It was the one rite of hers which Sesshoumaru had never prompted her to observe, this daily paying of her respects to Inuyasha. Not that Kagome had ever needed prompting.

Even in the depths of her depression, she had dragged herself here, to his graveside. It was the one place she felt a fleeting measure of comfort, knowing that beneath the soil his ashes lay. The tangible proof that he had lived—and that he had died.

The knowledge cut her both ways. Tracing the characters of his name in the stone, she felt the flinty edges bite into her, cold and sharp. It was bracing. It was unraveling.

How long she would linger here depended on the day. Sometimes, she would stay only long enough to light the incense and offer up a prayer. Others…

Knees to her chest, Kagome sat, huddled and trembling. Her nails bit into her temples. Her eyes bore blankly into the stone. When he called her name, she didn’t answer. When his claws slid around her from behind, she reeled with a cry.

Night had fallen. Gripping Sesshoumaru by the edge of his chestplate, Kagome stared wildly up at him, disoriented and alarmed. Cool and level, his metallic gaze grounded her.

“I couldn’t remember,” she whimpered, burying her face in the soft spill of fur cascading from his shoulder. “I was looking at his grave, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember…just how it was that he died.”

Unfolding her and gathering her up, Sesshoumaru set off toward the steps. “And,” he said, “do you remember now?”

Kagome nodded, inhaling his musky, masculine scent. “…When you touched me, I remembered.”

It had come back to her in a dizzying flash—the tree and the lake, the dragon…the blood. Kagome shuddered, overwhelmed. Squeezing her eyes shut, she focused on breathing through the nausea that roiled within her.

Since that nasty fall she’d taken a few years back, her memory wasn’t what it used to be. Coupled with the trauma of Inuyasha’s death…

What else might she forget, she wondered, terrified. What else might she already have forgotten?

In this paroxysm of fear, she clung to Sesshoumaru all the tighter. The spikes of his armor stabbed into her palms, the cold surface chilled her. In the pain and the chill she found a reassuring clarity of presence. By the time he set her down upon the floor of her home, she was mostly calm.

A blanket draped over her shoulders. Kagome looked up at Sesshoumaru meekly. Pulling the folds of wool closer to her chest, she watched him charge the hearth fire with a blaze of youki.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she said, “if I would be better off not remembering.”

“Perhaps,” Sesshoumaru replied, not facing her.

As he set a kettle on the fire, Kagome stood quickly. “Wait, let me.”

When the tea was ready, Kagome poured them both a cup. Letting the blanket fall from her shoulders, she held her cup in both hands, blowing on the steam. Across from her, Sesshoumaru eyed his own cup of simmering greenish liquid in obvious distaste—but drank from it nevertheless.

“Have you ever been in love?” she asked him suddenly.

“In love,” Sesshoumaru repeated, as if testing the words on his tongue for the first time.

To Kagome, his downward gaze seemed strangely far away. Detached. It was answer enough, in her mind. Taking a sip, she tried to picture the sort of person who could capture Sesshoumaru’s heart. The image of some beautiful, exotic demoness rose to mind—peerless and powerful and refined. As the too-hot tea scorched a burning path down her throat, Kagome felt an irrational prickle of envy.

“What happened to her?” she pressed him, rather sharply.

Sesshoumaru’s eyes snapped to hers. The intensity in them stole the breath from her lungs.

“She died.”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 7/7/23