Yomi by Silent Taiyoukai

Yomi

A/N: Loosly based on the myth of Izanagi and Izanami. Izanagi and Izanami are husband and wife deities. In the original myth, Izanami died in childbirth. Izanagi went into Yomi (the Underworld) to find his wife, but she had had already eaten the food of the dead and could not go back to the mortal world. He was also so repulsed by Izanami’s rotting appearance that he fled Yomi in horror. Izanami sent shikome (the foul women of Yomi) to bring him back to her. In order to escape the shikome, Izanagi threw parts of his headdress at them, which turned into bundles of grapes and bamboo poles. Eventually Izanagi escaped Yomi and pushed a boulder to block the entrance of Yomi, sealing Izanami in. A naginata is a halberd. Ama-no-Nuboko, the Heavenly Jeweled Halberd, was given to Izanami and Izanagi by the first Gods, and it was with that halberd that the islands of Japan were created.

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The Gardens had always been Kagome’s favorite place in the palace.

Even now with the changing of seasons, there was a stark beauty in the bareness of the trees, in the abundance of dead and dying leaves collecting on the ground. It was a fitting place to find solace and to enjoy the silent company of her mate. She and Sesshoumaru had spent many hours sitting on the bench beneath the sakura tree. It was in this very garden that their relationship had begun.

Sitting there in silence gave Kagome time to think about the secret she had been keeping from him. It was knowledge that would change the entire nature of their relationship, and Kagome herself was still in a state of almost denial. She wondered idly if that, with his keen senses, he might have already known.

It was not her mate that was sitting next to her today. She instead shared the bench with Rin, who had come to visit many months ago and had been living with them ever since.

Kagome was glad to have Rin around the palace. Rin had a talent for bringing smiles wherever she went, not to mention a good deal of humor. Kohaku had visited her at the palace a few times, and the expressions Kagome saw in Sesshoumaru’s eyes as the two held hands were priceless.

But the previous month had been nothing short of hectic. Many strange and beastly-looking youkai had been coming and going from the palace, generals and warlords that called Sesshoumaru their ally. Most of them held no respect for humans and were not keen to behave civilly around them. These youkai saw Kagome and Rin more as Sesshoumaru’s pets than his family.

The last straw had come when a brutish tiger youkai gave a savage tug to Rin’s ponytail, putting the girl in tears and driving Kagome to purify him. Kagome had never seen Sesshoumaru as angry as he had been at that moment. Her husband’s wrath sent the tiger limping home with his tail between his legs. Since then Sesshoumaru had taken all of his business out of the palace. To her dismay he had left someone behind to tend to them, someone she had been trying desperately to avoid.

Kagome heard the screen behind them slide open and sighed.

“There you are!” Kagome heard, and soon found Sesshoumaru’s little vassal at her side.

“I have been scouring the palace for you two! Why if Lord Sesshoumaru found that I had let you out of my sight---”

“Jaken, please be quiet,” Kagome said. She had enough things running through her head without his grating voice.

Jaken gave an indignant huff and quieted considerably, though Kagome could still hear him muttering under his breath as he sat down on the ground beside her. Kagome was sure the little demon didn’t particularly like her, but since she was his master’s mate he would do pretty much anything she asked, albeit reluctantly.

Kagome watched as Rin jumped off the bench and kneeled down in front of Jaken, a wide smile across her face. “Is Master Jaken angry at us?”

Jaken crossed his arms. “You foolish humans are continuously irritating.”

Rin frowned at him, and Kagome decided the mood needed a little lightening up. She reached down and plucked Jaken’s hat off his head, holding it high out of his reach. 

“What are you doing?” he squawked.

“Maybe a game will cheer you up,” Kagome said, tossing the hat to Rin. The girl stood up to avoid Jaken’s grab. “Let’s see if you can catch Rin,” she winked.

Rin giggled an ran off over the bridge, across the pond and down the path that wound around the gardens. Jaken followed, waving his staff and yelling for the girl to come back. Kagome listened to their banter, wondering idly when Sesshoumaru would return.

Rin and Jaken’s banter suddenly fell quiet. At first Kagome thought they had simply moved too far for her to hear, but then she heard Rin’s shrill scream.

“Rin!” she yelled, and was on her feet and running.

She screamed the girl’s name down the garden path, but there was no response and no sign of Rin or Jaken. She skidding to a halt as she was overcome by an awful sense of foreboding, a strange presence, neither good nor evil, that sank its fingers into her chest. There was definitely something wrong.

Rin had her arms wrapped around a tree, while her legs were sticking straight out behind her. A pair of skeletal hands were wrapped around her ankles, and long arms cloaked in white silk ran from those hands and around the next turn of the path. Jaken was pulling on Rin’s sleeve trying to free her from the seemingly bodiless arms. Kagome wasted no time to wrap her arms around Rin’s middle, putting all her strength into pulling the girl free.

“Ka--go--me!” Rin yelled, and Kagome watched as Rin’s arms began to leave the tree trunk. Kagome and Jaken’s feet began to slide across the earth as the arms worked against them. Even now Kagome had no idea as to what they were dealing with. There was no demonic aura to be detected, though if this strange thing wasn’t a demon she had no guess as to what it could be. 

“I won’t let you go Rin, I promise!” Kagome yelled, and she kept her promise even as her feet left the ground.

Their three voices rang together in screams as Rin’s hold on the tree failed and they found themselves pulled high off the path by an unseen force and towed along by the spectral hands. They were pulled through the garden, emerging on the far side of the palace where the land dropped off in a rocky slope. Jagged rocks flashed dangerously beneath them. They gradually descended into the forest below, and Rin buried her face in Kagome’s shoulder to avoid hitting her head on the tree branches as they flew by. The girl also managed to tuck Jaken securely into the crook of her arm.

Kagome looked in the direction which they were being pulled, trying to see past the blur of leaves. At their pace, they would reach the base of the mountain bordering the palace’s southern flank in no time at all.

It came into view all too quickly, a flat face of rock that seemed to have a perfectly rounded hole in the middle of it, buried behind a line of trees. As they whirled closer, she realized it was not an imperfection in the rock. The aura she felt grew suddenly stronger.

The dark portal swirling with odd colored lights, the presence that was neither evil nor good but somehow both. At once, she knew.

Wrenching her body, she managed to reach down and grab one of the skeleton’s fingers, pulling it away from Rin’s ankle.

“You can’t have her!” Kagome yelled, and thing’s hold slackened as Kagome’s power flared in a purple light. 

The force holding them above the ground faltered. They were dragged across the ground, the portal coming upon them very quickly. Kagome held fast to that one bony finger, willing her power to flare again. The hands left Rin’s ankle and reared up, giving Kagome enough time to take Rin and Jaken into her arms, shielding them with her body. The hands plucked and tore at her kimono, distressed by the rushes of power she sent their way.

Her eyes widened with a demonic cackling echoing in her head. She gasped as one hand closed around her throat, the other around her thigh. She freed Rin and Jaken from her hold as she was pulled backwards, but Rin held fast to the sleeve of her kimono.

“No! Kagome!” Rin yelled, and Kagome plucked Rin’s fingers from the blue fabric. Kagome had heard her husband’s stories. She knew there was no hope for Rin where she was going.

Rin watched as her friend was dragged the rest of the way to the mountainside, through the dark space in the rock, which slowly closed up after her. She knew there was no time to spare. She jumped to her feet.

“Come on, Master Jaken!” she said, sprinting back from where they had come, nearly running the little kappa over.

“Rin!” Jaken yelled, and began tottering after her.

Rin ran all the way to the sharp incline just below the palace gardens. She gave no thought to the treacherous rocks. She began to claw her way up the steep incline up to the palace. She worked her way over sharp rocks and protruding roots, and Jaken tried his best to keep up with her.

“Rin!” Jaken called after her. “Lord Sesshoumaru is not even home! What can we possibly do?!”

“He’ll come back! He has to! We can’t leave Kagome!” Rin yelled back at him.

She wrapped her hand around a jagged rock and pulled herself upward. A rock broke beneath her left foot and she screamed. She slid down the rock-face, cutting her hand open and giving her knees a good scrape before she managed to secure herself again.

“Rin!” Jaken screamed up at her, and for a moment the girl could not reply.

“I’m fine,” she said weakly, but still could not find the will to move.

She screamed when she felt herself being lifted out of her footholds.

“No!” she yelled, imagining being dragged through that dark portal herself. She turned expecting to see those dead hands wrapping around her middle, but instead found a comforting length of fur.

“Lord Sesshoumaru,” Rin said, and the pelt supported her as she let her grip slacken.

The taiyoukai used his pelt to pull Rin into his arms. The girl immediately curled her arms around his neck, wetting his silk with silent tears. 

“Rin,” he said. He took the girl’s hand in his, turning it palm up. Blood stained her hand, and Sesshoumaru scowled. It had been the sound of their screams and finally the scent of Rin’s blood that drew him to return.

“Lord Sesshoumaru!” Rin nearly sobbed, “It’s Kagome! She’s been taken!”

She pointed back down the incline towards the forest, and Sesshoumaru moved quickly, soaring right over the head of his flailing vassal. Rin guided him back towards the mountain, but he was able to follow their scent perfectly fine. He could smell Kagome and could feel lingering traces of her power. There was also the residue of something else in the air, something he could easily say was not of this world.

She set down near a flat sheet of rock, where Kagome’s scent trail came to an abrupt end. He set Rin on her feet and stepped before the stone.

“She was dragged through that rock,” Rin said.

Sesshoumaru laid his hand upon the it, and immediately felt the solid rock shift beneath his fingers. He pulled his hand away as a tiny black blemish appeared in the center of it, slowly growing so that a full grown man could easily fit into it. It was a dark portal with the color of a thousand stars within, unknown worlds and the twinkling souls of the wandering dead. He knew it all too well.

“I’ll go with you,” Rin said, and Sesshoumaru tensed. He could not allow such a thing.

“No,” he said, but a steely determination was in Rin’s face.

“But it was after me! Kagome got caught because she tried to help me! I have to go with you!”

“For you to follow me means your death,” he said sternly and the determination began to leave Rin’s face. “I will not have it. Stay here. I will return.”

Without another word, he turned and stepped into the mediou.

At first there was nothing but darkness, and he felt as if he were floating through space. After a few moments, barren earth appeared at his feet, stretching out to form a narrow, winding path before him. He soon came across what looked like a group of people. Stepping closer, he realized that he had come across the foul women of Yomi.

They were a tightly knit circle of corpse-like women. Their kimonos were in tatters, their hair gray and stringy. Their skin was horrifically sallow, and each of them held a long bamboo pole as if for a cane. They were all cackling and tittering, and it wasn’t until Sesshoumaru saw a flash of blue cloth amongst their ragged clothes that he realized they were crowded around his mate. 

He rushed at them, drawing Tenseiga as he went. He felt air rushing past his face, could feel himself moving through space, but the circle of women remained a set distance away from him. It was if they were moving steadily away from him, though they didn’t seem to be moving at all.

He watched as the circle of shikome opened itself up and revealed his captive mate to him. One of the demon women had Kagome firmly by the throat, while another held open her mouth by pressing claw-like fingers to her cheeks. That same demon dangled a bundle of grapes above Kagome’s head. Another of the shikome plucked a grape from the cluster and let it drop into Kagome’s mouth. The women holding Kagome’s throat then slammed her open palm to Kagome’s chin, violently closing her mouth.

Kagome flailed in their holds. Her attempts to free herself began to slow, and when she finally went limp in their grasp, they let her fall roughly to the ground. It wasn’t until she hit the ground that Sesshoumaru could get any closer to her. The shikome shrieked as he fell upon them. He destroyed them as they retaliated, their claw-like fingernails searching for purchase on his body. Tenseiga cut through them easily. Their broken bodies dissolved into nothing, but their shrill screams and horrible laughter remained.

Sesshoumaru kneeled down beside Kagome.

“Sesshoumaru…” Kagome said weakly, but she did not move.

The aura of holy power that surrounded her was gone. Even her miko powers could not help her in Yomi.

He moved to brush the hair from her face, but her hand caught his before he could do so. At the sight of it, he thought that all of his senses were playing a terrible trick on him. The thing before him wore his wife’s clothes, spoke in her voice and was surrounded in her scent, but it couldn’t be her. The hand holding his was shrunken and calloused, the nails long and brittle. It was the hand of an old dying woman, not his young wife. Sesshoumaru felt anger rising up in him. There would be vengeance for this.

“We will leave this place,” he assured her.

“It’s too late, Sesshoumaru.”

“Nonsense. Death will not keep you from me,” he said, but she weakly shook her head.

“I can never go back to you now,” she said, and her hand fell away from his.

He pushed her hair away to find her once lovely face old and hollowed, her neck hanging in ancient jowls. Deep sores covered her cheeks, and he watched helplessly as her hair began to grow brittle and gray between his fingers.

The resonant screams of the shikome faded away and Sesshoumaru found himself engulfed by an encompassing blackness. When the darkness retreated back into the distance, he was not surprised to find that Kagome had disappeared.

He got to his feet and continued down the path, and the shikome began to laugh at him again. 

He eventually found himself where he had been once before. He stood before a mountain of corpses, where the only light was from a large lantern held in a skeletal hand. The Master of Hell sat atop the rotting bodies as if they were a throne. As he approached she rose up the lantern to better spread its light through the gloom. In his previous visit, she had appeared only as a massive beast with Rin held in her claws. Now he saw a shadow of the deity she had been before the darkness of Yomi had corrupted her.

She would have been lovely had all the flesh not been stripped from her hands, and had her eyes not been nothing but purely black orbs. Her white kimono was heavily splattered with fresh blood. In her right hand she held a bejeweled naginata. The Ama-no-Nuboko itself.

Above her head swirled the true darkness of Hell, the void to which all souls were eventually banished.

He stood at the base of the corpse pile and she smiled down at him. A vile black liquid dripped from the corner of her mouth.

“The mighty Lord Sesshoumaru,” the deity said with a musical laugh, “Back again?”

Her voice was like nothing he had ever heard. It was fractured, a dozen different tones and pitches all at once, feminine and deeply hellish at the same time.

“You dare take my mate from me?” he asked.

Izanami simply shrugged.

“I only wished to take back that which rightfully belongs here. Your mate gave herself up instead. It is her fault, not mine.”

“I will take Kagome back with me.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. She has eaten food from the Underworld and sealed herself to this dimension. Even Tenseiga won’t revive her. Only I can restore her soul, and I don‘t plan on doing any such thing.”

“You forced her to eat from this world,” he growled.

“No. I instructed the corpse women to seal the taken girl to this world. Your mate came through here instead of your Rin. The shikome followed my orders regardless of this fact.”

“This Sesshoumaru will not be denied what has been taken from me,” he said, and drew out Tenseiga.

She may have been a God, death and life incarnate, but even she could not sway his will. He had cut her down once before, and he would gladly do it again.

“Oh really?” Izanami hissed. “What is done is done. Your mate is dead. Who are you to defy death like this?”

Sesshoumaru gave a low growl. Izanami’s words echoed those his mother had spoken years ago when Rin’s life had been left in the Meidou. Life was finite. You must accept the reality of loss when you opened your heart to compassion. Life and Death were only for the Gods to control. Regardless, he could not leave Kagome behind. He could not allow this to be her fate, just as she did not allow Rin to face the darkness of Hell a second time.

“I will have Kagome.”

“How persistent you are,” Izanami remarked. “But why should I give her back? Last time you were here, you caused me much trouble. You sliced clean through me, killed one of my dogs, purified thousands of the dead, and then had the nerve to steal back the little girl’s soul. I shall not bend to you. I owe you nothing.”

“I bested you before. You cannot stand to this Sesshoumaru.”

“You plan to fight me?” Izanami nearly laughed. “Stop your boasting. Last time you cut me while my back was turned. You can’t hope to overcome me now.”

Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes. He would be the judge of her power. She may have been a God, but she had been easily overcome in their previous meeting.

“You will suffer at my hand,” he said, and Izanami’s eyes flared with rage. 

“Suffer? I’ve lain in suffering for longer than you can even fathom, pup!” she screamed, and he now saw that her mouth was full of long, sharpened teeth. “No pain you cause me will change my mind!”

Sesshoumaru launched himself at her. The many pieces of her throne reached up toward him as he flew, fleeting fingers clutching at his silks and fur. Izanami sat regal and proud even as Tenseiga was drawn across her neck, the same black liquid that ran from her mouth spurting forward from her neck and splattering across his brow. The smell was putrid, the stench of a millennia’s worth of death. He perched himself beside her beheaded body and watched as her head rolled down the corpses, laughing was it went. Her long hair became snagged on a corpse’s hand, keeping her head from rolling all the way to the bottom.

Sesshoumaru took a step back as the hand closest to him, the one holding the lantern, moved slightly. Her opposite hand then moved with a violent swiftness to drive the Ama-no-Nuboku into the pile of bodies. She supinated her freed hand, her arm growing long and grotesque. Her hand wound its way down to where her head was, gently scooping it up. Her arm retracted and she set her head back upon her neck. The flesh came together seamlessly.

She turned to him with her empty eyes dangerously narrowed. She ripped the naginata out from the belly of a naked corpse. 

“You’re wasting your time cutting me,” she said angrily. “I am a God. You may think of yourself as immortal Sesshoumaru, but compared to me you are nothing.”

Sesshoumaru’s temper flared. He brought Tenseiga around again. The Fang of Heaven collided with Heavenly Jeweled Halberd. The sword that could defer death and the halberd that had created the world vied for dominance.

Sesshoumaru was taken aback by the power behind the naginata. For being nothing but a glorified skeleton, she was strong. From the corner of his eyes he saw her swing the lantern towards him. He fell away from her as the lantern swung through the place his head had been just seconds before. In a single leap, he was back at the bottom of the corpse throne again, his sword still held at the ready. 

Izanami held his gaze with her naginata pointed at his heart for a few moments. Finally, she clicked her tongue and relaxed her weapon.

“I see you won’t leave me be until you get what you want,” she said irritably, though there was a smoothness and sneaky undertone to her voice that he did not like at all. “Perhaps we can negotiate. What have you to offer me in exchange for your wench’s resurrection?”

Sesshoumaru knew what she wanted. She wanted him rotting beneath her feet for all of eternity. But he would not make such an offer. He would not save Kagome’s life by sacrificing his own, leaving her to live her life without him. They had saved each other from loneliness in life, and he would not abandon her. The only viable option was for them to leave together, even if it meant sacrificing some of his power to Izanami.

Tenseiga left his claws in a deadly spin.

Izanami stuck the Ama-no-Nuboko into her fleshy throne again, freeing her hand to snatch Tenseiga from the air. She turned the sword over in her grasp, looking at it with narrowed eyes, as if it was a thing of contempt.

“Tenseiga…” Izanami said with distaste. “You mock me by offering me the same sword you would cut me down with,” she said, and hurled the sword back through the air and into Sesshoumaru’s grasp. “I will not take this for your wench’s life. Especially since resurrecting her would mean the revival of two lives.”

Sesshoumaru could not keep the shock from showing in his eyes. Izanami howled with laughter at his slight display of emotion.

“Bitch,” he growled.

“Hah! Even your keen nose couldn’t sense the change in her yet, huh? Oh well, it is your loss. If you have nothing more to offer me, take your pathetic life and be gone from this darkness.”

He had sensed the change. Her scent had changed ever so slightly over the past month. He hadn't known what it meant, and he hadn't had the heart to ask her.

He did not budge. There was only one thing left he could do.

Parting with Bakusaiga seemed wrong in a way that parting with Tenseiga did not. He had created Bakusaiga from his own flesh. It was a child of his soul, a tangible incarnation of his power as a taiyoukai. Giving the blade to the deity would be to castrate part of himself.

But leaving Kagome in the God’s grasp would also mean the death of part of himself. His heart and his blood. His mate and his child. The choice was clear.

He sheathed Tenseiga and moved his hand to Bakusaiga. He felt the sword pulse in his grip, and Tenseiga responded in kind. It happened a second time, a third, and Sesshoumaru was left quite puzzled. The swords had always spoken to him, of course, but this time he could not understand what the ripples in their life-forces meant. They were communicating between each other, and they seemed content on leaving him out of the conversation.

Izanami cleared her throat, obviously annoyed at the delay. “I may be immortal, but I do not wish to wait an entire millennia for your next move.”

Sesshoumaru drew Bakusaiga from its sheath. Both swords were now silent.

He threw and she caught, this time her eyes going wide. Her rows of needle-teeth were revealed in a wide smile. The sword began to glow in her grasp, and he could feel her struggling with it. Her powers struggled against all of his contained inside the weapon as Bakusaiga rejected her. Izanami frowned and gave a low growl.

“You truly concede this weapon to me?” she hissed.

“Yes,” he said simply, and immediately there was a change in the flow of power.

The sword allowed it’s power to diffuse into her, and Sesshoumaru was brought to his knees.

He could feel a part of himself being torn away. Part of his mind, part of his soul or both, he did not know. He felt strangely empty, and the terrible pain in his arm was dulled by this loss of self. His arm had gone numb, and looked down to find the flesh of his hand black with decay. Red blossomed at his sleeve as an invisible blade slowly cut into his upper arm, trying to rid him of what had been reborn with Bakusaiga. All he had gained when he grew to stand on his own was leaving him, but he didn’t care.

He could live with a half a soul and an imperfect body. He could not live to see Rin’s tears if he returned without Kagome, her friend and guardian. He could not live knowing that he had left Kagome to the darkness, she and his unborn progeny. 

“You fool, this sword is tied to your body! Part of your very soul went into making this blade!” Izanami yelled, running her bony fingers over the sword’s edge. Her ghastly smile was reflected in it. “Have your bitch’s life and say farewell to a part of your soul,” she tittered, “And your body.”

With a wave of her hand, the pile of corpses undertook a massive rearrangement. Dozens of bodies shifted, creating a hollow in the face of her throne. From the hollow burst forth a howling hellhound, and Sesshoumaru could see Kagome inside of it’s transparent belly. The dog laid down, and when it stood it left Kagome laying at the base of the corpses. The dog disappeared back into the hollow, which was then paved over.

Sesshoumaru tried to stand but found his legs unwilling to obey him. He nearly crawled to Kagome’s side, taking her in his arms. Light swirled around her and slowly, she began to regain her youth. She began to breathe again, very shallowly.

He held her close, nearly dropping her when his decaying arm dropped an inch or two, held to his body by a few stubborn strands of muscle. He could hear the bone crack, and his snarl of pain was muffled by Izanami’s scream.

His eyes widened at what he saw, and at first he could not believe it. The sword was turning against her. The power it had allowed to enter her was eating at her from the inside. A white light surrounded her body, and Sesshoumaru knew that Bakusaiga was not acting of its own will. Tenseiga was lifeless at his side, empty and dead.

It had foreseen his sacrifice and lent its healing power. Bakusaiga fought with more than its own destructive powers.  

Izanami let Bakusaiga fall from her fingers, and he watched it tumble over the corpses, using destructive power to destroy the hand of any that would touch it. It landed before its rightful master with a clatter.

“You shall not defy me twice!” Izanami raged. The femininity was gone from her voice now, leaving only a demonic roar. “I am a God! Your fate is in my hands!”

Izanami stood and he watched as the darkness of Hell, the impenetrable blackness that swirled just above her head, swooped down and enveloped her. It pulled at her small frame, stretching her into the grotesque thing he had destroyed in his first visit to the Underworld. The naginata grew with her into the most monstrous weapon he had ever encountered. The sheer size of it was enough to sever a thousand lives in a single stroke.

He saw her true power. Even he, a taiyoukai, a demon among men, could not stand up to her in her current state. The power in her wrath was something he had never witnessed, and would hopefully never witness again. She had not lied to him. She had been born before the world itself, had helped create the world as he knew it. She was eternal, and he could not hope to stand against her now.

As Izanami raised the naginata over her head, Sesshoumaru willed his broken arm to move and curled his fingers around Bakusaiga. He could feel power flowing through his body as a connection formed between himself and his two swords. Tenseiga and Bakusaiga shared Tenseiga’s healing power between them, working in tandem to spirit Sesshoumaru and Kagome away.

He closed his eyes and held his mate close as he felt the power of his swords steal them away, lifting them from the ground that quaked with the God woman’s rage. There was a crosswind that cut across his body, filled with the stench of death and he knew that Izanami had drawn her blade close, though not close enough.

He opened his eyes as soon as he felt the sun at his back and the grass beneath his knees, Rin’s voice ringing in his ear. He was facing the swirling portal though which he had entered Hell, and he could feel power pulsating within it, moving closer to the outside.

Bakusaiga’s voice rang in his ear. He drew the blade and pressed it flat against the portal, and bright light crackled and flared from within the darkness. He could feel Kagome stir in his arms, and he watched as she slowly opened her eyes and reached out her hand. She pressed her palm against the blade of his sword, setting it more firmly against the portal.

There was a flare of purple, and he could feel Kagome’s aura swell. It both hurt and healed to have her so close. He could feel her miko power seeping into his bones, and the hand that held her began to shake ever so slightly. At the same time, his shattered arm was beginning to mend. He felt as though he was being pinched as the skin came together in a tight bundle of scar tissue.

He was released from the pull of Kagome’s power and Izanami’s fury as the portal closed. There was one last flash of power at his side, Tenseiga drawing it’s power back into itself. He sheathed Bakusaiga, now back to original form. Sesshoumaru bowed his head, hiding his face in Kagome’s shoulder. He could feel as her arms slowly wrapped around his neck.

“Kagome! Lord Sesshoumaru!” he heard Rin yell, and then there was the weight of her in his arms as she smothered Kagome, hugging her tight. One of Kagome’s arms fell away from him to embrace Rin.

“Rin,” Kagome said, and they laughed together, hollowly.

With Rin still in her arms, Kagome turned her head, placing her lips against the pointed shell of Sesshoumaru’s ear.

“I have something to tell you,” she whispered.

“I already know,” he replied, and she sighed.

“I couldn’t let it take Rin.”

“And I would not let the God of Yomi keep you.”

“I know,” she said, and her lips brushed first against his cheek, then his lips as he turned his head. Rin’s weight fell away, and it was only the two of them. He kissed her as if it would be their last, and he didn’t care who was watching and smiling.

“How did you know your swords would do that?” Kagome asked as they broke apart.

“I didn’t,” he confessed.

“You’d give up Bakusaiga for me,” she said, and a tear appeared in the corner of her eye. He brushed it away.

“Not my sword,” he said.  His eyes swept over her, over Rin and even Jaken, who was still looking rather stunned. Not for her, but for all of them. “My life.”