A/N: I recently thought of something --- she never actually looked up when he held Tenseiga and was going to use it. So this far more depressing take on chapter 374 was born. Note, I'm not saying he didn't care (because he quite obviously did), I'm saying she maybe might have not noticed it ...

Warnings: Spoilers, excessive mention of blood. I can't help it if I'm morbid. Also, I think there's one line that is out of line with the canon chain of events --- the first italicized sentence was thought by her after she first thinks 'I am free'. It was an accident, but I'm not going to change it.

Disclaimer: You better all be thankful that I don't own any of the fandoms that I dabble in, or they'd be a thousand times more depressing than they already are (as evidenced by this oneshot).

She sits, dripping blood down on the flowers. Only the bees’ buzzing and the birds’ nearly nonexistant chirping breaks the silence.

Where will I go from here? she wonders. I can go anywhere ...

And then, because it’s true, I am free.

But pain shudders through her body, and she clutches at her torn kimono and at the grass with bloody fingers.

Dammit. She coughs, and there’s even more blood, dripping down from her lip across her chin. My body won’t move.

But as she looks around she decides that it isn’t so bad, dying here ...

So this is where it ends ...? I’m all alone — this is ... the freedom I was longing for ...

It is as she is staring defeated at the ground that he comes, with barely a whisper of sound. She looks up in shock, and it’s so strange and unlooked for that he should be here now, of all times, that she whispers his name.

“... Sesshoumaru ..?”

His face is cool, impassive as always, his voice the same. “I smelled Naraku’s shouki.”

It isn’t such a surprise after all. “Sorry,” she murmurs, and the word is bitter, bitter on her tongue. “He’s not here.”

There is a momentary pause. “I knew it was you.” he says, and her eyes looks down quickly, so he won’t see her hope, so he won’t crush it.

Her kimono is drenched in blood, and her body sends pain signals up to her brain, demanding her to writhe in agony. She doesn’t — she refuses this one last order that Naraku and his attack has given her with the defiance she has felt all her brief life.

“I see,” she whispers, though she doesn’t. You knew ... and you came?

There is another silence, longer. She remembers that he has a sword that can bring back the dead, and, fleetingly, wishes or hardly dares to hope to wonder if he will use it on her. After all, what is she to him? Naraku’s puppet. An annoyance.

She’s nothing to him.

She doesn’t look up, and so she doesn’t see, doesn’t see ...

“Are you going?” he asks, so calmly, and the tiny candle of hope she had flickers out. He really doesn’t care. He came only out of curiosity. He doesn’t care at all.

How odd this is, this ache in her chest. She finds it strange that her heart should be breaking when she has only just gotten it.

She looks up at him, and smiles at his cold, uncaring face. She is almost numb now, and a feeling of apathy has started to settle in.

“Yes, soon.” she tells him. “It’s fine, though ...” and she almost finishes it, almost says what she has decided must stay locked up inside her forever. Half of her is thinking she should, that there’s no time for embarrassment, she’s fucking dying, dammit, what does it matter? But she doesn’t. She can’t.

You were here, she thinks, but doesn’t say, because she can’t tell that impassive face that it actually mattered to her. She can’t.

So she explodes into dust on the wind without a word, just a sigh of joy, and blows through the flowers and the trees and past Inuyasha and his group.

And Kagura dances around Sesshoumaru, all over and around him and whispers that she is free, the free wind, again and again and again ...

Even though he can’t hear her. Even though he’s never cared.