Assassination

A/N: This is also a rewritten chapter. Trust me, it's better for all involved this way.

Disclaimer: "Do you own Inuyasha?" said the spider to the Titaness.
"I wish." said the Titaness to the spider.

CHAPTER TWO: Funeral


Somehow, funerals soothed her. They bespoke of a finality that was rare in her life, with ever-present change and the odd bout of continuity that always pissed her off.

She had a very morbid habit of crashing funerals. Some would say that it was even more morbid when the body in the casket was there by her own hand.

But what did they know?

It was sort of like her self-inflicted punishment. She didn't really like the whole killing aspect of her job, but it was a bit necessary. After all, it was what assassins had to do.

Besides, she never made her victims suffer unduly. Death was usually instantaneous.

Usually.

This one, her latest, most high-profile hit, actually lingered long enough to banter weakly with her fiance before finally kicking it. Sure, she had lost a bit of sleep over that, as she knew firsthand just how painful those lingering deaths were. She could have argued that the woman would not have suffered at all if she had not leapt in front of her fiance so suddenly, forcing her to shift her aim. She was fortunate that the assassin was quite as good as she was, to compensate for her rapid movement, or else she would probably be nursing a non-fatal hole to the head.

And inasmuch as she disdained using weaponry, she knew that she would like even less the prospects of sneaking into a heavily-guarded hospital to finish someone off by pulling a plug.

She could have argued that. But she would not, because she knew that the light going out of the body lying stiff in the church was her fault.

She had learned long ago to accept that dreadful guilt.

But, if the person who had hired her had gone with any other assassin, surely she would have suffered much
more than she actually did. The assassin could take some measure of comfort in that.

Somehow, she didn't think that the dead model's family and friends would think about it the same way.

"In this time of bereavement, we extend our condolences to the family of Kikyo Innesly,
taken far too soon." She looked up from her perusal of the shiny black casket at the
priest's words.

From her standing position in the very back of the Christian church, she had a perfect view of the front pews. The target's sister sat, small shoulders round with grief, as her sister's best friend curved a comforting arm around her. The target's fiance sat next to them, his head bowed as he stared at his palms. His brother sat stiffly next to him, clearly uncomfortable with all the emotion saturating the air.

She almost grinned at that, but her mirth faded when the fiance started to cry silently.

Well, dammit.

She stumbled out blindly, unable to deny the truth or try to drive it away with wiseass comments. She HATED her job. Too bad she was so damned good at it.

If she had a choice, she would drop her lifestyle in a heartbeat to do something less corrosive on her soul.
But she didn't. She had to kill to survive. That lesson she had learnt the first time she had died.

It was not an experience she particularly relished.

She inhaled the crisp air, allowing the stench of death and tears to dissipate.

God, but she really hated killing people who had people who loved them. If it was that the model was a class-A bitch that everyone, down to her mother, hated, then she wouldn't feel quite so bad about it.

But nooooo.

She had to get a paragon of virtue, that practically everyone loved.

Just her luck.

She sincerely missed the days when assassins could feel proud about their work. In her earlier days, the kind of men she was sent after thoroughly deserved the garrote to their throats, the poison in their teas and the knives to their chests.

But now...now she took out people so good and happy that they fairly glowed with purity and light.

She had extinguished Kikyo Innesly's light, and it truly was one of the more horrible things that she had done. And in a life tainted red with blood and white with sorrow, that was saying something.

She ignored the mass of people crowded outside, none of whom had seen her, and disappeared into the wind, heart and spirit heavy and cold.


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Sesshomaru sat quietly next to his younger brother, his shoulders stiff and face set. To his right, his daughter Rin sat, both of her small hands clasped tightly in one of his. He sat expressionless as the Christian priest started speaking in tones of geniune sorrow and regret about Kikyo. Suddenly, to his left, his brother's shoulders started shaking as he started to cry. Not deep, wrenching sobs, such as young Kaede were gasping through, but silent tears that simply slid from his eyes.

It ate at him that his brother was in such deep pain and he could do nothing about it. His brother sat in silent tears while the love of his life lay cold in a box.

And what could he do?

Sesshomaru slowly lifted his free left hand and simply clasped his brother's hand in his, holding on tightly, relieved when his brother accepted his comfort and grasped his fingers with almost painful intensity.


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Kagome sat next to Inuyasha, an arm around the shaking shoulders of Kaede, Kikyo's sister, and battled her own need to simply dissolve into floods of grief. Kaede gasped, tears still spilling from her once merry-brown eyes, and buried her face into Kagome's chest, her thin arms wrapped tightly around Kagome. Kagome looked down at the grief-stricken teenager and locked her own pain away. As she smoothed her hands over Kaede's hair, murmuring incoherent, meaningless comforts, she wondered what she could say to stop the girl's pain. She looked across at the closed black casket, past the mounds of flowers, remembering the awful paleness and coldness and stillness of Kikyo's face. Her once vibrant, laughing, kind face. Kagome remembered almost detachedly that one of her best friends lay cold and dead in that black box.

She felt Inuyasha tremble next to her, felt his own tears flowing as clearly as if she had turned to look at his face. She looked back at the casket, and she wished that it held her instead.

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A/N: So?

What are your thoughts?