Disclaimer: InuYasha and all related characters do not belong to me.

Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more.

"Crush", Richard Siken

i.

The first time they meet it doesn't register that she is his brother's would-be-assassin. She looks like every other human wench and neither her aura not her scent trigger anything in him until much later, when he feels a touch of a memory on him and wonders if the witch hadn't been working her magics after all. When he learns the identity of the girl and the true nature of her relationship with his hanyō brother, he is surprised. Even here, in the Western Lands, tales have been heard of the famous Miko Kikyō and Sesshōmaru wonders what sick deity put her in his half-brother's path.

He wonders then, what sick deity would allow her to come back.

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ii.

"The hanyō has found another wench," Jaken tells him one day, disgusted. "She is the same as the old one."

He regards her with little interest but finds, even then, that she is nothing like the dead priestess of old. That his brother even has trouble telling them apart is derisive, nothing short of what he expects from a dumb half-breed like him.

"She will die the same," he says, nonchalant. "Everything that loves him, does."

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iii.

Her touch is everywhere.

Village after village, crying for their lost priestess. They sing of a kind woman, mourn her loss and pray for her soul to find rest. Sesshomaru can see traces of her everywhere, in restored villagers and places, and crops. He can see it in every orphaned child that inevitably reminds him of Rin.

What a fool, to still spend herself so.

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iv.

The pain in his arm is the only thing that keeps the madness at bay, keeps him rooted in this humanoid form. He must gather his strength, find somewhere safe (and he's so far from the lands of his dominion, so far) and heal himself. The hanyō has injured him, aided by the priestess-that-isn't and he has never hated him more than now. The place seems deserted, peaceful and altogether too good to be completely real, so he keeps his good hand on the hilt of his sword even as he walks into the moonlit clearing.

He senses her before his keen eyes see her lying calmly against the rocks, pale face made of glass.

"You," he snarls, handsome features deteriorating into his more honest face. Rationally, he knows this is not her, not the one who helped reduce him to this — but a part of her is and he is desperate for rest but also for vengeance.

She rises calmly, walking limply towards him and raises one arm in a half circle over his face.

"You are hurt," she says and he can smell something rotten on her, something dead. "Sleep, daiyōkai."

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v.

When he wakes his wounds have been tended to and the bloodlust has given way to exhaustion and shame. There is a fire warming him and Rin sleeps soundly against Ah-Un. Jaken's arms are crossed over his chest and he glares at something in the distance.

"How did you find me?" Sesshōmaru asks, face imperturbable.

"Shini-dama-chuu," Jaken grumbles doubtfully. "Hers."

Seshōmaru rises and Jaken is startled. "My lord! Your wounds—!" he protests feebly but is ultimately ignored in pursuit of the witch.

He finds her in the middle of the stream, bathing. Her nakedness does nothing to startle or stir him but he stares all the same and he takes pleasure only in imagining his mutt of a brother has never seen her so. The shinidamachuu dance around her, feeding her the souls of the dead and even he can tell he has walked into something too private, but she doesn't stop and only when she is done does she look up.

"You heal fast, demon."

In her eyes, he finds no trace of the kind priestess the villagers and even Rin, speak of. She has steeled himself against that and for that moment alone, he forgets how much he hates her, too.

"Why are you here?" He knows it's been at least a couple of days, knows his body couldn't have healed sooner than that, even with her help. (In the back of his mind there lingers an image of another silver-haired yōkai, asleep against the trunk of the Goshinboku. He smothers this, too.)

"I have my own reasons," she answers as a ghost of a wound from shoulder to chest closes up before disappearing. She is wounded too, he realises, and tired from keeping up a magical barrier to keep the demons away.

Not me, he thinks suddenly and it angers him to think why.

"Fool."

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vi.

"Kikyō-sama," the dying man whispers and the dead priestess kneels next to him, a vacant vessel praying for another lost soul.

Seshōmaru stands close, Rin clutching desperately to his leg. He wants to kill the man, destroy him and all memory there is of him ever being alive. He wants to show him pain and then he wants to end it all not because he dared hurt the human brat but because he dared threaten him, Seshōmaru. He doesn't deserve the arrow piercing his neck and certainly not the kind hands that hold him as he lies dying...

"I am myself again..."

His ears twitch and he looks at the priestess and holds his breath, not knowing what she will say to that. He watches her approach her mount slowly, painfully and suddenly Rin is at her side, kissing her robes.

"Kikyō-sama," she whimpers, "thank you."

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vii.

His hanyō brother is heartbroken and angry but Seshōmaru is not amused. The half-breed Naraku has grown bold and greedier than anyone so low as him has a right to be and it unsettles him. He stares at the broken bow and wonders if it is even possible...

"I don't care to know what your connection to that woman was. The person responsible for killing Kikyō is Naraku ... and you. You're the one who didn't save her. Inuyasha, blame yourself."

He walks away, the taste of her name lingering far too long, too bitter, too strong.

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viii.

The miasma would have killed her, if she hadn't been already dead. Seshōmaru hadn't hoped for anything different, but this was someone who fought death tooth and nail and it did not surprise him to find it hadn't.

"You should be dead," he tells her, forcing her to face him. She has taken other names, a different garb but her scent is impossible to miss now, especially for someone who's been looking for it (aren't they all, now?).

The way she smiles, he reckons, is perhaps why Onigumo hates her the most.

"I am," she says, so softly. "You watched me die."

"I couldn't have saved you," he says, clenching a fist against his own will. There is something like pity in her eyes and he almost wants to claw them out for her, if only so that she never looks at him like that again.

"No," she tells him. "You couldn't have."

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ix.

"Inuyasha doesn't know you are alive," he tells her one lonely night. Kikyō does not appear to be surprised he has found her, yet again. When she remains silent he continues, approaching her boldly. They have found each other too many times to keep playing guessing games. "Why?"

"I'm dead, Seshōmaru, and she is alive."

This is the most honest she has ever been and it stops him in his tracks, irritating him again.

"She will die the same," he echoes from another time. "Everything that loves him does."

Kikyō's eyes are brown, deeper and brighter than Rin's, even in death. A pale hand reaches for him and he catches her wrist but there is no bruising though there should be. He stares at her for a long time, wondering if there will ever be evidence that he happened, unwilling to pretend otherwise. The scar on her back is proof that someone else did, after all.

"I'm sorry he hurt you so. But it is not Inuyasha's fault he died."

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x.

The stench of her body assaults him —it's earth and rain and flowers on the verge of decay. The taste of her, cold enough to shiver; sweet enough to cloy and he hates every second of that first damning kiss, more than the countless that come after. His mouth is vicious and he wants to bruise her, hurt her, fuck her like a dog and tell her 'I am not Inuyasha and he will never do this to you', but the way her back arches for him and how it is she who bruises him, she who marks him, she who fucks him into the wall, leaves him spent and aching.

She looks at him with eyes too fierce not to be alive as if she is thinking 'you are not InuYasha and he would never do this to me', and he wants to laugh and tell her he would if he could, he would if he thought he could get away with it, he would if he wasn't so goddamned scared of his dead lover.

"There is nothing for us here," she tells him, but her mouth is hungry on him and her body is clay beneath his hands. He can remember the smell of her, rotten and dying when the miasma was strongest and he is angry as he slams into her next, claws digging into the skin of her cheeks.

"You're poison," he rasps out. "I should kill you."

But she is Death, dead and dying; so instead, he comes.

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xi.

The demon Kagura passes in a field under the moonlight, unrepentant and smiling. The wind blows and when they ask him about it, the truth sets him free of any obligation he may have felt towards the heartless fiend. But his hatred for Naraku increases and with it, something else.

He hasn't sought the miko in so long but when he finds her and smells his brother on her, he is inexplicably crushed and it is Inu no Taishō and Tessaiga all over again.

"Let the demon have him," he hisses. "He's already killed you, you know."

Kikyō kisses him and she is warmer than he remembers and this time it is he who is cold.

"I will die all the same," she murmurs into his mouth like it is everything he has ever known. "Everything that loves you does."

Notes: I'm trash. I wanted to write something that was almost canon-compliant and faithful to the characters involved. Sesshōmaru is a complicated one because there is little about him that doesn't revolve around his selfishness and his deep hatred of Inuyasha that, I feel, is manifested through his jealousy. He's jealous his father favoured his half-breed son, jealous he trusted him with Tessaiga and here, jealous he holds the love of a woman so extraordinary, even after she has died time and again for him.

Anyhow, I really have no excuses for this, I'm just Sesskik and Inukik trash.