The Cricket's Cage by RosieB

My Obligation

A/N: So I've decided to start a collection of one-shots. They have no connection with each other and they'll vary in rating, pairing, genre, length, etc. I'll tell you what's what for each one. The ones that are Sess/Kag will be posted on SingleSpark under the same collection name. They're basically just for me to vent a bit of inspiration without embarking on a whole new serial fic. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning whatever story I'm presently working on. I don't do that. So enjoy!

Disclaimer for all stories in this collection: If I profited, I'd be paying off law school. Suck it, copyright.

Pairing: Sess/Kag

Rating: PG (if that)

Genre: Romance/Drama

Warnings: Talking about character death.

My Obligation

Hospitals are never quiet. That's what she learned in the first few hours she was there. So it was no surprise that it was the quiet that woke her up in the middle of the night.

Her mother had gone home hours ago, so that Sota and Grandpa would have a hot dinner. Kagome had insisted. And now, in the quiet of her private room, she was still glad that her family had not stayed. She wept silently, drenching her pillow with her tears. She smeared them with the heel of her hand, wishing she could stop, but the pain in her chest was wringing all of the salt from her body.

The bandages itched and she rubbed her damp fingers over the edges, her nails raking across the skin in the places it was particularly bad. The doctors had told her not to do that, that she would encourage infection, but she didn't particularly care. The stitches were even worse. The ends of the hard floss scratched at her skin, driving her mad. She wished she could increase the flow of her painkillers, but she knew it wouldn't help. Then everything would just itch in her mind. At least the bandages and stitches distracted from that.

The door opened suddenly, letting in a flood of light from the hallway, making her see bright diamonds of the light as it passed through the tears in her eyes. The door closed again and she tried to sit up.

"What do you want?" Her voice was thick from the crying.

"Nothing. I am here for my final obligation and then I will leave."

She could see his silver hair in the darkness, even before he crossed the room and threw the curtains open. The lights of Tokyo shone behind him as he turned back and she saw that he was wearing a dark, expensive suit. She leaned back on her pillow and pulled the blankets to her chin. "What's your obligation to me?"

"I have no obligation to you, only to my idiot younger brother," said the taiyoukai, straightening his cuffs. He clasped his arms behind him and stared at her steadily, the gold of his eyes reflecting the blues and greens and reds of the city lights. "He is dead."

Kagome felt the rise of a sob in her throat but choked it back. "I figured."

"All of your friends are dead, with the exception of that small fox demon." He ignored the startled look of hope she gave him. "He called me at my office, and tried to convince me to allow him to accompany me here, but my promises said nothing of him. He plans to visit you tomorrow."

She sighed and turned her head away. "Is that all?" she asked softly. "You just came to tell me that they all died after I left?"

He came to the foot of her bed, looking skeletal in the half-light. "You could have wished for anything," he said softly. "For life, wealth, power, for the entirety of your soul. You could have kept the well open. You could have given my brother anything. Demon blood or Kikyo's life or even peace. But you only wished for its destruction. Why?"

Kagome clutched at the blankets. Her mother had brought her old quilt from her room earlier, and it's worn stitching lay beneath her fingers in a comforting, familiar way. "It was the only wish that wouldn't have tainted it. You know that."

The dog demon nodded. "He made me promise that I would ask you," he said. "I do not know why."

"He probably wanted to know," she said. "Of course, since he's dead, that can't really help him." Her voice was more bitter than she intended. "Now, are you done?"

"No."

"What is it you want?" she cried, tossing her head back onto the pillows again, tears leaking from her eyes. Sobs echoed through the room for a few minutes.

He waited until she was done, took out his handkerchief and handed it to her. She didn't thank him, but noticed for the first time that he had a prosthetic arm. It was smooth and pale, and in the dark it looked real. "When did you get that?" she asked. She wasn't embarrassed that she had cried.

"The first one? A century ago or more. I do not remember. This one, I received only a few months ago." He stretched it out and looked at it as if for the first time. "It is still insufficient for my needs, but human technology has not adapted yet." His golden eyes shifted to her injuries. "How long will you be in this place?"

She shrugged. There wasn't anything to go back to, so why should she care? "I don't know. A week or so? Maybe two. Then I'll have to have physical therapy for my leg," she said, nodding towards the appendage wrapped thickly in bandages. The demon had almost cut clean through her calf. She was fortunate that she wasn't an amputee herself. "The muscle was almost severed."

"I know," he replied simply and she nodded, knowing that he did. He had been there. He had been the one to kill the demon actually, as it had sank its teeth into her flesh. She had been too exhausted to purify it, almost too exhausted to scream. She had never thanked him, but she didn't really plan on doing it now. For her, it was yesterday. For him, it was five hundred years in the past. He would mock her if she tried.

"What happened?" she asked suddenly, her eyes turning onto him. They were still shining with tears.

The taiyoukai let out a small sigh. He remembered the moment of victory over Naraku and the moment the Jewel had been united in Kagome's hands as she bled onto the grass. He thought she would die. Inuyasha thought so too, and was alternately screaming at him to use Tenseiga on her and begging Kagome to live. He wasn't sure if his little brother understood that Tenseiga only saved the dead. The others stood nearby, clutching at one another.

He remembered the moment Kagome had made her wish, her cracked lips whispering the words in a painful breath. As the Jewel disappeared, so did she. The monk later said that she had gone back to her own time, but it was a long time after that conversation that the taiyoukai understood what that meant.

"After you left, Inuyasha remained in the village," he said slowly, keeping an eye upon the heart monitor at her bedside. "He spent his life watching the well. He grew old and he died in the beginning of the eighteenth century."

Kagome turned over, burying her face into the pillow and pulling at the tubes running over her body. The taiyoukai sighed again. "Did you truly expect my brother to ever be peaceful in life? Be glad he died. It is the only time he could stop the torture of his life." He watched as her shoulders shook with her silent sobs. "He did not forget you. Is that not enough? I answered his call when he was on his deathbed and he told me to find you in this year, on this day. I did not know then what a hospital was. He gave me Tetsusaiga to bind me to my oath." He didn't say that he could still not use the Fang.

She convulsed more and he heard the wet sounds of running tears and a running nose. She pressed his handkerchief to her face again. "He told me to tell you everything you asked. About what happened." He paused and listened to her sobs subside again into half-hysterical hiccups. "Your friends, the monk and demon slayer, married and had several children. I have not followed their descendants, but they had many sons. I am sure you can find their issue if you wish. I have already told you of the fox. I am sure he can tell you more."

"Why did he send you?" she whispered as she removed her mouth from the pillow. "Why you? Why not Shippo?"

"I do not know," he lied.

"Was this supposed to make me feel better?" she asked. "Coming here the day after I lost all of them and telling me that not only can't I reach them, but they're almost all dead too?"

Sesshoumaru stood silently at the foot of the bed for a moment. "I do not know," he said again.

"Then leave. You've done nothing to help either of us."

He took a deep breath and straightened his tie. "Very well. I will not return again." He moved towards the door.

"I didn't say that, Sesshoumaru-sama."

He frowned and turned back to her. "That is an unfamiliar and unnecessary title," he said. "I cannot be a lord of an extinct race. I am one of the few left."

She nodded. "I still want you to leave." She coughed a wet cough that sent her heartbeat into a rapid pattering on the monitor. "But if I asked, would you come back tomorrow night?"

"No."

Kagome watched him as he opened the door and closed it softly behind him. "Alright," she said to the empty room.

A day passed and people streamed through the room. Every time she thought her tears had run dry, someone new would show up to remind her of what she had lost in the past, or what she would lose in the future. Shippo came for an hour and they cried together, a refreshing but still painful change. As the light waned and turned to orange, yellow, purple and gold, he left and the nurses told her there would be no more for the day.

She waited and with the night, the quiet returned and so did he. She smiled at him and pointed him towards the chair beside the bed, where Shippo had been a few hours before. "How did you get in?" she asked. "Visitor hours are over."

He sat down, putting his elbows on the arms of the chair and frowned at her. "I own the hospital," he said simply.

"Oh." She played the edge of the quilt. It was down around her waist tonight. "Do you own many hospitals?"

"Only this one," he said, still frowning. "A businessman without a charity or two is labeled as cold-hearted."

"You are cold-hearted."

He nodded. "But most of my investors have never met me personally."

Kagome let out a soft noise like a laugh and turned away. "I bet you can be charming at the charity balls and such. You must go to a lot of stuff like that."

"I do. I hate them." He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs.

"Shippo is an artist, did you know that? He's had a lot of gallery showings around Tokyo. He makes a good living at it." She smiled again. "He invited me to one in a few weeks, if I feel up to it."

Sesshoumaru nodded. "I know. I have a few of his originals."

Kagome's eyes widened. "You do?"

"I collect many artists. I prefer modern art." He arched an eyebrow. "I lived through history after all, and I have no wish to cling to it."

"No kidding." She lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling tiles. "May I ask you something?"

"You may ask me another question, yes."

She rolled her eyes. "I hate when people say that," she muttered. Turning her head, she looked at him carefully. "What happened to Rin?"

He tensed, his one real hand tightening around the arms of the chair. It creaked underneath his grasp. His face remained blank, despite the whitening of his knuckles. "She died," he said finally. "Many, many years ago. She was fifty-seven."

"Did she ever get married? Have children?"

"She married once. I killed him for infidelity two years later. She never had children. She was barren," he said, his voice an even monotone. He remembered the little girl the day she had lost her husband. She had kicked him out of her hut. The great taiyoukai was thrown from his ward's home as her husband's blood seeped into the floorboards behind her. He had walked away as she wept. The other women in the village had come running. The men had threatened the taiyoukai with farming implements. He hadn't killed anyone else that day though.

A year after that, she had found him in the forest and apologized for getting married at all. She had promised him once, after all, that she would never leave her Sesshoumaru-sama. She started to follow him again and thirty years later, to the day, she died. She had simply never woken up from a fever and Tenseiga had been useless. The sword had given him once chance, but it wouldn't give another. He buried her in a field of flowers. Much later, he had made sure the land was put aside for a park.

If Kagome found his admission of murder appalling or his long silence uncomfortable, she said nothing. No pity, only understanding, shone in her eyes as she nodded. "What about Jaken?"

"He died during the Second World War," said the taiyoukai. "From age, not the war."

"And you?"

"I have lived to this day and I plan to live longer yet," he said.

She sighed a little. "I meant, have you ever had a mate or a wife? You don't have a ring right now."

"I have mated twice," said Sesshoumaru. He had relaxed again. His mates had been nothing. Rin had been much more than a youkai like him could describe. "The first was a political alliance who died in the seventeenth century. The second died in the Boxer Rebellion shortly after we mated. She was young and foolish and I only took her for the sake of her father, who was an old acquaintance. I did not mourn their deaths."

"Your life is full of death, isn't it?" she asked, once again lacking pity.

"So is yours." He stood up and looked out the window. The curtains were open tonight. "I must go. I have planned dinner with someone."

"A late dinner," she observed, glancing at the digital clock at her bedside.

"Yes."

"A date?"

He nodded. "I suppose humans would call it that. I think of that as a high school child's activity."

Kagome crossed her arms over her stomach. "Is she human?"

"Yes."

She arched an eyebrow. "Does she know what you are? I never thought you would date a human woman."

"There are few of my kind left. I must make allowances. Even I will not live forever and I must have a child eventually." He frowned down at her. "She does not know that I am youkai though."

Kagome reached out and touched his striped wrist. He didn't move away. "What do people think these are?"

"A rebellious past," he replied crisply.

"Do you think you'll marry this woman?"

He considered the question for a moment. "Perhaps."

Kagome nodded and settled back into her bed. "It's good. You should be happy and married. Someone deserves a good life." She closed her eyes. "Goodnight, Sesshoumaru. Have a good dinner."

He left without a word, but he returned the next night and the next and the next. For her entire eleven-day stay, every time the hospital closed its doors to visitors, he would appear at her bedside. They spoke and sometimes they didn't. Once, he brought her a book of Shippo's work. It was the same one Shippo had brought that same afternoon, but Kagome looked through it with interest anyway. It was the only time that they turned on a light.

On her eleventh night, he did not sit down. She smiled and reached out to him. "What? Is this the first night again? Sit down."

"I do not wish it."

"Do you have another date?" she asked. The bandages were off her arms and torso, although her leg was still tied up. It would take several more weeks for the muscle to repair itself, if it ever did heal properly. Physical therapy would be painful. The therapist had been in that day, bending her leg slowly until Kagome thought she would claw her own eyes out with the hurt.

He shook his head. "No. I am not dating her anymore."

"Why not?"

Sesshoumaru said nothing, walking over to the window and staring down to the streets below. Restaurants surrounded the hospital. Most of them had bars. Sesshoumaru knew not because he had been in the establishments, but he had sold them the land. Liquor licenses were important around hospitals. So many people mourning their losses, both potential and real, both their own and their loved ones' losses. He suddenly felt the need to go to one and sit down on one of the sticky plastic barstools in his five-thousand-dollar suit and drink until he was drunk. He had never been drunk before. It was nearly impossible for a taiyoukai, but he was willing to try.

"Why not?" Kagome repeated. She was sitting up straight in the bed and a pile of her clothes sat on top of the dresser for her trip home tomorrow. Sesshoumaru had never encountered her family on these nightly visits, but he could smell their scents on the clothes and in the room.

"The same reason anyone stops dating another. Because I had no wish to continue the relationship," he said, watching cars pull into a particularly popular bar's parking lot. "It was not going to end in marriage," he added, knowing that she would press further if he said nothing else.

She nodded. "You didn't like her enough?"

"I did not like her at all."

Kagome frowned, not from confusion but irritation. Sesshoumaru realized she knew his reasons for dating the woman in the first place. "You just want a kid," she said.

"Yes."

"Then why wasn't she suitable? I mean, isn't anyone with a uterus acceptable for that purpose?" she asked, her tongue laced with acid. She had relaxed around him in the last few nights.

"She was acceptable for that purpose, as you say," he said, turning his eyes away from the window. Her face was alight with color from the city. "I have decided that there are more acceptable females out there than her, however."

"Me."

Sesshoumaru nodded, pleased that he would not have to slowly build up to that. "You are over eighteen, correct?" The age of consent in many districts of Japan was only 13, but as a creature aged into the quadruple digits, he felt the need to be a bit stricter with his own standards.

"I'm twenty next week," she said, frowning. "That's not the point. What if I don't want to marry you? What if I don't want to be just some incubator for a millionaire's children?"

He arched an eyebrow. He was a billionaire, but he wouldn't correct that misconception at the moment. "Are you waiting for love?"

"Yes, of course."

The taiyoukai walked to her bedside, blocking her from the lights, so that his face was in shadow. "Listen to me, because I will never say so much on the subject. You will never love again," he said. "You loved my idiot brother with such passion that you have burnt that part of your heart to a cinder. It will never heal, just as your leg will always feel weak compared to the other. Such deep scars never recover. I will give you a good home and access to a fortune. I will keep only you in my bed and our children will have a life of privilege. And you will love them at least. But do not fool yourself into thinking that you will ever love a male – human or youkai – again."

Kagome swung her legs over the edge of the bed and leaned forward onto her knees. The hospital gown rode high up her thighs and her spine poked through the gap in the back. For a moment, he thought she was going to throw up, but only tears dripped onto the floor. "You don't know anything, especially not about me. You've only started talking to me a little more than a week ago."

He crouched down, but did not look into her eyes. "You must admit, that no one in this era knows you better than I do. Not even your little fox kit. He was a child then. I am the only one alive that saw your pain and remember it with an adult mind." He turned his head away. "I have watched you throughout your life, up until this point. I was even the one to call the ambulance when you materialized in the well house with your leg and body cut apart."

She pressed her eyes with the backs of her hands, trying to stop the tears. "You'll never love me either."

"No." He straightened up again. "But I will respect you and give you what you need. That is more than damaged souls like ours can expect. It is the best we can do."

Kagome's laugh was hollow and short. "Imagine what Inuyasha would say."

"This is my obligation. This was my promise to him."

Her head jerked up. "What? No, he wouldn't do that. He-."

Sesshoumaru sent her a sharp look, silencing her. "I would not lie. I also would not go through with it, unless it was a suitable match. It is. And so I will fulfill the promise."

"Tell me exactly what he said."

The taiyoukai took a deep breath. "He said that you did not deserve to be alone, and as much of a bastard that I was, I had helped in the final battle and I had helped you survive over the years. He said he was convinced my 'stubborn ass' would live until this day." He repeated Inuyasha's words with distaste. "He said that I would be the only one that would understand and that... that if I only knew you, I would love you. He hoped that you would get past his own death in order to love me in return." Sesshoumaru cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. "He was a fool for the last two comments and for several of the epithets he used for me. If he had not already been dying, I would have killed him for it."

Kagome sat on the edge of the bed, her palms pressed into the thin mattress, a wan smile on her face. "Inuyasha really kind of matured in his old age, didn't he?"

"As much as one such as him could."

"And you are really willing to marry me, a human?"

"Yes." He saw the flicker of disbelief on her face, the same flicker that had passed whenever he had spoken of a human in his life. "I have somewhat softened my views on the weaknesses of humanity, although those weaknesses are more prominent than ever. They are, however, less prominent within you."

Kagome was silent for a few moments. "I'll marry you," she said finally. "On one condition."

Sesshoumaru frowned. "I dislike conditions, but name it."

"Kiss me." She looked up at him and noticed his eyes widened a fraction. "You know how. Like you actually do love me." She reached up with her arms, as she was still unable to stand.

He hesitated for only a moment and then stooped down, wrapping his arms, both real and prosthetic, around her frail body. The hospital food had made her lose weight. He made a mental note about it as he lifted her into the air effortlessly, her legs hanging in air. She was suddenly very close, her arms circled around his neck and her breath on his ear.

They looked at one another and he leaned forward, pressing his lips against hers. She kissed him in return with an inexperience unusual of women her age, but not altogether unpleasant. Sesshoumaru could smell her innocence. His arms tightened around her and she didn't have to hold on anymore. Her fingers brushed through his hair gently and then danced along the back of his neck and over his markings. He kissed her deeply as her fingertips found the points of his ears and slid down the length of neck to his shoulder. She felt his fangs with her tongue and smiled against his mouth.

Pulling apart, Kagome leaned forward onto his shoulder, until he set her down on the bed again. "You have do to that every night," she said, her voice dry.

He nodded. He could deal with that particular condition, especially if it eventually gave him a child.

"Then I'll marry you," she murmured. She was looking down at her hands.

He jammed his hands into his pockets. "Very well. When is your family coming tomorrow to pick you up?"

"Eleven."

He nodded again and moved towards the door. "And they know of youkai?"

"Of course. Inuyasha used to come to the house all the time." Her back was to him now and he could smell the scent of her tears again.

"I will meet you here at a quarter to eleven. We will tell your family when they get here." He frowned. "I will pay for everything."

"Don't worry about that. I don't have a lot of friends, so it won't be a big deal. I remember you hate dances and suchlike." She turned to look at him over her shoulder for a moment. Her eyes were large and brown and Sesshoumaru remembered that he had met her when she was only fifteen. He had watched her grow up at the shrine. He remembered that he had never discovered how to forestall Rin's aging. He wondered if he would have to watch Kagome go through the same and decided to send Jaken's replacement to the library the next morning to look in the old scrolls.

"Good," he replied simply, opening the door.

"Sesshoumaru?"

"Yes?"

Kagome rubbed her hands together, as she was suddenly cold. "I hope you're wrong. And I hope Inuyasha was right."

The taiyoukai nodded. "Goodnight, Kagome."

"Goodnight."

He closed the door behind him and stood in the hallway, listening to Kagome sniffling inside the room for several minutes. He stayed until she fell asleep.

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A/N: I tried to end on the happiest note I could, given Kagome's horrible situation. If you'd like, you can imagine that Inuyasha was right and they end up deeply in love and Sesshoumaru finds a way to keep her with him forever. That's the way I'll think about it! Haha. Anyway, please review and stick around! More one-shots are on the way!