InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Stealing Heaven ❯ What Time Won't Heal ( Chapter 32 )

(This is the latest of the current chapters; Thirty-three is being worked on at present.)

Chapter Thirty-Two

What Time Won't Heal

He held up a placating hand, taking another sip of his coffee with the other. “Let me preface this by saying,” he muttered as he set the mug down, still not meeting her gaze, “I wasn't lying that night on the dig, when I implied that I'd never really been in love. I think the worst place to start this off would be with a misunderstanding.”

Kagome didn't quite know what to say to that- would it belittle what he was about to tell her to question that statement? Her hesitant silence must've spoken just as clearly, because he gave a slow nod as certainly as if she had asked.

“Why would someone as sensible as Professor Taisho have a child with someone he didn't love?” He mused aloud.

She blinked hard and lowered her gaze, resting her eyes on her fingers as they fidgeted, nervous and restless, in her lap. “I didn't say that.”

“You didn't have to, I know it's what you were thinking because it is the same question I would have in your place.” He reached out blindly, settling his large, warm hand over both of hers to still their motions. “It's alright, Kagome. I'm telling you this because I think you deserve to know, not because I feel that you're forcing it out of me. Here . . . .”

Sesshomaru allowed his voice to trail off as he stood up from his seat and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a second mug and a sugar bowl. “We met as grad-students, not really friends at first, but because we were both intellectuals we traveled in the same circles. We each did things because they were logical and sensible, emotion rarely entered into decision making,” he explained in a low tone as he poured some coffee for her and pushed the mug and sugar bowl toward her.

It was only after she began fixing her coffee- with noticeably trembling fingers- that he went on. “When we began dating, it wasn't that it was something that neither of us wanted, strictly speaking, it was because we were compatible and we didn't hate being around one another.” He gave a light shrug. “It was really the best one could hope for when they wanted to do the sensible, socially proper thing, but didn't want a relationship that would interfere with both of us focusing on our careers. We both knew that being in a commitment would keep distractions of the heart at bay.”

Kagome's hand halted in its ascent of bringing her mug to her lips. “I . . . I think by now you would know a person can't control their heart that way.”

Just then for a brief moment he turned his head, meeting her gaze. “Yes, I now understand the flaw in that logic, but I didn't then, and it really never came up. Kagura and I . . .” his brow furrowed ever so lightly as he searched for a clear way to explain it, “like I said, emotion rarely entered into our decisions, we were compatible with one another and though there . . . wasn't truly any sort of `spark,' we each recognized that we were attractive enough individuals to make things work. We took steps in our relationship when it seemed the appropriate time to do so, nothing more. When Kagura became pregnant, it was a bit of a surprise.”

“So . . .” Kagome ventured in a whisper, “you did the sensible thing and offered to marry her?”

He gave a sad, self-deprecating little chuckle. “Neither of us wanted her to not have the child, and therefore it made sense to consolidate incomes, as well as to have both parents in the child's life more certainly than being separate would. Logically, if we could not love each other, than at least we could remain friends who were capable of putting the child's interests and wellbeing above our own and that seemed better than letting what was supposed to be a blessing turn us against one another by making us think one of us was better as a parent than the other, as such situations often do.

“We were married, Rin was born . . . and things were blessedly normal for a long while. She was so young that she didn't have the capacity for understanding that mommy and daddy sleeping in different bedrooms was out of the ordinary, really it seemed the only thing that separated our living arrangement from a `loving' marriage.”

Sesshomaru lifted his mug to his lips for a long sip, keeping his gaze locked on the cup even as he lowered his hand to hold it on the very edge of the table. “At first, she grew up like any other child, but when she turned four we noticed she seemed to halt there. She didn't grow an inch or put on a single pound in the year between her fourth and fifth birthdays, so we started bringing her around to all sorts of specialists, or at least we were going to- leave no stone unturned and all that. As it turned out, we ended up canceling most of them because the diagnosis was stumbled across rather quickly.”

Kagome set her cup down, crossing arms beneath her breasts to keep herself from shivering. “What was wrong with her?” Gods, her voice was barely even audible.

“She had a type of bone cancer. Very rare, very aggressive . . . within a year she was a full time resident of the children's hospital and confined to her bed.” His gaze narrowed briefly, as though he was angry at the memories themselves. “We took turns staying with her, neither of us really wanted to leave her to go to work . . . somehow those things that had been so important to us once had become utterly meaningless. Without Rin, none of it meant a thing.”

He paused for a long while and Kagome turned her head to look over at him. She watched the way he reflexively forced a gulp down his throat once, twice . . . the way he opened his mouth and closed it again a few times, unable to voice anything more. Nodding to herself, she stood and stepped slowly toward him. He watched her mutely as she lowered herself to kneel beside his chair and leaned her head toward him, resting her cheek against the back of his hand.

“If you don't want to go on, it's really okay,” she murmured, lightly curling a hand around his calf.

“It isn't that,” he replied, his voice level and a bit thickened with unshed tears. “It's simply that I haven't spoken on it in so long, I never thought I'd have reason to, either.”

“If you're sure,” she turned her head to look up at him, “take your time, I'm not going anywhere.”

It seemed a long while passed as they simply sat in strained silence before he could go on, but finally he nodded, picking up where he'd left off. “We didn't have a choice about going back to work- her treatments had to be paid for, after all. It was like . . . every time I went to see her I was so happy to just be around her, but I was also dying inside because I knew each day that passed was one less that she'd be in my life.”

Kagome listened mutely, blinking back tears as her eyes strayed to the closed cabinet doors once more. In a distant corner of her mind, she made the connection- cancer, treatments . . . . Wasn't chemo-therapy a type of radiation treatment for cancer patients? Black, back-lighted bones- like an x-ray in negative . . . . That quick image of the child's bones made sense now. She'd thought the ghost was Rin the moment the professor explained the meaning of today, but now she was positive.

“Every time I walked through the hospital,” he went on, his voice betraying an edge of time-honed numbness, “down every corridor, past every desk and room, I felt like everyone was watching me, all knowing how little time she had left . . . six months, three months, one month . . . . Finally the time came and went when she had only a week left and she was still with us.” He shook his head, amber eyes glistening, but refusing to let the tears free to roll down his cheeks.

“We couldn't even be happy about that, though, we knew it would be false hope. We had made arrangements in that last month that whenever Rin did pass, we were going to have her buried that same night. It was illogical and highly unorthodox, but we knew neither of us could endure sitting through days of staring at her in a casket, of hearing condolences from people who had no comprehension of what we'd been through. Kagura had stopped going to work altogether to stay with her day and night, she was barely eating or sleeping. After about two weeks of that, I put my foot down and insisted she go home, get some rest and eat something more than a vending machine candy bar. It was the very next morning- she was on her way back to the hospital- that,” he paused for a long time, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath and letting it out slowly, his eyes drifting closed, “that was when Rin left us.”

Kagome was afraid to move, even to lift her hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks. She wanted him to stop, wanted him not to have to feel this pain anymore, but she knew that would never be possible and she knew he wasn't telling this tale just for her sake, but for his own as well, that he needed to simply let it out.

“I was there with her, holding her hand the moment she died, but Kagura . . . she blamed me for sending her away, said it was my fault her little girl died without her there.” Sesshomaru distracted himself for just a moment, lightly picking at a lock of hair that had fallen across his lap and turning it in his fingers. “It was perhaps a week later that she handed me divorce papers,” he gave a slight shrug, “the one thing that had bound us together as husband and wife was gone, so I immediately obliged Kagura's wish. She accepted a job in . . . Holland, I think; she couldn't be around anything that reminded her of Rin or me. She couldn't make herself not hate me for what I'd stolen from her, she said.”

She was split down the middle about that. She couldn't imagine ever hating Taisho Sesshomaru for anything, but then she loved him in a way that Kagura never had . . . and she couldn't say with complete, unerring certainty that she wouldn't feel the same way, at least for a time, had she been put through what that poor woman had endured.

“Is . . . is that when you met Myoga?” she asked, managing to find her voice only to have it squeak out in a choked, shaking whisper.

“No, not right away,” at some point- neither of them were exactly sure when- he'd given into gently trailing the tips of his fingers over her hair. “A year of my life slipped by, I went to work, came home and it was all on autopilot, the only thing I could ever remember was thinking what Rin's expression would be if I brought home a picture of this artifact or that one to show her, or wondering what kind of dessert she would have asked for at that restaurant I'd been forced into going to with my colleagues. I don't think she ever cared about the items, themselves; she was at that bedtime-story-age and got swept up in the stories I'd tell about the people who'd crafted them . . . . Sometimes, I even thought I could sense her, still lingering around me somehow. That's when I met that tiny old codger.”

He gave just a hint of a half-grin then, giving Kagome the feeling that it was happy memory and it was an oddly heartwarming thing in the wake of such a tragic story. “I was attending a lecture one of my colleagues was giving on ancient spiritual practices versus modern scientific techniques. Of course, I wasn't paying much attention to what was being said, I was still neck-deep in mourning and self-pity . . . but,” his barely-there grin spread just a hint, “I distinctly remember hearing this wordless, grumbling scoff nearby every few minutes. It was as everyone was filing out that I bumped into this tiny elderly man. He looked at me like we knew each other from somewhere and said he needed to speak with me. I tried to push him off, saying I didn't have time, but then he said it was about the `little girl with the big, brown eyes'.

“We'd never placed a picture with the obituary, like some families do, and that phrasing- there was no way this man could know that . . .” he seemed to freeze for a moment, all but forcing himself to continue, “that was what I called her. Daddy's little girl with the big brown eyes, some fathers just say things like that, but that was my rather long-winded nickname for her. I felt I had no choice but to hear this man out.

“He proceeded to tell me that Rin had yet to move on, and that the reason was me. I didn't want to believe that, I wanted to believe that if she hadn't moved on yet, it was because she wasn't ready to go. He said I was keeping her here, my inability to let go was holding her to this life. Even as young as she was, she was so strong and she felt she couldn't leave me while I so clearly needed her here. I came to realize that he was right. I didn't want to admit it, but even though I was there with her when she died, I never really got to say goodbye to her. He performed a ritual . . . all manner of incense and candles and . . . gods awful smelling stuff hung in the air. It allowed me to enter an `altered' state of consciousness so that I could perceive her as clearly as he did.”

His brow furrowed, his hand stilling in Kagome's hair as he stared off again. “I wasn't prepared for it. She looked as she had in her last days, but I spoke to her- told her it was time to go and that daddy would be okay alone, that I had to learn to go on without her. It broke my heart, but as I said those words, I knew they were true. And, I know this may sound strange, but, the more I allowed myself to feel the truth of what I was saying, the healthier she began to look . . . until she looked like she never been ill a day in her life. And then she was gone.”

Silence fell between them for a long moment then. Kagome couldn't move for what felt like an eternity, but finally she stood, taking careful, deliberate steps to the closed cabinet. “. . . May I?” She asked in a murmur, looking over her shoulder at him.

He met her gaze and simply held it quietly, making it seem as though he wasn't going to answer, but then he stood up as well and crossed the room. Halting to stand behind her, he reached around Kagome's shoulders to pull open the doors, revealing the gilded framed picture of Rin amongst the bits of long-disused shrine- in a way it made sense, if to cling too tightly was to bind the spirits here, then perhaps constant homage wasn't as respectful of a practice as everyone thought. He probably prayed for her every single day, that voice in the back of her mind whispered, letting her gaze wander over it all.

She couldn't help reaching out to trail the tips of her fingers gently over Rin's picture. “I've seen her,” she murmured, giving a sad, understanding smile to the huge brown eyes staring back at her.

“What?” Sesshomaru's brow furrowed in disbelief.

“Outside of the pub, just before I went in to get you. I . . . I spoke to her. She told me you needed me to be your strength today.”

“. . . I don't understand,” there was an edge in his voice that suggested he was going to get angry if this didn't start making sense very soon. “She moved on, she had to have . . . .”

“I don't think she didn't move on, Sesshomaru.” Kagome turned slowly to look up at him. “I think she was a very strong person and that somehow . . . she left a piece of herself behind, just enough to watch over you until-“

“Until someone like you came into my life,” he muttered, seeing the acknowledgement in her eyes, though she couldn't muster up a nod. “So, now even that bit of her is gone?”

She gave a hard blink, unable to hold his gaze for a brief second. “I think so.”

Sesshomaru uttered a short, mournful laugh as he shook his head. “To think I had a piece of her with me all along. Even though I was the one that said those words to make her move on, I understood quickly that whenever it came to this day I wanted to take that all back. I just wanted . . . I just want my daughter back and I'm so sorry that I can't be happy that she's moved on.”

Kagome couldn't manage a word, feeling tears for him- for his loss and his pain- clogging her throat, so she simply reached up, sliding her arms around his neck and held him. For a long moment he didn't budge, but after a moment he gave in, slipping his arms around her and leaning down to bury his face against her throat as he- for the first time since the day she'd passed- silently and wretchedly sobbed for his daughter.

She had no idea how long she stood there, holding him, crying with him, but eventually his shoulders stilled and the hiccupping little sounds she was making quieted. Tentatively she pulled back to look up at him and thought that maybe, if she wasn't mistaken, it appeared that he was at peace. And- again, if she wasn't mistaken, and she really hoped she wasn't- there was something in his eyes that said that she was the cause of that peace.

Kagome was acutely aware of the sensation of one of his hands sliding up along the side of her body, up over her throat and the line of her jaw to cup her face. Her eyelids drifted closed entirely of their own accord as he leaned down to press his mouth over hers. She couldn't help savoring the feel of her knees going just a little weak, forcing her to lean into him as he traced her lips with the tip of his tongue.

1