Blind by FireFalcon1414

Disclaimer: I do not own, in whole or in part, the Inuyasha series. All rights belong to Takahashi Rumiko.

*** *** ***

Chapter 5: Autumn 2006 to Autumn 20--

As dew promises
New life to the thirsty plant,
So did your vow to me.
Yet the year has passed away,
And autumn has come again.
--Fujiwara no Mototoshi

*** **** ***

Poor health does not improve one’s disposition; and a poor disposition does not improve one’s health. This said, it is understandable that, seeing as I had both poor health and a poor disposition, each of these qualities fed off the other in a steadily worsening overall condition. In other words, this illness was considerably more miserable than the last.

I was confined to bed rest for a week before my mother managed to convince a doctor to come and see me, as I was far too sick to leave my room. I was a bit delirious; according to my mother’s later account, I at first thought the physician to be a demon, and had asked Souta to run and get my bow and arrows from behind the well house. Consciousness came and went arbitrarily, leaving me with sparse patches of the beginnings and endings of various conversations, one fading to the other in a vague blur of recollection and dreams; it was impossible to tell the actual from the imaginary.

One conversation that I overheard and am fairly certain was not a delusion, between my mother and the doctor roughly two weeks after he had first visited, went as such:

“… afraid I’ve done as much as I can,” the doctor’s voice faded in through the haziness; they were speaking quietly just outside of my room, yet I would not have been able to see them even they had been right beside my bed, as my eyes were sealed shut by the grime of prolonged sleep; once more, I was left blind. “The rest is up to your daughter, Mrs. Higurashi.”

“Doctor, please, you have been so kind to us,” answered my mother’s voice quietly, and I dimly registered that she sounded as though she had been crying, and that I could almost remember her holding my hand through the night, and her sobs asking me to please, please get better, she couldn’t stand losing me, she was so afraid, I was her only daughter, please, please… “Please tell me, why is her condition only getting worse?” Her voice cracked on the last word.

The doctor sighed. “As I told you, I’ve done all I can for her. It is only… she seems to have lost all will, all joy in life. Have you not noticed anything peculiar about her behavior before this? Any depression?”

A hesitation. “Well… no, not really. We were all just so happy for her to have her sight back; I suppose she could have been unhappy without us noticing. She just… She never said anything to us about it. Oh, gods, we should have paid more attention! Oh, gods…” She was crying again, and in my mind’s eye, I saw the doctor trying to comfort her.

A moment or an hour later, he spoke again. “Your daughter seemed enthusiastic and eager about regaining her sight while she was blind, did she not?”

“Yes,” my mother said damply. “She always said she wanted to see again, that she wanted to see the world around her, and this house, and everything, really. I mean… there was a while when she seemed not to care anymore what happened to her, but shortly after we moved here she regained her hopes of vision, returned more to the girl she was before Inu – before her friends stopped coming by to visit. It was as though they were still visiting, but no one ever did come.”

“Oh? You are sure that no one ever came to see her while she was blind? She had no friends?” the doctor asked, sounding surprised.

“Yes, I am certain.” She paused. “Though… once, nearly two years ago, she claimed that she had befriended a ghost, but we brushed it off as ridiculous. I mean, really, a ghost? In any case, she only mentioned him the one time, and it isn’t as though ghosts exist anyway.”

“You do not believe in ghosts, Mrs. Higurashi?”

“I could not help but see from your records, Mrs. Higurashi, that both you and your children grew up on the grounds of an old shrine; and yet you sneer at the thought of the supernatural?” asked the doctor.

“I once believed in these things, yet… times have changed. Kind sir, you are a doctor, a man of science. Surely you do not believe in this nonsense?”

He answered quietly, “I will say only this, madam: I, too, was raised on the grounds of an old shrine not far from here; my mother was a miko, my foster-father was a monk, and my foster-mother believed strongly in demons and the supernatural. Denying the existence of these things would be like denying my own existence.”

I am certain that my mother must have replied to that somehow, yet my weak body could sustain my consciousness no longer, and I fell into a light, restless, dream-filled sleep, my last thought echoing through my fogged mind: It’s been nearly a year, now…

*** **** ***

I awoke again late that night; Mom was dozing fitfully on a chair beside my bed; Souta had long since gone to sleep, and the doctor was rooming in the guest room down the hall, asleep as well. I clenched my hand weakly around my mother’s, and she jumped slightly as though shocked.

“Kagome… How are you feeling, honey?” she asked me worriedly. That was all I heard from her – worry and more worry.

“Thirsty,” I rasped around my dry throat, too exhausted to even try opening my still-sealed eyes.

“Alright; I’ll go make you some nice herbal soup for your throat; how does that sound? Do you think you can keep it down?”

I whispered an affirmative, though I was unsure of the truth on that second question; I hoped that she would take this response as something positive, and perhaps worry about me a bit less.

In any case, she released my limp hand and stood, patting the blankets more firmly around me before moving toward the door, pausing at the door to ask if I wanted the light on. I repeated my quiet confirmation and watched my world change from pitch dark to a deep red, the light filtering through the thin veins of my eyelids carrying blood to where it was needed. Even this, however, was not enough to inspire the energy necessary to open my eyes, and so I merely retreated deeper into my mind and tried to go back to sleep.

My attempts were interrupted, however, by the sound of someone seating themselves in the nearby chair. “Mom?” I asked expectantly, though my lips remained closed, so it came out sounding more like “Mm?”

A lower voice than my mother’s surprised me. “Kagome, what kind of foolishness is this?” He always did surprise me.

“Keiji?” I exclaimed as loudly as I could, considering I had not had anything to drink since the morning before. My eyes flew open, the energy I had been missing suddenly there, like a presence just behind me, ready and willing to be used for whatever task I required of it, yet impossible to be seen, always just out of sight. Despite the sudden influx of energy, however, my eyes blurred and ran, unaccustomed to the sudden light and itching from the grime I had not wiped away in days. My hands moved quickly to do just that, but even as I began lowering them back to my lap another, larger hand covered my eyes, sheltering them from what they wished so badly to see. “Keiji?” I asked, bewildered and a bit angry now that he would so hide his visage from me, my hands trying to pull his away from me while I moved back, but he was stronger than I, and my makeshift blindfold followed my frantic movements exactly.

“Do no look upon me with your eyes,” he said in that same deep, quiet, smooth voice I had missed for so long.

“Keiji, why won’t you let me see you?” I solicited, anger and distress slowly growing to overwhelm the befuddlement, yet I stomped the urge to cry down ruthlessly; I had cried enough, I told myself, though that turned out not to be reason enough for the few tears that managed to escape, wetting his palm so that it slipped on my face just enough for me to break away and look at him even as he lowered his dampened hand to his lap, his familiar golden eyes locked to mine, showing no shame in losing even so small a fight to a human, one of the race he had once professed so vehemently to hate in those days before I knew him…

“Sesshoumaru…” I whispered, not because of a dry throat. The tears I’d repressed returned to drip from my eyes to my cheeks to my chin, where they came together to drip down and form a growing salt stain on my blanket, and the next thing I knew I had flung myself at him, arms around his neck as I sobbed against his shoulder, “It was you… All that time, it was you…”

He remained silent, allowing the prolonged contact just as he had when I had been ill before, waiting out the flow of emotion until I pulled back to kneel on my bed, facing him.

“I don’t,” I answered, having regained a grain or two of my lost composure. “I embrace my most beloved friend, who decided to go missing nearly a year ago.” I couldn’t so much as try to keep my blossoming smile down; it grew and flowered, similarly to the way it had grown and flowered on the day we danced in the rain. “What kind of foolishness was that?” I mimicked playfully, smiling gleefully up at him.

“How can you not hate me?” he asked rather than answer my half-rhetorical question.

“Why should I?” I responded easily, moving without thought to pick up his hand. When his fingers did not curl around mine, I contented myself to simply examine this long-lost artifact, tracing the lines of his palm and the stripes down his wrist, carefully fingering the long, delicate nails that I knew to have the capability to slice a human body in half as easily as a heated steak knife through warm butter, absently wondering how I’d managed not to injure myself in all that time of ignorant grabbing.

“I stole your eyesight with that hand,” he said, watching me manipulate each finger one at a time. “How can you not hate me?” he repeated.

“I told you before,” I said, not looking from my detailed inspection, “it was my own fault, if anyone’s; I chose to run out there knowing full well the possible outcomes of my actions. Really, it was just an accident. You’re dwelling on this more than anyone else, I think.”

“I have had over five centuries to dwell on my mistake; to mourn the loss of my brother and his human companions; to mourn the loss of an innocent child who knew no better than to aid an injured demon lord; to mourn the loss of the innocence of a young woman who knew no better than to aid that child. I have spent more of my life in mourning and dwelling on my mistakes than I have not.”

“So,” I said reasonably, grasping his hand in mine despite its lack of response, “don’t you think it is past time to stop mourning and regretting?”

He blinked, and slowly, slowly, his fingers curled up and around mine to grasp my hand as tightly as mine did his.

He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the doctor’s warm voice from down the hall. “Kagome,” he was calling to me as he approached, “Your mother was exhausted, so I sent her to bed with a sleeping pill.” The voice was getting closer, and I looked to Keiji – Sesshoumaru, I knew now –, expecting him to release me and fade away somehow, as he always had when anyone came upon us, yet he remained as he was, hand gripping mine, watching the open doorway expectantly. The doctor continued, “I hope you don’t mind that I’m bringing you your soup instead of her.” Sesshoumaru was not moving. The doctor arrived in the doorway, his hair a mass of red-brown, his eyes a friendly, sparkling emerald green.

Sesshoumaru was still not moving; his grip did not loosen; he continued to stare intently at the doctor, who set about staring intently back, and I set about staring intently at them both and worrying.

The kind doctor broke the awkward silence with an amiable grin, chatting as he handed me the fragrant soup, “So, I see you’re feeling better! You have finally opened those lovely eyes of yours; and look, you are even sitting up! Sesshoumaru, I would have insisted that you come earlier if I had known what a wonderful effect you would have on her. Why did you choose to make your presence known now, by the way?” He stood from his stoop over me, stretching to crack his back.

“It was necessary,” was all that was said.

In the meantime, I was entirely preoccupied with looking from one to the other, wondering how they seemed to know each other. I watched as the doctor reached into his pants pocket and pull out a small top, which he proceeded to fiddle with while he continued to speak. “I’ll say! This is a gigantic leap on the road to recovery, Kagome. Remember, though, you are still sick, so get back in bed! Sesshoumaru, help her out like a gentlemanly chap, hm?”

Sesshoumaru shot the doctor one of those cold glares I remembered, but complied, taking my bowl from me as I shifted down under the blankets, handing the bowl back once I was settled and tucking the blankets in around me.

“Ah, Sesshoumaru, you certainly do have practice with that, don’t you?” the doctor spoke on. “For an evil demon lord, you do have a soft side for children. And Kagome, it would seem, eh?” He chuckled.

“Do you want to live, pup?” Sesshoumaru growled.

I smacked his hand lightly with the back of my spoon. “Don’t kill my doctor!” I scolded, then looked between them again. “How do you know each other, anyway?” I finally asked.

The doctor, who was seeming more and more familiar as time went on, laughed at that. “You should know, Kagome! You introduced us!”

I looked to Sesshoumaru. “I did?” I asked quizzically.

“In a sense,” he said quietly. “It was more that I just noticed him hiding behind one of those convenient rocks you were so skilled at finding every time I attacked your group.”

“Oh?” I mused thoughtfully as I slurped the last remains of my soup, studying my doctor as I did so. Red hair… I pondered as I licked my spoon. Green eyes… It hit me, then, and I opened my mouth to announce my findings, but he spoke first.

“I was a bit smaller then,” he said helpfully, and, in a puff of smoke was… well, smaller; and even more familiar.

“Shippou!” I squealed, pulling the child up onto my lap and hugging the breath out of him. “Oh, my little fox, I missed you! You grew so big I hardly recognized you.”

“You didn’t forget me, did you, Kagome?” he asked, looking up at me with those huge, sparkling green eyes, teardrops beginning to gather at the corners.

“No, of course not! I promised you I wouldn’t, didn’t I? And I can see by the fact that you’re here that you didn’t forget me!”

“No, I didn’t, Kagome! I always remembered you!” he cried, bursting into tears and throwing his little arms around my neck to sob on my shoulder. I held him close, just as I had when he had been this size in fact instead of illusion, and let him cry on me, though I myself was all cried out.

Once he had calmed down, he sat back on his heels on my lap, scrubbing at his eyes with his little fox paws. “Aw, Kagome, I missed you so much!” he sniveled, and would have gone on if Sesshoumaru hadn’t chosen this time to make his presence known by picking him up by the scruff of his neck and pulling him off of me to dangle over the carpet. He immediately poofed back into his full-sized self, glaring angrily at Sesshoumaru, mouth opened wide to yell at him for being so rude, when I broke in on the budding fight with a laugh. They both stopped what they were doing – Shippou scolding, Sesshoumaru enduring – to watch my mirth at their antics, until a pair of slow smiles spread across their faces, and all was peaceful.

Of course, my illness decided that this was the perfect moment to remind us all of the fact that I was still its victim, and I broke into a fit of coughing. Shippou was immediately transformed into the contrite-yet-professional doctor I had been acquainted with for the past few weeks, standing over me, feeling my forehead, handing me a glass of water and an aspirin to bring my fever down, and advising that I get some rest. I accepted all of these save the last one, insisting that I wanted to stay up and talk a bit longer, and he could not very well refuse me that.

“So, Shippou, you’re really a doctor now?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah; it was Sango’s idea, actually. She said that since I was always fixing her and Miroku up after their battles, I should get some training. I did as she said, but only became truly passionate about it when they died of an illness I could not help them with. Now, I would be able to diagnose their symptoms and tell them that they have tuberculosis, give them a vaccination, and they would be better in a matter of days. As it was, I did not have a clue, and they paid the ultimate price. After that, I went to the only person I knew left: Sesshoumaru. He took me in – put up with me, more like – and agreed to hire the most knowledgeable doctors and surgeons of the time to teach me all they knew. So now I’m the best in the field; possibly in the entire career, in Japan, at least,” he finished, puffing his chest out proudly.

“So,” I asked quietly, “Sango and Miroku died of tuberculosis?”

His chest fell with a sigh of expelled breath. “Yeah. It was really sudden. An epidemic, according to the history texts. Sango had just gotten pregnant… and Miroku was so proud. They had gotten married shortly after we killed Naraku, you know, and moved into an old shrine that stood pretty close by here, until it was torn down a couple decades ago. The epidemic struck about five years later. It was… so sudden…” He trailed off, eyes unfocussed, lost in the tragic memories. I touched his arm lightly.

“What happened to Inuyasha?” I asked him gently.

He sagged slightly under my hand. “The guilt ate at him every day… The guilt of losing you, especially on top of losing Kikyou, which you know was still an open wound on his conscience. He made up his mind, not long after the wedding, and went to see you one more time, then just… left. We never saw him again. We… presumed he had died.” I nodded sadly, and he looked up at me. “You… don’t seem as distressed by this as I’d expected.”

“I never expected them to live the five hundred years, Shippou,” I explained. “The only news you are relating to me is how it happened, not that it happened. I cried over their deaths – over the fact that I would never see them again – the day Inuyasha stopped visiting.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Do you know if the well will still accept you? Can you still go through?” Shippou asked eventually.

I shook my head. “No. I don’t know.”

“If… If you could go through… would you?”

I hesitated, then shook my head again. “No, Shippou. I don’t think I would.”

His voice trembled slightly. “Why not?” he asked.

“Because, by now, they’d all already be gone,” I whispered, staring at my hands, clenched on the bedspread; I was surprised at the blossoming spot of water that appeared there, closely followed by another, spreading out and soaking in to the cloth. “Why am I crying?” I asked myself aloud. “I already knew they were dead. So why am I crying?” Despite the illogicality of them, the tears continued to appear on my bedspread, picking up speed until I was sure I was done, yet they continued. “Why am I crying?” I asked myself again, but no one had an answer.

A heavy hand came to rest on my tremulous shoulder, and I turned to see Sesshoumaru looking at me, compassion, for once, in his eyes.

“What happened to Rin?” I asked before I could stop myself, somehow knowing that it had to be said.

“She died,” he said quietly. “She was old. She was mortal. I knew it would happen.” I looked down, unable to hold his gaze, and almost missed what he said afterwards. “I still cried when it happened.” My eyes flew back up to his, and he continued. “I sat there, on her deathbed, and cried over the little girl I had lost; and, as I cried, I asked myself, over and over, ‘Why am I crying? I always knew she would die.’ Yet I cried nonetheless.” He raised his hand from my shoulder to my hair, stroking it gently, just as he had stroked the hair of a young child, of a young woman, and, later, of an old woman, and I sobbed heavily and leaned over until I was crying into his chest, my tears soaking into the cloth of his shirt rather than that of the bedspread, and he sat calmly and stroked my hair.

“We are ghosts of the past, aren’t we, Sesshoumaru?” I asked weakly when I had finished. “Living for those who died centuries ago; ghosts of the past, that’s all we are.”

“Perhaps we are ghosts of the past,” he consented. “But that is not all we are. We are friends, are we not?”

I nodded. “Yes; we are friends,” I agreed, taking Shippou’s hand as he came to sit beside me.

“And so we live not only for those who have died, but for those who still live as well, do we not?”

I smiled, holding my friends’ hands in my own. “Yes; we do.”

*** **** ***

If my mother and brother were surprised at finding that the doctor who had been living with them for weeks had a tail and pointed ears, they took it fairly well after finding a demon lord making breakfast the next morning. I regret not getting to see their faces, but Shippou described them to me in great detail when he brought my share of the meal to my room; I was still confined to bed rest until I was actually well again. Although I was not yet the exact picture of health, I was well on the way to recovery; I suppose the old proverb, “If there’s a will, there’s a way,” was true in this case, as I began improving the moment I regained my enthusiasm for getting well.

*** **** ***

In this ancient house,
Paved with a hundred stones,
Ferns grow in the eaves;
But numerous as they are,
My old memories are more.
--Emperor Juntoku

*** *** ***

End.

*** *** *** 

Author's Note: Well, here's the last chapter of Blind. I'm still thoroughly not happy with it, but... Meh. Anyway, now that you've read it, would you please do me an itty bitty favor and go vote for what I should work on next? The poll's on my fanfiction.net profile, right at the top. More votes mean more direction for my writing, and more direction means easier writing, and easier writing means faster writing, and faster writing means finished writing sooner. And I know you want more finished writing. You wouldn't be reading this otherwise, would you? Anyway, thanks again for reading (and reviewing) Blind; I hope you read and review whatever I do next, too.

~FireFalcon1414