The Broken and the Lost by Chie

The Broken and the Lost

Chie: This story is for my dearest Drosselmeyer, who, a long while ago, told me she wanted "Chie Angst" and for me to make her cry. So here you go, my love, have this heaping of Angst. Happy (?) Birthday, Dross!

Content warnings: Character Death. Depression.

Death was something Sesshoumaru had always been familiar with. As a daiyoukai, a predator, he had often dealt it with his own hand, starting at a young age. First hunting animals, then battling lesser youkai, growing firmer in his resolution as he aged to follow in his father's footsteps. Death was part of life, the other side of the coin; always there yet distant.

Sesshoumaru never paid it any mind. He was young. He was a youkai. And though on occasion Sesshoumaru might bring death to others, he remained untouched by it, stood high above its reach. 

Until the day his father died, forever altering Sesshoumaru's life. 

Death had snuck up on him and at its heels came something new – loss. It rattled inside him, for days and months and years. It returned to him, in those quiet and dark moments, all anew; its sharp edges sinking in with ease. 

But it wasn't grief that filled him in the aftermath of his father's demise, it was anger. The circumstances of his father's death seared him, knowing he'd died by the hand of a mere mortal as unfathomable as it was humiliating. The great general giving his life to protect a human woman and their halfbreed son.

And so this first loss gave Sesshoumaru a purpose: he vowed to surpass his sire, to gain even greater power. Sesshoumaru would not die by human hands. This path of supreme conquest consumed him and for the next several decades he dedicated himself fully to gathering strength, his primary object being the legacy his father had left behind – his swords.

It was a lonely life, but Sesshoumaru neither noticed it then nor cared. The goal he was striving towards was all that mattered. Besting every opponent in his way. Gathering all the information he could find as to how to obtain his father's fang. Training himself, testing his limits and surpassing them, was the only thing that gave his life meaning. Until he suffered a bitter defeat.

He had found at last what should have been his crowning glory: Tessaiga. But he had been unable to free the sword; instead, his cursed halfbreed brother had gained the might of their father's fang. And to add insult to injury, Inuyasha had bested him in the ensuing battle, leaving him maimed.

Alone, broken, his left arm gone, Sesshoumaru had lain in ruin, cursing his father, when a human girl had appeared. He had not wanted her help. He had certainly not needed her help. But no amount of snarling had scared her away, so she had cared for him in the small ways that she could.

When he later came across her, her young body bloody and broken and already growing cold, he told himself he merely wanted to test out the useless sword his father in his cruel fit of irony had decided to gift him.

But the truth was, even back then, though it was but a faint speck on the surface of his frozen heart, he cared.

That was how Rin came into his life.

And over the days, months and years that followed, filled by her bright smiles, endless trust and unwavering affection, that faint speck got bigger. It grew roots that burrowed deep, and before Sesshoumaru fully understood what was happening, Rin had already taken residence in his heart.

The second loss he experienced was Kagura. He did not have a deep or personal bond with the wind sorceress, but because his once-cold heart had begun to thaw under Rin’s small and gentle fingers, he was touched by the death. And it had not been the feelings Sesshoumaru had suspected Kagura had harboured towards him that he was thinking of, when he stood there, watching her fade away. It was the poignancy of a personal victory. In death was also Kagura’s triumph, for finally, she gained what she had always wished for: her freedom. She did not merely cease to be, she became one with the wind. Her loss was the soft stroke of a feather, a gentle sensation that carried a silent beauty alongside the ache. 

Then, there came a time, much too soon, when once again Sesshoumaru had cradled Rin’s small, lifeless body to his chest, a howl – whether of rage or anguish, he still wasn't sure – rumbling deep in the pit of his stomach. His sword was useless in his hand, the bitter helplessness almost his undoing, until at last his mother showed him a way to cheat death.

That time, the loss only scraped the very surface, but the fear of its claws raked down deep, the cold dread that it left behind lingering in his veins for months to come.

The third loss of Sesshoumaru’s life had been Inuyasha’s miko.

As far as he knew, she had not perished – following their final battle against Naraku she had simply vanished and the halfbreed and his friends had all remained tight-lipped about her fate, had merely reassured Sesshoumaru that the miko was fine and back where she had come from.

Sesshoumaru had not expected the miko’s disappearance to affect him in any way; they had barely been allies and had not spent a significant amount of time in each other’s company. Yet, her spirit, strength and bravery had won his grudging respect. His mind turned often to those final moments he had spent with her, fighting Naraku together. 

The loss of the miko was a curious thing, an echoing hollowness inside him, sudden flashes of realisation of something that was missing until once again he would remember that the miko was gone.

Strangely enough, Sesshoumaru was also affected by Inuyasha’s reaction to the miko’s loss. Year after year, as the well remained stubbornly closed and the miko stayed gone, hope was carved out of Inuyasha, sliver by sliver, leaving behind a brittle, hollow husk. The hanyou became withdrawn, even more morose and apathetic. That shook Sesshoumaru more than anything.

Sesshoumaru’s fourth loss was that of Kohaku. Even after he’d parted ways with the boy, there remained more than a speck of fondness in his heart. He would keep an eye on the boy every now and then, make sure all was going well for him.

And then, as fate would have it, Kohaku ended up marrying Rin. The two were happy, building a life together, and Sesshoumaru was pleased for them both.

Kohaku reached his middle years before he met his final death, much too soon in the opinion of his entire extended family, who deeply mourned his passing. He had died a hero’s death, protecting his son and nephew on a training mission gone wrong. The youkai they’d been facing had been stronger than anticipated, and though Kohaku had managed to slay it in the end, the wounds had been too grave. 

Sesshoumaru himself had carried his body back to the village, following a chance meeting on the road with the distraught boys who’d survived the attack.  He’d seen a light die in Rin’s eyes, had held her against his chest until she’d had no tears left. 

Kohaku’s had been the first funeral Sesshoumaru had actually attended and a persistent ache burrowed deep within, dogging his steps for years to come. So, sometimes, did the smell, that coppery tang of Kogaku’s blood forever burned to his memory, coating it as it had once coated his hand.

Rin’s loss was the worst.

Not only because Rin was the one he had the most affection towards, but because losing her had been like watching sand slip through his fingers. Slow, gradual... inevitable.

Rin’s loss was a single surface wound that never closed and slowly continued to bleed him dry over the many long years.

It started with leaving her in Kaede’s care in Edo. It was the right decision, Sesshoumaru knew. Rin needed to be among her own kind and life on the road was no place to be for a young girl. And though he did visit her often, his steps were always heavy when he left, a dull ache inside seeping all the way to his bones.

Then, Rin had fallen in love with Kohaku. Sesshoumaru rejoiced at her happiness, even as he could feel her slipping further away, a strip of silk falling from his grasp. And following Rin and Kohaku’s union, along came the children, who quickly became the centre of Rin’s universe.

She was walking her own road, building her life, always growing and becoming more.

It was good, it was right, it was all that he had ever wanted for her. 

For a fleeting second, as she was sitting right next to him, her daughter in her lap, eagerly conversing with him, it almost felt like the old times. Sesshoumaru could see that little girl he’d known so well lurking in those ageing warm brown eyes.

In truth, she had already gone where he couldn’t follow.

She was an old woman, when at last that last sliver Sesshoumaru had been so stubbornly clinging to was finally torn from his grasp. It was age that took her, as she lay on her futon, her frail, warm, wrinkled hand in Sesshoumaru’s. She was smiling as she went, surrounded by her family, accompanied by the noise of Jaken’s bitter sobs. 

Sesshoumaru did not cry a single tear – not then. His heart kept beating in his chest, steady and solid as always, even as the sharp little shards it had collapsed into rattled against each other in that familiar rhythm, tearing up new wounds with each beat. 

Eventually, he let go of her hand, stood up and walked away.

Jaken left him soon after that. Grovelling, he begged for Sesshoumaru’s permission to stay in Edo, to look after Rin’s children. Sesshoumaru granted the request. After so many years of faithful service, it was the least he could do. And then, with Jaken gone, Sesshoumaru was once again all alone.

It wasn’t the comfort it once had been.

He never did set his foot in Edo again.  Sometimes, of course, he was tempted to go and visit. Watch Rin’s children grow. But he couldn’t take such a long and slippery loss anymore, could not bear to see his little girl in a smile here or a gesture there.  He kept wandering the land, his soul an echoing emptiness, his long strides aimless and without a purpose. He no longer had a goal to strive towards.

Pain was Sesshoumaru’s only constant companion now. It was the ebb and flow of the sea, unstoppable and in constant flux. Dull one moment, then prickling, in a flash turning into a deep stab that stole his breath.  Pain was the shadow at his heels, always there. 

And then, after a couple of years of wandering or thereabouts – time had no meaning to Sesshoumaru – Inuyasha found him. 

He hadn’t come to fight, as Sesshoumaru had first assumed. Instead, Inuyasha plopped down and talked. Sesshoumaru did not know why he was here. Did not particularly care for his presence. Did not respond to his brother’s monologues. But he listened.

Inuyasha talked about his life in the village. About the passing of the monk and the taijiya. About their children. About Rin’s and Kohaku’s children. About Jaken. He talked about Kikyo. He talked about his miko.

He talked about loneliness and that Sesshoumaru understood only too well. He knew then why Inuyasha had sought him out.

Once Inuyasha had talked his piece, he left. He promised to be back.

And back he came, several months later. This time, he had a bottle of sake in tow. They drank together. Inuyasha talked. Sesshoumaru listened.

The third time, haltingly, Sesshoumaru spoke. Of the pain, of all the death, of being alone. And Inuyasha listened.

The fourth time, Inuyasha brought the fox kit along. Though he was hardly a kit anymore, hovering on the cusp of adulthood. 

The visits continued over the course of many years. They followed no schedule, but Sesshoumaru always found them a pleasant surprise. A brief reprieve from his bleak and solitary existence. 

Most of the time, Inuyasha came alone. Often, he brought the sake. Sometimes, the young fox would accompany him.

Inuyasha’s visits became something Sesshoumaru could count on. Small glimmers of light over the decades of darkness.

And then, one day, the young fox came to find Sesshoumaru. Alone.

He knew what news the fox had come to depart before he ever spoke. The tears glimmering in his eyes, rolling down his cheeks were louder than the words.

Sesshoumaru sank to the ground.

His blood, his pack, his kin.

His brother.

Dead.

Gone, like everyone in his life.

That was the tipping point for him. From then on, Sesshoumaru stopped living. He merely existed, a creature of shadow and death. Carved hollow by the pain and grief and the never-ending loneliness. The last one left.

A century passed.

Then another.

The world around him changed. Youkai diminished, humans prospered.  The lands ebbed from war to peace to yet another war. 

And then came the greatest war of all. 

Sesshoumaru paid it no mind. The petty squabbles of humans were none of his concern. Or so he thought.

Because that war brought the final blow.

One last loss for him to shoulder, one more person for him to mourn. He had never imagined a day when he would wake to a world without her. To him, she had been a constant. She had been invincible.

And it proved true that even the most heinous weapon ever crafted by human scientists couldn’t kill her in one blow. But the poison within that bomb ate at her. Stubborn as she was, she held on a full month, wasting away day by day.

Until at last her heart faltered and stopped. 

Sesshoumaru cradled her cold hand. Waited for the pain to come. Waited for the grief to overwhelm him. Waited for the tears to pour down his face. Waited for the shards of his shattered heart to disintegrate with this last terrible loss. 

But he felt nothing. Only numbness was left to him. Maybe his heart, broken beyond repair, had already been ground to dust.

On the sixth of September 1945, sitting by his dead mother’s bedside, Sesshoumaru gave up. He felt the black oblivion press against his senses and let go, sinking into the darkness.

The victory against Naraku had been sweet and much too brief. In mere seconds, while the tendrils of time wrapped themselves around her waist and yanked her back to the modern-day Tokyo, it turned to ash in her mouth.

Sitting in the bottom of the well, the sand turning muddy from the torrent of her tears, her clenched fingers leaving deep grooves into the ground, a high, raw keening noise tearing her throat and pouring from her lips, Kagome felt her heart shattering to a million pieces. It hadn’t supposed to have ended this way. This was not the happily ever after she had imagined for herself and Inuyasha.

Eventually, her cries had been heard and her mother had come to the well-house and coaxed her out, helped her to the house and into her bed. Kagome had lain in that pink room, sand still caked under her fingernails, cocooned under her blanket and still feeling frozen.

She stayed that way for the next two weeks. Somewhere, in the back of her brain, Kagome knew she should go back to school, continue her life as usual. But nothing was usual anymore and school and everything didn’t really matter, not now that she had been cut off from Inuyasha and the life she had built for herself back in the Feudal era.

So many nights, Kagome would toss and turn from one nightmare to another, where she was chased by grotesque demons intent on devouring her. So many mornings, she would wake up exhausted into a world where demons no longer existed, and somehow that was worse.

The most frequent of all, however, where the nights on which Kagome barely slept at all. She would lie awake staring at her ceiling, each minute feeling like an hour. In the stifling quiet, her brain would be abuzz, reminding her of all the things she had lost, dredging up all those past regrets, conjuring possible future scenarios, each bleaker than the last. 

In those dark hours, she felt like the only person left in the whole world and the loneliness that was her constant companion swelled until it was threatening to crush her. The cold tentacles of hopelessness wrapped around her throat and left her gasping for air that her lungs couldn't seem to draw.

It took coaxing from her brother. Gentle and unwavering support from her mother. The unvoiced concern of her grandfather. And of course resolve and a grudging acceptance from Kagome herself. But it was the love of her family that finally helped her to get out of bed. Leave her room. Take small and cautious steps to regain what remained of her life.

It was a feat easier said than done.

She was back with her family, back in the era she’d been born in, back home. For a while, she tried to draw comfort in that. To pretend that nothing was wrong, that it was enough. But she was irrevocably changed.

She’d never before realised how much her travels in the past had changed her. How everything she’d experienced there had morphed her. How she had grown. And most of all, how for some time now, she’d only ever been a visitor in her own era. Her heart belonged to the past.

All these things, she only realised now, in the After, when she found herself a stranger in her own home, unable to recognise the girl she’d been before. Unable to settle into the life she’d had before. Unable to return to the half of her life that had slowly taken over everything else.

With the closing of the well, she had lost her other home. She had lost her friends. She had lost Inuyasha. But the worst of all was that she had lost herself.

She had been the Shikon Miko. She had gone on a quest of both danger and purpose. She had faced battles and adversaries and reigned victorious with her friends. She had helped find all the shards of the Shikon jewel and had pieced it together. Guarded it. Defeated Naraku. And finally, together with Inuyasha, put an end to Shikon no Tama’s cursed cycle of existence.

Now she was none of that. Just a failing high school student who’d fallen behind her peers. Her adventurous life had dwindled into one filled with textbooks, remedial classes and cram school as she struggled to catch up, fought to save her grades from a disaster so she might yet make something of her high school education. 

She was doing it more for her family than herself, though. She couldn’t think of the future beyond the next couple of days, couldn’t face the world yawning in front of her. The world without Inuyasha, her friends, adventure.

The world where she had lost her way.

The future held no appeal to someone who had made her home in the past; a home that her soul still longed for, her heart still clung to.

In the end, however, going to school turned out to be a good thing. It gave Kagome a reason to get out of bed and out of the house. It provided some structure and purpose to her aimless existence. It helped fill the endlessly yawning days and her studies became an escape from her thoughts and the bittersweet memories of better days. She could lose herself in her textbooks and school papers and let the world where she never quite fit in right anymore fade away.

That wasn’t to say Kagome didn’t make an effort, once she’d shaken off the initial gloom. She attended school. Started getting much better grades. Joined the archery club. Met up regularly with her friends at WacDonalds. Helped out at home and at the shrine. Spent time with her family. Played video games with Souta. Listened to grandpa’s wild stories. Curled up on the sofa next to her mother to watch her favourite dramas with her. 

She really tried. And though there were moments of laughter, hours of joy, days of sunshine and cheer, happiness eluded her.

Deep down within her, there was a yawning chasm of hurt and regret, of longing and nostalgia. Filled with all the could-have-beens. Here and there, something would remind her of Inuyasha and the chasm inside would gape all the larger, mocking her with her loss. Like a phantom limb, there was a constant throbbing ache that she carried, a painful reminder of the life she could have led.

Joining the archery club had been Kagome’s way to reclaim her identity. And some days were wonderful, the familiar soothing motions of firing her bow rooting her in the moment, making her forget the past, forcing her to focus on her breathing and her breathing alone. But other days, the bow in her hand, the arrow between her fingers, only served to remind her of what she used to be and she sighted at the target in despair because this all was just a pale imitation of true adventure, a bunch of high school students playacting.

Kagome wanted to fit in, to go back to the only life she knew before she'd travelled down the well, but it was no use. She’d seen so much more, done more, been more… This life she’d been left with no longer felt like it was enough. But it was all she had so she tried to make the most of it, while the chasm inside her loomed large, its jagged mouth gaping with darkness.

Like everyone else, Kagome sat through the university entrance exams. She attended her high school graduation, mustering a smile for her mother and grandfather, beaming proudly at her. She started her studies at university.

Life went on, as was its way, a forcible stream that ripped apart any effort to dam its course.

But Kagome didn’t move on. She couldn’t. Perhaps, deep down, in the pitch black of her chasm, she didn’t want to. 

In university, she chose to major in history, intent on specialising in the Sengoku period in particular. She threw herself once more into academics, drowning the present out with the past. Seeing it come to life in the pages of her textbooks, in the records that remained, in diaries, letters, poems of old. She pored over any document or legend or scroll she could find, hoping to get just one glimpse into the life she’d once lived, the world she’d once been a part of.   

But this protective bubble she’d built and burrowed in, lined with history books and studies of the past, burst just as she was about to start her third year in university.

Her grandfather got sick.

Her family, that integral pillar of support that had been keeping her upright all these years now teetered precariously. The chasm inside her widened, darkness slipping out once again, floating through her like smoke and dimming out all the light in her life.

It was serious and Kagome’s mother worried, spending half her days at the hospital at grandfather’s bedside. Kagome offered to help, though she herself was barely holding on now, hope slipping through her fingers as the freezing numbness in her soul pressed closer. 

It was a Saturday, a bright and sunny day, mocking Kagome with its cheeriness. She’d come to the hospital with her mother. Her grandfather had been in the hospital for almost two weeks now. She’d sat by his bedside, pasting a pale imitation of a smile on her lips as she chatted with him. But he wasn’t quite there anymore, too wearied to stay awake or alert for long, his mind muddled half the time, whether from the age or the medications or the illness. It made her stomach churn, to see her grandfather like this, an ailing old man who seemed like a stranger. 

When he fell to sleep, Kagome made her excuses, gave her mother a quick hug before leaving the room.

And finally, under the numbness and haze that had been plaguing her since her grandfather had fallen ill an emotion stirred. Sadness unfurled within her, vast like an ocean, a grey sea of misery she’d surely drown in if she let herself to fall in.

Kagome was blindly walking along the sterile corridor, more lost than she'd been in years, when suddenly she felt like a horde of ants was skittering and crawling on her skin. As a faint, sluggish pulse pressed against her temples, her strides steadied, lengthened, gained a purpose. All thoughts of her grandfather fled from her head as her stomach clenched, the ocean of sadness retreating once more as something old and achingly familiar rushed inside her once more, a wild and free torrent.

Distantly, Kagome was aware that her hands were trembling, that her hurried steps were now slipping into a half-run, that her heart was beating a rapid, frenzied rhythm while slowly crawling up her throat.

All she could focus on now was her screaming senses and the frail tendrils of darkness that had alerted them. Following the weak trail lingering in the air.

She paused before the door, rested her hands against it, her breath stuck in her lungs. She was terrified of what would wait on the other side of it. She was giddy with excitement, revelling in the feeling of the dark aura licking against her skin. A sensation she’d thought forever lost to her. 

With her heart teetering at the edge of a precipice, Kagome slid the door open and stepped in.

She stared at the figure lying comatose in the hospital bed for a long while, fingers digging into the skin of her arms as she hugged herself.

She didn’t even recognise him at first, not until she saw the markings.

Once, they had stood vivid and proud against the pale perfection of his skin. Now they were faded and wan, offering little contrast with his sallow face.

The tears Kagome hadn’t been able to shed for so long now streamed down her cheeks as she crossed over to the bed. Even with her vision blurred she drank in the sight of him. 

It was a shock to her system – and not just because she’d never expected to see him again. Sobs burned in her throat, threatening to spill from her lips. 

Like his markings, he was just a shadow of the daiyoukai she’d once known. His wonderful silver-white hair that she’d secretly admired had been hacked off. It had lost its gloss, lying limp against his head. He was thin enough to appear gaunt. His skin had a sickly pallid cast to it. 

And the worst of all were the tubes and wires and other medical paraphernalia attached to him, hooking him to monitors and whatnot. It looked wrong. He looked all wrong, lying there in front of her, so fragile. 

As if any second, he could break.

What had happened to him? What had brought him here? Rendered him into this husk of a youkai?

Her knees weak, Kagome dropped down to sit on the edge of his bed. Her tears still ran unchecked, falling to dot the hospital sheets. It broke her heart all over again, seeing him like this. 

She reached out, unable to help herself. Her fingers brushed against the flimsy hospital gown, splayed over his chest. She rested the palm of her hand on top of his heart because she had to touch him, to reassure herself that despite how he looked, he was alive. 

Kagome closed her eyes on a sigh. The tears were slowly drying on her cheeks. Her arms were alive with goosebumps, reacting to the darkly whirling youki in the room. It was thin and subdued, not at all like the storm of power she remembered. But it was there and that was all that mattered. 

That, and the heartbeat under her palm – steady, if sluggish.

Kagome opened her eyes and looked at him. A gasp tore from her lips.

The eyes – golden, bright and clear – were open, staring at her.

Kagome’s fingers curled, pressing into his chest now as her own heart began to race. Her other hand, shaking, rose as if by its own volition to come to rest on the cool skin of his cheek.

He was still staring at her, the youki in the room was pressing more insistently against her skin and the tears were burning in her eyes again.

The corners of Kagome’s lips curved, her voice rasping out in a broken whisper.

“Hello, Sesshoumaru.”

 End.