A/N: I know what you're thinking. This chapter took a while to form. It turns out, it's been written for a while and I just forgot. I'm sorry. Happy reading, please read and review.

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She walked crookedly, placed her feet lightly, felt as though each step she took might be the one where she crashed to the clay beneath her.

The sun beat down upon her, a blinding force that made her feel violently parched and weary, but that also dried any tear that even considered escaping her before it managed to form.

Circles hung her eyes; she cast them downward, unable to look at the path before her, nor the demon next to her, whose white garments were bright and impossibly painful to look at.

She took a reluctant step and her leg buckled beneath her, Sesshomaru placed a hand under her arm without looking anywhere but forward and steadied her, keeping it there long after she regained her balance.

"Why did you follow me, Rin?" He said after some time. His voice calm and level, detached and seemingly disinterested.

Rin stopped walking abruptly.

Sesshomaru proceeded until the full length of his arm extended, from where he held her by her own arm to several feet forward of the spot. There was no tug from him for her to continue, he did not attempt to move her along but stopped and peered at her in profile, his hair gleaming in the sun; his eyes were somehow null of the brightness it should have caused for them, as if all light was swallowed by them instead of refracting off their golden surface.

Have you ever wondered why I followed you all those years ago?

…I'm certain you've always assumed it to be because I had nowhere else to go, when really it was because….

"because you had nowhere else to go." Rin blinked, recalling back to the forefront of her mind the truth behind her words; it came at her with comfortable familiarity.

"I always knew, Lord Sesshomaru, that this was how I would end. I was aware of it every day of the seven years after I first died. Once I experienced the world after this one, where I met The Gateway King."

And she had alwaysknown, somewhere in the pits of her soul, that there was only one path for her; that one singular decision she made in death would one day lead her back again.

Sesshomaru released his hold of Rin and she sank to the ground, her legs splayed brokenly beneath her. She continue speaking, looking up at him even though she faced the sun and could not see him for the glare and the prism like circles it created; occluding him from her view in a fantastic array of colors that resembled the rainbow. "He told me on that day, that you would revive me. That if I ever wanted you to repent your sins so that you could one day be whole, I would have to aid you. And that one day, you'd grow to resent everything I'd done. …I never knew just what he meant, but I knew I had to try. I had to stay with you…I did not want to see damnation cast upon the only being, man or demon, who had ever shown me kindness."

She paused, and they both remained in silence for several moments, until finally she looked down to the ground, thoughtful. "What did he mean, Lord Sesshomaru? Have I ever done anything for you?" She asked finally.

Sesshomaru stood with one arm unmoving at his side and the other resting upon the hilt of his Tenseiga, his fist clenched possessively upon it.

"No." He finally said after a long moment. And then he knelt swiftly and gathered her.

Pressed against him, with her head on his shoulder and her legs dangling over the side of one strong arm, he started to walk again.

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The Gateway King.

He had given Sesshomaru his greatest weapons, simply by sending the human child upon him.

His Tenseiga, his Bakusaiga, both were his because her existence had given him something to protect. And now, ironically, he was delivering her to her death, all to become what he had been without her.

She didn't know, still, that her death could be avoided if she shed her piteous affection for him. That he only brought her closer to it by drawing her into him as he had throughout their journey, slowly breaking apart every immunity against him she had built up…how many more days would she have had if he hadn't touched her, hadn't observed her, hadn't caused her heart to prematurely spend beats it should have been saving….?

She didn't know that all of this, the entire situation, suited him. That simply because she loved him she'd die and Death would kindly return to him his proper self.

What a fool the Gateway King had been, to ever think Sesshomaru would care about love.

He looked down at her. Her chin was tucked in and her scraggly hair was bunched over her face, hiding it from him.

By sundown he entered a dusty, dilapidated cottage with a sunken in roof and only one room. He could still faintly smell her scent here, even though it had been years since she had been in this place. The floor was the same as the dirt outside, and the building itself held no other comfort except for a pot hung over rotted wood and a small bundle of twigs that seemed to be meant to sleep upon.

Sesshomaru led her to it, falling to one knee and laying her upon it.

She stirred.

Her eyes opened.

He realized then that he had been planning on leaving before she awoke.

He looked down at her as she opened her mouth. He could not imagine what words she would speak to him now, what else there could be to say?

"Thank you." She said, and he felt his eyes widen in astonishment.

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She had fallen back asleep. Every bone in her body ached, the corners of her lips were torn where her thin skin had begun to wear, her eyes were swollen. She opened them, unaware of how much time had passed since she had come back to this place. She could hear them growling, gathering, forming up, but she remained unable to move, frozen in place by the weakness of her diminishing body.

He was gone. And she was buried under his white blouse.

Illogically, she pictured how it would look once her blood stained it. Would it be darker, or perhaps any more vibrant, than the red flower crest upon it? Or would the wolves tear it to shreds as well? She mustered her remaining strength and gathered a handful of it into her fist. She would not so willingly let them have it.

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He could still feel her heart beating, a stray, frantic pulse that lingered inside of him. He walked on, placing a hand to his own heart, remembering the feeling of it. He looked to his side, there were foot prints forming in the clay next to his own, so slightly indented upon the surface they were nearly unnoticeable. Without warning or pretext, and without stopping his trek, Sesshomaru unsheathed Bakusaiga. The moon shined off of its sharp, silver blade. He turned it upon himself suddenly, and in one fluid motion he stabbed it into his chests.

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She coughed, suddenly, violently, and then sat up; Sesshomaru's blouse gathering in her lap.

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Blood seeped from him. He pressed on, staggering a little as the sword through his heart robbed the life from his body. Slowly the world around him shifted; the night became void, the air became death, and he looked to his side to see the form of an enormous demon, materializing out of the still-air.

"You planned this." Said Sesshomaru flatly. He wrenched his sword from his breastbone. There was no more blood, for he was dead.