Disclaimer: Don't own Inuyasha!
Author's note: Thank you for the reviews for the first chapter! I was feeling inspired (and had some free time), so here's Ch.2!
– 2 –
.a matter of honor.
She has never hated anyone. Not even Naraku. If anything, she pitied him for what he was. For what he became.
But she thinks she might hate him.
Inuyasha’s eyes stare at her endlessly, glazed and still. It makes her heart sick to look upon them, but she cannot tear her gaze away.
“Bring him back,” she whispers, trembling. “Please…you can…please…”
“I could,” his voice replies smoothly behind her. “I could revive all your companions.”
But you won’t, she realizes in that moment of pause. Bitter and heavy, the knowledge settles in her throat.
“…But how would that benefit me?”
His words brush her cheek in a warm caress, and she shudders.
She begs.
“I-I’ll give you whatever you want…” Her tongue darts out to lick at her dry, cracked lips. “Do whatever you want…just please…bring them back.”
And, now, she hates herself as well.
He scoffs. Silver-white hair swirls as he steps around her and plucks Tessaiga from the mud.
“It is no use,” he says, wiping the filthy blade against the sleeve of Inuyasha’s red haori, “to bargain with what is already mine.”
She knows she should hold her tongue. But the sight of him cleaning Inuyasha’s own sword against the arm of his corpse fills her with sudden rage. Her hands ball to fists at her sides.
“I don’t belong to anyone, least of all a sick jerk like you.”
The hand that strikes her face is so swift she hardly sees it.
She staggers. The blow had little force behind it, but in her weakened state it still sends her plummeting to the sodden ground.
“You do belong to me,” he states coolly as he looks down upon her. Beneath the hard glint, something else glimmers in the shadowed depths of his eyes. “And you would do well to accept it.”
She would rather die.
Clutching her stinging cheek, she glares up at him in undisguised loathing.
If only, she thinks, her bowstring hadn’t snapped.
“What about Rin?”
His gaze hardens still. “What about her?”
“You brought her back,” she says, her voice gaining strength. “How could she have ‘benefited you’?—she was just a little girl. But you brought her back all the same.”
He crouches down before her. There is a smile on his lips as he catches her chin between his fingers.
It is humorless. Cold.
“It pleased me to return her to life,” he answers. The pad of his thumb strokes across her lower lip, and she flinches. “It would not please me to resurrect that infuriating stain on my house, nor your fallen comrades, who would no doubt prove themselves a nuisance over my ownership of you.” His smile deepens. “Particularly the wolf.”
Kouga.
Her eyes stray to his unmoving form. Even in death he looks fearless and proud.
She envies him.
“Sesshoumaru…please…”
Desperation strangles her voice. She clasps his stony hand in both of hers. Her eyes brim. The image of his face trembles and, mercifully, obscures.
“How would it benefit me?” he demands of her again.
“It…your honor…?” When he says nothing, she tries again: “Y-your soul? Inuyasha is your brother…”
“Was,” he corrects her, his breath ghosting over her lips. “But those are feeble reasons, both. What honor is there in restoring a bunch of humans and weaklings, who brought death upon themselves through their own meddlesome interference? As for the ‘soul’ of which you speak, I have little concern.”
Wholeheartedly, she believes him.
Hot and fast, her anger burns through the film of her tears.
“You have no right to judge them. They had more cause than you to hate Naraku. And all of them fought harder and longer against him.”
He hauls her up by the arm as he rises. Almost tenderly, he combs back her sweaty bangs with his claws.
“I have every right,” he tells her in an even tone. “I alone hold the power over life and death, the sword that breaches the boundary between earth and the netherworld.”
A sword that was given to you, she thinks but does not dare to say. A power you don’t deserve.
“And I deem them unworthy.”
The eyes trapping hers are two dark yellow pools of death. How had she ever found them beautiful?
“Kill me,” she softly says.
The words are empty.
There is nothing left.
When he gathers her up, she is weightless.
“No,” he tells her as he begins to walk away.
The smirk he wears carves her out like a fleshing knife.
“This Sesshoumaru has given his word.”
Beyond his shoulder, her hollow eyes see a crow land in Inuyasha’s hair. Little black feet scrape against the silvery fur of an ear as the crow cocks its head to the side and regards her beadily in return.
Then it lowers a sable beak to the golden eyes she loves, and heartlessly rips them out.
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AN: I'm sorry... :(