Chapter 22: Direction
The air soured with her indifference, each step was a pointless movement into an aimless direction. She thought of the peace that she wanted. Death had felt like the answer but with each step, she felt like it had been the wrong choice to take.
Death was the coward’s way out; Inuyasha would have shouted that at her long ago. He would have grabbed her and gave her a shake until she saw reason. Or until she had made him ‘Sit boy’.
Her arms started to ache at the thought of their argument and the fight that would go on for days after.
They ached to hold him like she had when he had died in her hold. She couldn’t stop herself from holding him as she did her babies. Not when she had seen him as a wounded child, longing for the comfort of a mother.
A comfort she felt that she could offer.
It hadn’t felt cruel to dump his dead body either. So many bodies went unburied and returned to the earth in their own time. It felt kinder to her somehow than it would have before.
Kagome stopped just for a moment to look at her hands at that thought. How many dead had she buried in unmarked graves? Had that been kindness or self-serving since it made her feel better?
“Am I still human inside?” She questioned herself.
“You’re a true immortal…Death won’t come for you anymore.” His words echoed in her mind, a poison worse than the one she made herself.
“Shut up,” she muttered to herself as she started to move one more. She slammed the lid on everything she was feeling just as she had done for so long.
“You’re a true immortal…Death won’t come for you anymore.”
“Shut up,” she said softly to herself. Death wasn’t the answer she needed, she needed peace that would take away her pain.
“You’re a true immortal…Death won’t come for you anymore.”
“Shut up!” she growled as she smacked her head. “I don’t need death and there’s no such thing as a true immortal.”
She tried to convince herself of that at least. She would live for a long time, she knew that. Kagome touched the shoulder scarred by Sesshomaru as she remembered. He had done it to keep her living long beyond her years. Her feelings be damned.
That wasn’t true fair though; he had wanted her to be able to see their children grow up. He had suffered because of her as well. That however didn’t excuse anything between them.
She was too raw within to forgive yet…if ever. After all, she had told him that nothing he said could make things between them better.
She hadn’t known what would make everything better between them or if anything could. At the most, she hoped they could be friends one day, which she didn’t understand why she hoped for that.
He should have been her enemy, just like Amatsu was. He was also the father of her children, a man that loved them as much if not more than she did. He was a warrior that protected the weak, that had protected her before her life was ruined by him.
He believed that he was in love with her. Her feelings were a complicated mess that she couldn’t hope to understand. They were worse than any math question she had faced. Worse than any obstacles that life had thrown at her. Yet there was the undeniable fact that dumbfounded her.
Her flames had surrounded him when she had felt concerned for his safety.
“You’re a true immortal…Death won’t come for you anymore.”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” she screamed at herself when the words appeared out of nowhere.
Her poison thickened, souring the air all the more as the earth began to rot beneath her once more.
Her heart pounded in her chest with rage and fear, overwhelming her to the point she struggled to stand. It was an attack from within that she could not defend against. Her legs gave out, causing Kagome to fall into the rotting sludge of her making.
Her eyes felt as if she were crying as her breath fled her lungs. She had no more tears for anyone, herself included. She struggled to accept the truth and spoke it aloud, “I’m a true…immortal.”
“I’m Ka…Kagome. I’m Kagome. I’m…Kagome,” she whispered to herself as she tried to remember her past self.
But she knew the truth.
It was pointless to hold onto her past self, to try and make lost pieces fit again. This pain of her heart beating against her ribs was proof that she had grown and would continue to do so.
The sludge stained her skin, turning it into ugly bruised colours as Kagome fought to regain herself.
He walked with pride as hell danced around him. The path a nightmare to the living that passed through, unafraid. It crumbled and burned, the air was soured with poison and the earth burned those that stood upon it bare.
Buildings littered the landscape, some were whole, others burning with fires alight. The oddest was incomplete, floating in assembled parts that were waiting for something. It looked like some would fall apart with the lightest of touches. The souls of the dead weren’t in much better shape.
“Why do you leave things like this?” Sesshomaru questioned Enma as they walked.
“I don’t,” Enma told him. “The humans and demons that pass through here are the ones that do. None of them seek to change their environment and so the path remains this way.”
Sesshomaru glanced around at the souls in their miserable states. Some were weeping, others sobbed aloud. There were a few that threatened the weaker ones as if in denial of their fates. They all were rotten and decaying before his eyes. Their limbs or skin blackened, falling away.
It showed him what was truly beneath.
Sesshomaru felt compelled to ask. “Do they know they can bring about change?”
Enma laughed at the question as if it was the best joke he had ever heard. It was when Enma started to hold his stomach from the pain that Sesshomaru glared at him. He was unamused at the humour found at his expense.
“Humans are fools that know they can bring about change but never do. They care too much for their small comforts to ever do so.”
Sesshomaru found that he disagreed, thinking of how Kagome had never wanted the comforts of his palace. She had wanted a life beyond his walls despite the insecurity and danger. She had wanted the freedom that life beyond those walls offered as he had in his youth. But he had kept her caged behind them.
He knew that he had done it for selfish reasons. He had allowed his emotions to rule in him in matters around her. That fear for her mortal life and his desire to have her made him a poor ruler of his lands.
He should have let her go and yet, the thought of doing so ripped at his chest like claws.
“It’s hard to change,” Enma muttered. “When it comes to our loved ones, we do what we think is the best thing for them. That doesn’t mean that what we think is best would be the right thing for them in the end.”
“You sound as if you speak from experience,” Sesshomaru sneered.
Enma showed him a smile, it bared his fangs in a promise of threat. “I have a human mate from a land across the sea. She is foreign as can be and beautiful beyond compare to me. She was also a nun that thought I was a devil that would take her soul.”
“You didn’t?”
“This path isn’t just the way to Hell. It has the power to heal and redeem those that truly seek it. My love is alive and well in her human flesh, I courted her until she understood that I wanted her and not her soul.”
Sesshomaru stared at him for a moment before voicing his confusion, “there’s a difference?”
“The difference is like night and day, Sesshomaru.”
“You say that with such confidence…are you sure that you’re not just being arrogant?”
The smile turned cruel on Enma’s face. “I have the love of my woman…do you?”
Sesshomaru felt his eyes turn red at the mocking words. He wanted to strike out at the ruler of the underworld with the rage he felt hum in his blood.
“We both know who is stronger so don’t waste the energy,” Enma ordered.
Sesshomaru growled once before turning his attention to the path that they continued to walk down. Only the sight before his eyes stopped him dead. It was no different than a blade peeling the skin from his flesh for the sight pained him that much.
A Soul stood before him, one that had once been a woman. Her face whispered of her beauty that was being stripped away from her by the decay. Her clothes were ripped and there were clear signs to his eyes that someone had forced himself upon her.
That wasn’t what stopped him, though. It was her heavily pregnant belly with arrows stabbed into it that did.
His stomach turned as fresh, red blood dripped off the feathers and how it stained the Soul’s hands. His mind tormented him by lapping Kagome’s image over that of the Soul’s. It was almost too much for him to bear, to see Kagome look as the Soul did. A child of hers long dead inside of her by the actions of another.
“Whether or not it would be your child, so long as it’s hers…such a sight would pain you,” Enma voiced the words that filled Sesshomaru with such truth.
The Soul seemed to notice that she had their attention and approached. She muttered as she did, repeating the same thing over and over. “Hate you, hate you, hate you.”
She rained fist after fist on Sesshomaru’s chest, heedless of his chest armour. Her black blood painting it as her words kept on repeating. “Hate you, hate you, hate you.”
Then tears began to fall and the words changed. “My baby deserved to live…why did you demons…”
Her blows did nothing to him but her tears were like daggers. He couldn’t understand why and gave into the need to ease her discomfort. He obeyed the desire to save her and her unborn child’s soul.
His hand fell upon Tenseiga, which pulsed with his emotions. The sword longed to the same.
Only for Enma to grab his wrist with the intent to stop him. The Ruler of Hell even ordered him with a “don’t.”
“You would be so cruel?” Sesshomaru snarled in rage.
Enma gave no reaction. “You see the woman you love in this soul, why?”
“That doesn’t matter-”
“It does,” Enma cut in. “It matters, Sesshomaru because they are the same. They are alike and they both will walk the same path.”
“This is the path to Hell!”
“Neither life nor death is easy. I cannot let you try to make it so.”
Pressure expelled the air from her lungs, torturing her to claim another breath. She stood frozen and unable to move as if she had suddenly turned to stone. There had only been one other time she had felt so wretched.
Tears threatened her with a vengeance. Both her children were now dead and both had passed because of their father’s actions, indirect or otherwise.
She raged within herself for her loss as the feelings of helplessness filled her. She had never been able to protect her children. Most of her babies had been lucky, dying within her or never taking their first breath.
She thought she had been cursed until she realized it had been a blessing of mercy.
Her boy had been different, his will to live had been strong. He had refused to leave this world before having the chance to live in it. Hold him in her arms had been the most wonderful moment she had ever experienced.
There had only been one time that she had felt as if her body was rejecting its ability to keep living. The knowledge that her daughter, her sweet Sakura had passed had crippled her more than any loss she had lived through.
This was a thousand times worse. Her boy, so strong and resilient had passed on as well.
Tears began to fall, her cheeks stained with the pain that ripped her to sheds. Her voice screamed her rage at the world, the walls around her breaking as she continued her endless assault. Her claws dug into her hands, causing her blood to spill freely.
“DAMN YOU, AMATSU!” She screeched, her voice was shrilly that the vase before her shattered. The flowers and water scattered, the petals bruised from the impact. “MAY YOUR PARENTS AND ALL GODS CURSE YOU, AMATSUMIKABOSHI! MAY ALL YOUR CHILDREN AND EVERYBODY YOU TAKE NOW ROT FROM YOUR TOUCH ALONE!!!”
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Chapter 21 Sesshomaru’s Mate Chapters Chapter 23