Aikouka
006: Hoodoo.
Inuyasha does not belong to me, nor will it ever belong to me.

---

One day when she is young and pretty and just a human she wonders if he loves her.

It takes many days and months for her to get the answer, but when it finally comes, it makes her ears hear a tune only the spirits sing, and her blood rush fast through those tubes in her body that leak when split.

She spins and dances when she decides he loves her, makes flower chains to place in her hair so she is pretty, and hums a traditional wedding march that she heard once when she was a human, and he was unknown to the world.

(Which is ridiculous, because Lord Sesshoumaru has always been, always will be, and is never-ending in his luminance. He was not known to her, she should say, as he is there and has been there, while she has been here, and right now is there, but never never-ending.)

She presents him a paired daisy-chain with a loud proclamation of devotion, and he lets her wrap it around his wrist. He agrees to wear it for one day, and she feels happy.

Then Jaken whispers to her, he will never love a human like you, and she smiles at him because she knows that there is no “will”, but only a “yes”.

---

One day soon when she dies (for the second but not the last time), she sees oblivion at its finest. Stardust sifts through her fingers like sand, and the blackness bursts with light all in one explosion of colour. Her clothing feels like feathers on her skin, but her toes and fingers feel hang heavy with all the weight in the world.

The darkness faded - like it always does, when he's around - and the starlight formed mass and the colour drifted away on the breeze.

Then she's alive again (for the third but yes the last) and it's all dull and listless for one moment, vibrant and energetic the next. She smiles up at him, he inclines his head towards her, and she thinks she might be happy.

---

Years pass, and she's no longer a child with dreams and stardust dancing in her sleep. She's a woman now, with pictures of new lives in her vision as she watches them form and disappear from afar.

The wind dances through her hair as she observes the humans, and she slants her head and squints her eyes to see them better. One life is happy, full of children and prosperity, while another is rife with difficulty and pain.

It makes her wonder what her’s is like, and what she might be full of when someone else observes her and her antics.

His footsteps crunch the grass behind her, and she wraps her arms around herself. He lets himself be heard so he doesn’t startle her, and it worries her that he treats her so.

She turns to him and says "I am not a human?"

He looks at her and says "You are not a demon."

And they turn away from the pictures to return to their palace floating near the moon, and she thinks she might be wrong about him loving her after all.

---

Her room is burning, flames piling high on one wall while creeping through the cracks in the ceiling, and she doesn't know what to do.

The screams of the demonic servants rise from under the floorboards, and the heat rises with them. They are suffocating and burning away and she doesn't know what to do and where is Lord Sesshoumaru and who did this to her oh so perfect but not really perfect world?

With great difficulty, she pries her fists away from her ears, and listens to the other sounds, beyond the crackle of flames. Human voices, laughing and taunting a little green demon with a staff holding three heads. He is begging for their mercy, that after all he did help them get here, and please don't burn him again?

She wonders where Sesshoumaru is, and is answered by a cry of horror from the green demon and the shatter of glass as he appears before her glittering and in white.

One strong arm wraps around her waist without meeting her eyes, and she grips the stump of the other as they run through another rain of glass to see the contemptuous looks of the human lords and the horrified stare of the retainer. She has an urge to laugh at their eyes and their tongues, but as the shining white samurai lord drops her to the ground, the compulsion is killed dead with a pointy stick.

He draws his sword with deadly intent towards their aggressors, and she looks up at him in awe.

---

That day, when she is older and beautiful and full to the brim with spiritual power, she wonders if she loves him.

It takes two minutes and thirty three seconds to figure out the answer.

It isn’t surprising when she finds that she doesn’t.

A/N - This is my (one and only) acknowledgement of chapter 470. Now I can go back to pretending the entire thing didn't happen, and make more semi-immortal!Rin fics. Who's with me? Say Aye!

Also, palace floating near the moon is a nod to Resmiranda's House of the Moon, which isn't a SessRin fic, but is extremely interesting nonetheless.