Disclaimer: This fic is written purely for entertainment, and is not intended for monetary gain. Inuyasha and all characters are © Rumiko Takahashi
His Story.
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1.
"You can't just leave him here."
Although the words were whispered, they were filled with such emotion that they carried across the lifeless battlefield. It was not, however, the desperation in her words that made Sesshoumaru halt his steps. It was the fact that she- a weak, worthless human- thought that she could tell the western lord what to and what not to do.
The foolish Miko obviously mistook his stillness as permission to continue speaking.
"He's your brother." Her voice was stronger. "You can't just leave him here," she repeated the command.
A cold curiosity tickled the senses of the western lord; who did she think she was, speaking to him like that? He permitted himself to turn around and observe the miko.
She barely looked alive.
Her face was streaked with tears and blood. A portion of her hair had been cut off by a sword that had only narrowly missed its target; the angry, red line on her neck stood testimony of that. Two large gashes on her thigh and shoulder were sluggishly leaking blood on her clothes, but it seemed that the only thing she cared about was the unmoving creature in her arms.
He was mildly surprised that she was so adamant about him saving his brother. The dull, lifeless eyes clearly showed that his life was already lost, if the large chest wound didn't. There were members of her army, if you could even call it that, that were still alive - the demon huntress, for one, was breathing shallowly, and the little fox' fingers were twitching.
He turned his gaze back to the miko, who had tightened her grip on the hanyou even further, but her eyes still held a furious spark of hope.
"And what do you suggest I do?" Sesshoumaru asked dully, his eyes radiating icy indifference. "I am not a healer, and had I been he would still have been too far gone."
The miko started sobbing. Sesshoumaru continued.
"If you believe that his corpse holds any sentimental value to me, you are-"
"Use Tenseiga!" she growled at him.
"He is too far gone," repeated the demon.
"Try."
And he did. Why he did it would remain a mystery even to him, but instead of killing the pesky woman- even instead of simply walking away- he unsheathed Tenseiga and tried to resurrect his hanyou half-brother.
Like he had said it wouldn't, it didn't work.
The miko's cries in his sensitive ears were making his head ache.
The foul stench of rotting corpses was making his nose twitch.
He turned to walk away once more, and to his annoyance, the miko spoke again.
"Are you just going to leave your brother here to rot?"
He remained unfazed by the disgust in her voice.
"Yes."
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3.
Four years went by. He patrolled the lands of a kingdom that had once prospered. Demons were lost and conceived in an undying circle, and humans began to push farther and farther in on his territory.
Rin said she didn't mind.
Sesshoumaru found that he didn't mind either.
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5.
In the shadows, the youkai whispered in fearful voices; tales of a fierce demon huntress, a young miko with the power to take on hundreds of demons and walk out of battle without a single scratch.
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7.
On the rare occasions when Sesshoumaru passed through the human villages, the adults spoke of a kind-hearted priestess, a traveler, which went from village to village and helped the people. Their children told stories that had been passed on to them by this miko; stories about a ragtag army that travelled all across Japan to obtain shards of a precious jewel. They slaughtered whatever creature of evil came in the way of their adventure. And one day, the jewel was complete once again, and they all lived happily ever after.
"What is the miko's name?" Rin would ask the children, her large eyes radiating admiration.
"Kagome," the children would say with twinkling eyes and laughter in their words.
As the dog demon and the human left the village, Rin turned to him.
"If the miko and her mate lived happily ever after, why does she travel alone?"
Sesshoumaru remained silent as Jaken scolded Rin for asking such trivial questions of his master.
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9.
It was one of those rare nights when the moon god Tsukuyomi showed himself in his most beautiful form. The moon stood full and parchment white against the inky depths of empty space, the occasional star winking at Rin and Sesshoumaru. Rin had dragged him out of the shelter the woods provided, leaving a spluttering Jaken to tend for Ah-Un and the makeshift camp they had set up.
They were seated atop of the sharp cliffs overlooking the great western sea. The seventeen year old Rin sighed and leaned her head against the demon hundreds of years her senior as she admired the sky. The fragile human drifted off to sleep.
The scent of roses and lavender and a person in pain reached his nose. He knew that scent, and didn't even turn his head when the priestess sat down gently next to him.
They sat in silence. The dog demon felt a tickle of amusement as he heard the miko open and close her mouth as she struggled to start a conversation.
She settled on Rin. "I didn't know the two of you had gotten quite that close."
Sesshoumaru didn't even dignify her claim with an answer. He did not care whatever faulty assumptions she made.
"Isn't she a bit too young for you?" the miko asked. "I mean, you're a couple of hundred years older. I'm pretty sure that's a prime example of cradle robbing right there."
With an expressionless face he turned to her, but it was with a frown he turned back to the sky. The miko's lips had been drawn back in a full grin, and her eyes had displayed her mirth.
"It was not against her will, nor that of her dead parents, that I took her from her village, and I certainly did not take her from her cradle," he said neutrally. "Neither are we in the type of relationship you seem to believe," he added despite himself.
The miko huffed. "You're just like your brother. He can't take a joke either."
Her use of present tense irked Sesshoumaru for some reason. He did not know what to reply - not that he felt the need to, anyway, he told himself.
For reasons unknown to the dog demon she remained seated next to him for the remainder of the night. They watched the moon inch lazily across the sky. They watched the stars shine and fall. When dawn arrived, his gaze fell on her, to find her eyes already resting on his face.
"You look so much like him sometimes," she whispered.
Sesshoumaru remained silent.
Kagome picked up a tattered yellow bag and left.
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11.
They crossed paths more and more often over the years, and while the little girl Rin grew to be a woman, the miko never seemed to change.
"How is that?" Rin had asked her once. But the miko would just smile mysteriously and say that a jewel had granted her wish.
Their paths blended and mixed.
Eventually Rin asked her to travel with them. Sesshoumaru didn't object.
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13.
When Rin died, Sesshoumaru lost his will to travel. He settled down in his father's old castle and sent out armies to tend the borders instead.
"Rin would never want you to lock yourself up in an empty castle," the miko had said, her tone filled with both anger and sadness.
She stayed there, whenever her travels brought her nearby. Every time, she would stay just a bit longer, until in the end, it was like she never left at all.
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15.
She murmured his name in her sleep.
She spoke of him while awake.
She screamed his name in Sesshoumaru's bed.
For the first time since the birth of his half-blood brother, the dog demon found himself loathing the hanyou, for taking something that didn't even really belong to Sesshoumaru.
Never had, never would.
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17.
Kagome would not budge.
His first and only son would either remain nameless, or be named Inuyasha.
(Kagome had not counted on Sesshoumaru's own stubbornness, however.)
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19.
Kagome didn't like it when Sesshoumaru spent time alone with his heir.
"You need to loosen up if you don't want the kid to turn into an icicle," she'd tell him with a frown.
One day when Sesshoumaru walked past the nursery that Kagome had set up, he heard her voice. "You look so much like him already," she whispered to Sesshoumaru's heir.
He had no delusions of who she meant.
It was the first time since his brother's death that he came close to killing the miko.
She was never allowed to be alone with his heir again.
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21.
"When he heard that his wife had been taken from his castle he travelled all across Japan, searching high and low for months," Kagome said dramatically. "He questioned every demon and human that crossed his path, and finally, he found out that his queen had been taken prisoner by the horrible snake demon Orochi, who wanted the beautiful queen for himself. When he heard this, he transformed into his demon form and ran for days until he reached the castle in which the evil demon resided. He killed all the armies that the snake lord sent out to keep him at bay - but he was far too strong for them. He reached the castle, and he killed the cowardly Orochi, and took his queen back to the castle."
His nameless son squealed. He took great pleasure in hearing stories about his grandparents. "But what happened after that?"
"After that?" Kagome repeated with a wistful smile, eyes set on one of the bright toys. "She left him."
Sesshoumaru stood up and walked out of the room, leaving the guards to keep watch.
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23.
As the years went by, Sesshoumaru noticed that Kagome would spend less and less time with his heir. He started training him in all the things that made a proper lord. Sometimes his young heir would barely listen, wondering what he had done to upset his mother.
"You resemble someone she once knew," Sesshoumaru told his son emotionlessly.
By his tenth birthday, Kagome could no longer look at her son.
By his eleventh, she was gone.
Her last request, written hastily on a mere scrap of rice paper, was one that left Sesshoumaru perplexed.
Name him.
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25.
Every morning it was the same.
When he woke up he would hear Kagome's voice, chattering about some insignificant thing or another – so real that he could feel her breath on his shoulder, that he could feel her lingering warmth in the sheets next to him.
And every morning, he would open his eyes, and nothing would be there.
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27.
"Come, Kenji."
They came to this village every year on the same day. The inhabitants were oddly kind to demons, and Sesshoumaru had long since stopped feeling disturbed by humans.
Finally, the 80 year old hanyou stood up with a dramatic sigh. "Maa, maa, cut your son some slack, will ya? We don't come here nearly enough, I say."
How Kenji had adopted Sesshoumaru's brother's personality without ever having met him remained a mystery.
"Once a year is perfectly fine. It fits with our patrolling schedule," Sesshoumaru said patiently.
"Keh," his son scoffed. His frown quickly turned into a grin. "Think we'll find any big bad monsters to smack around? Remember that nasty badger demon from two years ago? Man, that was an awesome fight! But last year was pretty uneventful. Just humans to deal with."
Kenji continued chatting as he walked back towards the village, not noticing Sesshoumaru's absence from his side. Had the taiyoukai been a lesser creature, he would have rolled his eyes.
Kenji meant intelligent and vigorous and strong, dangerous feats that both Sesshoumaru and his brother had stupidly found to their liking in Kenji's mother.
"You coming?" yelled his heir from far away and waved his arms in a disgraceful manner. A sigh much too light to be heard by human ears escaped his lips.
He glanced at Kagome's grave. Her overgrown headstone seemed absurdly small and insignificant where it stood next to the large time-tree.
Kenji meant intelligent and vigorous and strong, and Kagome had been all of those things when she left them.
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(English is not my primary language. I apologize if this was made too apparent in the story. I'm also in dire need of a beta.)
Her Story (you can probably figure out what that one is about), will be completed and posted soon as a separate one-shot.
Also, the summary of this story is taken from a Jim Carroll poem; 8 fragments for Kurt Cobain.
Tsiedo, I love you.