Foot over padded foot, furry paw over paw, the white dog darted through the city streets as though he was darting through tree and over rocks. An occasional light would catch, reflect, off of his pelt, giving him the appearance of a shooting star that didn’t know where to land.

He is coming for her.

She will be.

A large, black wolf growls at him, and the dog is shocked at himself for not realizing he was there before. The wolf’s fangs are shining white in the moonlight, whiter even than the dog’s pale fur, and his lips are wracked up in a snarl.

You dare… he is challenging in the language of the dogs, because five hundred years has given Koiishi wolf the strength to surpass his own father, who not only has grown decrepit in his old age but is no longer called Alpha or God or Mate, because he has lost. The Dog is nothing but an exiled prince.

The Dog is too far gone, too lonely, to do anything more than whimper and lower his ears. Please, he is saying, just let me see her. Just once more. . . that’s all.

The wolf sniffs, and if they were human he would have spit. Instead, he marks the line that the Dog isn’t allowed to cross.

You had your second chance.

The Dog whimpers, because he knows it’s true. A voice in the back of his head, the only part of Sesshoumaru that still remains, reminds him that it is his own fault, and that he deserves nothing more than what Koiishi Wolf is giving him. He deserves, as a matter of fact, less.

You killed her.

Neither one is sure who said it, so the Wolf and the Dog accept it as the truth.

And as a frail baby girl screams, the Dog howls. And the Wolf just laughs at him.

She is five and playing in the terrace of the shrine, bouncing that pretty red ball of hers up and down, giggling as she did so. It is tantalizing, and the Dog punishes himself by reminding himself that she could have been his, was his, would be his, if he hadn’t gone so mad…

She looks up, smiling, and says something that he doesn’t understand because she doesn’t yet know how to speak in the language of the dogs. Her voice, though, is calm and soothing, so he thumps his tail, a muffled sound against the pavement, and with his face on his front paws, scuttles forward slowly as to not scare her.

His fear of hearing her screams are proven moot as she giggles, clapping her hands and singing something in a language he used to understand but stopped bothering to speak.

“Fluffy!” She exclaims just before she presses her face in to his throat, her tiny arms around his shoulders. He doesn’t know what she said, but feels an unreasonable tinge of annoyance. Not that it bothers him or anything. He’s feeling again.

“Kagome!” The Mother who isn’t the Moon calls out to her from the door. “Get away from that dog!” She runs forward, shooing the white dog as she comes, trying to save her daughter from a dog that killed her. She doesn’t even know it.

“Probably got fleas…” The Mother who isn’t the Moon mutters as she ushers Alpha Goddess Mate inside, and locks the door with the finality of a click.

This time he knows he should feel insulted, but isn’t sure why.

“Idiot.” Koiishi is human, his hair pulled back neatly and his face carefully shaved. It would be easy, they know, the two who are called by the moon, to forget that they were once human and turn in to the animal that claws at the back of their throats, and shaving is just one way to control it. It distinguishes between Man and Wolf, and Koiishi doesn’t let himself be ruled by his weaker emotions, because that would be to lose control and harm someone, just like Father who isn’t Alpha or God or Mate did to Mother.

Just like Father who is lying underneath the porch of Mother, thin and starved and still in the body of the dog because the world moved on, but he didn’t. Koiishi reaches a hand underneath, trying to grab at the scruff of his neck, and the White Dog growls, threatening to attack. His teeth sink deep in to Koiishi’s flesh, but Koiishi doesn’t whimper, doesn’t yip, because Sesshoumaru is just being a child.

“Is something wrong?” Kagome is twelve and wearing shorts, her hair held high in pig tails as she toys with an ice cream cone between her tongue and her teeth.

“It’s just a dumb dog…” Koiishi responds, trying his hardest not to make eye contact with his mother.

“Oh, him. He’s harmless, really.” She giggles, and leans forward to share her secret. “Sometimes I sneak food out to him, because he’s a good dog!”

Sesshoumaru doesn’t release his hold on Koiishi, but his tail swishes across the gravel, a sound unmistakable to Koiishi. It is nearly enough to convince him to let him stay. . .

Until he remembers his Mother’s crumbled body, torn and not human, not wolf, but something gruesome and hideous and so in between that it was a breed that belonged just to her. Her broken limps, her crushed skull, and the evening by the well that Koiishi said goodbye to Sesshoumaru for what he hoped would be the last time.

Koiishi jerks his hand, pulling Sesshoumaru with it, and holds him high in the air by the scruff of his neck. Sesshoumaru yips, pup-like and pleading, and Koiishi holds him at eye level.

“Change!” And Mother did as he commanded, shimmering between Wolf and Woman, screaming in agony as she tried to adjust to the hold that worked on dogs, but not on humans.

Koiishi sneered, and nearly demands the same. “It’s just a dumb dog…”

Sesshoumaru whimpers, because he agrees wholeheartedly.

The White Dog was there, in the background, held in place by Koiishi the morning of her fifteenth birthday, when she falls down the well, just like Alice falling down the bunny hole, just like children tripping down the stairs.

The Dog tries to stop her, to hold her to him, to change and fix his mistakes, but the wolf won’t let him.

This is all your fault. The Wolf is telling the Dog over and over again. Now you watch. Watch what you did.

The Dog wishes that he is human so that he can scream.

She crawls back through the well for the second to last time. Only the last time she comes back, she won’t be moving or breathing or his, and it’s all his fault it’s his fault his fault.

The wolf is by his side, solemn, and Sesshoumaru knows what he is about to do. Realizes the mistakes that he made root from this one, this moment right here and now, and Sesshoumaru knows that his son…

Don’t.

It is a plea, a whimper, a beg. Please.

The wolf looks at him, sneering. She asked you the same thing.

Then the wolf is darting forward, snarling and biting and ripping her humanity away, and leaving something canine and foreign in it’s place. And even that, Sesshoumaru knows, will only last for a little while before he tears even that away and leaves her with nothing at all.

Steady, solemn, Sesshoumaru watches as his son attacks his Mate, and knows that this is the way it has to be.

Souta is laughing, more stumbling than running through the lightly planted wood on the property of their shrine, when he finds the dog. White and dangerously thin, he approaches him, and runs a hand over a washboard rib cage.

“Souta?” His mother calls out to him, even though she is looking at the well, waiting for a daughter that will only return to her as a corpse.

“Mom!” Souta cries back, not taking his gaze off the dog. “I found a dead dog!”

Sesshoumaru will return to her as a corpse too. . .

Spirits don’t move the same as the living. They aren’t particularly malicious, and they see things for they way they were and the way they are.

I love you, one form says to another, to all others, and embraces it in to itself. Sesshoumaru eases out of the body of the dead and in to the body of something greater. He eases his way in to the comforting embrace of something that isn’t Kagome, but is.

I know.