Chapter One

Poor Rin...

"I don't see why you have to go back to your own time so much," InuYasha snapped, ears flicked down slightly in irritation as he watched Kagome climb out of the well dragging an engorged yellow bag behind her.

"I had a test! Besides, it's important that I check in. And look, I brought more ramen-"

"Ramen?" His ears perked up hopefully and he eyed the yellow bag.

Kagome smiled lightly. "Yes, ramen. And the sooner we get back to Kaede's, the sooner I can make some for you," she said in her best 'if I feed you, will you please stop yelling at me?' voice.

"Why didn't ya say so?" He scooped up her bag and crouched down so she could jump on his back. "Let's go!" She happily obliged and they took off at a fast run towards the village that had become her home over the past couple years.

When they got to Kaede's hut, the impatient hanyou rushed inside and dropped both Kagome and her bag next to the fire.

"Hurry up and make me ninja food!" InuYasha demanded. She glowered slightly at having been dropped but obediently went about setting water to boil.

"InuYasha, would you please go and tell the others I'm back? I brought presents for all of you." He stood and walked to the doorway, lifting the mat that served as a door.

He put a hand to his mouth and took a deep breath. "KAGOME'S BACK!" he bellowed to the sky before turning to Kagome with a smirk. "They should be here any minute."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it!"

"Keh. You never said-"

"KAGOME!" A fluffy ball (more commonly known as Shippou) crashed into her, hugging her tightly.

"Shippou!" She returned the embrace, hugging the kit fondly. When she released him she turned to her bag and pulled out a small box of cookies, handing them over to the grinning child. "Now don't eat too many of these, save some room for ramen." He nodded before scurrying off to sit against a wall of the hut, tearing open his prize and popping a cookie into his mouth.

A moment later, Sango stepped into the hut followed closely by Miroku. "Kagome-chan!" Sango said happily. "You're back!"

"Yes, we had heard that you had returned, although the methods of our being informed were a bit crude," Miroku commented.

"Keh. I told ya, didn't I?" InuYasha folded his arms stubbornly and went to sit against the wall opposite from were Shippou was sitting with his cookies. Kagome rolled her eyes and dug through her bag, pulling out a soda for Miroku, a bag of potato chips for InuYasha, and an assortment of chocolates for Sango.

She then proceeded to finish making "ninja food" for her friends. Soon after, they were once again off on their seemingly endless quest for jewel shards.

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Not two hours into their search, the sound of a small child crying somewhere in the distance came to their ears. They stopped, looking in the general direction the sound was coming from. Kagome and Sango exchanged glances and Sango nodded in approval of Kagome's unspoken thought: 'we need to go find and help this child.'

The two females abruptly began to walk towards the sound of crying when InuYasha jumped in front of them. "Oi! Where do you think you're going? We got jewel shards to find, remember?"

"InuYasha… We have to go help that child," Kagome pointed out.

He glared murderously. "We still haven't gotten rid of the last whelp you decided to help," he said darkly.

There was a collective gasp and Shippou looked like he might cry before looking extremely angry.

Kagome looked furious from the start. "Don't you dare talk about Shippou like that! Osuwari!" Once there was a nice InuYasha shaped crater complete with the appropriate hanyou-filling, Sango and Kagome rushed off in the direction of the crying child.

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Rin ran blindly through the forest, tears stinging her eyes, but not quite falling yet. She cried out in pain every time a branch or bush slapped against her or caught onto her arms and legs. She was starting to get tired, but she knew she couldn't stop running until she was far, far away. Jaken-sama told her so. And she knew he was right.

She had been kidnapped by a lower class youkai intent upon eating her while left in Jaken's care. Sesshoumaru-sama had saved her from being eaten, but one of her legs had been badly injured, and they had not been able to travel for almost three weeks while it healed.

After they had begun traveling again, during one of the instances in which Sesshoumaru-sama had left for a few days, Jaken had told her how angry Sesshoumaru-sama had been about such a long delay, and how he never wanted to see her again. Rin had tearfully asked Jaken what she should do to make Sesshoumaru-sama happy with her once more, and Jaken told her it would make Sesshoumaru-sama extremely happy if she would run and not stop running until she was far, far away.

So she turned and ran. Not caring about the cuts being issued to her arms and legs from trees and bushes, or to her feet from sharp rocks and the occasional thorn.

She didn't know how long she had been running, but her side was starting to throb terribly, and her legs ached, screaming in protest for her to stop.

She broke free of the forest suddenly and found herself running through grass that was taller than she was.

Suddenly, without warning, her foot caught in a small hole in the ground, hurling her to the grassy floor and twisting her ankle quite painfully. She let out a wail of pain and anguish and finally allowed the tears building up within her large brown eyes to spill, streaming down her dirt-streaked face.

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Sango and Kagome followed the pitiful sounds of a crying child and soon came upon a field of grass that was a little more than waist high. They plunged into the grass and began heading towards a forest on the other side of the field when they came upon the distressed child. A little girl with black hair lay face-down in the grass, sobbing hysterically. Kagome gathered the little girl in her arms and began rocking her gently. The girl tensed immediately, then glanced up. When she saw who held her, she seemed to calm down and snuggled into Kagome's embrace.

"Wait a minute. Aren't you that little girl that travels with Sesshoumaru?" Kagome asked. The girl started crying even harder, if that were possible, and nodded. "Then why aren't you with him? Or with Jaken and… uh, that dragon?"

"Ah-Un." She sniffled and clung to Kagome tightly. "And Rin is not with them because Rin made Sesshoumaru-sama very angry, and now he never wants to see Rin again!"

Sango and Kagome exchanged a puzzled look before Kagome turned back to the crying child in her arms. "Would you like to come with us for a while? We have a little fox kit in our group, and he's about your age. I'm sure he'd love to play with you."

She sniffled as she stopped crying. "O-okay…" She sniffed again. "Rin's name is Rin. What is yours?"

"I'm Kagome. It's nice to finally meet you, Rin! Oh, and this is Sango."

Rin looked at Sango. "Oh, you are Kohaku's sister."

She blinked. "Is… Is Kohaku alright?"

"Sesshoumaru-sama will protect him. He doesn't let anything happen to those who travel under his protection…" Sango and Kagome exchanged another uneasy look then headed back to the others, Kagome still carrying Rin.

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As soon as InuYasha caught sight of the little girl and identified her scent as one that was constantly around his older half-brother, he became quite unhappy. One might say, in fact, that he was even angry.

"No way is that brat coming with us!" he snapped, pointing an accusing finger at the girl. "If Sesshoumaru even suspects that we took a member of his pack, he'll have a perfectly valid excuse to kill all of us! Not that he thinks he needs one," he added in a dark murmur. "You two need to take her back where you found her, and leave her there so that bastard can find her when he gets around to looking for her."

Kagome gently set Rin on the ground and looked at the fox kit peering out curiously from behind Miroku's robes. "Shippou, come out and say 'hello.'" He obediently came out of hiding and approached her. "Shippou, meet Rin. Rin, this is Shippou. Why don't you two play while I talk to InuYasha?" They nodded then slowly walked a short distance away before Rin shyly asked if she could touch his tail. He said she could if she caught him first, and the game was on.

Kagome turned back to InuYasha and opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off. "No! She's not staying with us! Sesshoumaru-"

"Abandoned her," Kagome quietly but firmly interjected.

"What?"

"Sesshoumaru abandoned her, InuYasha. I don't know exactly what happened, she wouldn't tell me, but she apparently made your brother-"

"Half-brother," he corrected automatically.

"Half-brother, then," she conceded. "Anyway, she did something that made him really mad, and he told her to leave and that he never wanted to see her again. When we found her, she'd already been running for hours."

"How'd you know that?"

"She started running before she even had a chance to eat breakfast. Speaking of which…" She turned to where her bag sat on her bike and pulled out a bag of potato chips before turning to the children. "Rin, Shippou, here, have a snack." She handed over the bag of chips then produced two water bottles and sent them over to Kirara. She turned back to InuYasha and frowned when she saw the conflicting emotions on his face. "I- InuYasha? She asked hesitantly. He turned from her and mumbled incoherently. "What was that?"

"I said the brat can stay!" he snapped in a strangely choked voice before racing off into the forest.

Kagome exchanged a bewildered look with Sango and Miroku. "What was that about?" the taijiya wondered.

"It would seem that this uncharacteristic display of emotion was caused by Kagome-sama informing him that Sesshoumaru-sama abandoned young Rin," Miroku observed. A deathly silence fell as they exchanged looks of surprised curiosity and shocked disbelief before turning to look in the direction in which InuYasha had fled.

"I'll go talk to him," Kagome volunteered before following after the upset hanyou.

"You will tell us what he says, won't you?" Sango pleaded. "We've all wondered about his relationship with Sesshoumaru, and how they came to hate each other so much."

"Of course I'll tell you." 'If he actually tells me anything…' "Wish me luck!"

"Good luck!" Sango, Miroku, Rin and Shippou chorused as Kirara mewed her well-wishes. Kagome grinned her thanks before slipping off into the trees after InuYasha.

His trail wasn't hard to follow; in his haste, InuYasha had crushed and snapped all sorts of vegetation and had left his foot prints clearly embedded in the forest floor on several occasions, further encouraging her that she was, indeed, on the right path.

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It was about an hour and a half later that Kagome finally came across InuYasha sitting at the base of a tree with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs, and chin resting on his arms. His ears were lowered slightly.

She silently approached him and sat beside him, laying a hand on his shoulder. "InuYasha? Are you alright?" she asked softly.

"Why wouldn't I be alright, huh?"

"Well, that's kind of what I was wondering… You really freaked out back there… What happened?"

"… Bad memories." His ears flattened completely.

"Bad memories… about Sesshoumaru?" she ventured cautiously. He flinched then nodded slowly. She slid her hand from his shoulder to put her arm around him in a comforting hug. "Would you like to tell me about it?" she asked softly.

"Well…" He sighed. "Okay. It all started about 150 years ago…"

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Hanyou: half human, half demon
Oi: hey
Osuwari: sit
Youkai: demon
Taijiya: demon exterminator

No, Sesshoumaru really wouldn't be that cruel to little Rin-chan, and I'll explain what actually happened in chapter three. I mean, honestly, would it even make sense to hang around in one spot waiting for her to heal, and then get rid of her? No.

This will eventually have Sesshoumaru paired with an OC as the main pairing, although I'm not sure exactly when she'll be introduced. Not for another several chapters, anyway.

I'm actually working on this in doujinshi form, but I'm in the process of moving and don't have the space right now for drawing, but I'm sick of not working on it, so this will have to feed my addiction for now...

InuYasha and all related characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi; I am merely a semi-crazed fan-girl.
All OCs introduced belong to LadyVinicia and bret-michal-san