InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Strictly Taboo ❯ Suspension Without Suspense ( Chapter 26 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Inuyasha ran on foot, not caring that he was barefoot or that anyone could see him and recognize him and potentially embarrass him in the future when he was saner and not so frantic. He knew exactly where Sesshomaru lived. The demon was not fond of change and had resided in the same place for the last three-hundred years or so, a vast mansion in the middle of nowhere. Before that, he had wandered around the country, neither eating nor sleeping, caught up in his whole “daddy didn’t love me” spoiled brat existential crisis. Occasionally, he would track him down and attempt to kill him, pulling away at the last minute and leaving. Inuyasha suspected that Sesshomaru didn’t have the balls to kill anyone. The bastard had the coldest mask he had ever seen, even colder than Kikyo’s, but underneath that he was just a preening primadonna bitch who should have been disciplined more harshly as a kid. A good whack on the head or three a day would have cured his insufferable arrogance early on.

His anger building with each leap and bound, he eventually arrived at the property that was only slightly less isolated than his own. Sesshomaru had actual neighbors within a five mile distance. All demon neighbors, though. Inuyasha could smell it. Even the goddamn servants were demon; he knew how this crowd was. The only humans were perhaps gardeners or outdoor workers, which would account for the faint little whiff of human he picked up.

Breaking through the heavy oak door with a single kick, Inuyasha roared out his brother’s name. “SESSHOMARU!”

He had always hated his brother, but now he had gone too far. Trying to kill him was one thing, but taking Kagome, the only sweetness in his life? Now he would actually try and kill him instead of just dancing around his attacks. A blur came towards him and he suddenly found himself pinned to the wall by his neck next to the shattered remnants of the door frame.

“What do you want, bastard? You should be killed just for daring to set foot on my territory, never mind the destruction.”

Inuyasha glared at his brother, who still looked the same as he had the last time he had seen him, what must have been sixty years ago.

“Where is she, you fucking candy-assed son of a whore?!” he screamed, keeping still, intending to strike once he had the information he came for.

Sesshomaru tightened his grip, his claws piercing Inuyasha’s neck ever so slightly. “Where is who? This Sesshomaru has no time for your idiocies.”

He growled, beginning to tense. The bastard knew who Kagome was. Inuyasha knew his brother kept tabs on him, hoping for any weakness he could exploit. He probably knew Kagome was his daughter before he did, doing nothing to stop it even when they were obviously lovers. But blackmail wasn’t Sesshomaru’s style. Neither was exposing a terrible secret and dragging their long dead father’s name through the mud. Having a half-demon for a brother was shame enough, and Sesshomaru would do anything to keep Inuyasha’s darker transgressions quiet, something which might have led him to dispose of Kagome.

“Kagome! What the fuck did you do with Kagome! I’ll fucking kill you for touching her.”

Sesshomaru smiled in a way that was not quite a smile, something he had perfected long ago. “You are in no position to be making threats, bastard. This Sesshomaru knows nothing of the whereabouts of this woman, but I would be as big a fool as you are if I let pass this opportunity.”

Momentarily shocked by Sesshomaru’s use of the word “I”, Inuyasha did not begin to struggle until his brother’s energy whip had already formed and he had raised his hand. He steeled himself, waiting for the blow in order to dodge it, already planning a counter-attack.

“What is Sesshomaru-sama doing?”

Inuyasha fell to the floor with a thump, bruising his tailbone and narrowly missing a jagged stake of wood that would have surely impaled him in a most unpleasant fashion. He gasped for breath, able to breathe freely now that he didn’t have an enraged demon woken from his beauty sleep at his throat. On the staircase just beyond the doorway stood a little girl, one fist rubbing the sleep from an eye and the other holding on to a stuffed white dog. In shock, he observed that she was wearing a man’s nightshirt that had slid off her left shoulder, exposing a series of light bite marks, if a bite that left a mark could be called light.

“Rin, you must sleep. Go back to your room.”

The little girl skipped over, completely ignoring the giant hole in the wall where the door used to be. “But Rin wants to stay with you! Who’s that man with the puppy ears?”

“Go to your room, Rin. We will speak in the morning,” Sesshomaru said, glancing back at Inuyasha as though embarrassed at the revelation of his domestic life, yet not at all ashamed. He swallowed back his disgust.

“Rin can’t sleep without a story!” she said, pouting adorably in a stubborn manner that reminded him of Kagome and made his heart ache. What if he had been around to care for her when she was little? Would he have loved her as he did now? Would she feel anything towards him? “Tell me another one about the genocide of the Birds of Paradise,” Rin continued, stumbling over the big word. “You always tell me a story after—“

“Go to your room and this Sesshomaru will be up shortly.”

The little girl beamed up at him and he smoothed her hair in an uncharacteristically gentle manner, kissing the worst bite mark before tugging the neck of her nightshirt back in place. She nodded goodbye at Inuyasha and skipped back up the stairs, not looking back once. Sesshomaru watched her until she disappeared and then turned to glare at him. They were silent, both thinking their private thoughts.

“What the fuck was that all about?” Inuyasha rasped, his throat still healing and his stomach roiling. “Is this some sort of oddly specific mental asylum for people who speak in the third-person?” Making a joke was the only way he could regain some sense of normalcy after what he had just witnessed. He should have known. It was always bastards like his brother that had the worst desires.

“That is none of your concern,” Sesshomaru said with narrowed eyes. “Now leave before I kill you.”

“You’re harboring a human,” he said with a grin, an idea occurring to him as he rose to his feet. “A little human girl. Here in your house, miles away from anyone. Sounds like it should be CPS’s business. It’s at least enough to get you kicked out of your fucking country club.”

“What I do with her is none of your concern.” Sesshomaru sighed, for once looking weary instead of stoic and cold. “You must have noticed that Jaken has ceased his calls.”

Inuyasha hadn’t, too wrapped up in romancing Kagome to remember what life had been like before her. But what did his annoying and more than likely homosexual frog-slave-thing have to do with anything? Before the little girl showed up, he had assumed his older brother had some very strange amphibian fetishes. In comparison, a kid was almost normal. The older demon answered his unspoken question.

“For hundreds of years, I have been trying to take Tetsusaiga. It is only recently that this Sesshomaru began to question why. I no longer care. I am going to sell Tenseiga and retire. Perhaps in a century or so I will start my own business, but I am no longer a slave to envy and dreams of a dead man’s pride. I will live how I want for once, even if it brings harm to others. Sound familiar?”

Inuyasha stayed silent, absorbing the information. So his brother hadn’t taken Kagome. But maybe his sudden visit wouldn’t go to waste. “I will buy Tenseiga.”

Sesshomaru glared at him. “One such as you is not worthy to—“

“Stuff it. If I bought Tenseiga, it would continue on for as long as I am alive. I wouldn’t change it drastically or anything. Father’s legacy would continue.”

Sesshomaru looked at him, really looked at him for the first time he could remember. Slowly, he began to nod. “I see the sense, yes. This Sesshomaru will charge you the full amount and then half of it again. Do you want it that badly?”

“That depends,” Inuyasha drawled, trying not to sound desperate, although he supposed that was a lost cause since he had literally come bashing through the door in a complete rage. “You know people, right? You have to. You sell to mercenaries and big gangs and secret government agencies and stuff.”

“I know many of that sort, yes.”

“Help find Kagome, and I will buy Tenseiga.”

“What is this woman to you?” Sesshomaru asked, hardly curious.

“Everything,” Inuyasha said solemnly.

“Then I refuse.”

Inuyasha sneered, barely suppressing a threatening growl. “Then your little human girl will become a household name. ‘Rinlita Scandal’. I can see it now. They’ll take her away from you and stick her in a foster home where some overweight, greasy man can do to her what you do only without a fucking story afterward, just a black eye.”

“Are you trying to blackmail me, half-demon?” Sesshomaru asked, having the gall to look slightly amused. “If you continue, I just might laugh.”

“Impossible. Anyway, you’ve gotten in tight with a bunch of powerful demons, but you have completely neglected humans, and like it or not, they run the world. Now I, on the other hand, am half-human and have many human allies. Let that sink in. I can do you so much public damage that even your fucking demon brown-nosers won’t stick around.”

“I see,” Sesshomaru said with a nod. “You are definitely the type to follow through on that. Very well. This Sesshomaru grows tired of your ramblings. If it will get your filthy self out of my house, I will send men to find the girl, provided you purchase Tenseiga.”

Inuyasha grunted in response, a thought then occurring to him. “You could have just killed me once she left.”

“I can still kill you. But Rin is waiting and I do not wish to hear her whine about the smell of blood. She is a gentle child.”

Inuyasha snickered. “Humans can’t fucking smell blood unless they’re right next to it,” he pointed out, the look of undisguised surprise on Sesshomaru’s face making him wish he had a camera. “Are you… What is the little girl to you?”

Sesshomaru actually smiled, and it was slightly frightening. “You’ve taken your teenage daughter as your mistress without telling her the truth about the two of you, and yet you judge me? For what reason does a man keep a female of any kind around, Inuyasha? Although I do wonder from time to time which of us is worse.”

Inuyasha’s throat went dry and he changed the subject, hoping that Sesshomaru was at least gentle with the child. She had seemed innocent and carefree and normal enough despite everything, and it wasn’t like he could take the girl somewhere safe if he still wanted his brother’s help. “Please. Just find her. I will never ask you for anything again.”

“You better not. Now get out of my house.”

Inuyasha complied, staying lost in his thoughts the entire trek home. He felt broken. It was a small victory over his brother, certainly not his first and probably not his last. But was it even a victory? That child, what would become of her? Those marks weren’t of the mating variety, but something about them signaled intent, he wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did. He only hoped he would wait at least until after the girl began to menstruate, but looking at her that would be quite far off in the future. In a way, it reminded him of Kagome and what he did with her, to her, for her. Seeing their relationship exaggerated in such a grotesque mirror had disturbed him down to his very bones. Shaking his head, he resolved to put that problem out of his mind. Kagome was all that mattered, all that would ever matter, and he repeated that to himself until he pictured the wrinkles and folds of his brain rearranging themselves to spell it out. Once he was home, he was glad to find Kikyo was in her room and sleeping quietly, her slow, even breathing tipping him off to the fact. He didn’t know what he would do if she was awake to pester him. Collapsing onto his bed, he fished Kagome’s red silk scarf from his pocket and inhaled, her faint scent bringing tears to his eyes instead of comforting him like it used to.