Icy Skies

Chapter Three: The Hairbrush Of Doom (or Thod.)

"I'm Kagome. And the nudity, not my fault."

"Shanabe. And the nudity isn't my fault either… you know, you should probably try to get some clothes on Inuyasha before he wakes up. If he wakes up naked and with your scent in the bed, he's bound to be very embarrassed. Unless, perchance, the nudity was his fault?" Kagome blushed intensely.

"Not in the least."

Summary: There was nothing left for her, but she was rescued. And now she finds herself in a strange court where tradition is followed so exactly that it's hard to tell that it isn't believed, where the people harbor regrets and sorrows, secrets and promises, the past and the future. And so she will also find the cold lord of this well ordered chaos.

Disclaimer: Sesshoumaru stood meekly behind Rumiko Takahashi while the 14-year-old girl passed over the money. Rumiko Takahashi smiled and passed her Sesshoumaru and Sango's leashes. "Just don't tell the lawyers, okay?" She warned.

"Of course." The girl answered, and typed few words into her story, stroking Sesshy's fluffy thing absentmindedly.

I don't own Sesshoumaru or Sango, or Inuyasha, or Kagome, or Shippo, or Miroku, or Naraku, or anyone else in the Inuyasha storyline. Kagami, Shanabe, Satsuki, Satoki, Shukina, Kuichi and Ah-ren are mine, however. (You know, that sorta sounds strange now… I have a friend named Ahren, and I just learned that he spelled his name that way. I really hope that the characters don't converge now…)

The orange rotated in midair, spinning in space for a fraction of a second before falling back. The clawed hand of a silver haired demon reached out and snatched it from midair. He peeled the fruit carefully, slicing the exact depth of the skin and pulling it away, meticulously letting no drop of juice spill. He peeled away a single slice of the fruit and popped it in his mouth, turning his attention back to the two women sparring in front of him.

If a certain schoolgirl from the future had happened to be there at that moment, she would have said something along the lines of "Inuyasha, when did you cut your hair? And where did you get the modern clothing?" but Kagome was not there, and, incidentally, neither was Inuyasha. His twin brother Shanabe was, though. He was eating an orange. But I think you knew that.

Shanabe leaned back against the cool wall, his eyes trained on the fight between the girl of prophecy (or, incidentally, the lady of blood. but that sounded so ghost story-ish.) and his wife, Kagami. He had his bets on Kagami, though. And for good reason.

Sango blocked again, spinning off to the side to make her attack with the hand that wasn't currently occupied with blocking. She freed up her hand for just a second to brush a stray strand of hair from where it had stuck to the sweat on her forehead. The castle had some amazing innovation called air conditioning in almost every room. It cooled the air down beautifully. Unfortunately, it didn't happen to be installed in this particular training room, and all the better ones were currently occupied. She failed to land her blow, and landed on her ass instead. She cursed quietly and looked up. This was a mistake, as directly above her were a pair of the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. They could almost be classified as deep violet, or silver, or black, but they reflected every color in the spectrum, showing a perfect picture of Sango herself in each one. But though the reflection she saw there was her, it was at the same time not her, but instead some gloriously beautiful woman with a few unidentifiable similarities. Light glowed from every pore, not illuminating the room or shedding light on anything else, or making the woman in the vision any harder to see. She just seemed to glow… But she wasn't Sango, because while Sango was looking up in awe, the woman smiled, and her smile went to the depths of Sango's soul… and without changing, the woman was Kagami. And Sango loved her. In that moment she would have died for the owner of the mirror eyes… then Kagami blinked, and Sango tore her eyes away, avoiding the older woman's gaze.

"Would you close your eyes?" She asked, flustered and annoyed.

"Well, how am I supposed to fight with my eyes closed? I couldn't very well do that now, could I?" Kagami replied, with a roll of her beautiful eyes that Sango for obvious reasons did not see. Shanabe noticed, though, being immune to her captivating gaze.

"Kagami, you know very well that you can fight just fine with your eyes closed! Now stop teasing the poor girl!" He admonished with a smile. Kagami really did deserve the playful nickname of 'Kami', which meant god. She often acted like one, except when it would have forced her to do things the hard way. But she really was mainly just teasing, and though often terribly infuriating, he also thought it was rather endearing… But then again, he would forgive a lot of things of Kagami. She was the love of his life of course.

But right now he wasn't looking at her. He had sparred with her every morning for an hour for the past 300 years, so he had her fighting style down pat. For instance, when Sango moved in behind Kagami to throw her, Shana knew exactly what Kagami would do next. "Aha! He muttered softly as his prediction came true, Kagami spinning in mid throw to face Sango and pushing on the pressure point just above her breasts. He knew that pressure point well, seeing as it had been used on him around 250 times at least. He knew that it would cause her to stagger back, unable to resist the small prod. It was a wonderful weapon against those enemies whose weakness was their pride, to be pushed back by a light push by the slim, weak looking demon woman. So, he had expected that move. But what he didn't expect was Sango's response. She used the momentum of the push for her own use, quite masterfully flipping backwards gently over Kagami's shoulders and kicking her in the back, sending her flying across the room, Sango holding onto her shoulders and following her more safely. When Kagami slammed into the wall, Sango let go and reaffirmed her grip.

"10… 9…8…" Shana counted, with new respect for Sango's skill. "7... 6… 5…" he continued, more incredulous at every number. "4…" this was impossible. "3… 2…" He saw Kagami struggling and spent a second to figure out the pin. It was ingenious, using one hand and one leg to make her unable to use any part of her body. "1!" He said, and Sango let Kagami up, smiling.

"I gotcha that time!" She said, grinning.

Sesshoumaru stood alone in his room, the book of prophecy in front of him, spread open on the page that Sango's prophecy was on. "All my life?" He whispered, reading the words that sealed his fate again. "And so shall come a woman of strength, and she shall be the savior, the lady of blood and tears. And The lord of the palace shall be her rescuer, and all the palace will trust her, for she is the girl of prophecy, and she shall unite the four warring lands under one rule, and as for her rescuer, the western lord, he shall be the lord over all demon lands, and the companion of the lady of blood for all his life." He didn't want a lifetime companion, not in the least, definitely not a human one. But Sesshoumaru was wise, and knew to trust the prophecies. The Ashulate Mikaru books had ruled over him for most of his life, and he had finished his disastrous period of rebellion when he was much younger.

But why had he said those things to her yesterday? He was supposed to be earning her trust, not destroying it. He was supposed to be befriending her, not scaring her. He knew that he could never hurt her, for prophecy was not absolute. If it were absolute, then it the instructions wouldn't be there in the first place. He knew to follow the prophecy exactly, or else it could mean the destruction of his country, and all of the demon lands. And though he tried to not allow the weakness of caring, he cared about his birth land. He cared very much. So he would follow the rules, even if he had to apologize…

Sango squeaked indignantly as the covers, a nice goose down blanket from another time and country, were pulled quite rudely off of her. It was chilly out side this time of morning. At least Sango assumed it was technically morning, though she considered anything before dawn still night. She was used to getting up in the night, though, and could survive on only a few hours of sleep. Still, her favorite way to wake up was most certainly not but having the covers pulled off by Sesshoumaru while she was still rather embarrassingly close to naked. She snatched for the covers, but he held them just out of her reach, faint traces of a well though incompletely concealed grin on his face. He quickly rearranged his features into a look of cold indifference, which somehow made her a whole lot less embarrassed.

"Get up." He said. By his tone of voice Sango could tell it was not a request but an order. An order she was most definitely going to obey. She got up, moving over to the stack of neatly folded kimonos in the corner. Just as she was reaching for a lavender one with barely visible delicate silver wisps of smoke or something on it and her cool gray obi, She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned around. Well, it was more like Sesshoumaru turned her around to face him, but she preferred to think of it as her turning for her own reasons… nevertheless, she ended up facing him, her hand drawn away from the kimonos.

"What is it you want now?" She asked, slightly more rebelliously than she really thought was safe.

"Come." He said simply.

"Bu…" Sango started to complain as he dragged her bodily from the room, still wearing nothing more than the rather indecently thin sleeping kimono that she had found at the end of her bed. "Where?"

Sesshoumaru didn't change his even stride (just slightly faster than Sango could keep up with comfortably) or his calm expression. "We're getting married. Come on." He said as if were the most natural thing in the world.

Sango spluttered, but he wasn't releasing his grip, so she was forced to follow to a room full of women. At the head of them was a strange human girl with black hair and clothes that after three months at Sesshoumaru's palace she instantly recognized as futuristic. Her skirt was shorter than any that Sango had ever seen, and she had it paired very strangely with a long sleeved shirt as if it were winter for her top half and summer for her bottom. She had a hairbrush (Sango hated the idiot that had invented those torture devices) and a tube of something unfamiliar with strange lettering all over it and only a few recognizable hiragana and kanji. She was also wearing a slightly scary determined expression.

"Meet Kagome." Sesshoumaru said. Was that a look of fury she saw passing across the girls face? Hurray! Someone else who might not be completely devoted to Sesshoumaru! "She is a… friend… of my brother."

"Shanabe? Kuichi?" She asked, wondering if it was his Hanyou half brother of whom he spoke or his full blooded elder brother. It could have been either, she knew, since both of them were far more tolerant of humans than the middle brother.

"No. Inuyasha." He replied, before turning on his heel and striding out of the room a little more quickly than usual. Inuyasha? Sango wondered. She had never heard that name mentioned in the palace, though she saw a lot of Shanabe and his wife Kagami, and heard endless gossip about the eldest, who had gone quite scandalously to live in the society of humans. That alone would have been acceptable, almost, as there were a few humans like Sango herself who lived or worked in the palace. But Kuichi had gone in the guise of a girl, or so she had been often told in hushed whispers during her stay.

She turned her attention back to Kagome. "Who is Inuyasha? I haven't heard his name mentioned in the palace before." She asked.

Kagome grimaced. "Of course you haven't. Sesshoumaru hates him. He's half human."

Sango only became more perplexed at this. "But… There's another Hanyou in the palace, and Sesshoumaru doesn't hate him… and he doesn't hate… okay, well, he hates me… or so I thought…"

"Wait." Kagome said. "Sesshoumaru gets along with another Hanyou who lives here?"

"Yeah." Sango responded. "His half brother, Shanabe."

"Oh…" Kagome replied." That Hanyou…

"But who is Inuyasha? I have only ever heard mention of Shana and Kuichi!"

"Kuichi?"

"Inuyasha, admit it! You were staring at Kagome-chan just now!" Came the piping voice of a very small kitsune who was very sure that he was right. Kagome ignored him, keeping the fight on the back burner of her mind in case she had to step in.

"I was not!" Inuyasha replied, swinging halfheartedly at the kitsune, who easily dodged.

"Leave Shippo alone." Kagome mumbled from her sleeping bag. The fire was lit up brightly, flickering and announcing their presence to the world, but Inuyasha had said that any danger in this area would have been able to smell them even without a fire, and if anything did attack it would be safer if they could see it. So now, in the relative post-dinner quiet, Kagome was beginning to doze despite the loud and piercing voices behind her.

Finally Inuyasha turned and looked over at Kagome, just now remembering that she was attempting to sleep. Quite kindly, he shushed Shippo, pointing to the dozing Kagome. Miroku sighed in relief, and got up, walking towards the fire to go to sleep. Eventually, after trying to curl up with Kagome (he had a slap mark from Kagome and a large and painful bump on the head from Inuyasha to show from this) he lay down, carefully catching Inuyasha's eye as he chose a spot across the fire from Kagome but near enough to the fire for warmth. The group quieted down as Shippo more successfully snuggled up to Kagome and Inuyasha settled in his customary tree. By the time a figure drifted silently through the woods they were all fast asleep. That's why Inuyasha didn't notice Sesshoumaru until he had been hit at a pressure point on the back of his neck and conked out.

Kagome had been dreaming of a woman who was her friend, who traveled with the group and was secretly in love with Miroku. She could never quite catch the woman's face, just a feeling of rightness in the fact that she was around. But even through her dream state she sensed a presence, and pulled herself awake. She blinked groggily and looked around, clearing the sleep out of her eyes. She was just barely awake enough to roll out of the way when Sesshoumaru fell gently out of the tree, carrying Inuyasha's body.

She opened her mouth to scream and wake Miroku and the woman… but just as she was reminding herself rather sadly that the woman wasn't real, just someone she had been having dreams about lately, a hand clamped over her mouth from behind. In the fraction of a second that it had taken her to open her mouth, Sesshoumaru had gotten behind her. A bit of dust floated down around her face and she fell asleep.

Kagome woke convinced that she was home. The Sengoku Jidai simply did not have feather beds. It took her a moment to realize that neither did she. This realization pulled her fully awake to find she was indeed lying on a feather bed. Given another second she realized that so was Inuyasha… I think Sesshoumaru got something wrong about our relationship… she thought, blushing. She slipped quietly out of the bed before Inuyasha could wake up and realize she had been there. Knowing him, he would get mad at her…

She wandered across the room, looking for another bed to switch to. The problem was that there was only one other bed in the room. And Miroku was in it. No way that was gonna happen… She strained her head to see if the woman was in that bed too. Now that would be a hilarious waking. Rather painful for Miroku most likely, though. She closed her eyes and opened them again slowly, reminding herself that the woman was a figment of her imagination.

At this point the door creaked and swung slowly open, and a foot entered through the opening in the door. It was followed by the rest of a body. Kagome turned around to look at the man who followed. The first thing she saw was a plain black tee shirt and a pair of faded jeans. The second thing she saw were a pair of impossibly familiar golden eyes…

Kagome did double take, shutting her eyes and opening them again. She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. "Inuyasha, when did you cut your hair? And where did you get the modern clothing?" she asked squinting up at him. She looked back at the bed, noticing the odd fact that Inuyasha was still in it. "Umm… and where did you get the double?"

"I'm sorry to disappoint, but I'm not a double." Shanabe said, smiling warmly. Kagome couldn't help but blush. If only Inuyasha would smile at her that way… she pushed the thought away. Inuyasha was rude, crude, and thoroughly unpleasant. So what if she had been in love with him for over a year now. That wasn't her fault, was it?

"Then who are you?" She asked, pulling herself out of her thoughts.

"His twin. But the question should be, who are you, random naked woman in my brother's room?" Kagome examined herself and found out that she was indeed embarrassingly naked. She snatched up something from behind her to cover herself. It turned out to be a beautiful blue-gray Kimono with black cranes on the surface. She turned the other way and wrapped it hurriedly around herself, picking up a coal black obi that lay beside the assortment.

"I'm Kagome. And the nudity, not my fault."

"Shanabe. And the nudity isn't my fault either… you know, you should probably try to get some clothes on Inuyasha before he wakes up. If he wakes up naked and with you're scent in the bed, he's bound to be very embarrassed. Unless, perchance, the nudity was his fault?" Kagome blushed intensely.

"Not in the least."

a/n: I will leave it up to you're imaginations what happens when Inuyasha wakes up…

"Oww!"

Sango winced as the 'hairbrush' ran through her hair again. "Owowowowowowowowowwww!" The little lavender haired girl in the deep blue kimono didn't let up, though.

"Stop fussing!" insisted another lavender haired girl in a matching kimono to the first.

"It only makes it hurt more!" Admonished a third girl. These girls were Kagami's creations, mostly golem and illusion. The hairbrush was real enough, though, and even though Sango's hair was absolutely smooth and straight, it still got horribly tangled.

The girl ran the brush through her hair in one last futile attempt and tossed it aside. Kagome stepped forward with a bottle of something and picked up the fallen hairbrush, looking a little menacing, though Sango admitted that it might have just been her imagination.

"Kagome-chan?"

"Yeah?"

"What's that stuff?"

"Oh, this?" Kagome answered, smiling. "Just some detangler. I know how it feels to have that brush go through your hair…" Sango relaxed. She liked Kagome after all, she decided, as she felt the terror brush go through her hair with no resistance at all.

"Wow, Kagome-chan! It's like magic!" Kagome smiled.

"You know, Sango, sometimes you sound like a commercial…"

"A comma-whatty?"

"Never mind…"

Sango was happy. Happy was bad. Happy meant liking it here, and liking it here meant liking Sesshoumaru, and liking Sesshoumaru meant not killing Sesshoumaru, and not killing Sesshoumaru meant children who didn't eat their veggies, which meant an epidemic of vitamin deprived children in early graves. So she must not enjoy herself, for the children's sakes. Even if even she didn't understand that reasoning…

"Kagome-chan, do you like it here?"

Kagome looked down. "No. Not at all." She said quietly. Sango couldn't tell if she meant it or not.

Three hours later, Sango had decided never to be a bride again. "This dress is not made for human occupation!" She told the Utsuri and Kagome again, disregarding the fact that she had already said thin several times.

"I know!" Kagome agreed vehemently. "It was made to look good on hangers and people who look like hangers!"

"What's a hanger?" one of the Utsuri asked.

"Now, if you will just sit still, we'll make a hanger out of you yet!" another Utsuri said, rather bravely, despite not knowing what a hanger was either. Kagome giggled.

"Now, San-Tsuri, we don't want Sango-san to be a hanger!"

"A hanger is something you hang clothes on." I-Tsuri informed her sister.

"Oh…" San-Tsuri blushed a little in embarrassment.

"Why would someone make a dress for a hanger? That's just stupid." Nana-Tsuri remarked.

"Nana-Tsuri" Kagome said. "I could explain to you about Marketing and Advertising, but I don't really think you want to know…"

Sango had tuned out of the conversation. The dress seemed to have started to stretch with her body heat; either that or she had ripped a seam. Anyway, San-Tsuri had managed to pull the zipper (now those were cool. Sango needed something like that for her Taijiya uniform.) But zippers were made to zip up, and this one was not doing its job. Mainly because Sango had made the mistake of not being two dimensional. One dimensional would have suited the dress even better. Sango looked down at the dress. It was really quite beautiful. It was strapless, with non-attached sleeves that fitted around the middle of her upper arm and fell loosely to the tips of her fingers. The dress itself fitted tightly around her body until it reached her waist before sweeping gently around her hips into a skirt with waaay too much fabric in the back. Sango had been told that this was called a train, and I-Tsuri, Ni-Tsuri, San-Tsuri, and Yo-Tsuri would hold it up so she could walk. Go-Tsuri would hold rings, and Ro-Tsuri and Nana-Tsuri would throw flowers everywhere. Sango knew it must be futuristic. She had never seen a wedding like this before.

"I-Tsuchan, could you take over for me?" San-Tsuri asked sheepishly, motioning towards the zipper.

"Yep, here I come." I-Tsuri sighed. Every time something got difficult, her sisters turned to her… She went over to the zipper and tugged at it. it refused to budge.

"I don't even want to be married! Do I really have to do the dress?" Sango protested.

"Yes." Kagome and Ni-Tsuri replied in unison.

"I got it."

Everyone but Sango, who couldn't move, whirled around to face the little girl.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

"I. Got. The. Zipper." I-Tsuri said, poker faced.

"Oh… um… yay. I can't breathe." Sango mumbled."

"Aaand, on to makeup! Kagome grinned."

Sango would have sighed. She really would have. She just couldn't.

a/n: San means three, so what Kagome means is something like Utsuri three. There are 7 Utsuri, in order they are: I-Tsuri, Ni-Tsuri, San-Tsuri, Yo-Tsuri, Go-Tsuri, Ro-Tsuri, and Nana-Tsuri.

a/n: I-Tsuchan is just a nickname for I-Tsuri. Similar things may be done with the other Utsuri.