InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Reunion ❯ Chapter Fifteen: Memories ( Chapter 15 )

Chapter Fifteen

A/N: Hi, guys! Sorry I'm late. I wasn't feeling well and was thinking about this chapter. I had a couple of different approaches in mind, I hope you like the one I chose. Thank you for the reviews! Don't be afraid to criticize, I need input ( as no. 5 would say). chuckles I know, I know. Obscure reference. Anyway, I don't own Inuyasha or Sesshomaru. It's funny though, my middle daughter is a member of an Inuyasha fan club at her school. The members take on nicknames from the show and she is Lord Sesshomaru, so I guess I could claim that I am Sesshomaru's father. She should have been Ayame, since she is a red head, but Fluffy is her favorite character. Well, enough rambling, let's see what I will do to our favorite hanyou today. Vincent Price type chuckle! Attention: The following chapter may contain material that is unsuited for younger readers. There will be some mature themes here and a dark story line. I do not wish to offend anyone, but this idea has been haunting my thoughts for days. It is not pleasant.

After a brief game of 'Kick the Jaken', everyone settled back into sleep. Everyone but Sesshomaru and Jaken. Jaken was watching his lord watch the hanyou and miko sleep in each others arms. Sesshomaru's face was an unreadable mask, but his eyes ... his eyes told a different story. Jaken had hoped not to see THAT look in his master's eyes ever again.

"M, my lord?" he stammered, watching his lord's reactions.

"What is it, Jaken?" Sesshomaru asked, not taking his eyes off of his brother and Kagome.

Jaken took a deep breath and trembled. This next statement could be very dangerous for him. "My lord, it wasn't your fault." He cringed as Sesshomaru tensed.

"Silence, Jaken." Sesshomaru continued to stare at Inuyasha and his miko mate. "I determine what was and what was not my fault."

"She wouldn't want ...." Jaken got no farther before Sesshomaru spun and backhanded him.

"I said 'Silence'!" the demon lord snarled.

The toad demon lay still for a moment and then slowly stood back up. "Yes, my lord." he said with down cast eyes. "I shall go see to Ah-Uhn. Good night, my lord." That said, the toad shuffled off into the night.

Sesshomaru had turned his gaze back to his brother and mate as he listened to Jaken leave. His face was the same stoic mask as always. Inside of him, turmoil raged.

"That was unworthy of you." one of the voices in his head stated.

"He overstepped his place." defended another voice.

"True. But he spoke the truth."

"Just because she wouldn't want me to blame myself does not alleviate my guilt."

"YOU WERE NOT THERE WHEN SHE DIED!"

"You prove my case. If I had been there, she would not have died at the hands of those filthy humans. She would not have suffered what they put her through."

Unchained, the memories came back to him. He remembered the first time he saw her. She was a rare beauty. An inu youkai with hair as black as a moonless night. Black hair was a much prized rarity amoung the dog demon world. She was the only female who could shake his normally calm reserve. Around her, his poise was for nothing. He felt awkward and clumsy and yet, she had chosen him out of her many suitors. She had always told him that he had seemed so poised and confident when courting her, but he had never felt that way! They had been mates for ten years when they decided to begin their family. She soon became heavy with a pup growing inside her. Sesshomaru marveled at the miracle of the child growing within her, and it only served to make him love her more. He would have died for her and their child.

"But you didn't, did you?" his inner voice taunted him. "You had to go on patrol. You had to live up to your responsibilities as a lord, didn't you?"

"She told me to go!" his other voice answered. "She wanted me to do what I was born to do! To be the Demon Lord of the Western Lands! Her time to whelp was still a month away! She insisted that she would be fine and that I should be about my duties!"

"But she wasn't fine when you returned, was she!" screamed the voice in his head.

"NO!"

"Look at what became of her!" The memory appeared in his minds eye. His beloved mate, lying in the ruins of her kimono. Bruises on her face, her sides, her legs. The dried tears on her cheeks below those lifeless eyes. The stench of burned flesh were the blessed ropes they had used to bind her had burned into her wrists, all the way to the bone. And, perhaps the worst, the lifeless body of their daughter, naked and still smelling of her birth, lying against her mother's side. He had found out later that his mate had gone into labor because of the brutal attack on her. When the pup was born, the leader of the attackers had strangled it.

"Enough!" he roared in his mind. "I know that I failed her! On that day, my heart died. Nothing has been the same since!"

"Yes, you failed her." the voice continued, remorselessly. "You even failed in your vengence."

"I tracked and slew the humans who had done the deed." This memory brought cold satisfaction to his mind. The long, slow deaths of his mate's and daughter's killers was a collage in his mind. A flash of the first one, dying from the poison of his claws. He had watched the flesh melt from his body. The second dying while he flayed him. The third choking to death on his own manhood where Sesshomaru had ripped it from his body and shoved it in his throat.

"You still failed! You never caught the leader!"

"He was dead! The last human I killed told me that he had been killed by some villagers who had caught him in one of his crimes!"

"But you did not get your vengence on him!"

"ENOUGH!"

Inuyasha's head jerked up and he looked at his brother. Sesshomaru had just shouted something.

Sesshomaru realized that he had said the last aloud. Slowly, he stood. He took one more look at his brother and his brother's mate before turning his back to them and walking into the forest.

'True. I didn't get my vengence on the man who planned the attack on my mate. But, someday, I shall meet him in hell. And on that day, you shall pay for what you did to my mate, Onigumi, you shall pay!"

A/N: I almost trashed this chapter, but it does have relevance to the story, so I decided to keep it in. There were a few other things that I wanted to write in this chapter but I couldn't figure out how to put them in without affecting the flow of the writing. Again, I welcome all reviews.