Disclaimer: I make no claim to own Inuyasha.

It seemed like no matter what she did, she couldn't get the blood off her hands.

XxxxxxxxxX

The last thing Sesshomaru remembered was a miko, dressed in a strangely exquisite kimono for a human, unleashing a strange energy from her palms that was nothing like any other purification attempt from any other. Strangely enough, he felt the dark energy and realized that whatever abilities she did have, they had to have come from the underworld. Such dark magic for a priestess! Sesshomaru bristled, and his youki surged. This nonsense was inexcusable. He would have to hone his abilities further. He had nearly allowed himself to fall as prey to a weak human.

Speaking of weak and human...

Pushing himself up with a surprising amount of grace for one who awoke to find themselves on the forest floor, the demon lord looked around for a moment. His senses had been dulled by the miko's powers, not that he would admit it, and it took his eyes a moment to readjust. It was coming upon dawn, the attack had happened sometime during the night. Jaken was propped against a tree nearby, but looked relatively unscathed. He figured the kappa was of no threat to the demon slayer miko, thus he was ignored.

The human, however, was a different story. She, the young woman called Rin, was nowhere to be found. Sesshomaru's keen sense of smell failed him at the moment, which he figured was for the best, as the corpse of his potential assasin was bloodied and laid some distance away from him. The uncertainty of his girl-child ward's location caused the demon lord's heart to pump irregularly, faster than usual. The possibility of her death was always considered first, as she was just a ningen girl, unable to truly defend herself. The child had yet to see her twelfth summer. Second was that of her kidnapping, however, he remembered the miko to be alone before she overpowered and embarrassingly knocked out the demon lord...

Wait.

Sesshomaru's eyes widened. The miko had caused him to lose consciousness.

And yet...

She was dead?

How?

Sesshomaru approached the body carefully. Regarding the woman with a cold calculating look, he discerned without defiling himself by touching her body, that she had been stabbed through her heart with a sword. Thus, he must have done it instinctively. There was always a logical explanation for everything. Reaching down to his side, he felt for his two swords, Bakusaiga and...

Tensaiga.

It was missing.

Someone would pay.

XxxxxxxxxX

As soon as she heard the woman breath her last, she had sprinted as fast as she could to the nearby stream, wanting to clean her master's swords as best as she could. She seemed to spend the entire night there, scrubbing the sword with soft leaves from the shore, and until her small hands were raw. She then ran back to the campsite her demon companions had been injured at, the night before. At least, it appeared they were injured. Rin remembered the priestess chanting something in words she had never heard before, and then watched as her beloved lord and his servant were disarmed without so much as the flick of a sword.

They had never seen it coming.

As she approached the campsite, she immediately tended to her lord, adjusting him, to the best of her ability against the trunk of the nearest tree, and brushing his usually perfect silver locks out of his face and behind his pointed ears. Jaken was already leaning against an adjacent trunk, so she left him be and set out to get wood for the fire.

After setting up a fire that would provide a cover for the scent of the dead miko, Rin returned to the riverbank, and began scrubbing her hands again. She bothered not with catching the fish that swam through the stream or her unhungry, empty stomach. Instead, she continued to scrub her hands. For whatever reason, whatever dark magic the woman had cast, the blood would not come off her hands.

It was like this, hunched over in the stream, that her lord would find her shortly after sunrise.

XxxxxxxxxX

He came upon her as his keen sense of smell was beginning to return. She was bathing, it appeared, though all her clothes were on, and mostly soaked. The bottom of her kimono was pulled slightly to the left in the gentle current, and her sleeves were dripping from being dipped repeatedly into the cold water.

"Rin."

The human girl froze for a split second. - Sesshomaru was relieved that he could tell this, the miko's effects on him were lessening significantly. Then she turned, and for once in his life, the Taiyouki let out a gasp that reached his mouth before he could control himself.

"Sesshomaru-sama," She said softly, almost sadly. "How are you feeling?"

He approached her with a speed so fast she hadn't seen him move. The front of her checkered kimono was saturated with blood. She bowed low before him, and he reached a clawed hand out tenatively to pull her back up. "You are injured?" He questioned.

"No, Sesshomaru-sama." She paused, thinking for a moment before turning to her right side and withdrawing her master's sword from the rock she had set it upon. "Rin was washing the blood off of your sword." She moved reverently, bowing again, before sliding his inheritance into its sheath at her lordship's side. "However, my lord," She held her hands out for him to see, "I was unable to wash the blood off of my hands."

Sesshomaru regarded her for a moment, his mind racing. There was no blood on the girl's hands, so what was it that she was speaking of. Also, the more pressing issue was why there was blood on Tensaiga, a sword that did not have the capability to cut. "Rin." He took a silent breath. "There is no blood on your hands."

She gasped, looking at her hands. Whatever human spell was upon her was broken, the youkai lord supposed. She sighed. "Gomen, Sesshomaru-sama. It was a silly thing." She stepped away from him for a moment, and looked toward the east, where the sun was slowly beginning its descent through the sky.

"How did this Sesshomaru's inheritance become bloodied?"

The human child turned her head to look at him, her eyes gazing into his with an intensity he had never seen from her before. "The miko was going to kill you, yes?"

No honorific? Sesshomaru was caught off guard. "I suppose," Was his reply.

"The miko," Rin continued, her voice strangely mature for a young human, "She attacked your youki. It weakened your senses and caused you to lose consciousness. Much like Naraku's poisonous misama," She recalled. If anything, the child was observant. "She was going to use her holy blade to pierce your heart and kill you, so-"

"What happened." This time, it was no question. It was a command. She was giving too much details, and he wanted a simple answer.

Rin sighed and looked down at his swords before regarding him with a gaze that reminded him that she was no stranger to death. She had seen things he had not. "I killed her, Sesshomaru-sama. With Tensaiga."

She was not surprised when she was left in the care of Kaede before sunset.