Title: Mocking Flowers
Author: Bird That Flies At Dawn
Genre: Romance, Angst
Rating: T
Word Count: 672
Prompt: Lavender
Universe: Canon
Warnings: Character death
Summary: She knew she would die, and he was her only regret.
AN: Okay, so there might be some OOC Sess at the end (not like Sesshomaru falling in love isn't OOC), but I believe it might in some odd and farway universe be possible, so...
This won 1st place at Dokuga(underscore)contest for oneshot #89 (lavender), and I wanted to share it.
Kagome knew it was her time.
There was no doubt in her mind that she would die, but she never thought that death could be so beautiful. She was positioned in a field of wild lavenders, their petals caressing her cheeks, dots of her blood painting them slowly in a casual, constant drip.
Drip...drip...drip...
Her breath came ragged, her heart rate ran at an uneven pace. Her untamed ebony hair splayed around her in waves, blanketing the pretty flowers surrounding her as if trying to console them for being degraded by her draining soul.
But she was not afraid.
No fear encompassed her mind at the thought of leaving the living world. She was actually joyful to do so. She was tired of being half a soul, half a person. She wasn't meant to live; she was weak, and the weak died. That was just how nature worked.
There was only one person on her mind, and that was her only regret. Dying was the greatest and most wonderful thing she had ever experienced, but it was also the most painful.
As if the gods purposefully planned the coincidence, the person of her focus entered the clearing, his silver hair creating a shining halo around him. She cried then as she had never done before. Kagome hadn't wanted her love to see her like this, to see her so broken. Her tears held her saddened aura, actually tinted pink as her life bled out onto the purple flora, her aura panicking as it escaped her in her final moments. This happened for all mikos, but to her it seemed to be a tearing, raw thing when your aura tried to purify the infection of demon claws, but instead of healing it burned you, leaving large spaces of red and charred skin. She was unintentionally damaging herself.
Sesshomaru approached her slowly, his youki betraying the distress and horror that he refused to show. He wouldn't panic her further. She had accepted her fate, and he would need to as well.
Kagome's reiki stroked the youkai before her, trying to comfort him as he crouched at her side. Sesshomaru ground his teeth at her selflessness. Shouldn't he be the one comforting her?
“I'm sorry,” she whispered quietly, the sound almost completely obliterated by the breeze that blew through the clearing, the breeze that brought the sickening stench of her blood to his nose.
Sesshomaru growled lowly, embracing the moribund woman as best as her position allowed. “Do not blame yourself.”
Kagome let out a single sob, weakly lifting her fingers and twining them in his his locks, the setting sun reflecting off of them, making them glow. She thought he looked like an angel.
In that moment Sesshomaru wasn't the great youkai. He was Sesshomaru, a man who was losing everything, a man who was losing his reason to live. He felt like a puppy trapped in a cage, like a tormented animal. He wanted Tenseiga to revive her, but he knew it would be a useless attempt. She had been saved by the sword once before, and Tenseiga did not have the almighty ability to defy death twice. Tenseiga would go through the corpse, but Kagome would not breath again. Sesshomaru could not protect her pitifully weak, human life.
Kagome smiled softly, a few more tears dripping down her face. As quietly and weakly as before, she murmured, “I love you.”
Then she was no more.
Her fingers slipped out of his hair, her grip slackened, and her skin began to turn cold.
Sesshomaru did what he never thought he would. He wept. While in a far away part of his mind he was ashamed at his reaction, he could not bring himself to care. He held her and spilled out the agony for what had been taken from him so harshly. Because when Kagome died, he had died as well.
Almost mockingly, the lavender flowers swayed slightly around the departed Kagome and the shattered love she had left behind.