Who?

Light, pale and thin, burst from Kagome’s skin. In a flash she was free of the claws that held her. And in that same flash she beheld—blood and anguish. Dread and dark waters and bleak confusion. Scenes of violence whirred past her, spinning like the frames in a movie reel gone off the tracks.

Hued in red at the center of it all, Inuyasha’s figure blurred and distorted, revolving slowly toward her—

A world of horror reflected in the dulling of his eye…

“You know what killed him,” she choked out, backing away from Sesshoumaru still. “You were there—you saw.”

“I know,” her brother-in-law said quietly.

His own eerily bright gaze continued to pursue her. Against the dark energy that veiled him, the brilliant bands of her reiki had broken like skeins of mist. Jarred by the sight, pinned by his stare, Kagome resisted the impulse to turn and bolt. Her sandaled foot stumbled backward over a snow-covered stone.

“The lake, the dragon,” she said thickly, as her back scraped the coarse, frigid trunk of a pine. “We’ve gone through it a dozen times before.” Her hurt and shock sharpened suddenly to anger. “Why are you bringing this up again now? You’re just trying to scare me—to bully me into doing what you want. Just like you always have!”

Sesshoumaru stepped toward her, the frozen undergrowth crunching beneath his boots—only because he willed it. “I am trying, as I long have tried, to spare you from needless suffering. There are some,” he said with a terrible deadly softness, “who would see you struggle to the bitter end. But not I.”

“And what is this ‘bitter end’?” Kagome’s nails bit into the craggy bark behind her. “This so-called inevitability?” Her eyes narrowed at him. “Whatever it is, I reject it.”

Sesshoumaru’s gaze was dark, a slight frown turning down his mouth at the corners. When he took her face in his hands and brushed his lips to her brow, Kagome wasn’t sure what stunned her more—that he had done it, or that she’d allowed it. Her own hands had flown to his and remained frozen there, her fingers curled against his in a paroxysm of indecision.

“Leave this place,” he spoke against her skin. “There is nothing for you here but a shadow of the past.”

Kagome’s eyes squeezed shut, her heart thudding in her ears. His warm breath stirred her bangs, the fine silk of his own hair spooling over her. There was the hardness of his armor pressing into her chest, the trailing softness of his fur curling at her hip. Kagome’s breath hitched. Her cheeks scalded in his palms, in mingled want and shame.

She couldn’t deny the part of her that longed to give in, to be swept up by him as once she had. To reach up and pull his face down onto hers, and lose herself in him completely.

So keenly she could imagine it—the feel of her mouth opening against his, the pressure of him between her spreading thighs—as if the imagining itself were somehow more real to her than anything she had ever known before.

Shakily, Kagome exhaled. “…Leave, and do what exactly?”

“Whatever you like,” Sesshoumaru replied, the tip of his nose skirting hers.

Kagome’s lips twisted as she turned her face aside. “Whatever I like…so long as you permit it, that is.”

The margin of air between them chilled another fraction. “Am I such a dreadful tyrant in your eyes?”

“Your realm, your rules,” Kagome said briskly, meeting his gaze as the space between them continued to grow. “And that’s just how you like it. You were perfectly fine with keeping me here, so long as you felt like you could control me. Now the tables have turned, and you can’t stand it. Don’t think I don’t see what you’re really trying to do: This is a power play, and you know it.”

Sesshoumaru’s eyes were flinty. “The longer you remain here, the more you will suffer.”

“To the bitter end it is, then,” Kagome said, smiling sharply back. “I’d rather die than roll over for you.”

With that, she turned upon her heel and left him glaring after her in silence.

Sober yet fuming, she crashed her way back through the twilit wood, heedless of the deepening cold. From a copse of scrubby trees, Ikiryou slipped out to join her, the peppering of blood on his white muzzle turned black in the gloaming.

The scarlet threads of Kagome’s furisode frayed beneath her digging nails. “Sesshoumaru…” she muttered aloud to herself, as if it were a curse.

What troubled her most was how narrowly she had resisted him. How weak she had felt as he’d cradled her face in his hands, like all the fight left in her was bleeding out at the touch. She’d gotten too complacent, she decided, but she couldn’t afford that kind of complacency around him any more than she ever could.

She would have to remain strong to stand against him. She would have to remain strong in order to survive.

Fueled by this resolve, she strode back into the paved courtyard of the fortress—scarcely noticing Rin sitting alone on the steps, until Ikiryou darted off to lick at her hand. When the girl remained listless, continuing to rest her chin on her knees, Kagome felt the first distant pangs of alarm.

“Rin-chan?” she called out, hurrying over. Pushing aside Ikiryou, who had begun to whimper, Kagome crouched down and took her apprentice by the arm. “Rin-chan, what’s wrong?”

Slowly, as if in a daze, the girl raised her dark glassy gaze to Kagome’s. As their eyes met, a shiver seemed to pass through Rin, the surface of her eyes rippling as the tears began to spill unchecked down her cheeks. Her features crumpled just as helplessly, into an expression of loss that gutted Kagome like a blade.

“Kagome-chan, Kaede-baa-chan…Kaede-baa-chan is…”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi