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A flick of the fan.
That was the difference between Kagura surviving another day and dying. Not enough action for Naraku to feel attacked, but just enough that when she fled, her own heart in her chest and several miasma-injected holes in her body, she could heal.
There were no saimyōshō on her tail, so Naraku must have thought his poison would do its work. He always did overestimate his abilities, but Kagura would take it. The excruciating pain shocked her body as she fled, but she pushed onward anyway; she needed to get far enough away to hide. It would take at least a few days to be back up and on her feet, and she wanted as much time as she could find to think.
It was a new and alien sensation: the badump-badump-badump. And as her newly-won heart pumped, the poison spread.
Your weakness will always be in what you overlook, Naraku, Kagura thought.
Yes, it was spreading the poison to untouched parts of her body, but those parts of her body were also untapped reservoirs of healing. As long as she could withstand the pain, she would be able to withstand the poison.
Kagura knew pain.
This was nothing.
She’d nearly been turned to stone, she’d been tortured and left in a basement, she’d been blasted with a swordstroke capable of downing one hundred in a single blow (thank goodness the hanyō’s arm had been broken…)
And of course, there were the times that Naraku felt the need to squeeze her heart.
That was always the worst.
Because it reminded her of how easily she could die, if he chose to kill her.
You will not kill me, Naraku, Kagura thought, breathing air into her free lungs, and listening again to the labored beats of her free heart.
Then, Kagura’s feather faltered.
It was time to land.
Time to sleep.
Time to heal.
She could rejoice in her freedom tomorrow.
Kagura came to a gentle landing in the canopy of the tallest tree she could find; the branches were thick and the greenery was lush enough to hide her. As she settled in, cursing the poison’s burn in her bones, she looked up at the moon: somewhere between half and waning crescent.
Now is not the time to think of him, she chastised herself when her mind wandered to the silver daiyōkai with the amethyst moon stamped across his forehead. There will be other times to think of him. For now, rest.
Kagura closed her eyes and nestled into the leaves of the tree.
She would sleep, and she would heal, and she would rejoice in her freedom tomorrow.
The first day was the hardest. It was as if her entire body was burning to cinders from the inside out. Kagura could merely exist and pray that the miasma did not break her. She had believed that the worst of the poison would be immediate, but how wrong she had been. So Kagura lay in that tree and whimpered. If a demon found her then, she would not have the strength to fight back.
It would still be better to die free like this than to live in chains.
Kagura inhaled, trying to ignore the taste of ash that filled her lungs: a result of Naraku’s poison. She would make it. She would make it. So Kagura persisted, comforted by the steady beat of her own heart.
On the fourth day, Kagura emerged from the canopy.
Free. Untethered. Her entire life now ahead of her, her own.
Where would she go?
Far away from Naraku.
But… what if the do-gooders didn’t defeat him?
Kagura rolled her eyes. That wasn’t her problem. She didn’t choose to exist, and she owed them nothing.
For the first time, she was her own person.
And so, she would go to a place where she could be her own person.
Why did her heart twist as she flew away?
Why did she feel heavier?
And why was her mind lingering on the crescent moon in the sky?
Why was… why was she sinking?
FALLING?
“Shit! Shit!” Something was happening. Every moment, Kagura’s senses were receding; Kagura’s power was receding.
What was happening?
Kagura hit the ground with a thud; at least she’d landed somewhere soft. Kagura grabbed her fan, trying to feel the force of the wind, but for the first time ever, she couldn’t. Sounds seemed to recede away into silence. Her eyes became blurred. The scents of the world around her disappeared into the void.
It was almost as if…
as if she were no longer demonic.
“No.” Kagura tried to breathe. “No.”
She’d done it. She’d escaped Naraku with her heart and now… she was human?
It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t fair.
Kagura’s emotions slammed into her so hard that she was crying before she could swallow down the tears.
This had never happened before. Not when she was chained in the dungeon. Not when she was sent on endless reconnaissance missions. Not when the fucking brat ran her ragged with meaningless tasks.
She had been so close.
“You’re human.”
Kagura knew that voice. It was the voice that had stalled her flight.
“Sesshōmaru?” Kagura looked into the golden eyes of the daiyōkai. “Why are you here?”
“Your scent changed,” Sesshōmaru answered; he was meters from Kagura, but had paused his advance. “So… you’re a hanyō.”
Kagura froze.
She remembered one night, for a flash, dark hair and gray eyes on Inuyasha before he was back to normal. She remembered too stumbling into Naraku’s weakness, and paying for it.
It had not even occurred to her, because she had never had a human night before. But… when her heart was connected to Naraku, he must have absorbed her nights of weakness too.
Something inside of her broke as she stared at Sesshōmaru’s unmoving face, and before Kagura could do anything about it, booming uncontrolled laughter broke from her in waves. Of course she would be ended so shortly after she had tasted her first freedom. Cut down during the surprise weakness on the night of the crescent moon that looked so like the one that adorned Sesshōmaru’s forehead.
The rapid beat of her heart, though, steadied her. Prepared her. Quieted the roiling emotions enough for her to accept what was next. And if Kagura were being honest with herself, the only hand she would be unashamed to die by was Sesshōmaru’s.
“So I suppose we should get on with it, then,” Kagura drawled, opening her body to whatever attack the daiyōkai had planned for her. “I ask only that you make it quick.”
Kagura had kidnapped Rin. Kagura was in league with Naraku, and had conspired to lure Sesshōmaru into trap after trap so that Naraku could possess him. Sesshōmaru had good cause to kill her, and it would be a just—
“I’ve no intention of killing you,” Sesshōmaru scowled, taking many more steps forward, until he was mere inches from her looking down where she sat, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Then why did you come?” Kagura asked. She had observed Sesshōmaru enough to know that he did not turn up places by random chance.
“Because your scent changed,” Sesshōmaru repeated, “and… I could hear the beat of your heart.”
“That does not answer my question,” Kagura scoffed, but she couldn’t look away anymore. “I’m helpless and vulnerable tonight. I can’t even put up a fight. Why would you not take advantage of this?”
“Because I do not cut down the weak,” the scowl had returned to Sesshōmaru’s face, “and… I have no desire to see the freedom you have so recently won torn away from you.” Kagura made to retort, but before she could, Sesshōmaru continued. “You heeded my words. You took your destiny into your own hands and won the battle for control of your own life.”
“A fat lot of good that did me,” Kagura lamented; Sesshōmaru’s gaze softened, almost to the point that Kagura might mistake it for affection—almost. “I am a hanyō, with no place to hide from my former master.”
“So, you stay, and fight,” Sesshōmaru answered, a twinkle now appearing in his eye. “And… one thing I have learned watching my brother fight is… there is no shame in being a hanyō.”
“Ha! I’m so weak right now that one of the passing pissant demons that crumble if I sneeze the wrong way near them could cut me down.” Kagura felt the tears resurging; she really hated feeling so out of control with her emotions.
Before Kagura could so much as collect herself, Sesshōmaru was no longer standing over her. No, he’d taken her momentary loss of composure to set himself next to her, so close that his mokomoko curled around them both. Was this an invitation? Was this a test? Kagura swallowed down the momentary panic of their closeness, and simply looked at him, hoping that perhaps she could find her answer in them.
“No pissant demon will so much as touch a hair on your head tonight,” Sesshōmaru assured, and for the first time, he took her hand into his. Now his intentions were clear.
Kagura could feel her heart beat out of her chest at the touch, at the promise that Sesshōmaru had given her, at the soft eyes that smiled at her on his serene face. It was spinning images of them, side by side, taking down the spider who had wrongly assumed that she was now dead. Because the moment she heard his voice and saw the amethyst crescent on his forehead that so perfectly matched the moon in the sky that night, Kagura knew that she would not flee.
She would fight.
And maybe too she would die.
But fighting and dying next to Sesshōmaru didn’t seem so bad.
Then maybe, just maybe, there would be time for other things too. For smiles and riding together on the wind. For exploring his lips like she had always dreamed of doing. For finding out if those nights she stared at the moon and thought of him were mirrored by nights a breeze blew through his hair and he thought too of her. It made her hopeful in a way that she had never been before, a way that only one who was human could hope. And perhaps it also made her bold.
“Do you promise?” Kagura whispered, letting herself rejoice in the staccato rhythm of her heartbeat. Letting herself move just enough so that he would understand what she desired.
“You have my word,” Sesshōmaru answered, and Kagura gave in and snuggled into his side.
Sesshōmaru paused only for a moment, then he took his single arm and he threw it around her, pulling her in more closely to him: exactly where she wanted to be.
“Then I suppose there’s no point in dying tonight,” Kagura sighed, breathing in Sesshōmaru’s warmth, feeling the lush fur of his mokomoko finish its journey and curl protectively around her. “Tomorrow, though, I’ll fight.”
“Good,” Sesshōmaru said.
Kagura would stay and Kagura would fight, her hanyō status be damned. She would do so by Sesshōmaru’s side. Because although she had reclaimed her heart from Naraku, on the night of the crescent moon, the night she turned human for the first time, the first night that Sesshōmaru guarded her in her weakness, she understood.
Her heart might have been beating in her chest, but there would come a day that she would freely give it to Sesshōmaru.
Artwork commission by clementinesgulag