Karerui no Hana: The Wilting Flower by Pretty

The Wilting Flower

He had hunted her for nearly a fortnight. Following rumors of the broken miko from afar from his home in the West, to the mountains in the North, to the Southern valleys, and finally he found her in the far East. She was a pitiful sight to behold. She reeked of blood and grime, her once flowing, ebon hair tangled and unkempt. Her lust for life that he had once almost admired in her cerulean eyes was gone, never to return, bled from her soul in the final battle between good and evil.

His brother had done well, bringing down the wicked hanyou with a righteous vengeance. How ironic, that when Inuyasha had died on that fated night nearly two weeks ago now, he had shattered the very thing he had sought to protect so valiantly.

He had heard, via word of mouth, that Naraku had met the group in the growing village of Edo. The impious hanyou had lain in wait, until the miko had returned home from wherever it was she came. Even with his superior youkai intellect, with all the years of wisdom held in his pretty silver head, Sesshoumaru could not certainly decipher her origins. It seemed, he realized with frustration born of an unsatisfied itch of his curiosity, that no one really knew.

It did not matter, he decided, because his quarry was in his sights and his honor would be restored with her blood. It had been his duty, as the Youkai Lord of the Western Lands, to rid the world of the Naraku. But his dearest little brother had once again taken what was his. And the girl, being the only one left of the little motley group, would pay the price.

He approached her silently. Her dry, wretched sobs tore at his sensitive ears so that he wanted nothing more at the moment than to rip out her throat for the sake of peace. 'Soon enough,' he reminded himself. There was no malice in his expression. No satisfaction in his thoughts of what was to come. Only duty. Duty is what drove the strong. Only the weak relied on emotion to govern their actions. That, he knew, was why his brother had lived such a short life.

She didn't notice as he stepped from behind the trees and into her sights. Or perhaps she just didn't care. The taiyoukai approached her with caution born of long-engrained prudence toward her race. Youkai and miko, the two opposites. His concern (he called it concern, for he, Sesshoumaru, could never fear anything) was strictly instinctual. He did not truly think that this scrawny, foolish, pathetic human girl could ever truly do him bodily harm. That was just absurd. But somewhere, deep in the forgotten recesses of his mind, his restrained beast knew in his very soul, to dread her.

"Miko," he spoke to her in a soft but commanding tone when she did not move. Thin, bony shoulders were quivering under her papery skin, which was a hideously unhealthy shade of greenish-yellow. He gracefully stepped closer to her until his knees were just a hairbreadth's away from her hunched form. Now that he was closer, he could see what had her attention ensnared so assiduously. Lying in front of her swollen knees were five shallow graves occupied, he could only assume, by her deceased companions. 'Pathetic...'

Towering over her like an impending doom, he could see very clearly the sullied bandages stretched taught across even thinner, tighter flesh. Like a thick, choking fog, her anguish hung around her and clung to her body, her clothes, her hair; he could smell it. Her shoulders were drooping with a massive weight, back bowed grotesquely under the burden of her sorrow. Her heavy head was sunken against her chest, leaving the back of her neck exposed to the chilly night air... and his claws.

He reached out slowly, his billowing sleeve sliding down around his striped wrist. Lethal talons flexed eagerly only inches from her pulsing river of life. She smelled like death, he noticed as he arched over her shaking form, and it made his beasti twitch with morbid anticipation. When his hand was about to close over her unsuspecting throat, she spoke.

"Inuyasha really didn't hate you," her voice was flat and dull, the only intonation a crack from days of disuse.

He stood completely still. Looking down on her, he only now truly realized that she was indeed still in the land of the living, albeit holding on by a singly feeble blade of withering faith. Her statement caused him pause. What was she prattling? What did she mean? How did this little piece fit into the disturbed puzzle of her mind?

It didn't, he decided; the troubled girl was just revisiting translucent memories, chasing ghosts that weren't there.

Her voice came again, so soft and silent that it seemed like little more than a passing breeze. "He admired you, you know..."

So, she was coherent. She noticed him, she knew he was there. Still, why could he not move? What difference did it make?

He watched with an unexplained dread as she raised her hand, her first voluntary movement, and ran fragile fingers through snarled, midnight locks. And something clicked in his mind. Like a bursting floodgate, images poured without mercy through his mind's eye. Images of a young, smiling human girl in a checkered yukata, a miko in indecent garb beaming with joy. Rin always ran her grubby hands through her hair when she was nervous, or when she was thinking.

Sesshoumaru realized, with growing dread, that he may not be able to kill her. Perhaps she reminded him too much of his Rin. 'No,' he rationalized, 'this is not Rin. This is not even the miko. This creature barely resembles her.'

He was compelled to grab her shoulder. And he did. He hauled her up with his one arm, his claws digging into her skin, causing her ripped white blouse to stain slightly with pinpricks of crimson life. He turned her around roughly with an inexplicable anger and glared into her eyes. They were not hers, as he had predicted.

The girl looked limply back at him, her face blank and devoid of anything. It was... disturbing. Twin tear tracks still flowed down her cheeks, though her expression was empty. Her large, navy eyes shown stark against the pale of her skin, making her seem hollow. They reminded him of a deep, dark, dank well. Oddly, he got the impression that he could toss a stone into them and never hear its echoing impact.

She continued to stare up at him, though he was sure she could not see him. Her swollen lips parted, ever so slightly, and an anguished melody leaked from the petals, bittersweet like frozen nectar. "Have you come to end me?"

Something about her wording made his resolve waver. He had the power lying, quite literally, in his palm. The power to rise or fall, the power to sink or swim, to give or to take... and for the first time in his unnaturally long life, Sesshoumaru couldn't decide what to do with this power.

His mouth opened, and then closed, his fogged mind grasping desperately at a solution that wasn't to be found. Finally, he painted his words with an artistic tongue. "Any flower, no matter how beautiful or resilient, will one day wilt. And when this blossom falls from its tree, it is useful to no one." Somewhere in his subconscious he hoped this would justify his actions, and somewhere in the forefront of his mind he knew it wouldn't.

Her eyes, if possible, dulled even more to a pallid, deathly gray. Her head tilted downward to lie against her chest, her matted locks falling to expose her vulnerable neck to his hungry claws once more. It was as if she was begging. Begging for him to pluck her from this tenuous branch.

It would be so painfully simple...

After a few moments in suspended animation, the object of his ire raised her head to look at him with those wide, hollow pools of despair so different from the fiery imp who had so fearlessly faced him down in the past. What had gone so wrong? She was a moving shell, a comatose mockery of human life. All because her loved ones had passed over into the next world, the proud creature lost her footing on the figurative precipice of her will. She was falling, dropping, plunging into the seas of lost souls and quickly forgetting how to swim. How did humans live with this weakness called love?

They didn't, he realized looking down into soulless storm-cloud eyes. They did not live. They balanced on the edge of a thin blade, letting their foolish emotions tilt and tip them until finally their imminent downfall was realized when one side of their emotional pole became too heavy, too crooked to do any good at all.

Staring at the fallen seraph, so pliant and uncaring in his murderous grasp, he decided then that he would never fall victim to this emotion as so many others had. His mother, his father, his brother, and now this mortal miko had all so willingly died for this "love."

But not he. Not Sesshoumaru. He would stand alone, victorious, on the battle field of this dangerous game.

Without the satisfaction he thought would come with this end, he raised his claws. "Close your eyes," he whispered mercifully, resignedly; truly, he did not want to look into those lifeless pools any longer. Kagome obediently lowered her lids with a tired sigh, the dark lashes lying against ashen cheeks in such stark contrast it was disturbing.

The coppery scent of fresh blood lay heavy in the night air.

He knew those desolate eyes, that inconsolable face would haunt him for the rest of his days.