Ukime No Sekisetsu by Lyra

Fallen: Sesshomaru

Part I

Fallen: Sesshomaru

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. Afterward, 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? When they came asking, 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- a necessity for the human guests he could not avoid having, these days - 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 pennants of silver cloud, flooding the earth with light.

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 dark wind clad in silk, he moved out into the night.

~~~

A/N: Ha!  Just noticed some funny bits that got pasted in accidentally and deleted them.  Oops! :D

**Note: My apologies to the admins, the poem in this chapter is from the Arthur Waley volume titled Translations From The Chinese, copyright 1941. My copy is now water damaged :( but hey, credit where it’s due. This also applies to the poem in Chapter Two, which comes from the same source.

All other poems included as part of this fanfiction are original works of me!

Please Review! 

Return to Top