Discarded Wings by Neutron
The Harbinger
The ones that fell asleep were always his favorite. He would linger just out of notice, listening for their breathing to recede, before appearing to them, then guiding their soul from the terrestrial realm. It was quiet, and it was warm, and usually the soul smiled sadly and thanked him before walking through the gate.
Sesshōmaru did not ask about where they were going. That was not his role. He was an angel, walking the earth to reap the souls of the dying and to shepherd them to their afterlife.
Angels did not understand concepts like loneliness. It was not in their purview to feel emotions in the same manner as the souls they collected. They simply existed.
“Is it time?” the old woman asked, looking down at her body, her soul standing next to Sesshōmaru.
“It is,” he answered.
“Oh good,” the woman said, and she waddled toward the opening gateway. The one full of light. The one that would take her soul to the afterlife.
Sesshōmaru allowed himself a moment to meditate.
Yes, he thought. My favorite.
Sesshōmaru had been on Earth since time began, doing this job. He had shepherded so many souls at this point that he had stopped attempting to distinguish between them. There were the sad smilers, the deniers, the ‘I must go through the seven stages of grief before I leave’ dilly-dalliers, and there were the mourners—the ones who left before their time, and cried immaterial tears as they left loved ones behind.
Once in a while, someone would stand out and he would remember the scene. A small child who would not leave until someone else adopted her cat. A man who loved his partner so deeply that his soul held her through the night, begging her to wake in the morning. Twins, laughing and cajoling one another over the bone-headed stunt that had gone entirely wrong.
Names he did not need to know. Faces that would be forgotten. Souls that passed beyond the barrier and off the terrestrial plane with his help.
Sesshōmaru made it a point not to notice those around his charges, but sometimes he could not help himself. Human emotions were inescapable so close to death, especially when the one who had passed was beloved. He lingered at their wakes, listening to the stories being told of them, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the ill. It was the one human activity that he allowed himself, because it was the one place he could feel humanity.
Angels did not feel. He knew this. And angels did not desire to feel. He knew this, too. Angels who began to want those earthly things fell, and none wanted that. To be a fallen angel was to no longer feel the divine, settling only for the base earthly things.
As long as none knew how long he lingered in those grieving places, all would be well. It was small, and Sesshōmaru suspected that others of his brethren had similar habits.
He knew of at least one angel who spent offtime at the hospital, watching new life come into the world, and another who seemed to relish in the activity of the young, spending time in middle school halls listening to children melodramatically grow into adults.
Wandering the Earth for so many eons engendered a certain fondness for the place (and its inhabitants).
Your next is in Musashi General Hospital. Room 22B.
Sesshōmaru closed his eyes as he received his orders. He knew that ward well. Death in the intensive care unit was not the same as watching someone gently succumb. It was violent and fast, and he often needed to reason with the souls in that place that they needed to say goodbye and move on.
He did not look forward to this one, but he was an angel, and this was what must be done.
Sesshōmaru sighed. It would do no good to linger at the wake for the last one, and if he started now he would be able to walk. It was sunny, and the streets buzzed with activity. Humans laughing and conversing, busying themselves with their lives.
Sesshōmaru knew that he would see some of them again, when they finally were able to see him: their last moments on Earth, before he shepherded their souls beyond the veil. He wondered who would be his: the old cashier at the bodega, or perhaps the scowling mother whose children were running circles around her, or maybe the young man walking his dog.
Sesshōmaru did not look forward to their dying, per se, but more, to the fleeting look inside of their life that their end gifted him. He liked having those moments, hearing those stories.
In front of him stood Musashi General Hospital. He was almost there, and right on time.
Sesshōmaru could feel the pull of the gate. Not quite open, but no longer closed. Whoever was heading into the afterlife had started their journey.
Up the stairs, one left turn, through the doors, and one final right turn.
Just in time, he mused, now face-to-face with 22B. Let us beg—
But Sesshōmaru was unable to say the rest, because the moment he crossed the threshold into the room, he felt himself knocked backward.
She had long black hair braided in a tight braid down her back, and her fiery hazel eyes were concentrated directly in front of her. She slumped in a chair, watching the monitors and tubes connected to the patient in the bed in front of her, and while her aura screamed of exhaustion, there was defiance in her eyes that ran down to her bones.
“Not yet, Rin,” the woman said. Her green scrubs had the name “Dr. Higurashi” embroidered into the pocket. “We get through tonight, okay? We get through tonight.”
She was speaking to the little girl, the patient, who was connected to all those tubes. Who wore bandages around her head where the tumor had been removed, whose breathing was being controlled by machines.
Sesshōmaru looked at the gateway, still nothing more than a pearlescent orb, still trying to manifest in that room, then back down at the patient, at Rin. It was clear that he was there to take Rin’s soul, to shepherd her into the afterlife, and yet—yet, something about Dr. Higurashi stilled his footsteps, as if she was holding Rin’s death at bay through sheer force of will.
“It won’t work,” Sesshōmaru lamented out loud. “It is her time.”
To his surprise, Dr. Higurashi’s face turned when he spoke. He took a step backward, nearly out of the room. Could she hear him? Could she see him?
No.
But it did seem like she could sense him, because she had not stopped looking in his direction.
She was not the first that had unsettled the angel. Once in a while, he would come across someone who seemed able to sense him. Oftentimes, it was someone close to the soon-to-be deceased. Their eyes would follow what they could not see, and they would tremble as the soul crossed from their corporeal body to the gateway, tears starting the moment that their loved one was truly gone. Sesshōmaru would sometimes want to reach out to those ones, to comfort them, but he never did. It was not the place of an angel to soothe.
Dr. Higurashi, though, was different. She was not familial, and she did not look on with sad acceptance, but with a defiance so overpowering that Sesshōmaru grew timid.
“Rin, whatever you do, stay here. With me,” the doctor begged, scooting her chair up closer to the dying girl. “You fought so hard; you deserve to live!”
The orb pulsed once, as if answering, then started to grow once more.
“She will not be able to stay here.” Sesshōmaru approached the doctor, who glared in his direction, but glared through him rather than at him.
“But she sacrificed so much for me.” A small voice rose from the bed. “I’m not ready to say goodbye.”
She was small, so small, and dressed in a lilac kimono. Her hair was tied back with ribbons, and her translucent eyes still held a playfulness of the child she used to be. She drifted directly to the doctor, whose eyes had grown wide.
“Rin, no…” She had grabbed Rin’s hand, which she squeezed desperately. “We made it through! Together! You were going to get to see your sister’s new cat… you were going to play the new Pokémon game.”
“We do not get to choose when our end comes,” Sesshōmaru explained to Rin’s soul, directly addressing the doctor’s words. “Or who we leave behind.”
“What happens if I stay?” Rin asked, her translucent hand now holding the doctor’s.
“Nothing,” Sesshōmaru answered. This was a conversation that he had had with souls. “But your body is dying. The longer the linger, the lonelier this sphere becomes.”
Suddenly the machine alarms began to erupt and the doctor was on her feet. She grabbed one of three syringes that were sitting next to the IV and quickly injected the one labeled vasopressor into it.
The doctor then hit a button on the wall and ducked her head into the hallway.
“Get me a crash cart!” She shouted, then she wheeled around, peering at Sesshōmaru, though not exactly seeing him. “I know you’re here,” she snarled, and her eyes full of fire. “She’s not yours. I won’t let you have her!”
It made him truly wonder if this doctor could see him.
Two nurses had run into the room, and the doctor began to bark orders, staring again at whatever monitor it was that she had assumed her intervention would be changing.
“Her heart rate is dropping, I need the defibrillator,” the doctor demanded, and one of the nurses was at her side, passing her a set of paddles. The other had already begun injecting fluids into the IV hooked through one of the many tubes going in and out of Rin’s body.
“My surgery took 20 hours,” Rin said, watching the frenzy happening over her body. “And now, she has been watching over me since they took the tumor out of my brain.” The doctor leaned through Rin’s form, paddles in hand. “It doesn’t matter that she is the only surgeon who can do what she can do; she watched over me. She took the first tumor out a year ago, and blames herself that I relapsed.” Rin’s eyes fogged with nonphysical tears. “I don’t want her to carry that with her. She’s special. I want to live for her.”
“That is not a choice you can make,” Sesshōmaru answered. The gate was starting to grow larger. Rin’s body had nearly succumbed. “As much as you wish it were so.”
“Clear.” A clap was heard through the room as the defibrillator surged to life, sending electricity through Rin’s rapidly failing heart. “Call the OR and get me a room, fast!”
“Why did this happen?” Rin looked down at herself, trembling as the nurses and doctor moved around her in ordered chaos.
“Sometimes there is nothing that can be done,” Sesshōmaru explained, training his eyes to exhibit sympathy for this soul, Rin. “Fate is fate.”
“Higurashi!” A new person, one in a lab coat walked into the room. “What the hell is happening?”
“Check her head, Suikotsu!” she cried. “I can’t…” The doctor was now on Rin’s chest, compressing desperately as the nurses pushed more and more drugs through the IV.
“Higurashi…” Suikotsu’s voice grew soft. He was looking at the rapidly reddening bandages around Rin’s head.
“No!” There was something about the way she fought. Insistent and furious, but also gentle, because she knew that her hands were on the body of a frail little girl. “Not yet! Not when she fought like hell…”
“We need to call it,” Suikotsu said dully. “Trying to bring her back will do nothing except bring her pain.”
The two doctors exchanged a look, then Dr. Higurashi’s hands stilled, and her shoulders slumped. It was time to accept that there was nothing to be done.
The nurses stopped the moment the doctor made that declaration. “I tried, Rin; I really really tried. I’m sorry.” Her voice began to waver. “I’m so so sorry.”
The moment the doctor’s first tear wetted Rin’s hospital gown, the gateway pulsed.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” Rin said, but rather than walking to the gateway, she folded her soul over the crying doctor, hugging her as best she could. “It’s okay… it’s okay. You gave me one more year to be with my family, and to play Pokémon.” She then looked over to Sesshōmaru. “I… I promised to play Pokémon with her when I made it this time.” A soft chuckle. “She’s lonely, you know. She pretends that she’s not, but… I could always see it in her eyes.”
Rin then backed away, and she looked at the pulsing gold and white that had shaped itself into a doorway: the doorway to the afterlife.
“Her name is Kagome,” Rin whispered. “Tell her that I’m sorry… that I couldn’t stay here for her.”
Then she waved a sad goodbye and disappeared through the gateway, which disappeared when its task was complete.
“Time of death, 16:45,” the doctor—Kagome—said, breathing deeply, in and out, in and out, to collect herself.
“Sorry, kid. You fought like hell for this one.” Suikotsu patted Kagome on the back exactly once, then left the room.
“If it’s okay, I’m going to stay here. Just for a little while.” Kagome looked at the two remaining nurses, who nodded knowing nods. Kagome returned to the chair that she had been camped out in, and slumped down into it. “Damn.” She ran her fist into the chair’s armrest. “Damn damn damn damn damn!”
Although her eyes were still full of their defiant fire, tears were streaming down their edges. And although he knew that she couldn’t actually see him, for some reason, he was certain that she knew that he was there.
He wanted to keep watching her as she processed Rin’s death. He wanted to reach out and deliver Rin’s last words for her. He wanted her to—
“Is she going to be okay?” Kagome spoke so quietly it was difficult to hear her. “Wherever she went.” Her eyes were back to looking through him. “Will she be happy?”
They were questions to which Sesshōmaru did not know the answer. It was not an angel’s place to ask, either. Yet, as he looked into those bright eyes that streamed with tears for the girl she could not save, the girl who had thanked her for one more year of Pokémon, Sesshōmaru wanted to tell Kagome one single word.
Yes.