InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Memoirs of a Soul ❯ Fatal Fall ( Chapter 1 )

Chapter 1: Fatal Fall

"Rin doesn't want you to go! Rin wants you to stay here!"

Sesshomaru answered in a quiet but firm voice, "Rin, stop whining." Rin immediately shut up at his command. Sesshomaru continued, "I must go to visit some people. I want you to stay here with Jaken until I get back, so that way I can get back faster, understand?"

"Yes Sesshomaru-sama."

Sesshomaru motioned Jaken over. "Jaken, I want you to take care of Rin while I'm away. You will let her do whatever she wants, as long as it is reasonable. I will be gone for a few weeks, maybe a month." Sesshomaru turned around and started to walk away. He stopped a few paces from the door and spoke without turning around. "Oh, and Jaken?"

"Yes, my Lord?"

"You know what will happen to you if Rin is mistreated." Sesshomaru allowed himself a small smirk as his smelled Jaken's fear and heard the tell tale gulp coming from the toad like creature.

"Filthy human, how dare you disrespect a youkai such as myself!?" Jaken came running outside covered in fish guts. Lately, Rin had a …bad side to her; she would do a prank with weird expression on her face. Afterwards, she wouldn't remember a thing. Rin was kneeling down to pick some flowers, as usual, in the garden. Standing up, she looked at Jaken with a little confused look on her face.

"Jaken, what does disre… disrespect mean?"

"Stupid Girl, it means being mean to someone."

"Rin's not being mean to you." Pausing for a moment, Rin yelled, "and Rin is not stupid!"

"Any child with half a brain would know what disrespect meant. My Lord, Sesshomaru-sama, knew what that word meant when he was equivalent to your age."

"Stop using big words! Rin doesn't like that!"

"Why should I listen to you, human?"

Rin looked about ready to yell again, but the put on an evil smirk uncannily similar to Sesshomaru. "You should listen to Rin because Sesshomaru-sama told you to. And if you don't, Sesshomaru-sama will do something really bad to you."

Jaken couldn't hide his expression. He gulped at that sentence as he remembered the time Sesshomaru cut him in half as an "experiment" for Tenseiga.

"Jaken, can we go outside the castle, to the meadow?"

"Yes! Let's go, don't want to displease Sesshomaru-sama." Jaken hurried Rin out of the garden.

"Can we go now?" Jaken yelled out.

"No, I have to pick that pretty flower over there!" Rin pointed to the edge of a very steep cliff, in which a lone flower was resting.

Jaken didn't even give a look to where Rin was pointing. "Make it quick, then."

Rin sprinted to the flower and tugged at its stem. "It won't come out." Yanking with all her strength, she uprooted the flower, causing the ground to become unstable and fall apart.

Jaken turned around as he heard a scream. He saw Rin tumbling over a cliff edge. Running over and scanning the bottom of the cliff, he saw Rin, lifeless on the ground. Panicking, He scrambled down the side of the cliff face. "Wake up, girl. This isn't funny, I'm not laughing. Hurry up and stop acting, Sesshomaru-sama is going to be very angry with you for doing this."

Seeing that Rin hadn't twitched, Jaken stepped closer to check on her. Noticing that her chest wasn't even moving, Jaken whispered, "Lord Sesshomaru is going to kill me, or worse."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

At the Council of the Lords, Sesshomaru had his usual cold, calculating, and contemplating look on his face. Bored of all the talking, Sesshomaru observed the youkai around him. Smirking inside his mind, he noticed that all the Lords seemed to be giving him a wide berth, due to the fear that they all commonly shared of the Lord of the Western Lands.

Sesshomaru was jolted out of his thoughts by Tenseiga, who pulsed once and then went still. What happened, why did Tenseiga do that? Brushing the thought aside, Sesshomaru left it for further contemplation outside of the meeting.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After weeks of meetings, Sesshomaru finally arrived at home. Sesshomaru had a terrible time, he had to sit and be cordial to fat old geezers that couldn't even walk, let alone keep their kingdoms together; they had their sons do that for them. A nice efficient plan that Sesshomaru would've used too… except for the fact that he didn't have a father anymore. Luckily, the meetings only happened every four hundred years.

Sesshomaru couldn't wait to get home to take a nice long bath to relieve his unnoticeable stress. He could feel the knotted muscles in his back from all that sitting straight for hours on end. Yes, a nice, hot, long, steamy, relaxing…

"Lord Sesshomaru!"

Sesshomaru immediately tensed up at the sound of his name.

"Lord Sesshomaru, I bear the most awful news!"

Exasperated, Sesshomaru snapped, "yes, Jaken?"

Jaken was a bundle of nerves. "Sir, its Rin. She fell off a cliff while getting a flower, Sir, and the ground gave way and…"

Sesshomaru didn't need to have Jaken tell him what happened. His stench and aura told him everything. "Bring me to her, immediately."

"Yes Sesshomaru-sama."

Jaken led the way to the castle funeral room and waited outside the door. Inside, laid Rin, deathly pale.

Sesshomaru walked up to her, cradled her in his arms like he did the day the wolves attacked her village. He brought out Tenseiga by the hilt; he raised it over his head and waited. Tenseiga pulsed once, and Sesshomaru could see the spirits of the underworld. Staring at Rin, he waited to see the soul carriers preparing to take Rin's soul to the underworld.

He waited, Sesshomaru kept waiting for them to come, but they never did. Finally, Sesshomaru put down Tenseiga, and wept silent tears. His mask was still there, if you removed the tearstains, you would see the same face you always saw. But the fact that Sesshomaru dropped his mask enough to let a single tear escape that was a phenomenon that hadn't happened since six hundred and fifty years ago.

Sesshomaru whispered, "Her soul is gone; it left before I could use Tenseiga."