InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bloodlust ❯ Symphony: Birth ( Chapter 44 )

Kagome strained, and her bones felt as though they would snap from the pressure and the pain. Muscles contracted and released, giving her a moment of respite between the ripping wash of one pain and another.

“Sess-chan…Sess-chan! I can't do this…”

She groaned, a deep and terrible sound, and then she felt an urge to push come over her, driving by sheer force of instinct. Over and over she felt the draining pain, and the minutes dragged by her like years, a prescience building within her.

“Youkai births are not so long as human, my Kagome. You will be over with this soon.”

She could not form words to fit a as a reply, and smiled for him instead, overwriting the grimace on her face for the sake of his comfort. A new rush of agony overwhelmed her desire, and her expression turned darker, feeling the disruption of every molecule of her body as sinew and muscle stretched and tore. It was not only her birthing muscles that felt that sapping hurt. The nearly healed wound in her belly opened near the startling pushing of her muscles, and Sesshomaru saw with worried eyes a spreading stain of blood where no stain should be. Outside the chamber there was a sudden clamor of noise, and Sesshomaru threw open the door. It clanged sharply against the stone wall, and Sesshomaru surprised Histaru and Kouga, locked in an aborted and half-hearted struggle.

“Histaru. Kouga.”

The two looked up, equally guilty expressions on their faces, fear livening in their eyes.

“Histaru. Mount guard at the stairs. I am not willing to believe that Kasuka would give up so easily. She will come here.”

There was a moment of silence to surround Histaru's nod, and then Sesshomaru turned to Kouga. Gold eyes met brow with a flash and a hint of red respect, and the Taiyoukai spoke slowly, dragging out the words from the depths of his need.

“Kagome is birthing our pup as I speak. You know the difficulty of youkai births. I have begged gods and fiends to spare her life, I have sacrificed the sword of father to bring her back to me. Now once more she stands on the edge of death and I can do nothing but hold her hand and hope for the life of my mate and my pup. I ask you, Kouga, from any love you still bear her, to guard my Kagome.”

Kouga was silent for a long moment, contemplating this unprecedented plea from the great Taiyoukai of the West, above all others a proud Lord, and a silent.

“You know that I will, Sesshomaru. Where are you going that I must protect her?”

“Nowhere. You think I would leave her at a time like this? I ask you to guard her because I will not let Kasuka escape. Even if I must hold her myself until Kinawai comes to kill her, I will do it. If it means my life, I will do it.”
*For Kagome's sake…*

Kouga nodded, surprised at this sudden and forthright passion , but he remembered the sweetness that had been his Kagome, and he almost understood.

“I will guard your mate, Sesshomaru. You should know that I have delivered my lands into your hands, if I should fall.”

Sesshomaru's raised eyebrow of surprise dropped with concern before he had a chance to respond, and he was back by Kagome's side before the sound of her sudden scream had faded from the air. He knelt quickly on the floor between her knees, examining her progress with no expert knowledge but real distress. He could see the round crown of his pup's head, and looked at Kagome with shining eyes.

“Kagome…Kagome…soon, koi, soon.”

She answered him with another scream, and Sesshomaru winced, feeling the strength of her new pangs through the mating bond, forced through the joining of their souls. It was akin to the pain he had felt when Kasuka had stolen her away - but this pain was brightening. It did not cripple his heart with such an impossible load, but lifted it with convulsions of joy and loving agony. He settled into place and sat back on his heels, watching with something akin to awe the birth of a pup he had never expected to have.

 

Kagome was in pain. It was not the contractions that forced her screams, or even the tearing between her thighs - rather, ever convulsion of her womb forced paroxysm of agony through the wound in her belly, forcing out her life in a waterfall of throbbing. She could feel too the pup within her, as though it fought to leave her body. There were the pricks inside her of tiny, perfectly formed claws, tearing on their way out, a struggling movement even before the unborn pup had taken its first breath.

The ways of a species violent from birth until death were hard on those who would be mothers, and many died in their labor, giving their last breath as their pup began a new life. Old legends spoke of female youkai, said to hold the souls of their mothers if their mothers had died in childbirth, given a second chance at life because of the willing sacrifice of the first. Kagome knew none of these things, and Sesshomaru knew all of them. Despite the pain and the worry, Kagome felt then Sesshomaru's hands brush against her thighs, and then the pain was less as his hands supported the pup leaving her body. He pulled gently, leading more than anything else, easing with hands unused to ease. There were a few soft moments of waiting, soft contractions that diminished the pain running through her abdomen, and his next words were cherry-blossom soft.

“Kagome, my mate…we have a son. A son, koi…”

The smile that caressed Kagome's lips illuminated her face with such brightness that her eyes seemed to sing at his words. She blinked slowly, feeling nothing but love for the pup she had not even seen, who had clawed his way from her womb to the world. She did not care about the pain. There was a new scent in the room that slipped around her and into her just as the air she breathed, and she took in the scent of her son, memorizing it. The cinnamon huskiness that was the depth of her scent was in it, the soft pine of Sesshomaru mixed and twisted into something iridescent with the completely new; the shimmer-shadow of earth scent, dark and beautiful. There was a cry, louder than any infant she had heard before, lustier and more demanding, and Sesshomaru held his son up, letting the licking wires of energy race gently along his skin.
”My son.”

There was a rush as if in answer, and he turned away to face Kagome, shuddering through the last of her contractions. The well of energy took the afterbirth into itself, mixing the essence of mother and son, and with the silence of her pain she smiled a true smile up at her mate.

“We have a son? Sess-chan….I am glad.”

“You should rest, my Kagome. You have labored for some hours, and danger is not yet past. I will watch over you…and our son. Try and sleep, now.”

From a hidden corner outside the room he pulled thick furs, and lifted her onto them, protection from the cold stone floor. The smile stayed on Kagome's face, and her eyes shut slowly. Sesshomaru untied the sash that wrapped around his waist, and wrapped it around his son. Kagome opened her eyes and reached for him to put to her breast, and nearly jumped when he starting suckling, feeling the hard sharpness of tiny fangs. She looked with wonder and weariness at the life she had created, and touched a smooth cheek with a single finger.

*My son…*

There was joy on her face, but she was exhausted beyond any tiredness she had ever felt. Quietly, before Sesshomaru even noticed, she pulled one of the furs over her wounded body, and curled around her nursing son. She was asleep before Sesshomaru took his next breath, and he sat carefully beside her, levering her gently so that her head rested comfortably on his lap. He watched the blue lit energies play over her skin, eyes drawn by the slinking power that nibbled at the spreading stain on the front of her kimono, betraying the evidence of her healed-unhealed wound. He reached for the tie of her obi, looking to examine how badly the wound had reopened, and the door smashed open behind him.

Blood flew into the room and spattered on the wall beside where he sat, and half a moment later Sesshomaru had lifted both Kagome and their son out of the way. A single arrow managed to find its way through the melee that was the combat swirling before the doorway, and pierced Sesshomaru's shoulder. There was a shining burst of black light that exploded from where he had been struck, black miko energy still with the power to purify, rolling off his body in waves. Pink light to match lit around Kagome's body, shifting as she struggled between exhausted collapse and wanted wakefulness, and pushed the darkness of kuromiko power away from them, to be absorbed harmlessly by the walls.

 

Kouga had never fought an opponent as dangerous as Kasuka, and did not know it. Even when he had evoked all the power that was in him, she dodged his blows with apparent ease, twisting away from his claws and his sword. Twice he did not doge quickly enough, and where her claws touched there were angry welts that left his breath hissing in pain. It was not just the pain of the wounds she inflicted, but the miko magic poison that she left burning in them, a swelling intensity that brushed edges with danger and danced with death.

Histaru lay bleeding in the corner, victim of Kasuka first crashing blow. The side of his head was awash in blood, and Kouga could not tell if he was unconscious or dead, and had no time to look. He heard Sesshomaru's growl after the whistle of Kasuka's arrow, and threw himself at Kasuka with renewed fury, hoping to driver her attention away from Sesshomaru - away from the woman he held. Seeing this, Sesshomaru lay Kagome gently on the furs he had prepared for her, and used his sash to bind the pup that was wrapped in it securely to her breast. He locked eyes with his son for one long moment, an amber flash meeting the sun and the moon, and then he was gone and the door shut behind him.

 

In the hallway outside, he took in everything all at once. Histaru bleeding, Kouga fighting, and he tore Kasuka's arrow out of his shoulder and tossed it at her feet.

“Kouga. Guard the door. Do not let her pass.”

Kouga nodded and stepped back to the doorway, legs bend and claws splayed in a posture intended to create fear. Kasuka laughed and turned to Sesshomaru, and their eyes met with a clash like an electric shock. With no warning, Kasuka struck out with her claws, seeking to further torment the half-purified flesh of his shoulder, but the Taiyoukai's speed aided him, and he caught her wrist and used it to fling her against the wall. The sound of her bones breaking was audible, a crunching crack of ribs snapping with the force of his blow. She stood away without a sound and moved silently away from him, wiping a ripple-flow of blood away from the corner of her mouth.

“You dare lay hands on me?”

Her voice rasped from her broken chest, eerie and unfamiliar, but Sesshomaru did not answer her, choosing not to grace her with either a change of expression or even a single word. He stood completely at ease, as though he were doing nothing more strenuous than pouring tea, and Kasuka was thrown off her guard. She should not have been, knowing who he was, knowing the reputation he had built with centuries of careful coldness and uncaring cruelty, knowing that he his granite façade was a legend in battle and in negotiation - but she had never before been tossed aside, and all her illusion was of no good to her in his place of power.

He leapt at her, disrupting her thoughts, and as she watched him move he seemed to float over the floor, standing still even though he moved so fast he was a blur. His claws flashed out in a shining arc, drawing blood across one cheek in a mimic of the wound she had inflicted on Kagome with a single slap, and he shook her blood of his claws in disgust as she twisted away from a hand that was no longer there.

“Even your blood bears the stench of your rot.”

She snarled, dragon features peering through illusory spell work, and he smiled finally, tasting victory in the metal thickness of her blood in the swirling air. Despite her magic, because of her magic, the true skills of combat that were the birthright of every youkai she had never bothered to master. Blow after blow, Sesshomaru spilled her life, inflicted injuries that were painful and deep, but could not kill. He turned her into a work of bloody art, an exhibition of loveliness profaned by his skill in the arts of torture and battle. Master of warfare that he was, he could do no less to this, his hearts deepest enemy, and her skin showed the price of her betrayal. She stumbled back from him, balancing precariously against the wall behind Histaru's broken body, and it was full of an unsoothing shimmer. Sesshomaru spoke, two commanding words.

“Hold her.”

Strings of power shot out to bind Kasuka, rippling through the air with the tingle of liquid blue fire. The hair on her head crackled and waved, twisting in a deep glissando down through the heated air. Magic, she could fight. Sesshomaru's tentacles of holding power rebounded from a thickening shield of her own power, spear-headed and bright. Energy whiplashed against the door, shattering the solid wood into toothache splinters, and the door to the abyss stood open. Kasuka rushed, claws thrusting wildly, and by sheer force or the spending of some token of luck, she connected with Kouga's solid flesh. There was a screech in high tones, but it came from Kasuka - Kouga had buried his claws in the flesh of her arms and was dragging steadily downward. He tore her flesh from her bones, but the touch of her blood was a burning acid wash of purifying pain. It was like no pain he had felt before, and impatient, hungering agony that ate at his soul along with his body, perishing his skin and driving his muscles to a need for convulsion.

The scent of melted flesh grew thick in the air, and Kouga shook with the red-glazed intensity of pain. Every place she touched him and every wound he inflicted on her cost him dearly in blood and strength, and he was ragged with anguish by the time she had forced him back into the open space of the door, Sesshomaru behind him and in front of Kagome's slowly wakening form.

“You are the Lord of the South? What a pitiful remnant you are. It was your ancestors who tried to keep my people in bondage? How dare you confront me now!”

Kouga's eyebrows tightening in a confusion, but his words were still full of anger.

“My ancestors held no youkai in bondage against their will! To speak such a thing is to insult my house!”

She smirked.

“What house? You have no heir, no brother or sister to take your title, and your father is long dead. This thing between us, Lord of the South, begins here - and ends here.”

She rushed for the door, hands directly in front of her, and Kouga screamed for Sesshomaru's attention even as she connected with his chest and washed him with a flood of kuromiko power. He threw himself directly into danger's aura, taking the blast that was meant to include Kagome, and it took him into the deep chill of otherworld.

“Sesshomaru!”

A blazing inferno of cold black light flashed over him, a crashing tsunami of Kasuka's evil, great and all-consuming. It burnt the eyes of all those watching. From inside the room he had tried so hard to protect came a call of grief and an infants wail, terrified by the noise of battle and the thickening scent of blood.

“Kouga-kun!”

Kagome staggered from her place on the floor behind Sesshomaru to just inside the door, withstanding the dark flash of Kasuka's kuromiko light. In its wake was a strip of Kouga's headband, and a few floating pieces of fur. The Lord Kouga came to rest in a snowfall of dark dust, and Kagome steeled her unsteady heart, tucking away her tears at the death of another friend until a time of less urgent need. Not as close to her as the other had been, the injustice seemed somehow greater, hit her harder, and she lifted her head to meet Kasuka's eyes with a bright new glimmer and a hint of red.

“Kasuka.”

She smiled.

“Kagome.”