InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Sesshoumaru's Baby ❯ Chapter Eight: The Youkai and the Half-Demon ( Chapter 8 )

A/N: Curious how this story has become darker and less humorous than it started out; but I think I prefer it this way. The pivot of the plot is, in the end, a serious one - as reviewers on Fanfiction.Net have pointed out in the sometimes callous perspectives of the characters on the life and death of the baby. But is Sesshoumaru really pregnant? And what is he going to do if he is?

 

Sesshoumaru's Baby

 

Eight: The Youkai and the Half-Demon

 

During the past few weeks or so, Sesshoumaru had felt more ill than he ever had in his life - as a general rule, youkai do not succumb easily to illness, and in the long years of his existence he could only remember two occasions when he had been genuinely bedridden with pain. His wounds sealed themselves without infection; broken bones set themselves without splintering in his body, and within a few days he could go back to his usual routine of risking life and limb with the little concern he possessed about injury.

 

But this was different - it wasn't pain, as such, but a sick queasiness that seemed to radiate from every fibre of his being, muscles and bones stretching uncommonly to accommodate something that shouldn't really be there. So on a deeper level, Sesshoumaru understood there was something occurring inside himself that went beyond the bounds of nature. Nothing in Heaven or Hell would possess him to admit this, though; it would be giving in to madness, submitting himself to other people's command. If, by some bizarre and extremely unfortunate miracle, he was indeed pregnant - and with Inu-Yasha's child - that meant the hanyou had some say in the matter. And with his rigid adherence to the rules of his kind, Sesshoumaru couldn't lay it aside.

 

Somebody's fucking with me. And in order to put an end to this impossible state of uncertainty, I must find out. All decisions can be put off until I know if this is real, why it happened, and who's responsible. Then I can get on with my blood-letting over the matter and make up my mind about solving this once somebody has died.

 

Rin was sleeping when he got up, shortly after Sango departed to carry out her plan; he paused in search of his boots to contemplate what he should do about her. This crisis didn't concern her, and her life was not at risk; like always, he was sure he could leave her in the company of Jaken - snoring in a corner - and Ah-Un, and Inu-Yasha and his foolish friends, and come back to her when the matter was resolved. Like always, she would wait patiently in the knowledge of his certain return, and like always her patience would be rewarded when he came to pick up the part of his life that involved her again.

 

Sometimes he set that bit of living aside because of Inu-Yasha - before, their squabbles over the Tessaiga (Sesshoumaru himself understood that it was childish, petty to punish his half-brother for his delinquent father, but the old man was dead and though he could walk into Hell and the places between life and death, he couldn't go into Heaven in search of him; nor did he think he'd be allowed to beat him up there) and now, over this strange affair.

 

Other times, the need to lay the life where Rin was the pivot aside was greater and more pressing, and more was dependent on his ability to leave her to her self-sufficiency. Lives occasionally depended on him; other times, Sesshoumaru understood that to let Rin within ten miles of what he was doing would be to almost certainly cause her death, one which he couldn't return her from. He wasn't sure even the Tenseiga could restore someone ripped limb from limb and scattered, or partially eaten, or sucked dry of life into a grey, papery husk like the ashy outside of charcoal.

 

Small and bright, she filled his silences with her chatter, like water shaping itself to its container; on a level which she wasn't mature enough yet to perceive consciously, perhaps she registered the wounds and the layers of scarring in his mind and stained soul, and understood how voice departed him like a bird flushed from the bushes. Rin didn't need anyone to find food for her, because she had built up thieving ability to an art, where she plundered village fields and stores quite readily - knew how to fish, almost like a small bear, and what could be eaten wild and what could not.

 

Sesshoumaru wasn't familiar with the human diet; the experience of Rin had taught him how much variety their stomachs coped with, and also the fussiness of children. A squalling infant would be different because of its dependency, its frailty, its ability to be manipulated. Parenthood was fine, even easy, when the child was grown to an age when it didn't need to be continually mothered, but the idea of a baby was worrying. He didn't wish to address it yet, knowing it might make it real.

 

What would all those shadowy enemies make of his child? They weren't honourable enough to realise it was a line they shouldn't cross - no. He shook that idea into dust. That wasn't it. This wasn't a question of honour amongst his faceless, numerous antagonists, but of life. The worst thing was that none of them had enough life left in them to recognise this; the warped, bespoiled fragments of spirit that resided in them had been corrupted in dark places that the living were never meant to see, sunk into corrosive pools of hatred and resentment that had simmered since their deaths, and boiled the concepts of morality from them.

 

Outside, he paused on the step to allow his eyes to adjust to the fading light. The sun was setting in the west, a flare of orange and burnt umber along the black stripe of horizon, broken by the stabbing peaks of mountains and the bristling spines of trees on the crests of distant hills. The air smelt of wood-smoke, blood, humanity, and the thick odour of the forest - a comforting, lung-filling scent of pine sap and decaying leaf litter, and the mulch of needles and rotting wood in the rain-softened earth. A breeze, still warm with an edge of sunlight, caressed the downy hairs on the back of his neck, beneath the thick weight of his hair. It would turn cold at full dark; but by then he'd be in the mountains, and the change would be unnoticeable.

 

The demon slayer, it seemed to him, had been more sensible than all the others. The monk, careful not to upset the frail alliances on which the group hinged, had not made waves. He had kept out of the way of the miko girl to pacify her, and offered Inu-Yasha platitudes of acceptance whilst attempting to make his personal peace with the uneasy tensions of the situation. The kit, likewise, had kept his distance, assuming the importance of Rin's presence over all the adult concerns, and keeping only that in mind.

 

The miko girl - Kagome - had overlooked him. Betrayed too often by his feckless half-brother, whose inability to make decisions had always scuppered his attempts to make a life for himself, she had not seen this situation as separate from the other occasions; instead, they had all melded together in her head into a seething mass of pent-up emotions. Her heart's suffering had overwhelmed her head: the evidence of the relationship between Inu-Yasha and himself, whatever it was in anybody's eyes, had been squared with Inu-Yasha's trysting with the undead priestess. The betrayal was the same to her, and she might have dealt with it separately in the same way. But together, she couldn't keep it quiet any longer.

 

Inu-Yasha, guilty, couldn't or wouldn't defend himself. Instead, Sesshoumaru was sure, he would let the girl rage. He would meekly agree to her demands whilst the threat of her uncertain reaction was sure, and when she was calmer - perhaps days later - he would reargue his place. Better to wait and tackle her on what he wanted, than stir the hornets' nest while she might still do something both of them might regret.

 

The demon slayer's assumption that she knew what was best had been a welcome one - a chance to escape Inu-Yasha's clutches to set his own set of dice rolling. Let the hanyou believe he'd kill the child in him, if there was one, at the first opportunity - Sesshoumaru felt with a wry amusement that he'd chalk it up to this “hatred” he supposedly had towards his younger brother, with all his faults and tainted blood.

 

Truth was, he didn't hate Inu-Yasha at all. But the half-demon had never managed to grasp exactly what Sesshoumaru wanted from him, and it was something he had to work out alone. Until then, what he believed was his affair. It impacted little on what Sesshoumaru was doing now.

 

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Demon corpses everywhere. And not one of those blasted insects, Miroku thought, as he bent to examine a scaly cadaver, slack jaws open and still glistening with ropes of saliva between the long fangs. Usually the field of battle was shiny with the slivers of insect wings, and lumpy with the clumps of hairy bodies and the pollarded stumps of their legs. If there were no Saimyousho, it stood to reason Naraku wasn't involved in this. And if he wasn't, what prompted the demons - who usually stayed away, behind Kaede-sama's wards - to attack the village, and them specifically?

 

The idea was leading him down uncomfortable tracks: Sango, shifty-eyed and guilty-looking, appearing late and in the direction of the attack. Sango, with the strange smell of desiccated demon flesh on her (according to Inu-Yasha), and not a single undead youkai amongst the combatants; Sango, who didn't want Shippo to go anywhere near Sesshoumaru, who was relieved when allowed to go back the way she came as if she was guarding something from the others. Miroku loved his irasible slayer, but he could read the guilt from her without needing to smell it, and he was afraid.

 

Inu-Yasha seemed to sense what he was thinking too. He picked his way across the village, kicking dead demons away with an expression of disgust and resignation, and squatted down next to the monk. “No bugs,” he said without preamble. “This has nothing to do with that bastard Naraku.”

 

“And everything to do with Sango, I think,” Miroku said quietly. No sign of the demon slayer; perhaps she was clearing demons into large pits like the villagers were here - none of them killed, not a one - or perhaps she was moving a very different body.

 

He's the most powerful demon I've ever come across, but this has weakened him; and I have a terrible suspicion Sango might have killed him. This has been a diversion - it smells of it - but for what? Who was meant to die while our attention was distracted? Or was something else to happen, when nobody was capable of watching Sango?

 

“I think so too,” Inu-Yasha said softly, lowering his voice as Kagome passed near, stroking Shippo's head absently to calm him. There was a growl in his voice, a shuddering timbre of rage, and it chilled the monk; Miroku huddled into his robe. “But I can't imagine what she was up to. It involved a dead demon, though. And it somehow caused these demons to attack us.”

 

“I don't want to be the voice of doom, Inu-Yasha, but the body - ”

 

The hanyou cut him off with the wave of a hand. “She didn't smell like Sesshoumaru's blood. She smelled like him; but so does everybody. We've all been in close contact with him over the last day, even Kagome. That scent of rot was something else. I think you should go check the edge of the forest where the demons came from. Be careful you don't get attacked.”

 

“What about you?” Miroku asked tentatively.

 

Are you going to find Sango and demand answers from her? Will you hurt her, after all we've been through together, on only suspicion?

 

“I'm going to go check on my brother. It occurs to me he's been too quiet about these demons himself.” Inu-Yasha straightened up. “It's not like Sesshoumaru to stay out of a fight, is it?”

 

A/N: Next time - Sesshoumaru gone, and Sango has explaining to do…