Chapter 38: Cold
She felt cold. It was like she had turned into ice and snow; the warmth of bone, blood, and flesh was gone from her. He had done this to her, she had let him do this to her. It was back when she had been so strong and was willing to fight for others no matter the cost herself.
She had been such a warm person back then.
Now she was just like him. Cold and unfeeling towards others but was he filled with pain and unbearable sad like her? Had someone made him so like he had made her? Why couldn’t she live and be the warm person that she had once been?
Why couldn’t she stay with her children and raise them as she truly desired? But she knew the answer why and it hurt.
It hurt to know that she was too hallowed out by others and filled with poison. She knew that it was just a matter of time before the poison spilled out of her. It was a threat that she would not allow to touch her children. She was a threat that could not be around her children.
But Sesshomaru could be.
Cold and unfeeling towards those that deserved mercy, but he was an emotional and loving father to their children. He showed sides of himself that he would only ever show when their children were around. It was those sides of him that made her feel something that she didn’t want to feel.
It was something that she could not accept and so this was why she was walking down this hall to end it all. Mizuki still followed her, crying loud, and hard as she followed her but Kagome still continued to walk down the hall.
But it hurt to hear her child crying for her and it made Kagome long to hold her sweet little girl yet she knew that she couldn’t. She was a threat to her child and herself. But she welcomed being a threat to herself because despite the desire to see her children grown up, she could not stand living in this world anymore.
Not when she was this cold and numb to everything around her. She was too weak from the cold and Sesshomaru to be the strong, warm person that she had been by Inuyasha’s side. But Inuyasha had been able to save her back then.
She was on her own now with no one to save her.
Did that make her weak before as well? Was she so weak that she needed to be saved by others instead of standing on her own two feet alone? But back then she had always believed in the strength of fighting with friends on your side. She had been such a child back then all those years ago. She was too weak to stand on her own without her friends and family at her side.
It was just like her name meant. She was the bird trapped in a cage, unable to escape no matter how hard she tried to do so. In a cage like the one she was in, the only way to escape by one’s own was to die.
She would do just that.
oOo
There she was, walking toward him. Her flesh was bare for the world to see and she was perfection to him but he could see it. It was so plain there in her eyes that he could not look away like he wanted to do. The pain called to him and screeched of the cold burning through him. This was what was there in her blue eyes.
He wanted to reach her and take her into his arms, to soothe what he saw within her. But he knew what Kagome would do; how she would react…she had done it countless times already. She would reject him as she always did; it would hurt just like it always did but he needed to stop her from hurting herself.
Her powers burned him, continued to burn him as they had but still he ignored his pain in hopes of reaching her side. Each step was like agony clawed him of his skin, and in fact his skin was being burned away as fast as his body could regenerate it. How was she so powerful that she could do this to him? If she truly desired it, she could kill him without another thought. But she didn’t, and it gave him the hope that she would not reject him this time.
It was enough for him to continue to ignore the agony and keep moving towards her.
He had to keep moving towards her, to stop her and save her from herself. He had to save her, he just had to or he would have nothing left to life for. Even their children would not be enough to keep him in the realm of the living.
How could he love someone so much that he would follow them to the afterlife? How was that possible?
Even as he questioned the how to himself, he got ever closer to Kagome when she suddenly stopped. It draw him out of the questions that he asked of himself as he watched Mizuki wrap her little arms around one of Kagome’s bare legs.
She flinched at their daughter’s touch and tries to step away from Mizuki, how it cut into Sesshomaru’s heart to see that.
“Are you going to reject our children now?” He whispered softly to her but Kagome never looked at him.
She just stared down at Mizuki, who held onto her mother all the tighter.
How could she reject the child that he knew she loved? He knew that she loved their daughter more than her own life. He had seen it from that first moment; how she questioned him about their daughter, how the fire in her lit up her ocean blue eyes. Where was the joy and love that was always in her gaze when she looked at one of their children? Why was she being so cold towards the child she had labored to bring into this world?
Had she come to hate him so much that she had begun to hate their children for the part of him within them?
Tears came to his eyes at the thought. He could never forgive himself if that was the case, he would be a monster in every sense of the word if he had been the reason that she came to hate the future they had made together.
Suddenly the agony is gone. Her power that had continued to burn his skin away was gone and his body worked to heal him from the injuries that she had inflicted upon him. Sesshomaru look at Kagome, who had turned desperate eyes on him as she gently tried to force their daughter to let her go.
“Please, please keep her away from me.” She whispered. “Please, please I don’t want to hurt her. Please!”
“You hate our children now?” He hadn’t meant to question her but he had and he needed to know the answer to it.
It would kill him if she told him that she hated their children, if she hated the lives that they had created together. He was the monster but their children were innocents that deserved love.
A shocked look came to Kagome’s face at his words before the rage suddenly returned to her eyes.
“NEVER!” She shouted at him before her powers took a life of their own and slammed into him. Her power continued to slam into him over, and over from all sides of him.
He tried to fight against it but the power would just hit him hard and hard as if this was a lesson that she wanted to get across to him. But still, the conqueror in him demanded that he stand up and face his attacker. The look that greeted him was utter outrage at his question to which he was glad to see.
Kagome walked over to him with their daughter now in her arms as she suddenly moved one hand from around their daughter’s body. She did nothing but push him away, slamming him against walls as she watched. Her eyes held so little emotion as if she had become a sculpture of ice as she watched as if she was doing little more than giving him light slaps against his chest but with her power burning him once more, it was so much more.
Mizuki fell quiet as if she felt the danger that her mother had become to her father.
“I have never been a person to you, no matter that you say otherwise to me all the time. I was a person, Sesshomaru but you made me into a thing.” She whispered as her hand around, slamming him between the walls as he were a doll being through between two children. “I was a person that cared for others, that was so warm and kind…now I’m just so cold, and selfish that I can barely recognize myself anymore. You never wanted the person; you want a thing, a doll to play with.”
There was an angry, almost crazed look in her eyes as she suddenly brought him to her. He floated just a step away from her, her power burning him as she did.
“Now you’re a thing.” She whispered before kissing him.
oOo
Pouting mate plus pouting son had never been his idea of a good time yet he found himself in the middle of their latest fight. It was a position that he found really unpleasant to be in as he carried Rie back to Sesshomaru’s palace with their son following a pace or so behind.
“Why is it you and Saburo are always fighting like this?” Hotaka complained to his mate.
But Rie said nothing to him, quiet as she had been since she and Saburo arrived, and saw fit to inform him to punish their son for dropping in her in the air a few times. It was rather unlike her as well as something that he rather disliked. He hated the quiet that was there between them, they were usually always talking with each other about everything, and nothing. They enjoyed just listening to the other talk, it had been what had really started their relationship after they were mated.
She had been this quiet in the beginning after they mated; she had never really needed to say anything to him and seemed to hate the sound of her own voice at days when she needed to talk to him.
It had been awkward and it had him talking to her just to fill the quiet when they were alone together. He would have one-sided conversations for hours with her until he had said something that had gotten her blood ever so heated. The end result of that had been greatly enjoyable and had been how they had made their first pup.
After, she was always talking with him to the point that she almost talked in her sleep. But this quiet was uncomfortable unnatural to him and he wanted it to stop. He wanted his argumentative mate back!
He also wanted to avoid going back to Sesshomaru’s palace at all cost but his mate had lied down the ultimate threat that he knew he would not survive again if she went through it.
“Because mother is a child, father!”
Hotaka looked back at his son with a question in his eyes. “Really? Then you wouldn’t exist if that was the case since I do not mate with children.”
“A grown female wouldn’t leave another to be used and abused as mother has.”
Rie flinched in his arms, drawing his eyes away from their son to her. She was still and quiet but the look in her eyes whispered of regret and anger. He knew without words that she was anger at herself and that their son’s words hit their mark.
“Enough, Saburo. We will all talk about this when we are back at the palace.
It was then that they all felt what could only be explained as an explosion of power. It seethed out into the mortal world with seeking fingers that would burn away what it ever desired. Though he knew that it belonged to someone, it almost felt as if the power that moved ever slower to them was a living, breathing being so full of rage that it would burn everything away without thought.
“Where is this coming from?” He questioned aloud.
Rie knew the answer. “Kagome.”
Hotaka looked down at his mate, unsure if she was being serious or not. The power that too much and could even purify innocent humans if it continued to grow; how could one human have so much power in her? How was it that she continued to produce even more of it? This was in the realm of the gods but he knew that she was a human…she had to be a human.
“No way…she’s human and there’s no way that a human can have this much power.”
“Your grandmother did.” Rie whispered.
Hotaka didn’t like the distant look that came to his mate’s eyes at the mention of her mother. He had heard rumors of Midoriko having killed off most of the strongest demons in the mortal realm before cursing the rest for the lost of her mate. He had never asked Rie because of the look in her eyes would always appear when she thought of how her parents had been killed.
“She had been out of control in her grief…she wouldn’t let anyone near her or Goro for the longest time…she even turned her blade on Kane.” She muttered softly. “It’s one of the reasons he hates Goro so much.”
They all fell silence but Hotaka knew that he and his son wondered the same thing. He held Rie tighter in fear of what those answers would be; could they stop Kagome? Or would this be the end of everything?
“Still, how is Kagome this strong? It should be impossible for her body to have so much, to be producing so much power.” Saburo voiced their questions. “Can we even get close to her right now?”
“You and I can…but it would mostly kill your father if he got any closer to Sesshomaru’s palace.”
Silence fell against as dread chocked him. He was too weak to protect his child and mate from the threat of a wounded little girl. He made himself sick with how weak he was that he could not stand at his loved ones’ sides as they tried to soothe Kagome because he knew that Saburo and Rie were going to try to do just that.
oOo
Sesshomaru slowly awoke to the sound of crying. He could not remember the last time that he had ever felt so weak before as if every muscle in his body had been so overused that any movement on his part would cause him pain. All he could remember was Kagome had kissed him before agony suddenly bloomed in every fiber of his being.
The crying became louder and louder, which forced him to open his eyes. It broke his heart to see Mizuki holding onto his clothes as she cried the hardest that he had ever heard from her. He instantly feared that she would make herself sick, he suppressed the groan of pain as he reached a hand out to touch her head.
He was lying down and knew it would be impossible to sit up from the pain that filled him. Breathing alone was a challenge for him but he knew that he had to keep forcing himself to live. Kagome’s power was out of control, he knew that all of his servants were likely dead along with all his guests and the soldiers that he had been slowly gaining for the war.
So much had been destroyed but he knew that he was still alive and that so were his children. That alone meant that he would force himself to continue to live even if his body begged for it all to end.
It was so hard and heavy…was this the pain that Kagome had carried until now? How it hurt…he wanted to take it all from her so she would give him a kiss full of passion instead of a kiss full of sorrow and her pain.
Mizuki didn’t stop crying but she did slowly calm down as he continued to pat her head. He wanted to hold her but knew that his arms did not have the strength for it…he hadn’t even been this weak when he had first met Rin.
Where had he gone so wrong that this had been the outcome? Everything felt wrong, everything was wrong and he knew that it was had caused it.
Seeing her in that state had awakened that deep part of him that he always kept under tight control. But the sight of how thin she had been had broken that control and he had wanted to take her. That had broken his promise to her and the thought of her broken trust in him that had caused all of this hurt worse than his broken body.
How could he heal the trust that was broken between them?