Ukime no Sekisetsu by Lira

Part I: Fallen

Ukime no Sekisetsu

Part I: Fallen

*----* The ones left in my care say that I am honorable. I cannot forgive them, just as I cannot forgive myself. Not for learning the truth, but for learning it too late. Not for forgetting, but for being forever unable to forget. The truth is, my one honor was taken from me long ago, and I did not miss it until too late.

The long years have been kind to me, they say, and they only quiet when my eyes touch on them. When they speak, the words grind in my ears, until I remember the promise that binds me.

"Protect them, Sesshomaru."

And I wonder if the one who spoke those words knows everything that changed because of them.

The stories of ages say that with time, memories dull, the faces in them blurred with hopes. Perhaps it is because I did not have hopes that my memory is not dulled at all. The long years have sharpened it, and when I think back the expression on every face is etched with a permanence that is more than surreal. I see tears, blinks, gasps, joys, pains, passions – each face with its own soul.

Before her, and in the long nights after, I did not believe in souls. While I held her hands beneath the sun of the green earth, there were souls everywhere, and spirits fought in the shades of the sunset and in the slick darkness. And is it time to believe in souls again?

When I ask myself that question, my hands shake. I do not know why, I do not understand this feeling, this ache. It is the ache that covets my bones, and sleeps alongside them, and wakes with me to make every dawn cold.

The moment after I awaken, I have always forgotten that she is gone. It is in that moment that I am allowed to speak her name. Afterwards, I remember the reasons, the tortures, the way of her death. I remember these hundred years of pain, and I think to myself: the stories of ages are lies, and a soul is a breath, and her breath is long still.

In another moment, I will try to speak her name, but my own throat chokes me. I cannot see past a red veil of silence, and then, it comes. I do not let anyone hear me. When I can say it, it is no longer my voice. I am undone.

A Chinese poet said it best:

The bloom is not a bloom, the mist not mist,

At midnight she comes, and goes again at dawn.

She comes like a spring dream- how long will she stay?

She goes like morning cloud, without a trace. *---- *

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In another time, in another place, there was Kagome, and Inuyasha. They moved through the world, gathering companions and flinging out justice like a whirlwind, and then meeting with evil in a titanic clash at the edge of worlds for the salvation of all. When the other names were forgotten by all but a few, those two still remained, entwined like one being, a single legend in the annals of history. The legend makes them friends who became something like lovers, without the simplicity of that expression.

**This is all lies.**

Sesshomaru stared at the pages in his hands, and was filled with a sudden, inexplicable desire to tear them to shreds. The dark corner of his thoughts laughed at him, and spoke at him.

**But isn't it better to remember this way? To forge blasphemy in the name of purity? You said: I want no one to remember me! Let them remember Inuyasha.**

He scowled, and tossed the pages on his desk. In a hundred years, he had not forgotten anything that had happened, and to read it in those words, on that paper...! The one who he had paid to write this had done exactly as he asked; how could he complain? He stood and walked around the desk.

**That is what I said, but I did not think it would feel like this. I feel too much...these days.**

Before he could stop himself, he picked up the sheaf of pages and flung them into the fire. It was only a courtesy fire, for those human guests he could not avoid having, and it did not usually burn so large. In a moment, the greedy flames turned the pages and their distressing words into ashes and embers. Soon they would be dust.

What was there to do now? The emptiness, the gnawing feeling – how could he rid himself of it?

Slowly, the answer came to him, the old answer that had always satisfied – until.

**Until. What I would not give to change – but it is has all been done, and I can change nothing...nothing.**

He would go out into the land, and open himself to the scream and cry of battle, and end this solitude, pretending that he had not heard the whisper in himself, the whisper of weakness. Sesshomaru turned away from the lingering ashes, and moved towards the door. Outside, a shining three-quarter moon glinted from behind arching cloud pennants, flooding the earth with silver.

There was no reason to wait; not for daylight, not for a companion's comfort, not for earth or sea or sky. The door slid open; the door slid shut. Like a wind of silk darkness, he moved out into the night.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

*---- * From the last days, I carry with me only the heavy weight of my sorrow, a burden I will share with no one. They all had left me, and I was alone. The first weight, before sorrow, was blood. I will never forget the smell, the hard bitterness of iron sneaking into the thirst of the air. And the scent that caused each wound, each death, rearing its head like a striking cobra, coming down like a leopard, killing with a spider's kiss.

The face of my enemy...the face of Naraku was the face of death. After everything, it was I, left with the greatest reason to destroy, I, left with the greatest reason to survive. One by one, they each spent their lives protecting me, and so how could I let their enemy, my enemy, be victorious?

So I fought, and Inuyasha's strength was in me, and Sango's love, and Miroku's will. Naraku pulled me close, so close, and smiled at me, and it was my task, my responsibility, to return that smile. Then there was the light.

We were all within it – that final blow was made with souls, not just an arrow, but it penetrated. That scream, like claws of darkness in the air, and the sky raining poison. And when I wished to follow them, when I wished the long journey to be over, the weapons put back in their places, the whispers to be silent...I was alone.

That was the beginning.

I returned in the long silence, and found the supplication, the pilgrims who had come to seek my holy power, my holy shelter...I am not holy.

I am only miko, guardian of the shikon no tama, guardian of the shrine. That is what I told them, and their disappointment did not come like I expected it to.

Yes, they said. That is why we are here. You are the one who destroyed Naraku, the one who purified the great evil. Can you not save us? So I healed them during the day, and when there was darkness, I went out into the night.

It took ten years for me to know the truth of what had happened, the truth of my condition. The villagers would stop and stare when I passed by. It is not natural, they said. It cannot be...but it is. The shikon no tama keeps my flesh whole, my face unlined, my hands smooth, but I wonder how long this will go on, and if I will ever rest.

I live for my dreams, and my secret memories, and I dread the days before the first snow, when the sky reminds me of the scent of blood and the feel of cold earth under my feet wakes a trembling that I cannot cease.

It is like the poet says: Round my waist I wear a double sash

I dream that it binds us both with a same-heart knot.

Did you not know that people hide their love,

Like the flower that seems too precious to be picked? *----*

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In a hard village far north of the place she had once called home, a miko stood at the edge of the furthest rice paddy, and let the evening wind ripple around her. It blew from the north, and carried the memory of snow. Where she stood, it was still too early in the season for winter whiteness. The sunset was coming on now, but the sky was too thick for more than a glint of red light to show through.

The undersides of the clouds glittered with pinks and dry orange, but the thoughts of the miko moved outward, passing under those clouds and running down the other side of the tall mountains in the south that stopped her vision.

**It is always this way. Just before the snow falls, I feel it strongest.**

Her heart beat in her body like a low and steady drum. There were many memories that made it difficult to endure this season before the snow. Things that promised to leap from her own heart and strangle her with guilt, and grief, and regret. She had wasted many days, standing here, contemplating sorrow. Behind her, the villagers who waited in their homes, by the fire, did not disturb her unless they required her services.

They were grateful that a miko had even come near their village. These people lived nowhere, and no one cared for them. Since she came among them, only the most aged had died.

**It is getting to be time to leave here. It has been twelve years. How much longer will it take for them to notice that I have not changed?**

She turned away from the wrinkled sky, and walked slowly down the dirt path that had been worn by many feet. She would be sad to leave this village. It would be more difficult than leaving the others, where she had only stayed half as long.

**In the Spring. I must leave here in the Spring.**

There were less hard memories when the world was green. Now, everything was dull. Now, even the leaves poised on the edge of brittleness, and faded to skeletons, an outline of themselves. Spring reminded her of the long path through the countryside, and the glow of the high, cool stars over midnight's sleepless fire.

She shook her head. It was early, but she was tired. A faint, pale moon was rising into blue night, now that the sun glow was faded. She had just lay down and closed her eyes, and was waiting for the bright curtain of dreams to fall, when a shout in the village and the cry of "Miko-sama, miko-sama!" banished the thought of sleep.

In an instant, she was up, tying on her clothes. Her fingers fumbled in her haste, but it was still only a moment. She flew to her bow and quiver, and down the path towards the village, but the village men were running toward her and not away.

"Miko-sama!"

Their arms waving wildly, their words incoherent, the men were pointing behind her. She turned, swiftly, and the arrow on her string stared at the path to a heart and waited, tense.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"So, it is you. The air did not lie."

She could not move, or breathe, or speak. Speak! As if words, or the thought of words, could even contemplating entering her head. She had been thinking of the past that was dead, the past that could not be revived. She tasted of that bitterness every morning, and every night. Now it was alive!

Sesshomaru stared at her, as the old memories returned, the days when there had been laughter in his world, the days when this scent had been as familiar as the one he hated, and the one that calmed.

**And did I not hate this one too, for the pleasure it gave? When did I make any distinction between them?**

And then:

**He is dead.**

"Your name – your name is Kagome."

Her mouth opened, wide and pale, but only breath escaped her.

**I am not the only one who remembers.**

Abruptly, her voice returned, but what it said sounded faint in her ears, unreal.

"Yes, that is my name, but here I am miko-sama. Would you like tea, Sesshomaru?"

She added no honorific. She never had; he heard what she left unsaid, and knew that she, too, was remembering.

As he nodded, feeling dazed, she led him back down the short length of path to her own home. He was trying desperately to think if there was something he had gotten wrong, something he should be able to add to his memory. He ducked his head, and passed through the low door.

"You should not be alive."

His voice was dulled, but anger filled her, lifted the veil of grief from her features, and he saw that truly, she had not changed at all.

"No! Those are my thoughts! You cannot have them!"

Silence filled him, and spread out into the room.

**No. She has changed in a terrible way. Like I have. **

The striking line of their similarity blinded him for a moment, but he could tell her nothing of it. It would not be right – here, in her presence, he felt himself restored by her expectation, her memory of him. Moments passed while she boiled water for tea, and set out cups.

"What is it you do here, miko-sama?"

"What do you think I do, Sesshomaru?"

He shook his head, wordless. She reached for the reins of her temper, and hauled it in. How long had been since she had been angry – since real feelings had come for her? She sighed.

"I am sorry. My temper can still get away from me, I suppose."

Half a smile lifted half of her mouth, and then faded.

"You may be the only one left who could still bring it out of me."

Silent, Sesshomaru sipped at the cup of tea she passed to him, and she observed the smooth grace of his movements, the dark angles of his face. He, too, had not changed. She remembered the girl that had traveled with him, by now probably long dead, and a smile touched her.

"What happened to your girl, Sesshomaru? Rin?"

The cup of tea he had been holding shattered into many pieces, and she held up her hands with a cry. She did not move again; the memory of him, the strangeness of this interlude, was broken by the reminder of violence. She sat completely still, waiting. Sesshomaru did not even seem to be breathing.

It took her a long, bare-breathed moment to look at him, and really see. His hair covered his eyes, his mouth was a tight, fanged line – but it was his hands, his hands that shook and clenched that deepened Kagome's breath and widened her eyes. His hands were leaking blood onto her floor.

He did not say anything. While she watched he stood, and passed out of the door. A second passed, and then another. Then, suddenly, she stood and ran out into the wind, suddenly blistering with cold.

"Sesshomaru! Sesshomaru!"

Either he could no longer hear her, or he did not care to find out why she was calling his name. There was no reason for the sudden bite of her sadness, the flavor softer and more bitter than her usual grief. She found herself on her knees, crying, and did not know why.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It had taken him a year of wandering to dare himself even that far south; east and west he had traveled, and even to snow country, but not south. Never south. And then what should he find, but the whisper of a scent that could not be, a memory of the one left in solitude, even more than he.

**Kagome.**

The expression on her face when he said her name made him wonder, but he could not help it. If he recognized her, if he knew who she was, he must tell her. Otherwise, to sit beside her and drink her tea could not be allowed. It had been rude, inexcusably rude, to leap up and leave her, but he had seen the smile fade from her face, the awareness that had touched her.

**She knows I care. That miko...**

'That is my name, but here I am miko-sama.' That was what she had said. And he, without an argument, had agreed. Without a word, he had agreed, and it had not left his mouth bitter, to give her the honor of a title that she would not give to him. He remembered the one battle he had not won, and a bolt of cold struck through him like an icy spear.

She deserved the respect; he did not. She, a human woman, had defeated the enemy that had broken him. Naraku had broken him, and Inuyasha, and all his brother's companions – all but the girl, who was no longer a girl.

"Her face..."

The words faded into the cold silence. Her face had not changed it all, had not aged. There were no wrinkles in the smoothness of her skin and the energy that lifted off her skin in a bright aura of power was not diminished. She had grown, and he had not.

**She is not happy. She feels guilt. Why would that be, when it was she who achieved vengeance?**

He turned back, and faced the coast that he had crossed in the mindless new months of travel. At home, it would be coming upon Spring, and the green buds would be out, and the blossoms would be springing from the grass. The sea was wide and dark, and he looked at his hands, thinking.

**She said the name...she remembers. If I go back, she may say it again. But why would she ask such a question? Doesn't she remember? She was there!**

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Since winter had come to a frosty, wet end, and the last snow had long since fallen, Kagome turned her thoughts to the journey ahead. She had made plenty of arrows over the winter, and her bow was her own. When she had revealed her intentions to the villagers, they had wept and sobbed, but a few of the elders had looked at her with suspicious thoughts in the corners of their faces. She knew she had been right; it was time to go.

Part of her was still waiting, to see if Sesshomaru would return, but when the snow fell, and continued falling, and no white shape had filtered through it, she had tucked her waiting away. If he wanted to find her, he could find her. He had done it once already.

The villagers would give her rice and dried meat, enough to last for a while, and after so long she was an adequate hunter. She knew which plants were poison, and which were food, and how to prepare medicines from the bare roots and the polished leaves. There would be another village, eventually, and if she wished, she would stay there, and if they knew her story, she would travel on.

Her eyes flickered to the north. Wide spaces of silence opened there, and led to snow country. The far north was rumored to be home to strange demons, beings of ice and fire that flickered like lightning and burned like a cold sun. Was that the direction she should choose? Something was pulling her aside from that lonely path; something tugging her east, or west.

The sky in snow country would always be grey. She did not like the silver light of grey skies. Kagome turned toward the west, and faced the direction of the setting sun. If she went far enough, she would come to the sea, and beyond, China.

**If I went to that land, what would I find? I have lost track of the year, and my old history lessons...**

The ghost of a smile eased the constriction of her face. She turned away from the window that had come to capture her thoughts, and returned to packing the few belongings that had followed her, despite everything. It was spring now, and the trees were opening, and flowers had leapt out of the grass like flame. The planters bent in the rice fields, and the water was flush with melt from the mountains.

**Traveling time.**

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When Sesshomaru came back to the village and encountered an emptiness where her scent should have been, his own soul drowned him. Why had he hoped to find her here, why had he even returned? She was not his kind, she was not his companion – she was the one who had saved the brother he hated.

**He is dead.**

There was nothing to explain it, nothing to salve it, but a pain was opening in him and she was its cause.

**I should not have left.**

And if he had stayed? Would he have told her the tale of his grief, the way the silence reached out from the long ,dark nights and gripped his heart with icy fingers and claws of fire? She would never understand, no matter how she had changed. She was human.

He turned to the houses that stood just beyond his place on the path, and the villagers were running at him, some with weapons and some only with fear. He was remembering the glow of Kagome's voice, the words. 'You should not be alive' he had said, and she had not denied it.

From another time he remembered the scream, the high, horrible scream that had pelted at his ears like bullets of hail. He had been turning, turning to that most horrible sight, and then he had seen Inuyasha fall, and fall, and not get up. There was blood everywhere....

**Why did she leave? Why? She is the only one...who knows.**

A rush of blind terror at the loss of her filled him, and the villagers who had run up behind him shied away. He turned on them, red-eyed, wild. Only in a few was there recognition, the memory of the demon who had come to speak with their miko-sama. Careful, slow, he ground out words on the points of his pain.

"Kagome. Where has she gone?"

Fear penetrated the scents that accosted him from these people, so salted, so full of earth. Now the recognition had left all eyes, and only fear remained bright.

**They did not know her name. Why would she keep that from them?**

"The miko who lived here. Just here."

He pointed, and her house still stood, empty, deserted.

"She...she...she is gone! When the spring came, she said it was time, and she left us!"

There were nodding heads all around him, and he could not tell who had spoken, but the panic was not abated, and the memory suddenly came to him of the last look she had thrown, the moment after the name that destroyed him.

**She already knows. Why can't I tell her? Why is she gone?**

"Do you mean to tell me none of you, none of you knew who she was, or where she has gone?"

There was a mute shaking of heads, a silence more complete than anything in his memory. It moved into him, and filled him, and replaced the panic with an ache.

"And for your blindness, she loved you."

He turned away, and the villagers looked among each other with wide eyes and whispers. This was a new legend, but they did not know its beginning. Why would a powerful demon seek a miko? Why would a demon grieve?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This village was nothing like the one she had left behind. The children were bright and cheerful, their parent's faces open. A few of the women had come to her, seeking to offer companionship, but all their faces looked like Sango to her, like the promise that had faded in the brown grass. Quietly, after a little time, she packed her bag and gathered her arrows and went out into the night. There would be no farewells here. It would be better if she left as smoothly as she came, without words to enliven memory.

There was something else that pushed her on, despite how quickly spring was coming to an end. Friendliness was not what she desired; only that she do her work in peace, penance now for the lives she could not save then

**I am hollow, a creature only of regrets. They look at me, and speak to me, and smile at me with thanks, but none of this makes me like them.**

She wanted her dreams to come to life, and reverse time. She wanted to remember a different way, so that everything could be cloaked in green, or white, or blue...anything but red.

**Even I, outside of time, can change none of this. I do not deserve to go home...and what would I find, after a hundred years?**

There remained the fact that the well was south, near the place she could never return to. The village would still be there, grown now. The people would still talk, and they would still remember, and perhaps even now the shrine that once had held her as a child would be begun. Before she had ever left, there was talk of it, and hearing her own future about to become reality, she had shied away.

Her mind turned away from the long path down into darkness, though well accustomed to it. This forest, this night, was fresh and clean. The day had held the first promise of summer's warmth, a clear, bright sun without clouds. Despite everything, it was good to be standing on the warm side of winter.

"It was good...to see such happiness, for a while. Good-bye, village."

She turned away for the last time, and darkness stopped her, but it was not the shadows of nightfall.

"You did not make it easy to find you, Kagome."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

How easy it was, to let her name pass his lips again! It was a sweet sound, like the other that he had known.

**Not yet.**

After so much silence, after the long repetition of those words in his head, after trying so hard to forget – surely it could not be so difficult to wait, just a little longer.

"So you did come."

He knew as she said it that she had been waiting, waiting for him to come back. He remembered the sound that had come to him on the thin wind that carried in winter. It had been his own name, carried like the wail of that bloody day.

**That was why...I could not go back.**

"You expected me?"

She shook her head, and he could see the laughter on her lips – held back, why? He did not remember her as one who held back.

"Not now, I did not expect you. In the long months of winter, I expected you to come back. I watched out the window sometimes, sure that as the snow thickened, I would see you come striding through it."

The laugh did come now, but not as he remembered it. The sound fell softer than silk. He stepped back from her, to see what expression would cover her face with that sound.

"Sesshomaru...you are wearing black, now."

Her thoughts skipped backwards. Even when she thought of him coming in the winter months, was it not always as she had seen him then, dressed in white, wrapped in fur? And the yellow sash...

The visit, though. The day he had come, what had he been wearing? She could not at first remember. He was...Sesshomaru. That did not allow for this figure that her memory recreated, this saddened, shrouded figure, still regal...but he was broken. Looking up into his eyes, she could see that now, and the air went still. She knew, instantly, instinctively, what question it was that she had to ask. There had been ceramic shards, and blood on her floor, and the tightness of his mouth.

"What happened to your girl, Sesshomaru? To Rin?"

His eyes widened, and reddened, and then dulled. The strength seemed to leave his body.

"You know."

He was looking at her now, focusing on her, and the dullness was gone, the gold glow of his eyes like a piercing needle.

"You know!"

Kagome turned her eyes away from that gaze, and then back.

"She...died."

A howl broke out of him.

"Yes!"

She understood, now, what was breaking him, but not why.

"How did Rin die, Sesshomaru?"

His eyes blazed red again and pressed down on her like weights. Where there had once been such precise fury in him, there was now uncontrollable grief...yet he controlled it, endured it without a word.

"You know...Kagome."

He turned away from her, and walked into the tree shadows that had opened to show him.

"Sesshomaru?"

He did not turn, but she knew he could hear her.

"Do not make me wait another season, Sesshomaru."