Stoic and regal, Sesshoumaru stood tall before her, the lone beacon of calm in the fiery, raging maelstrom of her torment. From where she knelt, Kagome looked up at his handsome face, so surreally lovely to her in that moment that it brought a fresh stab of pain to her chest. His glowing eyes were golden, molten and fiery themselves as they reflected the rose-white heat of the flames.
She languished under the sear of his unblinking gaze, waiting for him to speak. Waiting for him to prove to her that he wasn’t just some fevered hallucination. When she realized dimly that his speaking wouldn’t prove anything anyway, when she realized that it didn’t matter to her whether he was even really here or not—only that the specter of him was before her at last, she spoke again herself.
“I’m dying,” she said to him, rather lamely.
Sesshoumaru’s mirrored gaze flickered. “So it would seem.”
Kagome’s expression crumpled then. A fresh wave of bloody tears trickled down to stripe her cheeks. Her face fell to hide them.
“I remember now,” she mumbled wretchedly. “I remember everything.”
“Do you?”
At the question, the strangest sense of déjà vu overtook her. Dizzily, she nodded. Her words were watery, indistinct.
“There was an accident…” she haltingly began.
Murkily she saw in her mind’s eye the vision of horror she had seen when that dead tree had snatched her up in its black clawlike branches—
On the slick stones of a steep riverbank she lost her footing. Felt her stomach flip as she fell backward toward the swift, icy current racing down below—
A sharp pain split her skull, and all went dark—
In a rush she came around again—only to find herself submerged in deep frigid waters, helplessly ensnared in slimy dark branches. Hopelessly disoriented in the smothering dark. Her flesh ripped and bruised as she struggled to free herself with limbs that barely moved against the battering current. Her reiki flared, fruitless. No matter how hard she fought, she couldn’t cut herself loose from the thorny limbs that gripped her.
She was drowning, she realized in despair. Her lungs crushed and burned. Her own blood tinted the water above her red, tinted the moon above her red, as she gazed in vain toward a surface she couldn’t hope to break.
She saw herself sinking, fading. The world obscured around her despite her sharp, white-hot fury to survive.
A maw of infinite blackness closed over her, its jaws snapping shut—
“…I died,” she finished tremulously, blood streaming now from the corners of her mouth as well. “I died, but you brought me back, didn’t you? You brought me back with Tenseiga.”
There was a field of snowy whiteness in her mind, so soft and blurred it was only a sensation of color, of feeling suffused. She had floated in it, with the rank sweetness of death still cloying in her throat. It was a death-memory, like the black branches, but the other side of it. The living side. She had come back to the snowy softness of him.
“You brought me back,” she said again, his fair form hazing red in her blood-brimmed eyes. “Did you love me, even then?”
“Yes,” he said, “I loved you then.”
‘Loved’, she found it in herself to lament. ‘Loved’, not ‘love’…
Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi
Sesshomaru don’t play like that now 😩
Lol yeah, I hear ya… 😣
💕
This so wretchedly sad!!
They finally meet, and this is what Sess says?!? 😭
Oh please please update tomorrow and don’t leave us hanging over the weekend! That’ll just be too cruel!
I just feel so keenly for Kagome that I feel depressed. 😖
(This is a compliment, btw, because your writing evokes such an emotion to your reader!)
Much love, Itoe.
And, he says love is a human notion but he finally admits to actually loving her… sigh* he just wants to be complicated with her >.<
Aww thank you so much, Itoe! It’s a rollercoaster of emotions here at the end!! ❣😭
So glad you’re excited to read what happens next!! 💕
Ugh, boy don’t be like that 😒
You too old to be butt hurt 🙄
And she’s finally ready to have a real conversation with you 😭😭😭😭😭
“You too old to be butt hurt ” – XD ain’t that the truth!
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, Rien!! 💕
Oh it’s getting angsty now. This is one helluva cliffy. The amount of realizations and emotion in this chapter is awesome. Everything is coming full circle to this very moment for both Kagome and Sesshoumaru.
“Everything is coming full circle to this very moment for both Kagome and Sesshoumaru.” – sure is!!
So glad you’re enjoying the angst and suspense, Blackberry! 💕
All this time and he’s saying that. 😢
This is such a bittersweet moment. Sweet from her side being happy that he finally arrived, seeing him as lovely but it just breaks my heart when he’s totally indifferent to all her torments like this is all he waited for. Don’t be such an ass Sesshomaru! 😤
But how is that she still doesn’t know yet what really happened? Could be that Hirokin was not able to really erase her memory and switched her memories with that priestess?
“Don’t be such an ass Sesshomaru!” – haha yeah, he’s the worst 😂
It’s a bittersweet moment to me, too!! 😭 Thanks so much for sharing your take on this scene, Elle!
Hope you enjoy the next part!! 💕
The suspension is killing me! I was in the middle of work when I got the update and had to dive in! No matter what I’m doing or where I’m at as soon as I get an update I have to read it. Can I throw in what I think might happen?
“He loved her then as he loves her now.”
She’s playing right into his hand that he always had open for her. By hook (as pure of a love he knows how to give) or crook (a series of unfortunate events) he vowed she would be his. The only way she can survive this would be to become his mate. Now she has the last choice. To live the life she chooses (which ends with him) or die from the one she doesn’t.
He can’t live without her and tried to find her in every other women (including another miko) and no other person has been able to itch his Kagome scratch. I believe if she tries to choose the latter, he’ll either force her hand or go with her.
That’s my hypothesis! But knowing you and your brilliant creative writing I can be totally off base! Look forward to the next update.
Aww thank you, Mi!! – Absolutely loved hearing your hypothesis! 🙂
Hope you enjoy how things play out from here… 😉
Appreciate your kind words of support! 💕
*pours tea* Sesshomaru sexually assaulted, mated, killed, and brought her back to life, creating a trauma response of anger, depression, and guilt that she can’t work through because she doesn’t know where it came from. It was made worse by her grief and his machinations after her husband died and has driven her to unhealthy hypersexualization, substance abuse, codependency issues from the guilt she feels for how those things have caused her to treat the people around her, and not being able to rise above said issues, it’s caused her to be sexually assaulted by others, lose her home, and friends. The guilt has also driven her to the point of self-destructiveness that she feels the only way to atone for these things is her own death. All of this was caused by him allowing himself to be manipulated by Hirokin, someone he has admitted he doesn’t trust. And he doesn’t love her anymore? I don’t think he’s the one who gets to be upset. Just saying. *sips tea*
“I don’t think he’s the one who gets to be upset.” – fair enough!
Thanks so much for sharing your take on this scene, GothRiotGrrl! “Sesshomaru sexually assaulted, mated, killed, and brought her back to life, creating a trauma response of anger, depression, and guilt that she can’t work through because she doesn’t know where it came from.” – very apt 🙂 “trauma response” is an excellent way to phrase it!
<3 <3
Ok what really happened that night? We know one thing—Kagome did *not* die. Hirokin killed her. She would have lived and been strong enough to hold his mark and have his baby (physically at least). But meanwhile sesshomaru has been conducting himself under the mind-bending guilt of believing he severed his own mating bond by killing literally the only person he really loves besides himself. I can’t believe Hirokin isn’t 100% aware that if they both figure out what really happened at least one of them would rip his ass to shreds—and not with chopsticks. Is he setting them up to destroy each other because he knows they’re too powerful and selfish to live? Now I’m mad at sesshomaru and Kagome. Like I know you’re the only lovers left alive and everything revolves around you but there is a known. Bitch. that you *know* is smarter than both of you, running around on the sidelines and you like, killed his mom and now he has a boyfriend he loves and wants to protect. But by all means disregard any personal motivations he might have because you can satisfy his kink—so in your minds that must mean you’ve neutered any threat he could present. These sex starved maniacs are getting distracted.
“sex starved maniacs” – haha I love it! kinda sums ’em up, sadly enough XD
Love hearing your observations & theories on what Hirokin’s gameplan might be! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, Loveline!!
Hope you enjoy where things go from here! <3 <3
I do like that you made sure one of the characters acknowledged her age being a factor when Sesshomaru assaulted her. It was such a subtle way to acknowledge her hyper sexualization as a trauma response. One of the things I love about your writing is how often you’ll create situations where characters will have trauma, then have realistic trauma responses, while you subtly sprinkle little hints about the trauma red throughout the story, but not go into obnoxious, blatant, exposition.
*hints about the trauma response
I also love the very realistic ways you write people’s response to individuals who are having a trauma response. Especially the way the individuals who are aware of what happened to her, treat her, when she is acting self-destructive as a trauma response. The very realistic, and very self-destructive ways that victims of sexual assaults will try to get a feeling of control over themselves back (love that the title was more than BDS M, by the way), are usually met with anger instead of understanding or support. And if they are met with understanding and support, they can be guilt driven, or have ultimatums attached to them. *cough* Sesshomaru, Miroku, and Hirokin *cough*. After you finished the last side story, their responses make so much sense. When they treat her like she needs to get over it, they’re not just talking about her husband’s death. And it makes all of their actions so much more worse because she doesn’t even have a conscious understanding of what happened, she’s just having the response because she has a subconscious understanding that it happened, and they seemed to be pretty aware it’s effected her. But they’re not doing anything about it because that would mean they would need to acknowledge it happened, they would need to acknowledge they cared more about not wanting to deal with the repercussion to her assault than how it might impact her. I love how realistic that is.
“The very realistic, and very self-destructive ways that victims of sexual assaults will try to get a feeling of control over themselves back (love that the title was more than BDS M, by the way), are usually met with anger instead of understanding or support. ” – very sad, and all too common unfortunately 🙁
So glad you enjoyed the realism & the additional perspectives added by the side-stories <3 It's a very tricky subject to try to depict, without overdramatizing or glossing over the impact.
Really appreciate you sharing your detailed feedback, GothRiotGrrl! Hope you enjoy the rest of the tale <3 <3
Please share an update that specifically details how that night occurred. Were they secretly seeing each other and it got out of hand? I’m on the edge of my seat and can’t wait 😭 What if all of this was Kagome’s personal hell- like she did die that night and has been in hell this whole time?!??!
So glad you’re enjoying the suspense! “What if all of this was Kagome’s personal hell- like she did die that night and has been in hell this whole time?!??!” – an interesting theory!! 🙂
Thanks for sharing, Britt & hope you enjoy the rest of the story! <3 <3
Omg!
Constipated-sama is back! 🤣🤫🤭
Keep your hands off my girl 🏹
Lol yep he’s back! XD
Hope you enjoy the rest of the story <3