A/N: An old tribute to my favorite Inuyasha character that was long overdue. I'll admit, I lost interest in the series for a while after chapter 374… but I came back eventually and this oneshot was sort of my catharsis at the time. I also wanted to experiment writing descriptions through a sense other than vision. Despite it origins… I actually ended up having a lot of fun with this one. Enjoy!

Title: The Chains of Freedom

Author: Kenkaya

Genre(s): Angst/Spiritual

Type: Oneshot, character study

Rating: PG, K+

Pairings: SessxKagura and SessxRin

Summary: Ch 374 Spoilers. Kagura knew she wouldn't go to Heaven or Hell… no, those were purely human notions. And what earthly sentiments could possibly bind the wind?

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Dying had been the single most painful, but also liberating, moment of Kagura's life.

She remembered the burn of Naraku's poison in her veins, a ripping sensation (similar to that of tearing skin) as the toxin literally ate away at her body. Individual cells were separating, falling apart… disintegrating into a fine mist. The whole process was incredibly agonizing and she was so unbearably hot. Kagara feverishly wondered if she was destined to become steam instead of wind.

Then he stepped into her clearing. Kagura had always thought him beautiful, but there, in her final moment, he was ethereal. A light breeze touched his long white hair, an ironic match to the wild funerary flowers swaying beneath her. Suddenly, the experience of dying didn't seem so lamentable: because he was with her in the end. He reached for Tensaiga, and for one brief, blasphemous second she almost dared to hope.

"I'm sorry. You are beyond Tensaiga's help."

Deep down, she had known it was too good to be true. But Kagura was in too much pain, too tired, to feel angry over the injustice. She may have had no control over her fate but, for the first time, no one else did either. That thought (alongside the presence of a man she could have loved) caused her to smile.

When actual death finally came, it was a relief: a release from pain and earthly limitations… but also from physical sensation. Pain faded away at the same rate her body did. The world didn't turn black; sight simply didn't exist for her. Neither did sound, taste, or smell.

It had been disorienting at first.

The cold, rolling touch of ocean waves beneath her, the blast of a heated updraft pushing her upward, or even the immovable presence of a mountain splitting her apart. These were the sensations that made up Kagura's world now: coldness and warmth, moisture and aridity, solidity and intangibility. Through them, the world became a different (but vaguely recognizable) outline. She knew where things were, their shape, and their temperature, even though she could not see or feel them.

Sometimes she would pass him on her journey. Her path was random; she simply went where the current carried her. Running into him was always a pleasant surprise. Her essence would sweep across his body, sift through his hair, and feel a jolt of excitable recognition before moving on. He was completely unaware of her visits, however, she liked to believe he sensed her presence somehow.

Time had no meaning in her state. Occasionally, she would note differences in once familiar places, but there was no passage for her, only movement. She didn't know (or care) that years had gone by until the day she slid past him and felt not a human girl accompanying him, but a shapely woman. Trepidation tainted her surprise as she slipped over the Pacific shore and onward.

Warmth surrounded her and whisked her away eastward. She skirted past vast mountains and engulfed massive stone structures to precise to be natural. Several violent storms pulled at her and she reveled in their chaotic rhythm. Eventually, she returned to land that she recognized from her former existence.

Kagura both dreaded and anticipated the inevitable. Even so, shock filled her when she wrapped around his familiar figure, only to wisp over the woman and a rambunctious child running between them-

She knew it would happen someday, still, she chose to ignore the possibility. In the end, her foolishness only delayed the grief. Kagura found herself wishing for a physical body once more, to be able to feel the catharsis of a good cry. That outlet was forever beyond her state.

Frustrated at her inability, Kagura struggled against the jet stream for the first time. She jerked and spun wildly out of control. Pressure built up around her, spinning with her until they coalesced into a formidable mass. The sea surged beneath as Kagura laughed, a chilling howl she sensed but could not hear.

Then, they hit land. She whistled giddily as her waves crashed beyond their beaches, as great houses and mighty tree trunks collapsed in the wake of her rage. Incorporeal fingers snatched any life they could: earth, plant, animal, human. She did not discriminate. She flung their physical bodies away to chance and fate.

But, as always, the lightening charge around her eventually dissipated. Sheets of chill rain dampened to a drizzle mist. Kagura's momentum slowed as her anger dispersed, until she drifted gently through the atmosphere, idly pushing fluff clouds forward. She knew she would come across them again (the mismatched family), but no longer anticipated or dreaded the moment.

Because she was the wind; and like life, the wind always moves onward.

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Owari

(End)