Title: The Lady of the West
Rating: T
Synopsis: Few know of the Lady of the West's given name. All most know about her is that she was the fearsome mate of Inu no Taishō. But there is something that no one knows, and that is how far the Lady of the West went to save her only child…
Warning: Sesshōmaru is very young here, and rather emotional.
The Lady of the West
The Lady of the West tossed and turned on her futon, her mind filled with images of her adulterous husband and that stupid human cow that he had taken as his. The Inu no Taishō had never been the most faithful of mates, but this was the last straw!
A human, of all creatures! It was ridiculous!
Izumi—though few knew her as such—sat up in bed and massaged her temples. Dark, ebony locks framed her face, and her bright eyes were squeezed shut to blot out the unwanted imagery of her husband with that human…
No, no. She didn't want to picture—any more than she had to—her husband having a romp with as lowly a creature as a human.
Perhaps I should go for a walk, mused Izumi, giving up on the idea of going back to sleep. She threw the covers off and stood up, stretching as she did so, and wondered how her son, asleep down the hall in his own room, was faring. Izumi sighed; she almost missed the times when he was young enough that, after a nightmare, he would come bawling into her room, clutching his great moko-moko to him like a blanket.
But of course, in the past, she had sent him away without comfort.
Such was expected of the Lord and the Lady of the West. No emotion was to be shown; no love to be expressed, not even to your only child; the child who would one day become ruler himself.
Izumi was just rolling up her futon when a crash sounded from downstairs. Her sensitive ears twitched, and she sniffed the air delicately. Was Sesshōmaru up at such an hour? That would be very unlike her son, who loved to sleep till all hours. Knowing this, the Lady of the West left her futon half made and was halfway to the paper shoji that separated her room from the hall when several sets of feet pounded up the grand staircase outside.
Alarmed, Izumi swept toward the door only to have it be ripped apart as the mangled body of a servant flew through it and crashed into the dresser against the far wall. Through the gap in the shoji that the maid had made, Izumi could see human troops, those belonging to Inu no Taishō's human cow.
The Lady of the West drew in a breath sharply, and stepped backwards. "What happened to the Guard?" she called out evenly, buying time as her mind raced to figure out how they had broken in and gotten past the Guard, which inhabited the castle of the West specifically to prevent something like this.
"You mean them?" growled the man in front, and motioned to the stairs behind his troops, where Izumi could see countless bodies strewn all over.
Izumi raised a claw and advanced, but none of the humans even flinched, and she wondered how long they had been planning this ambush. Angered by their impudence, the Lady of the West was about to fly at them in rage when a thought crossed her mind and she stopped short.
Sesshōmaru—!
Oh, and she did not wait to see if he was all right. With such speed that the humans did not even see her go past, Izumi dashed to her son's room to find him fast asleep in his bed. Gods, she thought in relief, the boy can sleep through anything!
But Izumi knew they would have to leave, and relocate themselves in a wider space, somewhere where she could inflict her true wrath upon the humans, so she went over to rouse her son. Pulling his arm, the Lady of the West tugged the still sleeping Sesshōmaru into a standing position, where she shook him until he woke with a start.
"Mother," he said upon seeing her, and stepped back, fright apparent in his amber eyes. "What's going on?" This had only happened once before, in a similar ambush years before, when Sesshōmaru hadn't even had his claws yet. "Is this a nightmare?"
"Yes," said Izumi truthfully, and pulled him to the door. "Come, we need to leave, before—"
"We'd wondered where you'd gone," came a voice just then, and Izumi and Sesshōmaru looked up to see the human general lounging in the doorway with his followers behind him. The man nodded toward Sesshōmaru. "Cute little boy you've got, mistress," he added sarcastically.
Izumi stepped in front of her son and let out a low growl. "Keep away from him," she ordered, and took Sesshōmaru's hand. As an idea formed in her head, her eyes darted from the window in the back of the room, back to the troops before her. Could they make it? Well, Izumi decided, they could try. And with that, Izumi dashed toward the window, pulling her son behind her. She heard the general shout, "Get them!" behind her, but by then she and a panicking Sesshōmaru had already tossed themselves out the window.
They both heard the disbelieving cries of the humans above them as the lake below Sesshōmaru's window rushed up to meet the Lady of the West and her son. Sesshōmaru panicked more, thinking they were going to hit the water, but calmly, Izumi pulled upwards at the last second and the two came to a peaceful halt, floating above the water's surface.
Sesshōmaru swallowed hard as his mother took him to solid ground, where he collapsed. Izumi glanced down at him and pulled him up by the neck of his robe. "They'll be down here in a mere moment," she told him, and wrenched a lamp on the end of a long pole off the fortress wall. Abandoning the light and throwing it into the lake, Izumi handed Sesshōmaru the makeshift spear just as the troops of humans rounded the corner of the castle and saw Izumi and Sesshōmaru there, on the water's edge.
The bloodthirsty general grinned, and pointed at the two. "Attack!" he roared, and his phalanx of humans surged at Izumi, who suddenly vanished. Bewildered, some of the humans changed course—while others just hung back—and flew at the terrified Sesshōmaru, who tried in vain to protect himself. An archer in the back took aim at the boy and was about to fire when he was suddenly struck down; decapitated. In the next instant, those who had gone for Sesshōmaru collapsed in a heap, and Izumi suddenly reappeared standing before her son.
The general seemed surprised; but that was a mere fraction of his army, and he gestured to the rest of his men and shouted, "Charge, fools!"
Frightened, though he would never admit it, Sesshōmaru blindly thrust out his sword as the oncoming humans charged toward he and his mother. A jolt ran through the child's arm as first one, and then another overzealous creature ran onto his katana. Openmouthed and wide-eyed, Sesshōmaru jerked his bloodstained sword back and watched as the two dropped limply at his feet. After looking with shocked glee at the viscous red substance on his sword for a moment, Sesshōmaru's mouth opened in a shriek of triumph that should never have passed his lips until he was a good few years older.
"Mother! Mother!" Sesshōmaru yelped, turning back proudly. "I did it, mother! Look, I killed—"
He stopped dead, and fell to his knees. The bloodied sword fell from his stubby fingers and clattered to the ground, but he neither heard nor cared. His mother stared back at him with unseeing eyes, a trickle of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth; she was on her knees, slumped forward. A barbed arrow was protruding from her chest.
"MOTHER!" Sesshōmaru screamed, and rushed up to her. The little boy shook her desperately by the shoulders, but she slumped against him, dead as those two he had just killed. Sesshōmaru didn't realize he was weeping until tears landed on his mother's forehead, and he howled like the wounded animal he was. "MOTHER!"
The human general smiled in satisfaction as the young inuyōkai wept, "Mother, please wake up! Mother!" and turned to the ashen-faced archer who had done the deed. "Well done, Shinichi," he said, and grinned wickedly at the young man.
"Th-thank you, sir," stammered Shinichi, a bit put off by the young boy's sorrow.
The battle had paused with the death of Izumi, but now the rest of the human army surged toward Sesshōmaru once more, and the boy cowered, weeping, beside the form of his mother, when a voice pleaded, "No, stop! Stop!"
The warriors stopped dead, recognizing the voice. As one, they fell to their knees and said, "Izayoi-sama!"
The very pregnant young woman stepped into their midst and gasped at the sight before her. She covered her mouth with a shaking hand, suppressing an empty retch as she saw the body of Izumi topple forward, the arrow pushing further into her chest with a sickeningly wet sound of ripping skin. "Wh-what have you done?" Izayoi gasped, her eyes fixing on the young inuyōkai sobbing in front of the bleeding body.
He was nearly a carbon copy of her lord. The boy had the Inu no Taishō's long, silvery hair, and the taiyōkai's brightly coloured markings. At once, she knew this was the son of her lord's true mate, the demoness who the Inu no Taishō had referred to as Izumi.
Izayoi's face paled as she focused again on the body on the ground. No, she thought, dimly aware of herself as she strode over to the weeping demon child, one hand strapped across her protruding stomach, no, no, it can't be! But she knew that the corpse lying in the dirt was that of the Lady of the West. She had been killed by Izayoi's own troops, and the human princess's stomach lurched at the thought of it.
"Oh," Izayoi heard herself saying, and it was only then that Sesshōmaru became aware of her presence.
The young inuyōkai looked up with a choked sob and scurried backwards at the sight of this fat, dark-haired human kneeling before him. She looked like his mother, but humans had killed his mother, and it was too much for Sesshōmaru to bear and he fell to his knees and didn't stir, unconscious.
Izayoi started, and picked up the boy. She cradled him in her arms and spun away from bleeding corpse beside him. "Clean this up," she ordered, voice cracking as she struggled to hold her composure. What would her lord say when she returned to her castle, where he waited, with his son in her arms?Author's Notes: This is a drabble. This will not—I repeat, will not—be continued further. It is supposed to make you think about what Inu no Taishō's reaction to his human lover, returning to her castle with Sesshōmaru in arms, would be. It's just a drabble that ends in a question.
There is no more.
I like it, though. Poor Izumi.
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