Kagome took Sesshoumaru’s hand.

As he drew her to him, his grip was cool and strong. Against the inside of her wrist, she felt the scrape of his claws and frowned, the touch chafing her more than she thought it should.

Their destination was a largely unremarkable place, for all that it signified in Kagome’s heart and mind. Sesshoumaru found it with no difficulty, though she’d only given him a few short words to go on. Perhaps he’d been back here before on his own. At least once, she knew, he had for certain—

When he’d returned to retrieve Inuyasha’s beheaded corpse.

As Sesshoumaru’s youki cloud touched down near the shores of that dreaded lake, Kagome ventured forward, alone. Brittle old grass stalks crunched beneath her sandaled feet. Dew and the green blood of new shoots wet her skin. The trill of panicked water-birds pierced the air before her. Startled, whole flocks of them took to wing, pale and fluttering as banished ghosts.

At a distance, Sesshoumaru followed after her.

The grass gave way to pebbles, then to coarse brown sand. In the depressions left by her footsteps, the damp earth seemed to weep, but Kagome’s eyes remained dry. Sinking a little into the shoreline, she stood, and gazed out over the surface of the lake.

The water gleamed like a dark mirror, the far end of it edgeless and shrouded in mist. Crouching low, Kagome peered past the gently lapping waves. A few stringy tendrils of kelp swayed in the shallows, but that was all she could perceive. The murky depths swallowed up the sunlight, revealing nothing.

“It’s strange,” Kagome said, touching a finger to her lips as she rose. “After so many nightmares, now that I’m here, I don’t feel anything for this place.”

“It is only a lake,” Sesshoumaru replied, “the same as any other.”

Absently, Kagome nodded, casting a glance around. “Still, I thought…”

Her voice trailed off as she narrowed her eyes upon a black and stunted shape. An ugly, gnarled little tree, whose roots crawled out from the bank like twisting snakes. Whose sharp, wicked branches curved out at her like so many grasping claws. It was dead. It had been dead for years—why was it still here? The very sight of it offended her.

Its very existence seemed to mock her.

Stalking toward it through the sucking silt, Kagome felt the beginnings of rage boiling up inside her. Stupid, wretched, pathetic fucking thing…

“…Disappear already, you piece of shit!”

Before she even knew it, Tessaiga was in her hands, and she was swinging at those brittle black branches in full-blown fury. More bludgeoning the tree than anything else, she brought Tessaiga down like a cleaver—again and again and again. Until the tree was just a spear-point of hollowed-out trunk, then not even that much. Until she was panting and sweating and sobbing in exertion, and still hacking away at the busted remains through the blur of her tears—

“Enough,” Sesshoumaru said, taking Tessaiga from her though it blazed in his hand. “Kagome, enough.”

She reeled, the smell of scorched flesh turning her stomach. Grimacing, Sesshoumaru sheathed the sword, and shook the ash from his charred, flaking claws. Heavily, Kagome breathed. Clutching an arm around her ribs, she stared up at him in anguish for a moment, before throwing herself against his chest.

“Take me away from this,” she rasped, hooking her nails into his sleeves. Hot and wet and raw, her grimy face buried itself in the warm silken fall of his fur. “Just take me away from it all.”

With his good hand pressed to the small of her back, Sesshoumaru took to the sky.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi