InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bitter Blood ❯ Chapter 21

Bitter Blood

Chapter 21

"My lady . . ." Dokumi attempted to comfort her.

"Save him," she sobbed. "You're a healer. Save him."

"I don't know if I can," she said.

"He spared you!" she screamed. "Save him! Put aside this 'bad blood' and save him!"

She looked from Rin to Sesshomaru and back again.

"Please," she cried. "You owe me," she said. "I got him to spare you . . . Now, please. . . please, please, please spare him." She looked up at her with pleading eyes. Her eyes red and swollen, still overflowing with tears. "Please, Dokumi . . . Would your lord have wanted this for his son?"

She sighed. "I think he would've thought it was a most honorable way to die--protecting his loved one . . ."

The force from her sobs shook her body. "This is not how I wished it to end." She caressed the side of his face, passing her fingers over the two purple stripes that extended down to his cheek. "Will you not wake?" she asked. "Will you truly leave me behind?" She traced the crescent moon on his forehead with the tip of her finger, pushing his hair back from his face. "Do you tease, my lord? Will you never hold me again? Will you never smile at me again?" She laughed through the tears. "Will you never scold me again?"

"My lady . . ."

She knocked her hand away. "Have you not seen enough loss in your life?" she asked. "Was it not enough that you lost your mother, your lord and your son? Must you watch me suffer as well?" She squeezed her eyes shut. "Why do you sit there and do nothing when you could so easily save him?"

"He's lost a lot of blood," she said.

"He may have mine."

"No," she shook her head. "He doesn't need blood; he needs for the bleeding to stop." She reached out and felt the front and sides of his face. "He's very cold, but there's still life in him. There's a part of him that clings very closely to this world."

Rin looked up at her. "Does that mean he's not dead? But he's stopped breathing."

Dokumi put her head to his chest. "His lungs are full of blood," she said. "He's bleeding internally."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

She pulled the sleeves of her kimono back. "Lay him down flat on the floor. If I can stop the bleeding, he'll be fine."

She laid his head down gently on the marble floor. "What will you do?"

She placed both of her hands on his chest and closed her eyes. "I will heal him," she said. "I will abide by my father's wishes. I will make a good name for our family in this house." She evaporated into a fine, red mist.

"Dokumi?"

The mist rose and covered her lord in a brilliant red spray, emanating an incredible amount of heat.

Rin shielded her eyes. This must be the true form of a bog demon, she thought. A blood mist.

The mist began to solidify and Dokumi reappeared. "I know where the problem is now." She pulled out the scalpel she'd previously threatened her with from her sleeve. "I suggest you look away, my lady. This won't be pretty." She opened his robe, then took the blade and cut down the center of his chest.

Rin gasped.

She then made two more horizontal cuts to the right of the long vertical one.

"What will you do?" Rin asked.

"There is a rupture in one of the major arteries," she said, pulling back the skin and reaching inside his chest. "It is the main source of his internal bleeding. Everything else is but a flesh wound."

She watched as Dokumi pushed her hand deeper and deeper inside her husband's chest. "Does this hurt him?" she asked.

"He's barely conscious," she said. "Now, please, I need to concentrate. It's a very delicate operation. I must heal what has been damaged without damaging anything else. I must go from solid to gas to pass through all the membranes, then go partially solid to repair the wound."

Rin sat in quiet anticipation. Dokumi would save him; she just knew it. She knew it in her heart.

"Found it!" she said at last. She glowed red for a moment, then she pulled the gaseous hand from his chest. "Finished," she said. She folded the skin back over his chest cavity and sealed it with a blast of warm energy.

"What does that do?" Rin asked. "When you go all gassy like that?"

"That is our natural form," she said. "Our home is shrouded in red mist, they say. It is not mist; it is my people. Mostly, we can heal in solid form, but when the case is severe, and a certain amount of delicacy is necessary, we return to our natural state."

"It was very pretty," she said.

Dokumi shook her head. "Well, it's not exactly for looks, my lady."

"I know, it's just . . ."

Sesshomaru stirred to life, rolling over onto his side, coughing up blood.

"My lord," she scooped his head up and laid it in her lap, "you're back."

"Where would I go?" he asked.

"Away from me," she smiled through her tears.

He reached over and grabbed her hand. "Never," he said.

More tears came.

"Why do you weep?" he asked.

She swiped the tears away with her free hand. "They are tears of joy, my lord. I am HAPPY that my lord husband is well, and is with me."

He smiled to himself, then let his eyes drift closed.

"My lord!" she shook him violently.

"Stop it!" Dokumi said. "He needs to sleep," she said. "He's fine, now. And you need to sleep, too."

She looked down at her lord, sleeping soundly in her lap. How many nights had their positions been reversed, and she was the one who'd fallen asleep in his lap?

She reached down and stroked the side of his face. "Tell me, Dokumi," she said. "You said you could not kill him, but he was to die . . . Who was to do the killing, Dokumi?"

She shrugged. "Why, the other lords, of course. We're all in this together."

She stared up at her.

Dokumi stood. "There is a saying, my lady. The enemy of my enemy is my friend . . . I spoke the truth when I said he was not to return from that battle." She looked down at the two of them. "And they'll be back to finish the job," she said. "Lord Kita, Lord Minamiyori and Lord Touganoini. The lords of the North, South and East, respectively."

"But Jakken said they'd been defeated," she insisted.

"That was plan A," she said. "This is plan B. And what better time to strike than when your lord is so injured?"

"When?" Rin demanded. "When will they come?"

She shook her head. "That I do not know."

She looked up to her and sighed. "I have to be able to trust you, Dokumi. The lives of my husband and son depend upon it."

They regarded one another.

"I will not betray you, my lady. I would not repay your kindness with ill . . . Besides, I'm sure they seek my life now, as well."

"Why is that?"

"I was to have brought them proof of your demise by now. Since I have not done that, they will think I've either been killed or I've changed allegiances."

"Why would you do such a damnable thing?" she asked. "To dispossess him of his lands? To take from him one of the two things his father left him?"

She was slow to answer. "I did not think he deserved to live in such a place. I didn't think he deserved such a nice wife and a perfect son . . . I wanted him to suffer as I had suffered, as his father had suffered."

"I never heard that my lord's father suffered."

"I told you he was much displeased with his son's dour disposition. And he was even more displeased with his wife's part in it . . . So, he put her aside, and took up with me and assorted other women. Lady Akki could not bear the disgrace of it, so she plotted against her mate. She gave him over to the Chinese and practically fed him to Ryuukotsusei . . ." She sighed heavily. "As I said, she was a cruel women."

"What happened to her? Lady Akki?"

"When the lords of the North, South and East discovered her betrayal, they demanded her life. She'd cost them quite a bit in terms of men and property, so they stormed the castle, and demanded her head on a stake."

She glanced at her sleeping lord, fearful of the answer to the question she'd ask next. "Was my lord there?" she asked.

"He was with the other lords," she said. "What other side could he take?"

She breathed a sigh of relief.

"What?" Dokumi laughed. "You didn't think he killed her, did you?"

"No," she shook her head.

"He watched," she said. "But he didn't do anything--neither for nor against her."

She pushed the hair back from his face. "Do not worry, my lord. When they come, your lady will be ready for them," she kissed his forehead. "I will not die easily."

Dokumi looked at her and smiled. "Neither will I."