InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Price of Vengeance ❯ Chapter Thirty-Three: Revelation ( Chapter 34 )

Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha, and I don't own any money. Suing would be a waste, no?

A/N: Sorry it took me so long to update, but I just started a new job and this chappie was the (bleep) to write. Sessy is a difficult card to diagnose. I made up for it with a l-o-n-g chapter, though! A bit of dark imagery, and one explanation of doggy behavior (friend suggested I add this in). In a pack, if the alpha dog turns his back on an "erring" dog, he is rejecting him, and it can be the ultimate in punishment, signifying the loss of his pack (including security, companionship, etc.) Very bad. I found this behavior first mentioned in my `Net research, but I also found it skillfully depicted in Terri Botta's "The Lucky Ones".

Thank you for the continued reviews and next update will be on Tuesday, promise!

WARNING: SOME DARK IMAGERY. (Word edit on ff.net.)

Chapter Thirty-Three (Revelation)

Dawn came with a slow lightening of the formless clouds that covered the horizon. The tumultuous storms of the night before had passed over the Western Lands, but they had dragged after them the heavy cloud cover that dominated the landscape.

SesshouMaru awaited the coming of dawn, his eyes spying out the panorama spread out before him, the very height of the Western Tower stretching it before his eyes from one horizon to another. He had watched silently as formless shadows had grown to familiar grey-black shapes, and then the faded dullness of a cloud-covered dawn.

His instincts told him that the clouds would not dissipate, at least not this day.

A slight flash of red tinged his eyes for a moment, and he almost growled.

Curling his mouth in self-derision, the gold of his eyes glowed more brightly in response to the stirring inu youkai in his blood. The inu was impatient that he would not see what he wanted, would not view the surrounding lands that he claimed as his own.

His inu nature, once tightly controlled, now seethed beneath the surface, as if taunting him with its presence.

*Intolerable.*

Closing his eyes on the greyed horizon of his lands that stretched below him, the Taiyoukai grappled momentarily with the reluctant admittance that he would have to learn how to tolerate it. The inu, once so tightly leashed, was now freed. And although he had won dominance over it, it would never remain locked away as it had.

A sudden memory came to him, a picture stirring across the many long, dusty years of half-forgotten time. He growled softly, claws slightly clenching as he pictured his mother once more.

Her cold voice haunted him in an echo of his own.

*Intolerable...*

As cold as she was beautiful, the Lady of the West had borne no other name. If she had, her only son had not been told it. She was the pride of the inu youkai court, as pure-blooded and ruthless, as proud and vain as any of them. She had been the only---surviving---child of the old lord, and his father, InuTaisho, had fought his way to the top of the pack from lowly orphanage as the son of a lower general in the old lord's army. When InuTaisho had defeated the old lord, and the old lord lay dying from his many wounds, the old lord had demanded that the new Lord marry his only daughter, thus ensuring the survival of his blood.

There was none more beautiful or sought than the Lady, and a part of InuTaisho had reveled in claiming the proud daughter for his own. And so the old lord had passed to the new, assured that his pure, noble bloodline and august heritage would continue. As the light had faded from his pale yellow eyes, the marriage ceremony had taken place, and the old lord had passed from this world contented.

But there was little contentment between the new Lord of the Western Lands, InuTaisho, and his Lady. The Lady had been of a proud and haughty ancestry, and she did not take well to the low blood of an interloper mixing with hers. SesshouMaru had been too young to really take more than a passing note of their coldness to each other.

When he was very young, his father had been away much of the time, extending his lands and defeating (and creating) enemies with a singular lust for power that had outstripped sanity at times. There were rumors, from various indiscreet conversations overheard as he lurked in the shadows, that it was the Lady's cold bed that drove the Lord into war. As a child, SesshouMaru had not truly understood what that meant; for himself, it meant that he had never seen his father except on rare occaisions that the distant and terribly austere Lord chose to see him. He had known only of his mother, and the Lady could not hide her personal distaste for him.

Another memory, as keen-edged as a sword, slipped through his guard, and his claws grew as the inu stirred in anger over the past.

He could not have been more than nine summers old when his mother had summoned him to her rooms. He could remember with a mild sense of disgust at his own hesitancy as he stopped outside the door to her rooms. He could remember hearing her cold, arrogant voice through the door as if it were yesterday...

*~*~*~*~*

The wood paneling of the door was intricately carved, and he traced the interweaving vines with a white claw-tip, not truly desiring to push open the door to face the Lady within. He could already hear her voice---that cold, distant voice that always made him feel uncertain and foolish.

Inadequate.

"Where is the cur?" Her voice was raised in cold anger, and he flinched. The Lady had never addressed him by name when he was not with her. She might have been surprised if she had known just how many times he had listened to her, how many times he had sought her out, standing in the darkened corners where she would not sense him, hoping for some sign that she could love him, that he was worthy of her love.

How many times she had denied him, despised him and derided him.

"We have sent for him, my lady." The soft voice of one of his mother's maids was wrapped with whispered fear---and for good reason. The Lady was impatient with delay and quick to anger.

There was a harsh crack of flesh hitting flesh, and the young youkai who hesitated at the door flinched at the soft cry that accompanied it.

"Incompetent fool! Cringing little whore! I will not tolerate your---"

SesshouMaru, not wanting to hear more---he had already witnessed his mother's brutal revenge on inefficiency, and the dead were hung on the ramparts to stare sightlessly out as a reminder to others of the Lady's arbitrary wrath, hurriedly pushed open the door, dropping his eyes from the cruel delight in the Lady's face as she held her cowering servant up by one arm, her other hand, claws elongated, ready to strike.

He hid a reflexive cringe as the Lady dropped her victim to the floor, and bowed as the other maids scrambled to take the terrified servant away from the Lady's sight.

He never saw the maid again, but he never witnessed her body hanging on the front wall either. The youkai had been one of the few to escape the Lady's wrath.

"SesshouMaru."

He raised his eyes, hoping that the Lady would not be angry with him as well. The Lady was terrible in her wrath, and his mind desperately worked, trying to think of anything he might have done that displeased her.

But the Lady's coldly more-yellow-than-gold eyes held nothing of anger, and, of course, nothing of love. Instead, the look she gave him was aloof and calculating. She relaxed slightly, and waved a clawed hand airily at him to follow her. The flash of sparkled gems in the blue-white light of her rooms almost made him wince. One of the Lady's few weaknesses was her fondness for pretty---and expensive---jewels.

"Come."

He followed her, silently, obediently, as she left her sumptiously appointed rooms and headed out into the terraced gardens that her chosen wing of the castle surrounded. The courtyard, much like his mother, was kept impeccably neat, the rows of preferred flowers preserved in tight formation and cut back to display their aloof beauty. As a young pup, he remembered trying to play in that garden, and not feeling any ease that he might dare to run through the carefully pruned trees and plants. The one time he had---accidently---trampled over a young, flowering rose-bush, the Lady had not punished him. No, she had punished the gardener who should have been attending him.

SesshouMaru's punishment had been to watch the gardener's slow, torturous death and to hear the youkai's dying screams echoing in his young mind for weeks afterward, making him lie awake in fear at night, afraid to hear those howls revived in his dreams. His nurses, who dared not comfort him or face the Lady's same wrath, had still protected him in their own way---by not breathing a word of knowledge to his mother's ears of the night terrors that gripped him. If she had known, she would have punished him further for despicable timidity.

Fear, even the whisper of it, would not be tolerated in a true-blooded inu, the heir to the Western Lands.

The Lady seemed to be in a strange, introspective mood, and SesshouMaru followed her quietly, not wanting to draw her sudden attention---or the immediate arousal of her rage---toward him. He trailed the Lady for some time as she walked the carefully manicured rows of her gardens, following the soft scrape of her sandaled footsteps over the stoned paths, the swish of her long, formal court robes an odd counterpoint to the burble of a flowing fountain in the center.

She eventually circled the garden, and directed her steps to the fountain's pool in the center. The slight noise of the rippling water increased, and he kept his ears alert for the slightest hint from her that she was ready to speak, to tell him what she wanted of him.

He watched the carefully brushed stones at his feet as she stood watching the slow waves of the pond for what seemed like hours. He dared not stir, else her wrath be lighted with "indecent" movement.

Finally, the Lady turned to face him, and SesshouMaru raised his eyes, wanting to flinch under that arrogantly cold gaze but daring not to. The Lady had taught him early on that to show expression was to show his despised heritage of his father's strong, barbarous blood---and not to be tolerated.

"My son." She said, the words a long drawl of honey over-riding the faint sense of cold contempt. The pale, yellow eyes flicked over him with calculation, appraising him. SesshouMaru straightened under her gaze, bringing his own head up and facing her stiffly.

"I am pleased that you bear more resemblance to me than to your father." Her lips curled over that last word in a sudden flicker of sneering disgust. By this time, SesshouMaru knew exactly how much the Lady hated and abhorred her husband.

"Perhaps it will be your salvation."

His eyes widened slightly at her introspective words, but the Lady dismissed his unvoiced question with a wave of her white hand. Ignoring him for the moment, she seated herself on the fountain's edge, carefully arranging the beautiful silks of her robes so that they draped around her to the best, visually artistic, advantage. One did not ignore the little details.

He waited, uneasiness and uncertainty tumbling through his mind, but daring not to stir so much as an inch.

The Lady stared into the distance, as if weighing her words, overlooking him for what seemed like hours, but was probably only moments. Eventually, her chilling gaze swept back towards him, and she stared at him, her yellow-gold eyes intent.

"You are my son, the last child of a long, proud line. The blood of the Taiyoukai flows through you. Although your blood has been tainted with the baser beginnings of your father's, it still has in it my own blood, and my family's. You have exceeded my expectations of you. I am pleased."

SesshouMaru's magenta-striped cheeks flushed with pleasure at the scarce praise, and his mother's mouth twisted in immediate anger, her eyes bleeding slightly as she abruptly stood up, crossing the stoned surface between them to come and strike him sharply with her open-handed palm.

"Cur! This emotion does not become you!"

SesshouMaru huddled on the stone, not daring to move lest she strike him again. Blood smeared his pale cheek where one of her heavy rings had scraped the skin.

The Lady's eyes flashed with the red of her wrath, and she snarled at him. "You are nothing but a worthless dog!"

SesshouMaru dared not breathe, lest she become truly enraged.

Slowly, the red stain dissipated from the light golden eyes, and his mother stood there, her coldly arrogant face still once more in its concealing mask of indifference. Her icy words, however, cut him deeper than if she had slapped him once more.

"See what you do to me? You make me lose control, and that is intolerable. I despise you. If it were not for your birth, I would have been free to---"

She cut herself off abruptly, her beautifully cruel mouth whitening as her eyes glowed almost as golden as his father's. Deliberately turning her back, SesshouMaru felt her rejection of him down to his core, and he sat with lost misery as the Lady's quick steps took her from the gardens, away from him.

His last view of her had been the long, silky white hair that was knotted in intricate coils on the top and allowed to flow freely down her back to touch the stone-sweeping skirts of her outer kimono...

*~*~*~*~*

A faint growl heated him, and his own eyes glowed for a moment at the memory. Long buried underneath the dust of time, he was slightly surprised that it would surface now. But with everything else, it needed to be re-examined, and closely.

It was not long after that, that his mother's plot to rid herself of her despised Lord had surfaced. The Lady had brought shame to her ancestors---she had taken one of his father's more ambitious generals as a lover, one she deemed worthy of her blood and infatuated enough to follow her lead, and consorted with him to assassinate InuTaisho during one of the many campaigns that took him from the castle.

The Lady's lover, of course, had been defeated by InuTaisho, and his wrath over the Lady's betrayal had known no bounds. Servants and nurses, fearful of his, SesshouMaru's, safety in the blinding bloodlust of the Lord's inu rage, had hidden him in the lowest dungeons of the castle. SesshouMaru remembered how they had huddled, their unspoken fear making him uneasy and frightened, and how it had been then, as he watched their silent terror of the inu blood-rage, that he had vowed to never allow that rage to rule him.

His father had eventually come for him, but it was not with the red rage of the inu. It was, instead, the regret of a father who barely knew his son, and sought to rectify that.

But InuTaisho was still unsure of how to address the stiffly formal, overly quiet youkai who was his only son. SesshouMaru could also sense that his father was uneasy with him, that he reminded the Lord of his dead wife in the more aristocratic lines of his face, and in the more white than silver silk of his hair.

When he had dared to ask after his mother, after her welfare, InuTaisho had reacted with biting rage, the inu blood coursing through him causing him to strike out at one of the poor servants who had braved the Lord's wrath and hidden the son. The youkai servant had died in screaming torture under the bloody claws of the enraged inu Lord, and SesshouMaru had witnessed, first hand, just what that seething blood-rage could do.

InuTaisho had fought back his rage, and he had once more been the severely abrupt Lord who did not know what to say to his son. He had ignored the dying cries of the servant as if it meant nothing to him, and he had told his frightened son that the bitch who had been his mother was now dead, that she had expiated her shame by committing suicide.

SesshouMaru had fallen to his knees, the tears erupting inside of him, although he did not know why, to this day, he had cried for the Lady who had never loved him. He had hated her at times, despised her cruelty and her easily-invoked wrath, raged internally over her contempt for him, wept for her indifference and her haughty disdain, reveled in her icy control and her beauty. He had tried, desperately, to win some semblance of pride from her, and now he never would.

InuTaisho had not known what to say to him. His father had been taken aback by his reaction to the curt news of his mother's death, and, in his own way, his father had tried to comfort him. Smacking his back with the bloody claws of his hand like he was a comrade at arms, the Lord had almost joked, "Come now. Be you a man or a youkai? You're much too old for tears, boy."

The tears had disappeared, but the cold feeling of distance and separation between them never would.

It was then that SesshouMaru had determined that emotions...all emotions, rage, love, jealousy, bitterness, disappointment, failure...all of them were unworthy of him. He would not tolerate, in himself, any of the coarse feelings and behaviors that he had witnessed in either of his parents...

The air in the Western Tower was chilled by the height of the upper reaches, and the wind that circled through the Tower distracted him with its icy kiss. Opening intensely golden eyes, gift of his father, the Taiyoukai stared dispassionately below him as the low-lying clouds of the morning swept under him, obscuring even the dull green glimpse of his forested lands.

Golden eyes turned from the clouded vista, as the slight pain of his palm told him just how tightly he had clenched his single fist at the returning memory of his cold mother. Opening the hand, he examined the red gouges his sharp nails had laid across the palm. A single bead of blood reminded him, abruptly, of how easily the inu rage had taken control of him last night...how easily it had controlled his brother.

He had despised his half-human brother since the conception of his birth. One of the things that his mother had taught him was that his blood, the youkai blood, was a proud heritage, one not to be taken lightly. And his father, whom he had grown over the years to respect, if not love, as a great inu Lord, had mingled his blood with one of the lowest known...a human.

Many years had passed from the death of the Lord's first wife and his claiming of a second. The ferocious warrior consumed in expanding his borders that had marked InuTaisho in his younger days had turned into a contemplative youkai who, although still mighty in his power, did not feel the need to continually assert his dominion as Lord of the West. His interests had turned to the pursuit of knowledge, and in this, SesshouMaru had finally shared something with his father. Their tense, constrained relationship had grown into something bordering on mutual respect and acceptance. By that time, SesshouMaru had grown from a stiffly formal, quiet child into the first strength and certainty of a young youkai, assured of his position and station in life.

The tentative relationship had been destroyed when his father took a ningen mate.

Lips curling with disdain at the thought, SesshouMaru remembered when his father, the once feared Taiyoukai, had brought home his captured bride. The woman had defied her family's wishes (and arrangement for marriage to a "suitable" ningen daimyo) and had married the youkai Lord instead. SesshouMaru had never cared to find out how his father had initially met the ningen woman, who, though beautiful, was still a ningen, and should never have been allowed to mate an inu Lord.

The ningen had changed his father, and not to the Lord's benefit. SesshouMaru had seperated himself from them in disgust, taking the excuse of traveling in the pursuit of seeking to understand the strange world outside of known borders, so that he might not witness the humiliation of having the great InuTaisho reduced to the role of doting husband.

. He had traveled the ningen world, seeking out knowledge like his mother, the Lady, had once sought fine gems. His father sent greetings to him, from time to time, but SesshouMaru ignored the missives. He knew, if he bided his time, that the weak ningen would eventually pass from this world, and then, perhaps, he might desire to return to the Western Lands. But his disgust with his father, his haunting sense of betrayal from a youkai lord he had come to admire, might not have let him.

He had come, however, when his father sent word that he was celebrating the birth of a son.

*A son...*

A hanyou son. A revolting half-breed who bore the taint of its ningen mother in its weakness. He had looked on the babe, and withdrawn into cold contempt at the indulgent look in his father's golden eyes as he beamed over the boy.

"I have named him InuYasha."

The memory of his father's proud voice still made him icy with outrage.

His father had never been so proud of him, his true son, his first-born. And yet he grinned over the babe like it was a gift of the spirits, his love for the pathetic little half-breed only surpassed by the love he held for the hanyou's ningen mother...

*Could I have been jealous?*

Impossible.

He had never sought his father's esteem like he had the Lady's. By the time of her death, he had not needed it, no longer desired it.

He had left in disgust, refusing to speak further with his father, knowing that his fury at this abomination would forever sunder what relationship they did have.

He had left, returning to the distant lands that had held his interest at the time, paying court to the countless youkai who would treat him with the respect due his position and birth, burying his disappointment in his father's betrayal of their inu blood in icy disdain.

He had not replied to any further missives sent by his father. He could not.

And in the end, his silence had killed the Lord.

The taking of a ningen bride had spread the rumors throughout the Lands that his father's power was now diminished. Ambitious youkai, determined to test InuTaisho's strength, had nipped at his borders. While these minor disturbances had been easily dealt with, the unrest had attracted the attention of more formidable opponents, and his father had been badly wounded in battling the most formidable of all.

*Ryukotsusei.*

InuTaisho had, in the end, triumphed. The great dragon had been nullified, his powers sealed into dormancy by the claw that pierced his heart to the rock beneath. He had gone to see the body of the dragon youkai himself, hoping to catch some trace of his father, to expiate the faint sense of guilt that he, SesshouMaru, had not been there to fight by his father's side.

The battle had cost the great Lord dearly. In time, InuTaisho would have recovered his strength, but he had not been given time. The neko tribes to the north had taken advantage of InuTaisho's weakness, and his father had gone to meet them, wounded and under strength.

The neko had lost countless youkai in that final battle, but their sheer numbers had overwhelmed the great Lord, and eventually he had lain close enough to death that his inu nature, his blood-demon, had taken control. The blinding rage of his inu blood would not let him stop until he had killed every youkai and ningen in the area, and the wounds inflicted on him had bled until the dog demon had died in disgrace, a pathetic, raging shadow of his former glory.

The restless youkai of the Western Lands had immediately turned the prosperous domain into a blood-bath of fighting factions, and InuTaisho's ningen wife had fled the province with her hanyou boy, taking him to live with her family, who had taken them in with ill-disguised reluctance.

Word had finally reached him of his father's death, and SesshouMaru had quickly returned to the Western Lands, to claim his right as Taiyoukai, and defeat the many fools who would contend it. It had taken him years to subdue the various enemies his father had created in his years living with a ningen whore, and when he had finally been able to expunge his borders of any threat and consolidate his power, SesshouMaru had gone looking for his father's mate.

Blood honor demanded no less.

But the weak ningen woman had died, and there was no word of her hanyou son.

Not that he could get much from the corpse of the ningen woman's daimyo father after he had slaughtered the man for his derogatory comments regarding the hanyou brat. The woman's father had despised the marriage of his beautiful daughter to a youkai lord, and hated the resulting half-breed as much as SesshouMaru did. But a Taiyoukai did not suffer the nasty natters of a ningen upstart.

The man's blood had stained the walls, and SesshouMaru had taken delight in the screaming riot that had consumed the daimyo's paltry home. He had chased down two or three more servants, upper advisors of the dead lord's who might tell him where the hanyou brat had gone. But they had died under his impatient claws, their pathetic begging to spare their lives making him curl with disgust at their weakness.

And that had been that.

Until he had learned of his father's last gift to his two sons. Twin swords, formed from his fangs by the often-underestimated sword-smith, Totosai. His sword, Tenseiga, had been waiting for him to claim it. He had felt, for a brief time, that the great Lord had finally seen his true worth as the dog demon's only pure-blooded youkai heir.

Until he realized just what a pathetic gift he had been given. A sword that did not cut, that did not kill, that did not strengthen. The rage he had felt at his father's betrayal had almost consumed him. If it had not been for the tight control he kept over his inu blood, he would have fallen prey to it. When he realized that the true fang, the mighty Tetsusaiga, which could have increased his power nearly ten-fold, had been destined for the half-breed...

There was a faint pull at his side, interrupting his dark thoughts.

*Tenseiga...you speak more freely to me.*

Perhaps his father had not given his such a weak imitation after all...

Tenseiga had proven its worth, quite a few times. Not the least of which had been last night, when the fang had called him back from the inu rage, and helped his soul to subdue his nature. Without it, he might not have won the contest of wills...

*Tenseiga was made for the first son, and Tetsusaiga for the second. Each to protect, and each to guide.*

The words written in an ink-splattered message from the sword-smith who forged the twin blades. He had found the missive on his father's desk, in the very study he had claimed as his own. Perhaps it had been the last message the great Lord had read, before going off to an ignoble death in the bloodied rage of the inu youkai.

Perhaps his father had known that both of his sons needed protection and guidance.

He regarded the claws of his one hand, seeing the red blood that covered them the night before. The red blood of his hanyou brother, whose own claws, so similar, were covered in his blood.

*Blood...*

Blood he shared with his brother...

Part of his mind curled away from the thought in familiar disgust, while another started at the sudden revelation of it.

InuYasha was his brother.

InuYasha was not human, was not hanyou, was not a despicable half-breed whose birth had tainted the pure blood of his father.

He was inu.

*Impossible.*

And yet...it was.

*It changes nothing.*

It changed everything.