The Long Road to Freedom 2: Fire on the Water

Leave the Past Behind

        Kintsuke lie awake well into the night despite her greatest efforts. Her mind continued the seemingly impossible task of trying to fit together the pieces of her encounter with Sesshoumaru earlier that day. None of what she had seen, known, and experienced of him before matched easily with his current incarnation. She dared to hope, but not to believe, that perhaps somewhere through the years he had managed to change.

'He let you go, didn't he?'

'Yes, but that doesn't prove anything.'

Unable to sleep, she finally sat up, making her way outside to give in to the pondering that demanded her attention. Now and then, she picked up the scent of poison that still clung to her; or was it only in her head? Something in her chest ached each time, and it puzzled her. What the hell was wrong with her? Slowly, as she let her mind wander from thought to thought, examining how his memory and influence had haunted her through the years and how she had reacted that day, she came to realize what it was.

She had wanted to see him. In some depraved, twisted way, without realizing it, she had missed him.

Kintsuke laughed at herself, almost appalled by the revelation. She forced herself to believe it was only because he was something familiar, and familiar was comforting to her right now. There was nothing more to it. There couldn't be, and she wouldn't let there be.

'But you want there to be something, don't you?'

She blinked at the thought.

...Did she?

***

1552, late-Muromachi Period, Winter

'Still so innocent...'

Kintsuke mused as she recalled the way Rin had bidden her farewell. The girl was overflowing with life, with simple and pure intentions, and Kintsuke wondered just how long she would be able to remain unchanged in the face of a world filled with tragedy.

She was many miles from the village by now, making slow progress. Patches of the land were frozen over and she had to watch her step as she found her way back towards her old territory. To be honest, she wasn't quite sure exactly where it had been, but as she laid eyes on the valley with its gently sloping hill and cavern, she knew she had arrived. Unfortunately, so had the humans.

To her great displeasure, Kintsuke found her former home had become a human village, the valley now a series of rice patties, the cavern in the hill something akin to a shrine. She waited until it was dark to explore further, finding stables, a small quarry further down the way, and a great chunk of the forest now missing. She recalled how it had looked before, the serene and simple beauty of it all, and found herself filling with rage. These humans, these...creatures...they'd destroyed everything beautiful here.

A memory sparked again, as they so often did now that she had returned to Japan, and she flitted quickly to find the old tree where she'd buried her late friend Shinjirou and his family. Amazingly, it was still there, along with the worn and faded headstone she'd erected. Perplexingly, she found traces of incense and other human-traditional gifts for the dead set neatly around it. Surely, they did not know it was a demon memorial; else they would not have bothered to be so respectful. Still, the fact that they'd preserved it lessened her anger slightly towards what they had done to the landscape.

She took a glance around, ensuring none were watching before she knelt near the headstone, brushing some of the dirt and frost from the top of it before pressing her hand against the chilled surface. She allowed herself only a moment of remembrance, apologizing silently to her friend for having been gone so long, and that she could not watch over his resting place as she desired to. Loneliness panged in her heart, warming her eyes and she shoved the rising tears away as reiki suddenly buzzed at the edge of her senses; it was time to go.