at the end of the futon, watching her with a peculiar intensity for a few seconds, then seemed to come to some sort of decision. Nodding to himself quietly, he said, "Tell me, Kagome... why did you come to me? What brought about a desire to live again to a woman that tried to will herself to death? And, as I asked before, why now, after all this time?"

Kagome looked down at her lap, clasped hands tightening around each other as she thought about how to answer his question. Should she tell him about her experiences within the void? She inhaled deeply, then expelled the air slowly, for the first time feeling unsure of herself. The voice that had spoken to her in the void had hinted at her destiny being tied to the beautiful youkai lord sitting before her... but she was not sure she wanted to mention that, for fear of what his response would be. Despite being told that he did not hate her by the entity in the void, and even he himself hinting along those lines, she was, she admitted to herself, a bit afraid.

She had always found Sesshoumaru beyond attractive, even back when her heart had belonged to his half-brother, and now that her heart was finally freed of him, she found herself wary around this gorgeous male - wary of mis-reading the situation and allowing herself to open her heart, only to be hurt yet again. Finally, she dragged her eyes up and met his steady golden gaze, hoping she wasn't heading straight for a major bout of humilation.

"For most of the time I was 'asleep', I was unaware of myself. I have no memory of most of the time I was gone. But a short while ago, something woke my - spirit - I guess," she frowned, irritated, trying to find the words to explain, "I'm still not sure what, and I became aware of myself again. At first, I didnt know who, or even what, I was. All I was aware of was a void... I could see nothing else besides myself. Turns out I wasn't alone there, though, because I was soon in conversation with an entity calling itself 'reality'."

Sesshoumaru snorted aloud at that one, then gestured for her to continue, very curious as to where this was going. Reality? Hn.

Turning her face away, she looked off into the distance, her gaze losing focus as she stared into a place only she could see. "To make a long story short, it told me that I had ended my life in loneliness due only to my own choices, and that I had been looking in the wrong place for happiness."

Her voice trailed off for a few seconds, before she sighed and focused her gaze on him again. "The next thing I knew it was showing me you, my Lord, standing in that room I woke up in, looking down at my body." Her eyes took on a peculiar gleam, and he moved a bit uneasily, unsure of what to expect. "It told me that you would soon call me, and that I had the choice to respond, or not, but that I should be aware that my decisions would affect others, because if I chose wrong, they would be unable to complete their destinies. That's why I came to your call, my Lord... it was you that gave me the will to come back."

Rubbing her hands up and down her arms, she finished, "As for why now? I honestly cannot tell you that, because I have absolutely no idea, my Lord."