InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Absolution's Pursuit ❯ A Reluctant Agreement ( Chapter 9 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Lady Sianna 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Romance / Drama / Adventure | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 02.06.2010 | Updated On: 02.22.2010 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 463 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Romance / Drama / Adventure | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 02.06.2010 | Updated On: 02.22.2010 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 463 | Status: Work In Progress
Absolution’s Pursuit
A Reluctant Agreement
_____________________________________________________________ ___________
“Do you know where I can find Inuyasha?”
The question seemed to weigh down the very air around him and the demon lord blinked slowly as he bided his time and considered his options. He, Sesshoumaru did not fear humans, did not, in fact fear death. What was not acceptable however, was a dishonorable demise. One such as he was meant to be felled only in heated battle by an opponent whose skills and power greatly surpassed his own. Even then death was only acceptable after a valiant effort on his part. It was not acceptable to perish at the hands of this pathetic human female, nor to lose his power and longevity and die as a wretched mortal.
“Sesshoumaru?” the woman prompted, her voice belying the delicate caution and healthy respect due to a creature as deadly as he. Little did she realize that her arrows, even her very touch could send him into the world beyond this plane.
“He is gone.” the daiyoukai stated simply, his steady gaze finding her face, gauging her response. The sound of her rapidly beating heart met his ears and for the briefest of moments, her aura flared; lost a modicum of its stability and released another grating wave of purity against his senses.
“Gone?” she rasped softly, “What do you mean gone?”
He could see her eyes flickering with dread, traces of anxiety and the faintest hint of realization. His gaze remained steady, his posture firm and sure in spite of the uncertainty that was even now pooling at the base of his spine.
“He is dead.”
The light clattering of wood against wood overtook the light pattering of rain as the miko’s weapons fell from her now limp fingers. She took a single step away from him as if in preparation to flee. “No!” she insisted, “That’s, that’s not true!”
And inaudible sigh escaped him and the demon stepped forward, not fully comprehending why he felt the need to recover the additional space she had created in her partial retreat.
“I assure you it is,” he informed the untrained miko. He continued to watch with faintly cautious interest as streams of tears began spilling from her eyes.
“It can’t… it can’t be!! H-how do you know?!” she yelled, her voice cracking about the edges. Her eyes were fixed on his face, traces of accusation visible in their chocolate depths. She was clenching a tiny fist against her breast, still struggling in vain to hold onto the last traces of her denial. Her knees were growing weak, the exposed planes of her legs shaking beneath the short kimono she wore. Not quite as revealing as that ridiculous green and white ensemble she always used to wear, this kimono was decorated in a pattern of tiny blue and white checkers, while the double layered top pieces were solid but of complimenting colors.
“How do you know?!” she demanded again, baring her blunt human teeth as if they could possibly be of any threat to him.
The demon lord was silent for several more seconds, all the while the tension was growing thick in the air.
Finally, finally he told her, “Because I attempted to bring him back.”
The air rushed from her lungs and her frail legs finally gave out on her. The female collapsed to the ground, seemingly unconcerned as moisture seeped into her clothing. “No…” she said after a long, trembling pause, “I can’t… I-I don’t believe you.” Unchecked, the tears streamed down her cheeks, somehow managing to stand out against the previous moisture of delicate rain. Her dark hair, heavy, damp, and longer than he remembered, spilled down around her, a few of the ebony tresses pooling in her lap as she hung her head in despair.
“I buried him myself.” the daiyoukai pressed on, his voice low and even. “If you wish to visit his grave…”
“NO!!!” the woman shrieked, her head shooting up and allowing him to see the wide-eyed panic and renewed sense of denial.
The demon lord stepped forward again but the woman quickly scrambled to her feet. “He’s not dead!” she denied heatedly. “He can’t be!! I came back to this time just for him!! He can’t be! He’s not weak! He wouldn’t die on me like that!!”
“He was felled in battle.” the inu lord told her. “It seems that his spirit had been weakened, but his demise was honorable.”
“Stop saying that!! Just stop it, stop it!! Don’t say that again! He’s NOT dead!” she cried, her voice grainy with the overwhelming weight of her emotions.
“Denying the truth of my words will change nothing. I was there… I saw him. He is gone.”
“NOOOO!!!!” she cried again, placing a hand over each of her ears as if blocking the words would change the reality. When he stepped forward again, the miko began to back away. One unsure step and then another before she spun on her heel and broke into a frantic run, presumably back the way she had come.
For a time, Sesshoumaru simply watched her shrink into the distance, leaving behind her weapons and the lingering scent of her anguish. He could still hear her crying even when he could no longer see her.
An old, rarely used sensation washed over him in caustic waves and it took several moments for the demon to recognize it as guilt. As emotionally detached as he had always prided himself to be, Sesshoumaru was never one to take pleasure in the suffering of a female. The fact that she was human was of no matter.
Aside from that, there was the niggling sense of unease at the fact that he had not been entirely honest with her. Obviously it was not in his best interest to do so, but as a fundamentally truthful creature, he was not pleased with the fact that he had been forced into any modicum of deception. Prudence, however, had given him very little in the way of acceptable options.
Sternly, the daiyoukai dismissed the shadow of malcontent that had attempted to envelope him in its icy embrace. His situation was bleak enough as it stood. Full disclosure would likely have prompted the miko to attack and Sesshoumaru was fairly certain that the blood of a priestess on his claws would have only increased the calamitous state of his situation. Besides, she was a woman and he really did not care to harm her unless no other option was available.
____________________________________________________________ ____________
When he found her again, Kagome was leaning against the diminutive structure of an ancient well, her eyes blank and distant as she stared listlessly into the still cloudy sky. The rain had since abated, but he suspected she would not have cared one way or the other.
Even as he stood there, watching her from the edge of the clearing, Sesshoumaru could not say for certain what compelled him to follow her. Logically, he realized that it was probably best to avoid her, but, against his better judgment he found himself content to follow the scent of her pain and tears. His journey would have lead him near this area anyway, so trailing the female really was of no consequence.
Leisurely moving forward, the youkai stopped just a few feet from her position, dropping her discarded weapons in the small space that lay between them.
“Foolish girl.” he chided softly. “It is not safe for one such as yourself to travel unarmed.”
“Doesn’t matter.” she told him, dejection clear in her tone. “Nothing matters anymore. I can’t go back to the village, I won’t. I won’t burden Sango and the others with my grief. They were all so happy together. They’re a family now. There’s no room for me there. And the well…” she trailed off, a pair of fresh tears escaping her unblinking eyes. “The well won’t take me home again.” She sighed softly, resignedly, her eyes closing as she folded her hands in her lap and leaned her head against the rim of the well. “I won’t survive long on my own anyway, so what’s the point?”
The daiyoukai did not respond to that, simply maintained his silence. It was strange to see the female this way. He had never seen her so downtrodden, so completely devoid of hope and that annoying sense of optimism. He found it strange, yet oddly intriguing.
“Where is your family?” he heard himself asking, though he had given no prior thought to the question.
The miko did not reply immediately and when she finally deigned to do so, she sighed and said, …“I guess… I don’t have one. Not anymore.” And in her mind, her youthful visions of herself together with Inuyasha and their silver-haired quarter youkai children, faded and crumbled at her feet like the ashes of so many purified demons. It all seemed so silly now, but the three years that had separated them had left her with such an overwhelming sense of longing, so many fantasies of what could have been. And now that she was here again, here in the place that had become more and more like home to her the longer she was separated from it, the one person who truly made it so was gone.
It had been too much to hope for; too much to hope that the only male she had ever had any sort of romantic interest in, the brash hanyou with his adorable puppy dog ears, the one who had been her brave and unfaltering hero would be here waiting for her should the well ever decide to welcome her back. Swallowing and allowing her eyes to shift just a little, she noted that the demon was still there. She had expected him to simply walk away, but since he was still here, he could answer a question for her, destroy her already shattered heart; remind her just how ridiculous her fantasies and girlish dreams had really been. Perhaps the additional pain induced by the unrefined truth would be enough to kill her, to end her now miserable existence and blot out the stain of her stupidity and presumptiveness.
“When did he die?” the woman asked, her tone bland and leeched of the emotion he could still detect in her scent.
“Three days ago.” he told her, his voice cool and even.
A wet, humorless chuckle escaped her, grating down Sesshoumaru’s spine as her already crestfallen expression crumpled into nothing less than the physical embodiment of unrepressed anguish.
She began to cry. Drawing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around them, the woman dropped her head, only slightly muffling the sound of her miserable bawling.
She had just missed him, just by a few days, and somehow that made it so much worse. The pain was almost physical and in the murkiest corners of her mind, Kagome wished that the grief would stop her heart rather than simply torment it. She wanted to run away, flee the pain, flee the reality that he was really dead, flee the emotionally detached creature that stood near to her, telling her that her life was over, that the love of her life and his own sibling was gone, without the slightest shred of care or concern. She almost wanted to lash out at him, almost wanted to inflict upon him the pain that was consuming the entirety of her soul, but she didn’t, couldn’t. He had already done far more than anyone would have expected.
He had tried to bring him back…
Spiraling further into her despair, the untrained miko shuddered and wailed, her miniscule frame jolting against itself with the force of her sobs. She was so consumed in the depths of her self pity, that she did not notice the pale form of the demon lord as he apparently lost interest in her display of emotion and retreated into the nearby woods. She wanted to go back to the village, wanted the others to welcome her with open arms and sooth away her heartache. She wanted to volt over the edge of the well again and have it return her to her proper time, but none of those things would make it better, none of those things would make the hurt go away, so she just sat there and cried her heart out, reminding herself over and over that she would never see him again. That he was gone, gone, gone, and he was never, ever going to come back.
____________________________________________________________ ____________
The late afternoon sun had finally broken through the thick layers of clouds, though its appearance did little to brighten what was left of the day. Pale and watery, its lethargically iridescent beams blotted the earth in erratic patterns through the thick scattering of trees.
Bathed in a diluted yellow glow, a tiny clearing played host to a small female. Her body slightly skewed in its futile pursuit of comfort, the young woman’s head was partially supported by the well on which she had slumped, while her shoulder took the remaining weight. Her arms were folded over her stomach while her long legs, one folded beneath the other were sprawled out in front of her.
Coaxed by a soft breeze, the surrounding grass rustled lightly against itself and the woman slowly opened her eyes.
“Your imprudence knows no bounds.” a cool voice broke into the stillness.
Recognizing the voice, but not understanding why it happened to be there at all, Kagome wrapped her arms around herself and angled her body so that she was facing the opposite direction from which it had come. “What’s it to you?”
The voice did not respond to this.
Figures. “Why are you here anyway? I thought you were gone.”
Hearing the stir of grass behind her, the woman did not even bother to turn and face the being that currently shared her space.
Looking down on her, Sesshoumaru considered her question. When she had broken into uncontrolled sobbing, he had made his departure, content to leave her behind and be on his way. But, something had insisted that he should go back. An unrelenting voice, one that sounded suspiciously like his father, had tormented him persistently until he finally doubled back on his path, returning to the small clearing where he had left her. By the time he had returned, she had fallen asleep, tracks of dried tears staining her otherwise passably attractive face.
For her sake, it was probably a good thing he had returned when he did, because the woman would have found herself in a situation she surely would not have appreciated. Someone had been watching her. From the boughs of an nearby tree, a young forest youkai had been eying her in a way that clearly displayed his lascivious intentions. Worrying his lower lip between his teeth, the male had been greedily devouring her feminine curves, his focus centering on the exposed flesh of her legs.
Upon sensing his youki, the demon started, his pale green eyes wide with surprise as Sesshoumaru moved to the miko’s side. Passing a quick glance to the girl, to the inu lord and back again, the forest youkai leapt from the tree and sprinted off in the opposite direction.
Once the deplorable creature was gone, Sesshoumaru moved a short distance away and seated himself in the shade of a young tree. During the time she slept, he allowed his mind to wander. He was becoming mortal, he remembered, the memory causing an unhappy furrow to mar his brow. There did not seem to be a significant difference within him, but he did not feel quite the same. There was a faint heaviness in his limbs that had not been there before. He wondered if this new development would affect his trademark speed and agility.
He wondered if the tortoise shell he was currently seeking would truly be of any benefit. It was this thought that triggered a memory, a memory of what his father had told him very shortly before he returned to the world beyond…
“I cannot say for certain how you will convince her to surrender something of such great value, but I have faith that you will find a way, my son.”
‘Oshiikame,’ he remembered. She would not surrender her shell without question so…
His calculating gaze fell upon the miko. Swaddled in the defenselessness of sleep, she seemed completely without care, in spite of the constant dangers and emotional turmoil that surrounded her. It was around then that he made his decision.
“You will come with me.” Sesshoumaru spoke across the small space. The woman jolted visibly before turning to face him.
“What?!” she asked, her expression conveying confusion and incredulity.
“You said that you would not return to the village, so you will come with me instead.”
A flurry of thoughts whirred through Kagome’s mind, not the least of which were ‘What?!’ Or, ‘Who did he think he was to suddenly make demands of her?’ and ‘What the heck was he talking about anyway?’ but the one she finally voiced was, “Why?”
“Inuyasha is no longer here to protect you. I shall do so in his stead.”
“Oh…” the woman breathed softly, her features softening but still belying traces of confusion. She did not answer for a long time, and Sesshoumaru briefly considered the ways he might convince her should she decide to refuse.
Her brow furrowing, the untrained miko considered his proposal and the possible reasons behind it. In her mind however, the latter was sorely lacking, except…
She looked up at him, attempting to find her answers in the blank façade of his face. When nothing seemed to be forthcoming, she focused on his eyes. There was something there, something she could not identify, though she was sure she had never seen it before. Was it… was it possible that he felt guilty for not being able to save Inuyasha? It seemed ridiculous, but nothing else could explain his current behavior.
The silence, faintly colored of tension and seemingly endless, stretched its wings around them, filled the space like something alive and tangible, all the while waiting for one of them to speak.
Finally, Sesshoumaru had had enough. He was not entirely comfortable with what he was about to say, but he needed to convince her without force.
“Consider it… a means of atonement.”
Those words, simple yet devastatingly profound, seeped into her mind and invaded her heart. Her lower lip trembled at the weight of it, yet she managed to keep her tears at bay. His words played in her mind over and over again, and as out of place as it seemed, she now understood that, in spite of the relationship the brothers had shared in life, there was something there. A familial bond that left Sesshoumaru feeling culpable for the fact that he had not been able to save his only sibling.
“Yes,” she finally choked out, “I’ll go with you.”
Giving a curt nod that signaled the completion of their agreement, Sesshoumaru refrained from smirking at this small victory.
With a miko under his guardianship, Oshiikame would surrender her shell without fail.
_________________________________________________________________ _______
Whew! Finally got this done! I know the tone is still pretty melancholic, but hopefully the next chapter will be a bit lighter. I really hope you all enjoyed and please review!
A Reluctant Agreement
_____________________________________________________________ ___________
“Do you know where I can find Inuyasha?”
The question seemed to weigh down the very air around him and the demon lord blinked slowly as he bided his time and considered his options. He, Sesshoumaru did not fear humans, did not, in fact fear death. What was not acceptable however, was a dishonorable demise. One such as he was meant to be felled only in heated battle by an opponent whose skills and power greatly surpassed his own. Even then death was only acceptable after a valiant effort on his part. It was not acceptable to perish at the hands of this pathetic human female, nor to lose his power and longevity and die as a wretched mortal.
“Sesshoumaru?” the woman prompted, her voice belying the delicate caution and healthy respect due to a creature as deadly as he. Little did she realize that her arrows, even her very touch could send him into the world beyond this plane.
“He is gone.” the daiyoukai stated simply, his steady gaze finding her face, gauging her response. The sound of her rapidly beating heart met his ears and for the briefest of moments, her aura flared; lost a modicum of its stability and released another grating wave of purity against his senses.
“Gone?” she rasped softly, “What do you mean gone?”
He could see her eyes flickering with dread, traces of anxiety and the faintest hint of realization. His gaze remained steady, his posture firm and sure in spite of the uncertainty that was even now pooling at the base of his spine.
“He is dead.”
The light clattering of wood against wood overtook the light pattering of rain as the miko’s weapons fell from her now limp fingers. She took a single step away from him as if in preparation to flee. “No!” she insisted, “That’s, that’s not true!”
And inaudible sigh escaped him and the demon stepped forward, not fully comprehending why he felt the need to recover the additional space she had created in her partial retreat.
“I assure you it is,” he informed the untrained miko. He continued to watch with faintly cautious interest as streams of tears began spilling from her eyes.
“It can’t… it can’t be!! H-how do you know?!” she yelled, her voice cracking about the edges. Her eyes were fixed on his face, traces of accusation visible in their chocolate depths. She was clenching a tiny fist against her breast, still struggling in vain to hold onto the last traces of her denial. Her knees were growing weak, the exposed planes of her legs shaking beneath the short kimono she wore. Not quite as revealing as that ridiculous green and white ensemble she always used to wear, this kimono was decorated in a pattern of tiny blue and white checkers, while the double layered top pieces were solid but of complimenting colors.
“How do you know?!” she demanded again, baring her blunt human teeth as if they could possibly be of any threat to him.
The demon lord was silent for several more seconds, all the while the tension was growing thick in the air.
Finally, finally he told her, “Because I attempted to bring him back.”
The air rushed from her lungs and her frail legs finally gave out on her. The female collapsed to the ground, seemingly unconcerned as moisture seeped into her clothing. “No…” she said after a long, trembling pause, “I can’t… I-I don’t believe you.” Unchecked, the tears streamed down her cheeks, somehow managing to stand out against the previous moisture of delicate rain. Her dark hair, heavy, damp, and longer than he remembered, spilled down around her, a few of the ebony tresses pooling in her lap as she hung her head in despair.
“I buried him myself.” the daiyoukai pressed on, his voice low and even. “If you wish to visit his grave…”
“NO!!!” the woman shrieked, her head shooting up and allowing him to see the wide-eyed panic and renewed sense of denial.
The demon lord stepped forward again but the woman quickly scrambled to her feet. “He’s not dead!” she denied heatedly. “He can’t be!! I came back to this time just for him!! He can’t be! He’s not weak! He wouldn’t die on me like that!!”
“He was felled in battle.” the inu lord told her. “It seems that his spirit had been weakened, but his demise was honorable.”
“Stop saying that!! Just stop it, stop it!! Don’t say that again! He’s NOT dead!” she cried, her voice grainy with the overwhelming weight of her emotions.
“Denying the truth of my words will change nothing. I was there… I saw him. He is gone.”
“NOOOO!!!!” she cried again, placing a hand over each of her ears as if blocking the words would change the reality. When he stepped forward again, the miko began to back away. One unsure step and then another before she spun on her heel and broke into a frantic run, presumably back the way she had come.
For a time, Sesshoumaru simply watched her shrink into the distance, leaving behind her weapons and the lingering scent of her anguish. He could still hear her crying even when he could no longer see her.
An old, rarely used sensation washed over him in caustic waves and it took several moments for the demon to recognize it as guilt. As emotionally detached as he had always prided himself to be, Sesshoumaru was never one to take pleasure in the suffering of a female. The fact that she was human was of no matter.
Aside from that, there was the niggling sense of unease at the fact that he had not been entirely honest with her. Obviously it was not in his best interest to do so, but as a fundamentally truthful creature, he was not pleased with the fact that he had been forced into any modicum of deception. Prudence, however, had given him very little in the way of acceptable options.
Sternly, the daiyoukai dismissed the shadow of malcontent that had attempted to envelope him in its icy embrace. His situation was bleak enough as it stood. Full disclosure would likely have prompted the miko to attack and Sesshoumaru was fairly certain that the blood of a priestess on his claws would have only increased the calamitous state of his situation. Besides, she was a woman and he really did not care to harm her unless no other option was available.
____________________________________________________________ ____________
When he found her again, Kagome was leaning against the diminutive structure of an ancient well, her eyes blank and distant as she stared listlessly into the still cloudy sky. The rain had since abated, but he suspected she would not have cared one way or the other.
Even as he stood there, watching her from the edge of the clearing, Sesshoumaru could not say for certain what compelled him to follow her. Logically, he realized that it was probably best to avoid her, but, against his better judgment he found himself content to follow the scent of her pain and tears. His journey would have lead him near this area anyway, so trailing the female really was of no consequence.
Leisurely moving forward, the youkai stopped just a few feet from her position, dropping her discarded weapons in the small space that lay between them.
“Foolish girl.” he chided softly. “It is not safe for one such as yourself to travel unarmed.”
“Doesn’t matter.” she told him, dejection clear in her tone. “Nothing matters anymore. I can’t go back to the village, I won’t. I won’t burden Sango and the others with my grief. They were all so happy together. They’re a family now. There’s no room for me there. And the well…” she trailed off, a pair of fresh tears escaping her unblinking eyes. “The well won’t take me home again.” She sighed softly, resignedly, her eyes closing as she folded her hands in her lap and leaned her head against the rim of the well. “I won’t survive long on my own anyway, so what’s the point?”
The daiyoukai did not respond to that, simply maintained his silence. It was strange to see the female this way. He had never seen her so downtrodden, so completely devoid of hope and that annoying sense of optimism. He found it strange, yet oddly intriguing.
“Where is your family?” he heard himself asking, though he had given no prior thought to the question.
The miko did not reply immediately and when she finally deigned to do so, she sighed and said, …“I guess… I don’t have one. Not anymore.” And in her mind, her youthful visions of herself together with Inuyasha and their silver-haired quarter youkai children, faded and crumbled at her feet like the ashes of so many purified demons. It all seemed so silly now, but the three years that had separated them had left her with such an overwhelming sense of longing, so many fantasies of what could have been. And now that she was here again, here in the place that had become more and more like home to her the longer she was separated from it, the one person who truly made it so was gone.
It had been too much to hope for; too much to hope that the only male she had ever had any sort of romantic interest in, the brash hanyou with his adorable puppy dog ears, the one who had been her brave and unfaltering hero would be here waiting for her should the well ever decide to welcome her back. Swallowing and allowing her eyes to shift just a little, she noted that the demon was still there. She had expected him to simply walk away, but since he was still here, he could answer a question for her, destroy her already shattered heart; remind her just how ridiculous her fantasies and girlish dreams had really been. Perhaps the additional pain induced by the unrefined truth would be enough to kill her, to end her now miserable existence and blot out the stain of her stupidity and presumptiveness.
“When did he die?” the woman asked, her tone bland and leeched of the emotion he could still detect in her scent.
“Three days ago.” he told her, his voice cool and even.
A wet, humorless chuckle escaped her, grating down Sesshoumaru’s spine as her already crestfallen expression crumpled into nothing less than the physical embodiment of unrepressed anguish.
She began to cry. Drawing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around them, the woman dropped her head, only slightly muffling the sound of her miserable bawling.
She had just missed him, just by a few days, and somehow that made it so much worse. The pain was almost physical and in the murkiest corners of her mind, Kagome wished that the grief would stop her heart rather than simply torment it. She wanted to run away, flee the pain, flee the reality that he was really dead, flee the emotionally detached creature that stood near to her, telling her that her life was over, that the love of her life and his own sibling was gone, without the slightest shred of care or concern. She almost wanted to lash out at him, almost wanted to inflict upon him the pain that was consuming the entirety of her soul, but she didn’t, couldn’t. He had already done far more than anyone would have expected.
He had tried to bring him back…
Spiraling further into her despair, the untrained miko shuddered and wailed, her miniscule frame jolting against itself with the force of her sobs. She was so consumed in the depths of her self pity, that she did not notice the pale form of the demon lord as he apparently lost interest in her display of emotion and retreated into the nearby woods. She wanted to go back to the village, wanted the others to welcome her with open arms and sooth away her heartache. She wanted to volt over the edge of the well again and have it return her to her proper time, but none of those things would make it better, none of those things would make the hurt go away, so she just sat there and cried her heart out, reminding herself over and over that she would never see him again. That he was gone, gone, gone, and he was never, ever going to come back.
____________________________________________________________ ____________
The late afternoon sun had finally broken through the thick layers of clouds, though its appearance did little to brighten what was left of the day. Pale and watery, its lethargically iridescent beams blotted the earth in erratic patterns through the thick scattering of trees.
Bathed in a diluted yellow glow, a tiny clearing played host to a small female. Her body slightly skewed in its futile pursuit of comfort, the young woman’s head was partially supported by the well on which she had slumped, while her shoulder took the remaining weight. Her arms were folded over her stomach while her long legs, one folded beneath the other were sprawled out in front of her.
Coaxed by a soft breeze, the surrounding grass rustled lightly against itself and the woman slowly opened her eyes.
“Your imprudence knows no bounds.” a cool voice broke into the stillness.
Recognizing the voice, but not understanding why it happened to be there at all, Kagome wrapped her arms around herself and angled her body so that she was facing the opposite direction from which it had come. “What’s it to you?”
The voice did not respond to this.
Figures. “Why are you here anyway? I thought you were gone.”
Hearing the stir of grass behind her, the woman did not even bother to turn and face the being that currently shared her space.
Looking down on her, Sesshoumaru considered her question. When she had broken into uncontrolled sobbing, he had made his departure, content to leave her behind and be on his way. But, something had insisted that he should go back. An unrelenting voice, one that sounded suspiciously like his father, had tormented him persistently until he finally doubled back on his path, returning to the small clearing where he had left her. By the time he had returned, she had fallen asleep, tracks of dried tears staining her otherwise passably attractive face.
For her sake, it was probably a good thing he had returned when he did, because the woman would have found herself in a situation she surely would not have appreciated. Someone had been watching her. From the boughs of an nearby tree, a young forest youkai had been eying her in a way that clearly displayed his lascivious intentions. Worrying his lower lip between his teeth, the male had been greedily devouring her feminine curves, his focus centering on the exposed flesh of her legs.
Upon sensing his youki, the demon started, his pale green eyes wide with surprise as Sesshoumaru moved to the miko’s side. Passing a quick glance to the girl, to the inu lord and back again, the forest youkai leapt from the tree and sprinted off in the opposite direction.
Once the deplorable creature was gone, Sesshoumaru moved a short distance away and seated himself in the shade of a young tree. During the time she slept, he allowed his mind to wander. He was becoming mortal, he remembered, the memory causing an unhappy furrow to mar his brow. There did not seem to be a significant difference within him, but he did not feel quite the same. There was a faint heaviness in his limbs that had not been there before. He wondered if this new development would affect his trademark speed and agility.
He wondered if the tortoise shell he was currently seeking would truly be of any benefit. It was this thought that triggered a memory, a memory of what his father had told him very shortly before he returned to the world beyond…
“I cannot say for certain how you will convince her to surrender something of such great value, but I have faith that you will find a way, my son.”
‘Oshiikame,’ he remembered. She would not surrender her shell without question so…
His calculating gaze fell upon the miko. Swaddled in the defenselessness of sleep, she seemed completely without care, in spite of the constant dangers and emotional turmoil that surrounded her. It was around then that he made his decision.
“You will come with me.” Sesshoumaru spoke across the small space. The woman jolted visibly before turning to face him.
“What?!” she asked, her expression conveying confusion and incredulity.
“You said that you would not return to the village, so you will come with me instead.”
A flurry of thoughts whirred through Kagome’s mind, not the least of which were ‘What?!’ Or, ‘Who did he think he was to suddenly make demands of her?’ and ‘What the heck was he talking about anyway?’ but the one she finally voiced was, “Why?”
“Inuyasha is no longer here to protect you. I shall do so in his stead.”
“Oh…” the woman breathed softly, her features softening but still belying traces of confusion. She did not answer for a long time, and Sesshoumaru briefly considered the ways he might convince her should she decide to refuse.
Her brow furrowing, the untrained miko considered his proposal and the possible reasons behind it. In her mind however, the latter was sorely lacking, except…
She looked up at him, attempting to find her answers in the blank façade of his face. When nothing seemed to be forthcoming, she focused on his eyes. There was something there, something she could not identify, though she was sure she had never seen it before. Was it… was it possible that he felt guilty for not being able to save Inuyasha? It seemed ridiculous, but nothing else could explain his current behavior.
The silence, faintly colored of tension and seemingly endless, stretched its wings around them, filled the space like something alive and tangible, all the while waiting for one of them to speak.
Finally, Sesshoumaru had had enough. He was not entirely comfortable with what he was about to say, but he needed to convince her without force.
“Consider it… a means of atonement.”
Those words, simple yet devastatingly profound, seeped into her mind and invaded her heart. Her lower lip trembled at the weight of it, yet she managed to keep her tears at bay. His words played in her mind over and over again, and as out of place as it seemed, she now understood that, in spite of the relationship the brothers had shared in life, there was something there. A familial bond that left Sesshoumaru feeling culpable for the fact that he had not been able to save his only sibling.
“Yes,” she finally choked out, “I’ll go with you.”
Giving a curt nod that signaled the completion of their agreement, Sesshoumaru refrained from smirking at this small victory.
With a miko under his guardianship, Oshiikame would surrender her shell without fail.
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Whew! Finally got this done! I know the tone is still pretty melancholic, but hopefully the next chapter will be a bit lighter. I really hope you all enjoyed and please review!