InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Towards the Future ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )

Author’s Note – After a lengthy break, I’m back.  Thank you all so much for the feedback left last chapter!  Most of this chapter was written in January, but for some reason it took a particularly long time to tweak (I’m still not too happy with it).  I apologize for the delay, and I hope that subsequent chapters will be quicker in coming (I can’t promise that they will, but I DO promise that I won’t leave the story unfinished).  One Japanese term here, for those who may not have heard it before.  “Chichi-ue” is an old-fashioned, extremely respectful way of referring to one’s father.  In the Inuyasha anime and manga, it is how Sesshoumaru always refers to his (and Inuyasha’s) father.  When Emi or Kichiro use it they are referring to Sesshoumaru.  Some of you have left some questions in your reviews, which I’m going to answer soon (look in my profile/biography).  For the moment, to answer puppet-cat, creo que Kichiro tiene seis o siete años ahora.   Finally, an extra special thank you to BrownRecluse who is both a) a wildly imaginative and talented writer that I admire greatly and b) the author of my only review on mediaminer. ^_^  (Thank you, BR!!)     Chapter Two     Kichiro rounded the outer passageway into the courtyard and stopped, bouncing on his hind paws with excitement.   “Jaken-sama says Father came home last night!”    The small half-demon struggled to catch his breath and pushed stray white bangs out of his eyes.       The eyes of the slim girl standing a few paces away from him in the center of the courtyard were not focused on him, and they did not flicker at his arrival.  The girl was dressed in a simple but neat white blouse and trousers, her shiny black hair plaited in a long braid down her back.  She held one arm extended with a rod of bamboo diagonal and motionless before her.    Kichiro waited impatiently.    In a quiet, swift stroke the bamboo broke the stillness and sliced upwards.  The rod slashed down, right and left, in two more attacking motions before returning to the tense stillness of its original position.  The girl held it there for a moment, and took a deep breath, her face relaxing into a fleeting, self-satisfied smile.     “Yes, I know,” Emi answered, resting the tip of her practice stick against the ground.  “Why do you call him that, ‘Jaken-sama’?”     She wasn’t looking at him directly, but Kichiro caught the hint of annoyance in her voice.    “He likes it.  Mother calls him that too when Father isn’t around.”   “It isn’t appropriate,” Emi replied, frowning and swinging the bamboo around in a relaxed parabolic arc, “Jaken will never respect you if you pretend that your position isn’t higher than his.”  For the first time since he had burst outdoors she was paying attention to him.  Her nose screwed up a little.  “Don’t wag your tail so much, it isn’t dignified.”    Kichiro didn’t respond, hoping she wouldn’t press the subject.  Emi was right, of course, Emi was practically always right.  Jaken liked to bully and lecture him sometimes, but there was never any malice in it and he liked making the old toad happy.   Jaken rarely – if EVER – tried to bully his sister.  He suspected the family servant was a little afraid of Emi.     “Should we go and see Father now?” he asked instead, his initial enthusiasm undampened.     “No.”   “Why not?”   “He’s with Mother right now.”   “So?”   “It isn’t appropriate,” she stated with finality.    Reluctantly, Kichiro dropped down to sit on a wooden step and rested his chin glumly against his hand.  Normally he liked watching Emi practice.  Each of her movements was swift and controlled, her attacks and defenses graceful and smooth, not prone to choppiness like his.  Her heavy braid swung like a pendulum behind her.   Kichiro sighed loudly, breaking Emi’s concentration and earning a dirty look in return.   “Sorry,” he apologized hastily.    Emi resisted an urge to roll her eyes and instead let her mind go calm and still.  She took a deep breath and coolly lifted the practice stick.      * * *   Sesshoumaru watched bemused as Rin paced around the garden, studiously selecting which of the thinning autumn flowers she would cut in honor of his return.  She took an inexplicable pleasure in picking flowers – whether for him, their children, or, even occasionally, Jaken and Ah-Un.  For some reason he tried to picture his own youkai mother picking flowers – the image wouldn’t form.  She had carefully reared and protected her child, but it would never have occurred to her to do something so unnecessary as to cut flowers for it.  His mother had never also hummed silly nonsense verse to her offspring, had never chattered on to his father about childhood bumps and scrapes.  Sesshoumaru watched Rin as she moved about the orange chrysanthemums.  She was still sleepy from the night before, and her movements had a slow, dream-like grace.  He imagined his parents together.  His mother would never have picked flowers for his father, either.  It was something the human woman – Izayoi – would have done.   More attuned to his moods than he realized, Rin watched the shadow pass across his face.       “What is it?”  she asked him.   “Nothing.”    She didn’t press him, and his jaw softened again.  He loved her (for many reasons that had taken him years to admit) – and this was one of them.  She always knew when to withdraw, to give him space when he required it.    He passed along the perimeter of the garden.  Yes, he liked Rin the way she was – humming and bothering with flowers that would begin to wilt shortly afterwards, being warm, open and unworried.  Devoted and caring to everyone – especially him.  It was her role, it was the way he preferred things.  He breathed the air deeply, and sharpened his senses against the morning’s smells, sights and sounds.  That was Rin’s role, and it was his role, he thought as he caught the head of serpent, its forked tongue hissing from behind a stone at the border of the footpath.  It was his role to destroy anything that threatened that existence.    His wrist flicked and a thin whip of demonic energy snapped forward, reducing the serpent to dust.    Satisfied, Sesshoumaru turned and walked towards the courtyard.    “Welcome home, Chichi-ue,” Emi and Kichiro chimed in unison, bowing their heads.           Kichiro fought hard to keep his tail respectfully still.    Sesshoumaru acknowledged them both with accustomed restraint.  Like he had with Rin the night before he silently took measure of them.    “Mother!” Kichiro called cheerfully, smiling and raising his face to her.   “Good Morning,” Rin answered.  She kissed her son on the forehead.    “You have been practicing?” Sesshoumaru asked his daughter.    “Yes, Chichi-ue.”   “Show me.”   It was clear from the eager look on Emi’s face that there was nothing she would like to do more.    Rin knelt on the stones, spreading her heavy silk sleeves out as cushioning and opening her arms for her younger child to join her.  Nestled in his mother’s arms, Kichiro watched in blissful adoration as Emi’s stick crossed against his Father’s and they began to move, the sharp hollow whacks of the bamboo reverberating around the courtyard.  Emi was practically perfect, but no one was stronger, no one was faster, no one was greater than his father.  Doubly great – because even with one arm, no human, no hanyou and no youkai could be mightier or deadlier than Chichi-ue.  In his all-encompassing admiration, the question of HOW someone as invincible as Chichi-ue could have lost an arm in the first place had never occurred to him.    Emi dropped and swiped, forcing Sesshoumaru to leap backward.  She anticipated his step and threw all her power into a one-handed upward cut, narrowly missing the fluttering tail of his sleeve.  A bold move, but leaving her defenses open.  Sesshoumaru landed with his rod cracking loudly against hers, pinning her weapon to the ground.  With swift precision before she could recover, he held the end of the stick against the juncture of her neck and shoulder.      He stepped back.   “Well done,” he said.   “Thank you, Father,” she answered, bowing her head and breathing heavily.  Except for the evidence of exertion, she kept her voice neutral.  But she couldn’t hide a slight timbre of self-pleased pride.  Their simple exchange didn’t fool either of them.  They both knew that she had been excellent, that she had nearly tagged him twice.  He really ought to warn her against feeling too triumphant Sesshoumaru thought reluctantly.  Overconfidence could lead to costly mistakes – a lesson that he had learnt painfully.  But Emi had just shown herself to be quicker and more skilled than many full-blood youkai, and he ruefully recognized his own proud sense of triumph at her accomplishment.  Against his better judgment, he decided to postpone that lesson for another day.    Without turning around, Sesshoumaru called his son’s name.    Rin tucked some hair behind his ear, and Kichiro apprehensively rose to his feet.  He had practiced dutifully himself, but not nearly with the relish and devotion that his sister had.  They began, and he tried to concentrate on his attacks.  He could tell that Emi was holding back, but soon he had fallen into to defensive parrying, and with a sense of anxious dread he felt his concentration slipping.  It wasn’t just that Emi was older, and stronger, and took more relish in the activity.  She was simply better at this than he was, and it showed.    He made a wild swing against her midsection.    Emi was slow to respond, and his bamboo rapped against her knuckles.  She dropped her rod with a clatter to the ground.  Kichiro froze, and looked up toward his father.   Sesshoumaru was watching both of them in stony silence.    “You were very fortunate.  Next time your opponent may not be so obliging,” he finally said.       He turned and left them.    “Why did you have to let me win?” Kichiro demanded, later after Rin had also gone.       “Well, next time I won’t,” Emi spat back sulkily.  They were both quiet for a moment, then Emi stepped over to where the bamboo had fallen and picked it up.  She offered it to him.   “Here,” she said more sympathetically.    “Not right now,”  Kichiro answered.  The anger had faded from his voice, leaving it dull.  “I’m going to go feed Ah-Un.”     * * *     Sesshoumaru was already there, sitting white and motionless in the rich gloom of the shadows, after the household had settled for the evening and Rin returned to her room.  His eyes were far off, not watching her as she moved about the room, unrolling the bedding from a chest and finally covering the coals of her small lamp.    Rin knelt beside him, and rested her head against his shoulder.  His pale hair seemed to glimmer with its own unnatural light.    “You must be easier on him,” she said, gazing at his face in the darkness.    His eyes met hers briefly, before he moved them away.   “I cannot afford to be easy on him.”   “He seeks your approval.”   “If he is not strong, he will not survive.”   “He will be strong,” she answered gently.   Sesshoumaru said nothing.   She turned her lips against his body, kissing his shoulder.  He was still for a moment, then scooped her into his lap.  Rin closed her eyes and smiled as she felt his lips pressed against her forehead, then on her mouth, strong and familiar.  A warm joy flooded her chest.  He was back home, and she was with him.  All was well, and all would be well.    His lips suddenly stiffened.    She felt the muscles in his body go tense and opened her eyes, pulling back.    “What is it?”   His own eyes were focused and alert.  Sesshoumaru sniffed the air again.  The scent was there.  Like, and yet unalike.  It was unmistakable.  And impossible.  Completely impossible.  Anger, confusion, and disbelief rose in his throat.    Rin rolled off his lap, her face questioning.    He reached for Tenseiga, sliding the sheathed blade against his waist as he stood up.    “Stay in the house until I return.”  It wasn’t a request.  He thrust Toukijin into its belt, and without looking back slid the screen open and was gone.    Rin waited, listening, hearing nothing.  What time was it?  She wasn’t even sure.  She stayed dumbly still for several minutes, unsure of what to do.    Rin rose and slipped out of the room.  She hurried down the hallway to where the children slept.    Emi was asleep, the naginata that Sesshoumaru had given her lying on the floor beside her.  Rin quietly moved into Kichiro’s room.  Without waking him, she lay down beside him, listening to the child’s even breath rise and fall.  She lay awake and curled on the floor, losing track of the passage of time until a subtle graying of the light through a papered wall partition indicated that dawn had begun to seep into the passageway outside.  Soon after, she recognized a familiar shuffling against the floorboards.   “Rin-sama?”  Jaken nervously slid the screen half-way open.    She sat up.  Kichiro raised his head and blinked his eyes sleepily.    “What is it?  What’s happened?”  she asked.   They found the night sentry dead, slumped against the doors of the house.  There were no marks of violence on his body, or any signs of struggle.  The grass all around was smooth and untrampled.  Several yards away, the gate doors of the wall surrounding the house were open – broken and sagging on their hinges.  Rin saw no signs of her husband.    “Rin-sama, did Sesshoumaru-sama say where he was going?”  Jaken asked hesitantly.    Rin didn’t hear him, she was watching Emi and Kichiro standing very still and close together, a few feet ahead of her.  The cold morning breeze clutched at the black strands of Emi’s loose hair.  This was not like him.  They had been attacked before and – yes, he had gone off before – sometimes with very little explanation, but never like this.  He didn’t let her worry unnecessarily.  He told her to stay inside until he returned, surely that implied that he did not mean to be gone long.  Something was wrong.    “Do you smell it?” Emi asked her brother quietly.    Kichiro nodded, his face ashen.   “What?  What do you smell?”  Rin heard her voice growing shrill.  She felt shut out, human – missing some essential piece of information that her children already knew.  She felt helpless.    Emi turned to her, her eyes very wide.      “It’s Father’s blood,” she said slowly.          To be continued…