Standard Disclaimer: Inuyasha and all belong to Rumiko Takahashi.

A/N: Mou. I really, really need to stop writing when I'm bored out of my skull during lecture. I have come up with the most bizarre, abstract crap of my life trying to stay awake through some of those dissertations. Anyhow, the instructor was off on a tangent and I started to wonder why Sesshoumaru has never killed Kagome despite ample opportunity. This idea just kinda popped in there, short and weird, and I typed it up. At Kayla's insistence, it's getting posted in all its random glory. ^__~

Echo

I knew I should have gone with my gut instinct the first time I ever saw her.

However, I allowed my own arrogance and impatience to dismiss her.

She was, after all, only one human female.

Made even more ignorable by the fact that she traveled in close company with the hanyou son of my father. The hanyou who reminded me with his very existence of my own mother's unnatural death; the full youkai siblings I should have had never to be due to a careless error. Due again to the arrogant assumptions that were the flaw of both my father and myself.

We had believed that simply because she was ours, his mate and my mother, that there was nothing in the world that could have taken her away. We believed her when she said she was well.

I was younger then, barely old enough to be free of the degrading name "pup," but there is only one memory that remains crystal clear in my mind. The image burned forever into my dreams and nightmares of the life fading slowly from my mother's eyes. I had watched it flicker and die before my own very young and disbelieving eyes.

And I clearly remember the rage that followed.

It was a violent, murderous, blind rage. one that brought about the slaughter of hundreds of human and youkai indiscriminately. Until my father put a stop to it.

I felt so dead on the inside. Cold. Even detached from the life that flowed all around me.

I had to escape it.

And so I fled.

I didn't even stay to watch my mother buried, I don't think I would have been able to handle that so soon, choosing instead to roam my father's lands. Any youkai or human that crossed my path in the time met with an untimely end, finding themselves an outlet for the pain I was fighting to control. Each death aided my struggle towards the cold control I so badly desired. the stoic mask I worked so hard to attain. I was determined to kill my emotions, the thing that had made me weak enough to lose control.

And that meant forcing myself to forget my mother.

It worked too.

For a few centuries, father and I were feared throughout the lands, our names synonymous with ruthless cruelty and danger. Our lands peaceful and prosperous while our enemies were cut down if they dared rear armies against us. But that all changed with one woman.

Our father knew why I couldn't look at the woman he had taken for a mate, my reasons for staying away from her the exact same as what had started the return of his own feelings. But that was his reason for wanting her, loving her.

She made us remember.

And I hated her for that.

The bitch that would bring my hanyou brother into the world weakened my father, as I would not allow myself to be weakened. He saw his dead mate reborn in her gentle smile, her graceful walk, her open laughter. her eyes... And once he told me it was that one thing that had made it impossible for him to ignore the human girl, the reason he had chosen her. That was enough to make me avoid her completely.

I had a premonition that day, and I can't explain why or how, but I knew that my father would not live past his next century.

And when that premonition came true before Inuyasha had reached his third decade, I felt an emotion I thought I had killed completely in the years since my mother's death.

Fear.

I took them away in their sleep, in the night, when I wouldn't have to see their eyes. I didn't think I would have the strength to abandon them if they looked at me, not after how very deeply father and I had believed in the ties of blood. But I refused to be brought down like my father, and the only way I could think of to protect myself was to banish them from my sight, from my mind.

It didn't work as well as I had hoped.

The guilt I felt when I heard of the human woman's unnatural death was unexpected, and I nearly lost control of myself. I searched for Inuyasha then, but the hanyou had disappeared without a trace. I had no idea he had been watching me from a distance until over a century later when he confronted me.

I did not want him to suffer the same fate as our father. as me.

I wanted him to escape the curse that had stolen our father's life and my control.

However, I had not taken into consideration that my hanyou brother had received the same arrogance and stubbornness of father's blood. Had I realized that sooner, I may have tried to sound less unfeeling when I told him to forget her. I was unprepared for the violent reaction of my juvenile half-brother.

He was not strong enough to do any damage, but I could see the passionate rage and hate in his eyes when I beat him. It was like looking at myself in a mirror after the death of my own mother.

I couldn't look at him any more than I had been able to look at myself at such a time.

To my undying embarrassment, I fled again, leaving Inuyasha on his own.

In my lands I refused to allow his name to be spoken, unwilling to be reminded of my failure to do my duty by my father's blood, but I had him watched. Up until he was sealed by the human miko woman in his attempt to recover that ridiculous magic jewel. I refused to believe a child of my father's blood could be so stupid, and I traveled to see him for myself.

And I did see it.

Inuyasha became the embodiment of every failure I had ever had as I stared at his peaceful face against the holy tree, the miko's arrow protruding from his chest. My mind filled with every chance I'd had to prevent this end to my brother's life, every mistake I'd made dealing with him. I felt helpless, and that was a feeling I hated even worse than fear.

I vowed to forget him the same way I had forgotten my mother.

I never anticipated that he could be freed.

It would have taken a human miko of considerable powers to break the spell that had been placed on him, and no miko in her right mind would ever set a hanyou free.

Or so I had thought.

When Jaken reported that Inuyasha was awake, I thought it was a mistake, and I came closer to killing him than I ever had before. But he sounded so certain, and I was curious. Not only that, but I was searching for the Tetsusaiga.

I should have stayed away, kept with my plan to forget.

I wouldn't have had to see her.

At first she was too far away for me to see her clearly. All I knew was that she was human, and female, bizarrely dressed with strange mannerisms, and something I could use to taunt Inuyasha. It was easier for me to hurt him when he was enraged, his eyes the reflection of everything I hated in myself. I thought I could kill him that way.

But still I held back.

My excuse remains that I was distracted when I saw the female my brother was protecting up close for the first time, my only warning about her a nagging feeling at the back of my mind. Something about the girl making me pause, making me nervous and urging me to destroy her completely, quickly.

I tried to kill her, but it was sloppy, half-hearted.

Father's sword protected her.

Inuyasha protected her.

And I was rather forcibly hit in the face with the fact that my hanyou brother had grown stronger than I ever imagined he would become.

I was enraged with myself for behaving with such idiocy towards my brother, my panic at finding him free after five decades making me act like little more than a juvenile rather than the Lord of the Western lands. I fully intended to take the time I needed to recover from losing my arm to restore my control, determined not to behave in such a fashion again. I am, after all, an ancient. my hanyou brother should not be able to defeat me.

It was while I was cursing myself for my behavior that the female's face returned to my mind. In my sleep, my mind haunting me with images long suppressed.

Images of the past.

I woke from the nightmare feverish and disoriented, my mind a tumbled mess of broken memories with only one defined, recognizable image.

At that moment, my dreams showed me what I had not wanted to see.

I knew the reason my mind had been urging me to kill the human female who had defended my brother. Why my soul had subconsciously shied away from her; why I had felt the need to kill her quickly.

And I knew why I would not be able to do so.

It seemed Inuyasha was walking the path of our bloodlines in the same way as our father before him, despite what I had tried to do to shield him. Whether he was aware of it or not.

That girl has my mother's eyes.