Heart of Ice
Disclaimer: Inuyasha is not mine!
Chapter One – Dreams Unsettling
He was tired, after a long hunt for the snake youkai invading his territory, and so it was only common sense that sleep should follow the hunt. Stretching languidly – the Lord of the Western Lands had a gracefulness anyone would long for – he raked his claws through his silver- white mane and turned in the direction of his tower, as he called it.
Most people called it a prison, but that didn't bother him.
Entering through the intricately crafted golden gates aspiring for the heavens, Sesshoumaru pushed roughly through the door and stormed up to his room, the scent of blood still lingering around him. He started towards the bed, yanking his door shut behind him, and threw himself upon the pallet.
Sleep wouldn't come.
The youkai lord knew why, naturally. It was his own mental defenses that refused to allow sleep to sink in. Ever since he'd woke up crying three nights ago, he refused to sink back into the darkness of slumber.
It was impossible to escape, however. His moves slowed without sleep. The Sesshoumaru of before the dream would have beaten this one in six minutes of hand-to-hand combat. It was possible that even a normal youkai would be able to come close enough to draw a drop of blood.
And that was not allowed, since he was well aware of the poison some demons were endowed with. The virulent substance could bring down even the mightiest of beasts.
There was no help for it. Sesshoumaru sent the walls of his mind crumbling down, resigning himself to sleep, hoping fervently that no dreams would pervade his mind.
His wishes were not granted.
Again, he was sitting by the river next to his home. He was staring into the tranquil waters, and his reflection beckoned for him to peer closer. He did so, curious, still seeing only himself.
The water shifted then, forming another face. This one was decidedly female, and he let out a small cry when he saw it. Rin's laughter seemed to sound in his ears as he gazed into her childish features. The image offered a wreath of flowers towards him, but he didn't move, lest he disturb the vision.
A blur of red shot behind the unsuspecting girl. Yelling, doing anything he could, Sesshoumaru tried to warn his young charge. He knew this was just a manifestation of his mind, that Rin was long dead, but still he felt the undeniable need to protect her.
Rin kept smiling and holding her blossoms. Then her smile changed, grew fixated, and before his eyes she twisted in the air and fell.
The grass around her, soaked with blood.
The dream Sesshoumaru peered even more closely at the water, and he saw the leering face of his foster-child's murderer clearly for the first time. He recoiled sharply, and his eyes slowly darkened to crimson, promising death to the picture in the water...
Sesshoumaru sat bolt upright in bed, shivering despite the heat. Rin...the young human child he'd come to love, her persistent happiness finally winning him over. She was gone from him forever; he still remembered entering her room one day to see the diagonal gash across her white throat, to see her eyes wide in confusion.
She was a child, and children think they'll never die.
It wasn't as if he hadn't tried to avenge her. He was still attempting to slaughter any bloodthirsty youkai left in his territory that could inflict such a wound upon Rin. He didn't care how many he killed, as long as he caught the culprit.
But this dream, this fantasy...it was exactly the same as the last, except for one difference: he'd been shown the murderer's face.
"Inuyasha," the youkai lord hissed, flexing his claws, "I will find you. And when I do, you will meet the same fate as me. The one you care for most will die, and you will feel the pain before I end it by cutting out your heart!"
With his prophecy settled, Sesshoumaru whirled from his room, and those who saw him would never have guessed his anger, so carefully it was concealed within his heart of ice.
"Kagome!"
Tossing back her raven tresses, the teenager turned to face her friends eagerly. "Sango, Miroku! It's great to see you! Hi, Kirara!" She reached out to scratch the giant cat's ears and grinned as she felt the slight pressure on her shoulder. "Hey, Shippou."
"Forgot someone, didn't you?" a surly voice inquired from a nearby tree.
Kagome tsked. "Don't be foolish, Inuyasha, there's no way anyone could forget you."
"What a pity," Shippou sighed mischievously from his safe perch on Kagome. He slyly waved to the fuming hanyou, but his expression soon turned to one of dismay as his 'mother' set him on the ground.
"You guys, can you leave us alone for a bit? I want to talk to Inuyasha," Kagome explained.
Miroku smirked. "I can just imaging what you think the word 'talk' is a synonym for."
"Houshi-sama!" Sango scolded, whacking the wayward priest on his poor, abused head. "Come on, let's give the two some time alone."
Inuyasha watched the remainder of the group leave before he leapt lightly to the ground. "All right, Kagome, what do you want?"
Kagome smiled at him.
The hanyou shivered. He knew that smile.
"Inuyasha?" she asked as sweetly as she could.
He shivered again. He knew that tone.
"Could you possibly do me a favor?"
"What favor?" he inquired suspiciously.
She flashed him another dazzling smile. "Nothing much," she replied.
"What?"
"Couldyoupossiblyeathalfofmymathtextbook?" she requested, shoving all the words together and hoping he wouldn't understand what she was asking.
Unfortunately, his hearing was more acute than most, and he blinked at her incredulously. "You want me to eat half of your math textbook?"
"No, I have a reason," she explained hastily. "If you do chew through half a book, you will benefit because I will cook you three pots of ramen, and I will benefit because I can show the mutilated book to my math teacher and give her a reason why I didn't do my homework. Then the only people that won't benefit are my parents, who will have to buy me a new textbook. See?"
"Ramen..."
Kagome peered closely at the drooling hanyou. "So, will you do it?"
"Ramen..."
"Yes, we've established that fact. Now can you start eating my book?"
Inuyasha snatched her textbook, bit it in half, and handed it back to her.
She blinked. "Well...I suppose you could do that, too."
"RAMEN..."
After approximately half an hour of Kagome cooking and two minutes of Inuyasha eating, the hanyou was very satisfied and very bloated.
Kagome motioned to Miroku, Sango, Kirara, and Shippou; she was well aware that they'd been hiding at the outskirts of the forest the entire time. "All right, I need your opinion on something," she said.
"Whether or not Inuyasha's getting too fat for his own good?" Shippou interrupted, leaping onto Kagome's shoulder.
"No," she replied pointedly. "I need to know which half of my Calculus textbook looks more chewed."
The others stared at it. "Um...Kagome?" Sango ventured.
"Yes?" she answered impatiently.
"It's been broken cleanly in half."
"It's...what? INUYASHA!" Kagome shrieked.
The hanyou glared at her. "All you said was that it had to be bitten."
"No, I said it had to look bitten!"
"Same thing!"
"No, it's not! My math teacher will assume that I took a chainsaw and vandalized this book myself! What's the point of having sharp teeth if you can't even bite a book correctly?"
"My teeth are just fine, thank you very much."
"Not really! Ever heard of a toothbrush, you yellow-fanged freak?"
Silence. A few birds chirped.
"Oh, wait, you haven't, have you?" Kagome realized.
"Well...no," Miroku replied, answering for everyone.
"Oh." Kagome looked rather embarrassed.
Which was when the snake youkai, actually an immigrant from Sesshoumaru's lands, decided to attack, seeing that everyone near it was rather preoccupied.
The first any of them knew of the attack was when the emerald-green coils threw themselves around Kagome's arms, pinning them to her sides. Ruby-red eyes, glittering like garnets, surveyed their prey tantalizingly. The hinged jaw opened to reveal rows of silver fangs, each dripping acid onto the ground, leaving sizzling patches behind.
The serpent reared, lifting Kagome high into the air. She lashed out with her feet, but only succeeded in ripping off the bottom of her shoe on the snake's sharp-scaled skin. Angry at the attempt, the snake whipped its tail violently around, knocking Sango away and sweeping aside Miroku, too, as the priest tried to help the taijiya.
When the tail snapped in Inuyasha's direction, however, the hanyou leapt onto the scales and began running vertically towards the youkai's head.
He bounded higher, until he could see Kagome writhing. His claws cleaved through the coil easily, and Kagome was released, but the snake reformed instantly, and now Inuyasha was impeded by the terrified high-school girl clinging to his foot.
"Will you get off me?" he roared impatiently.
"How?" she shrieked back.
Glancing down, he realized that they were fifty feet above the ground. Ok, so maybe that wasn't the best of ideas. "Can you sense a Shikon shard?"
"It's in the worm's upper left fang!"
Inuyasha nodded his thanks and continued leaping upwards, Kagome having crawled so that she was positioned more comfortably around his shoulders. He paused momentarily to study her words.
"Kagome?" he yelled, despite the fact that the snake was being awfully distracting to the conversation.
"Yeah?" she called back, the wind wreaking havoc with her silky hair.
"This is a snake, not a worm!"
She mumbled, "Well, it looked like a worm!"
"Worms don't have teeth!" he snapped, trying to cut off the serpent's fang without getting his arm disintegrated by poison.
Kagome scoffed. "And I was supposed to remember that while hanging a thousand feet of the ground and being traumatized by the experience of being swallowed?"
Honestly. The girl's exaggeration was amazing, compared to her lack of imagination.
Pondering on the intelligence of drawing the Tetsusaiga – he wasn't sure how well the mystical blade would fare against acid – Inuyasha slashed across the youkai's maw. A cascade of scales fell sparkling downwards.
Which was when he got his brilliant, amazing idea.
He grabbed hold of one of the snake's scales and wrenched it off. The beast's screech was quite satisfying to hear, and wielding the scale as his weapon, he used the sharp side to slash through the top of the snake's mouth.
Along with the two main fangs, the Shikon shard spiraled out, flashing in the sunlight.
Laughing, Inuyasha disposed of the rest of the youkai, soaring clear until the body thundered to the ground. Kagome snatched the jewel shard from the blood surrounding it. She smiled slightly as it melded with the other shards around her neck.
"Congratulations, brother," a voice hissed from the shadows. "But if you have no qualms about slaughtering a defenseless child, surely you wouldn't care about slaying a mindless youkai."
All heads turned to the tall figure wreathed in shadows.
"Sesshoumaru...!"
Disclaimer: Inuyasha is not mine!
Chapter One – Dreams Unsettling
He was tired, after a long hunt for the snake youkai invading his territory, and so it was only common sense that sleep should follow the hunt. Stretching languidly – the Lord of the Western Lands had a gracefulness anyone would long for – he raked his claws through his silver- white mane and turned in the direction of his tower, as he called it.
Most people called it a prison, but that didn't bother him.
Entering through the intricately crafted golden gates aspiring for the heavens, Sesshoumaru pushed roughly through the door and stormed up to his room, the scent of blood still lingering around him. He started towards the bed, yanking his door shut behind him, and threw himself upon the pallet.
Sleep wouldn't come.
The youkai lord knew why, naturally. It was his own mental defenses that refused to allow sleep to sink in. Ever since he'd woke up crying three nights ago, he refused to sink back into the darkness of slumber.
It was impossible to escape, however. His moves slowed without sleep. The Sesshoumaru of before the dream would have beaten this one in six minutes of hand-to-hand combat. It was possible that even a normal youkai would be able to come close enough to draw a drop of blood.
And that was not allowed, since he was well aware of the poison some demons were endowed with. The virulent substance could bring down even the mightiest of beasts.
There was no help for it. Sesshoumaru sent the walls of his mind crumbling down, resigning himself to sleep, hoping fervently that no dreams would pervade his mind.
His wishes were not granted.
Again, he was sitting by the river next to his home. He was staring into the tranquil waters, and his reflection beckoned for him to peer closer. He did so, curious, still seeing only himself.
The water shifted then, forming another face. This one was decidedly female, and he let out a small cry when he saw it. Rin's laughter seemed to sound in his ears as he gazed into her childish features. The image offered a wreath of flowers towards him, but he didn't move, lest he disturb the vision.
A blur of red shot behind the unsuspecting girl. Yelling, doing anything he could, Sesshoumaru tried to warn his young charge. He knew this was just a manifestation of his mind, that Rin was long dead, but still he felt the undeniable need to protect her.
Rin kept smiling and holding her blossoms. Then her smile changed, grew fixated, and before his eyes she twisted in the air and fell.
The grass around her, soaked with blood.
The dream Sesshoumaru peered even more closely at the water, and he saw the leering face of his foster-child's murderer clearly for the first time. He recoiled sharply, and his eyes slowly darkened to crimson, promising death to the picture in the water...
Sesshoumaru sat bolt upright in bed, shivering despite the heat. Rin...the young human child he'd come to love, her persistent happiness finally winning him over. She was gone from him forever; he still remembered entering her room one day to see the diagonal gash across her white throat, to see her eyes wide in confusion.
She was a child, and children think they'll never die.
It wasn't as if he hadn't tried to avenge her. He was still attempting to slaughter any bloodthirsty youkai left in his territory that could inflict such a wound upon Rin. He didn't care how many he killed, as long as he caught the culprit.
But this dream, this fantasy...it was exactly the same as the last, except for one difference: he'd been shown the murderer's face.
"Inuyasha," the youkai lord hissed, flexing his claws, "I will find you. And when I do, you will meet the same fate as me. The one you care for most will die, and you will feel the pain before I end it by cutting out your heart!"
With his prophecy settled, Sesshoumaru whirled from his room, and those who saw him would never have guessed his anger, so carefully it was concealed within his heart of ice.
"Kagome!"
Tossing back her raven tresses, the teenager turned to face her friends eagerly. "Sango, Miroku! It's great to see you! Hi, Kirara!" She reached out to scratch the giant cat's ears and grinned as she felt the slight pressure on her shoulder. "Hey, Shippou."
"Forgot someone, didn't you?" a surly voice inquired from a nearby tree.
Kagome tsked. "Don't be foolish, Inuyasha, there's no way anyone could forget you."
"What a pity," Shippou sighed mischievously from his safe perch on Kagome. He slyly waved to the fuming hanyou, but his expression soon turned to one of dismay as his 'mother' set him on the ground.
"You guys, can you leave us alone for a bit? I want to talk to Inuyasha," Kagome explained.
Miroku smirked. "I can just imaging what you think the word 'talk' is a synonym for."
"Houshi-sama!" Sango scolded, whacking the wayward priest on his poor, abused head. "Come on, let's give the two some time alone."
Inuyasha watched the remainder of the group leave before he leapt lightly to the ground. "All right, Kagome, what do you want?"
Kagome smiled at him.
The hanyou shivered. He knew that smile.
"Inuyasha?" she asked as sweetly as she could.
He shivered again. He knew that tone.
"Could you possibly do me a favor?"
"What favor?" he inquired suspiciously.
She flashed him another dazzling smile. "Nothing much," she replied.
"What?"
"Couldyoupossiblyeathalfofmymathtextbook?" she requested, shoving all the words together and hoping he wouldn't understand what she was asking.
Unfortunately, his hearing was more acute than most, and he blinked at her incredulously. "You want me to eat half of your math textbook?"
"No, I have a reason," she explained hastily. "If you do chew through half a book, you will benefit because I will cook you three pots of ramen, and I will benefit because I can show the mutilated book to my math teacher and give her a reason why I didn't do my homework. Then the only people that won't benefit are my parents, who will have to buy me a new textbook. See?"
"Ramen..."
Kagome peered closely at the drooling hanyou. "So, will you do it?"
"Ramen..."
"Yes, we've established that fact. Now can you start eating my book?"
Inuyasha snatched her textbook, bit it in half, and handed it back to her.
She blinked. "Well...I suppose you could do that, too."
"RAMEN..."
After approximately half an hour of Kagome cooking and two minutes of Inuyasha eating, the hanyou was very satisfied and very bloated.
Kagome motioned to Miroku, Sango, Kirara, and Shippou; she was well aware that they'd been hiding at the outskirts of the forest the entire time. "All right, I need your opinion on something," she said.
"Whether or not Inuyasha's getting too fat for his own good?" Shippou interrupted, leaping onto Kagome's shoulder.
"No," she replied pointedly. "I need to know which half of my Calculus textbook looks more chewed."
The others stared at it. "Um...Kagome?" Sango ventured.
"Yes?" she answered impatiently.
"It's been broken cleanly in half."
"It's...what? INUYASHA!" Kagome shrieked.
The hanyou glared at her. "All you said was that it had to be bitten."
"No, I said it had to look bitten!"
"Same thing!"
"No, it's not! My math teacher will assume that I took a chainsaw and vandalized this book myself! What's the point of having sharp teeth if you can't even bite a book correctly?"
"My teeth are just fine, thank you very much."
"Not really! Ever heard of a toothbrush, you yellow-fanged freak?"
Silence. A few birds chirped.
"Oh, wait, you haven't, have you?" Kagome realized.
"Well...no," Miroku replied, answering for everyone.
"Oh." Kagome looked rather embarrassed.
Which was when the snake youkai, actually an immigrant from Sesshoumaru's lands, decided to attack, seeing that everyone near it was rather preoccupied.
The first any of them knew of the attack was when the emerald-green coils threw themselves around Kagome's arms, pinning them to her sides. Ruby-red eyes, glittering like garnets, surveyed their prey tantalizingly. The hinged jaw opened to reveal rows of silver fangs, each dripping acid onto the ground, leaving sizzling patches behind.
The serpent reared, lifting Kagome high into the air. She lashed out with her feet, but only succeeded in ripping off the bottom of her shoe on the snake's sharp-scaled skin. Angry at the attempt, the snake whipped its tail violently around, knocking Sango away and sweeping aside Miroku, too, as the priest tried to help the taijiya.
When the tail snapped in Inuyasha's direction, however, the hanyou leapt onto the scales and began running vertically towards the youkai's head.
He bounded higher, until he could see Kagome writhing. His claws cleaved through the coil easily, and Kagome was released, but the snake reformed instantly, and now Inuyasha was impeded by the terrified high-school girl clinging to his foot.
"Will you get off me?" he roared impatiently.
"How?" she shrieked back.
Glancing down, he realized that they were fifty feet above the ground. Ok, so maybe that wasn't the best of ideas. "Can you sense a Shikon shard?"
"It's in the worm's upper left fang!"
Inuyasha nodded his thanks and continued leaping upwards, Kagome having crawled so that she was positioned more comfortably around his shoulders. He paused momentarily to study her words.
"Kagome?" he yelled, despite the fact that the snake was being awfully distracting to the conversation.
"Yeah?" she called back, the wind wreaking havoc with her silky hair.
"This is a snake, not a worm!"
She mumbled, "Well, it looked like a worm!"
"Worms don't have teeth!" he snapped, trying to cut off the serpent's fang without getting his arm disintegrated by poison.
Kagome scoffed. "And I was supposed to remember that while hanging a thousand feet of the ground and being traumatized by the experience of being swallowed?"
Honestly. The girl's exaggeration was amazing, compared to her lack of imagination.
Pondering on the intelligence of drawing the Tetsusaiga – he wasn't sure how well the mystical blade would fare against acid – Inuyasha slashed across the youkai's maw. A cascade of scales fell sparkling downwards.
Which was when he got his brilliant, amazing idea.
He grabbed hold of one of the snake's scales and wrenched it off. The beast's screech was quite satisfying to hear, and wielding the scale as his weapon, he used the sharp side to slash through the top of the snake's mouth.
Along with the two main fangs, the Shikon shard spiraled out, flashing in the sunlight.
Laughing, Inuyasha disposed of the rest of the youkai, soaring clear until the body thundered to the ground. Kagome snatched the jewel shard from the blood surrounding it. She smiled slightly as it melded with the other shards around her neck.
"Congratulations, brother," a voice hissed from the shadows. "But if you have no qualms about slaughtering a defenseless child, surely you wouldn't care about slaying a mindless youkai."
All heads turned to the tall figure wreathed in shadows.
"Sesshoumaru...!"
