Disclaimers: I do not own InuYasha or any of the manga/anime characters. They belong to the wonderful genius Rumiko Takahashi.

In Denial

It was madness -there was no other word for it. How else do you explain charging into Hell - quite literally - to retrieve a human child?

His mother had chided him, "You intend to pass through the Meidou to save a human? You really have become soft."

He declared he was only going there to kill the Hell hound, but he knew the truth - he had to have Rin back.

Sesshomaru tried to convince himself that it was because Tenseiga needed an upgrade to be even more powerful. But when confronted with Rin's death, he was willing to throw it all away. He knew that he had to bring her back. He could not leave her in that mountain of corpses. He took on the Master of Hell himself to get her back and was crushed when she wouldn't wake up.

His Rin - she was dead. He had failed her, all because he wanted to improve his sword. His father's lesson was to teach him sadness and fear, but what he had learned was - love? Was this the compassion that he felt, the great sadness that he felt, when he realized he would never see her smiling face again? The insurmountable joy that he experienced when her life was returned to her by the Meidou stone - was this love? No, it must be madness - so much fuss over a human.

And yet here he was, doing it again. This time Rin had been taken by Magatsuhi in an attempt to seal Tenseiga. He hadn't thought twice about entering the body of Naraku to retrieve her. After all, after Hell, what was one Shikon no Tama powered hanyou?

He must be getting soft. He didn't even want to kill his hanyou half-brother whose youkai was currently fueling his body. He just wanted to knock some sense into him and get back to the problem at hand - where was Rin? Where had she disappeared to in that mound of flesh?

It wasn't love - it was... necessary. The whole situation was madness, but it didn't matter as long as he retrieved his Rin.