The evening rays were already beginning to filter through his window, obscured by the overcast sky. They cast a greyish film over everything in the office. The few struggling rays of light glinted off the decorative crescent moon statuette sitting beside his name plate.
Sesshoumaru stared down his nose at the stack of papers, completely ignoring the woman as she sat with arms crossed. She didn't mind too much. Through their limited meetings over the years, he had always treated her with disdain. It was a grown man's version of a childish pout, really. Kagura prided herself on seeing through the charade that would have terrified anyone else.
His golden eyes finally flicked up from the folder. "And you say he could not tell me himself because..?"
"You aren't the only busy youkai in the city, love."
His eyes narrowed, and she raised her hands in surrender.
"Don't shoot the messenger, Sesshoumaru."
"Lord Sesshoumaru, in case you have forgotten. Even a woman like you should show a modicum of respect where it is due."
At this, Kagura gave a haughty scoff.
"Oh please, again with this? I came all the way here—in this dreadful weather, mind you—to hand-deliver these specifically because Naraku refused to trust an underling. We both respect you."
"Yes, you seem to do many things because that spider prefers it, don't you?" he quipped from behind a page, placing it down on the pile in exchange for another.
Kagura's lips tightened into a thin line.
"Now, tell me about this so-called urgent course of action he would have me take."
She crossed her arms under her breasts, glaring forward.
"It's all there in black and blue," she said as he studied the gory photographs spread out over his cherry wood desk. "You're the lord, something has to be done about it, and it's not a human issue. Twelve years of business and all along he's been doing such heinous things behind Naraku's back. And thought he could get away with it, too."
The taiyoukai continued on through the grim reports, scanning across each line of text and tattered corpse, or what was left of them.
"Hn. It seems I would know much of how Naraku feels in this regard. Or perhaps our friend karma has finally given him a taste."
That was it. Her eyebrow twitched, and Kagura nearly blew steam from her nostrils.
"I'm done with this. It was in the past, Lord Sesshoumaru. I've moved on. You should try it, you know. Whining over old news isn't all that becoming of you."
His eyes tightened on her, the air in the room growing thick and electrified.
"Do forgive me if I'm still holding some hostility against the one who betrayed my mark."
"Once!" Her hand slammed down on the desk. "One. Time."
"Was it once, Kagura? You and he seemed to move on rather abruptly after our separation."
The daggers they glared clashed over the five-foot battlefield. With a steady calm, the silver haired male placed his hands down on the large desk.
"You are lucky I don't possess human senses, because I am not sure I could have waited long enough for a test to be done. And if I had smelled that the pup was not mine..." his eyes darkened considerably on her, "...you would have ended up very much like the people in these photographs."
Slowly, Kagura's backside returned to the comfort of her chair, maintaining his gaze the entire way. Her fists clenched and released.
"How long are you going to keep blaming me for that? What more could I have done? You heard the doctors—"
"You could have at least let me see her, not have her carted off before I arrived like some sort of insignificant refuse. You could have given me that tiny ounce of respect. Gods, woman, she was my only child," he said, his steady voice slowly rattling.
"I apologized for all that, damnit. I was obviously under a massive amount of stress, in case you've so conveniently forgotten," she retorted. "Wherever she is, I'm sure she's still—"
Kagura's face fell into one of shock. She brought her trembling hand up to cover her mouth.
Sesshoumaru stared at her, genuinely stared, and in those deathly amber eyes there was real confusion. And then rage.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Nothin—"
"You had better choose your next words very, very carefully, Kagura. Very carefully."
She locked up in that position, and for a tense while the two of them sat like statues. His claws tightened on the arms of his high-backed chair, the leather whimpering under the strength of his hands. Sesshoumaru's blood was starting to run hot. His pulse was throbbing in his ears. He could practically hear her own doing the same. He took a few long breaths through his nose, closing his eyes for a moment while the cocktail of anxiety and fear entered his nose.
"A rushed cremation... that is what you left me with. Ashes and not a single memory... and now you tell me not even the ashes were real?"
Kagura sat in the vacuum of his glare. Her nails twitched against the fabric of her designer clutch, but her lips were sealed. Her vision dragged to the left, but she could feel his aura flaring, growing more wild and dangerous with each restrained breath.
Sesshoumaru pushed the evidence aside, the grisly photos, the eyewitness accounts, all of it. His fangs were growing sharper, and every few seconds his vision flashed the color of blood.
"Is my daughter alive, Kagura?"
The timbre of his voice was an unnatural calm. Maybe she could have kept up a decent act back then, when he was as distraught as she pretended to be, when all the sights and sounds and emotions were just too overwhelming, but not today. He knew he wouldn't catch the liar's spike in her scent. He got his answer when she said nothing.
"Where?" he demanded. He leapt to his feet when she didn't respond, looming over the desk and glowering down at her.
"Where!?" he roared.
Kagura flinched away. Her voice was softer then he'd ever heard it, much too soft to fit her face.
"I honestly don't know..."
He threw the sturdy little statue to shatter against the wall with a guttural snarl. A light cloud of grey ash drifted from the broken pieces. "OUT! Get out, you worthless wind bitch!"
Despite her muscles primed and ready, she remained glued to the seat. His fury cast a barrier around her that she was too wary to break. Neither fight nor flight seemed viable.
"I knew you were rotten down to your very essence, but I was a damned fool. I actually considered you, YOU, worthy. But even a cunning bitch like you could never pull off something so low, I thought. No. Wrong again, Sesshoumaru."
He ran a hand through his hair, his long fingers actually twitching a bit.
"I even suspected something was amiss. But I figured you had been through so much, why in the hell would I harass you after losing our pup under such circumstances? You were still pack. I tried to console you... you disgusting creature."
"Sesshoumaru, I—"
"Don't say my name so casually, wench."
"I didn't want any of this to happen!" she screeched, almost in tears. Kagura dabbed them away with her fingers, just barely brushing the outer corners of her eyes.
"Oh? It was all because of him then? You let a disgusting half-breed, not even worth killing for sport, come between me and my pup? Let me believe that she had died before ever seeing the light of day, and all the while she has been out here in the world somewhere without her father this entire time? Living gods know what kind of life if the two of you are any indication..."
"It's not like that. You were always like this, Sesshoumaru. Of course you wouldn't understand…"
He turned his head away, his arm pointing across the room.
"Leave… before I do something I regret. I will not tell you again, Kagura."
She stared at the side of his face, backlit by the dull grey light. His fangs had grown ever sharper. Kagura grit her own. She snatched up her things and stormed towards the door without even a passing glance over her shoulder.
Sesshoumaru paced back and forth across the room, his hands locked behind his back. There'd been no word... how the hell had there been no word after three whole days? What was the point of money and power if something so simple couldn't be done? Kagura was keeping her usually oh so talkative mouth sealed like a vault. The police were useless wastes of flesh. He'd sent investigators instead to scour the hospital's records despite what human laws might have had to say about it. It was out of their hands.
But Sesshoumaru slammed down the phone yet another time that day. This was ridiculous. Something was there, some forgotten scrap of information, but what were they all missing? He chose an empty spot of his king sized bed, which had since been covered in a thick snowfall of envelopes and manila folders, and began another shift.
Hours passed as he scoured the loads and loads of medical papers, pawing through the folders. His amber eyes ripped through each page before tossing it into another haphazard pile and grabbing the next when they offered him nothing. There had to be a lead somewhere...
After forty tedious medical records, even his head started to hurt. Years' worth of frustration and stress crammed into a few days would do that, he figured. Every muscle in his body had been tense since the moment she accidentally blurted those words. The taiyoukai rubbed his temple, focusing his sharp eyes on the parade of letters marching before him. Birth records from that day, including the day before just to be safe. He couldn't quite recall seeing her the night before the child was born. Who knew the bounds of that woman's trickery...
Sesshoumaru forged on. He sifted through countless names, not sure if he could even trust looking for a female child. Maybe she'd deceived him about that, too. Maybe he had a son waiting for him.
The detectives had initially scoured Shourin General Hospital's records, of course, but Sesshoumaru was determined to check every maternity ward within 50 miles of them, just to be sure. When no leads turned up, he went back to ground zero and decided to look through the information himself. Anything regarding a newborn in that hospital on that day or the day before was in his hands. Any of those children could be his own lost pup... and he had no clue which, if any. He was just as furious with himself for letting it all happen. Sesshoumaru picked up a photocopy, a rather familiar looking death certificate, and gingerly placed it face down in a small but solemn little pile by his thigh with a few other lonely papers.
His eyes were growing heavy, but he moved on to the next: a live birth, fortunately.
But something about the next document caught his eye. A live birth, yes, but this was not just a birth certificate. Attached was a letter of adoption, apparently filled out mere hours after the child was born. Sesshoumaru did not know much about adoptions, but usually the paperwork was extensive and took months, completed well before the baby was born.
He double, triple checked the pages. And then he grabbed his coat.
Kagome dragged herself through the door, a sleeping Rin dangling her arms off the woman's shoulders. She blew a puff of air through her cheeks once inside before shoving the door closed with her foot and reaching back to click the deadbolt into place. As she set down her purse on the small table, she glanced around the small, somewhat cozy apartment. The first few moves had been out of paranoia, the last one out of necessity. She couldn't raise her daughter in a place like that. Kagome checked the deadbolt again.
With her baby girl slipped out of her school clothes and into a pink, butterfly-speckled nightgown, the blue-eyed woman released her hair from its bun and rubbed the side of her head to ward off the mild headache sneaking up. If that last table would have at least tipped her something, maybe she could say the annoyance was worth it. Instead she muttered something about cheap bastards and made her way to the shower to scrub off the film of work that clung to her skin.
The hot water called out gratified sighs. People in her tax bracket couldn't afford many indulgences outside the natural world—sunsets and all that—but hot water, as hot as she could stand it, now that was luxury. By the time she stepped out, Kagome was thoroughly boiled and as relaxed as cooked spaghetti. She went to bed with a lazy smile on her lips. If they woke up later, she'd pop a pizza into the oven—a Friday night treat.
The forceful banging snapped her up in a flurry of arms and legs, pulling the covers up to her racing heart.
BANG BANG BANG.
Kagome jumped out of bed, throwing on a pair of socks and jogging out into the hallway. Through the thin opening, she peeked into Rin's room at the stirring lump in the covers with a bit of relief. Another round of hard knocks reclaimed her attention. Kagome tiptoed down the short hallway. There was a clear view of their front door across the tiny living room/dining area. The square window in the middle displayed moving shadows through the white, ruffled valance Rin had picked out.
"This is the police. Open up, please, whoever is inside," a man called through the wood.
Kagome crept up to the door, pressing her back the wall beside it. With one finger, she gingerly lifted the flowery fabric to peek outside. There were at least four figures that she could see in the orange streetlight glow. Two were, in fact, wearing police uniforms that looked real. Her stomach couldn't decide whether or not to drop.
The figure in the center of the two officers was standing rigid in the tight outdoor passage. She slowly pulled her finger away, but as she did her nail scraped against the window's edge and those golden eyes snapped right onto her. Kagome jerked back. There was whispering on the other side.
"Miss Higurashi, we know you are inside," the same officer called. "We just want to talk to you in regards to an investigation."
Icy terror flew through her veins, and she became painfully aware that she was, in fact, awake. It was finally happening.
A/N: Thank you everyone who reviewed. Please check in next Friday evening for Chapter 3 ~