A.N. -- Oh thank you all for the reviews on the last chapter! (And I'm sooo sorry if that last part confused anyone, I had to explain it to some!) Um... Yet again, e-mails with ideas or private comments are welcome and wanted! (iwilleatchocolate at gmail dot com) This first part starts off with Sesshomaru after Rin and Kagome leave to bathe.

He brushed his hair back behind him in a way that you would usually see modern day Tokyo girls doing, closing his eyes as he did. This Sesshomaru thought he was getting soft... in his youth. And it was all that girls fault. Yet he couldn't find himself to blame her. He didn't know why he couldn't hate her just as he hated every other mortal. This child, Rin, had changed his life and he knew it, but denied it. Not just a year ago he would have left the miko lying in the snow without a second thought. But that was a year ago. Now he actually gave it a second thought. And all because he took in a small orphan girl that had tried to help him when he became "vulnerable" after his late half-brother's full blown Kaze No Kizu attack. Now... he half thought he was becoming grateful for being entrusted with Tensiega, not Tetsusaiga.

Am I going soft in my youth?

He knew no other way of thinking of it. He'd save a good few number of lives, women lives, where in the past he would have brushed them off, pregnant or not...

Pregnant... does she even know...

Then his thoughts traveled back into oblivion.

--

The girls traveled back into camp, Rin looking up at the other with concern. The other, Kagome, looked distressed and confused, clutching the flat of her stomach in dismay. Both sat down a ways away form one another without a word, only cast off looks. Sesshomaru could care less. His lingering thought had been answered, so he pay no attention to the other two nor Jaken. He just sat up against the tree with his eyes closed and composure calm. Just like he always did as he enclosed his true self behind the iron bars of his mind...

Kagome-san, what is wrong?

That question lingered in Rin's mind, but she was too timid to actually ask. Kagome looked sick to her, and she half wondered if the girl was coming down with something from being so sad. Rin wanted to help, but Kagome didn't want help from anybody. She just wanted to keep quiet and curse herself. How could have she been so stupid? How could she have been so thoughtless? She had seen him for the last time and she had forgotten. She had forgotten to tell him that she was pregnant with his child.

- # - # - # - # -

She leaned against the bathroom door, counting down the seconds, eyes shut tight as if the world was about to end. The questions were flying through her mind at incredible speeds, demanding answers that she could not possibly give, screaming and whispering in her ears without end. The nausea would not cease as she clutched her hands to her stomach, holding back anything that would travel through her mouth for the second time. The seconds were getting smaller and smaller, closer to their goal... Kagome opened her eyes. She stared at the thing on the sink rim, wondering whether to run while she still could or face the truth, good or bad. But was this truth even possible to be "bad?" Life was a good thing, was it not?

Taking in her breath she inched forward, both hands and arms now pressed against her chest, almost glued there. She found that she reached the sink oh to soon.

Pink, she thought, means I am. Blue means I'm not...

She forced herself to pull her gaze from her reflection, slowly lowering her head to look at the little device that held so much truth. The truth that could turn any young girl's life around and upside down.

...Pink

She shut down just then, her brother banging on the door asking why she was taking such a long time, declaring she was not the only one in this house hold whom shared the need to use the toilets.

- # - # - # - # -

Koga nearly immediately turned his course to follow the scent, but then the wind died. He cursed aloud, sending shock to his comrades behind him. Yet the stubborn wolf yokai took off in the way the scent had come from, eyes narrowed in determination. The ground came alarmingly fast, Koga skidding as his heels dug into the ground. Ginta and Hakku landed behind him in a much more graceful manner, declaring they wished to know what the sudden cause of direction change was. Koga just plain out ignored them. He began to run where the smallest, almost undetectable, trails of her scent lay, following a straight forward path. The strait forward path that Kagome had traveled the opposite way on not days earlier, but the wolf yokai was too stubborn to notice the difference in direction.

But the seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours and there was no sight of her as the scent died away, and when all hope died away in Koga, Sango awoke.

"Koga..." she muttered, "What... what's happening?"

Her words only half penetrated his stone ears, and he muttered a "yes" in reply, not really stringing her words together. Her response was a look of confusion.

"Koga!"

The yokai snapped back into reality, "What?"

"What's happening?"

"...Nothing." Somehow he found he couldn't tell her.

Later in the day Kagome found her way out of confusion by talking to the young one and humoring her questions. Rin enjoyed it and Kagome was glad it actually pulled her from her own thoughts.

"Kagome-chan," Rin spoke, now dropping the respectful '-san' to the friendship '-chan', "Where do you come from?"

"A ways away, Rin. Somewhere I am sure no one you know has been." Kagome said, trying her best to conceal her little secret from the taiyokai nearby.

"I bet Sesshomaru-sama has been there!" Rin said in excitment, unaware that there were limits to her lord's travels.

"... I'd be surprised if he had." Kagome said with a thoughtful look.

This slightly interested Sesshomaru. She thought there was a place he knew nothing about? He was pretty sure she couldn't hide from him. But little did he know, he was wrong for the first time in his long life. There was a place, even if he had walked across it before, he would never be there. That was only possible if he traveled five hundred years in the future, which even this Sesshomaru could not do without waiting five hundred years to get there. But yet he brushed the thought aside and continued to walk, thinking the young girl was just naive when it came to his travels.

"Kagome-chan? Do you have a Mother and Father?"

"Yes, a Mother. My Father left us long ago." Kagome answered, "I have a brother too, and a grandfather that lives with us."

"Rin has no parents anymore. Her parents were killed. Killed in front of Rin's eyes." She replied with a half smile, "Rin lived alone in a village for a long time, but then she met Sesshomaru-sama and Jaken-sama!"

And yet she still finds a reason to smile... will I be able to? Is this why I envy this young one's spirit?

"I'm so sorry," Kagome said, getting away from her thoughts, "I never thought--"

"Do not worry Kagome-chan! Rin is fine..." She paused, then let her sentence fade away into nothingness for a moment, "...She is fine because she is happier than she has ever been!"

The radiant smile that now graced Rin's lips would have made anyone smile, or giggle, or laugh. And in the past it would have done to Kagome what it has done to so many others of the young child's past, but now, it couldn't.

Rin, that is why I envy you so...

Koga fell mute the rest of the day, not wanting to believe that he had actually found her scent, then lost it. Was he just plain stupid or had the scent been a mere fragment of his imagination? Whether it was or not, he was determined to follow his heart until she was next to him once more. He had been so determined in fact, he had fallen deadly ignorant of the world around him. Sango's questions were ignored, just as Ginta and Hakku were, and the trio began to worry about their wolf friend. The remaining two down-to-earth yokai had not been fortunate enough to catch the miko's scent, so were left in the dark about Koga's actions, while Sango was left completely in the dark with out a candle, without the smallest flicker of light. She was actually worrying it was something she had done.

The demon slayer was panicking that it was her actions that had caused her fellow yokai's stone ears. Had she done something wrong? Or had she offended him? The questions lingered in her mind and stayed there unmoving, haunting her. She was dying to ask him of his problems, but yet she couldn't bring herself to do it after being ignored over and over. So she remained blind to the situation just as the other yokai were, wondering what she had done wrong.

--

While the sun rose high in the sky Koga noticed the dark, looming clouds over the far mountains, the scent of yokai that lingered near and around them not evading his sharp nose. Those clouds served as hiding spots for Naraku's yokai, hiding spots for the demons who could easily ambush those who couldn't sense their presence. The winds were picking up, dead sign that Naraku was planning for some type of move forward into other's territory. The winds brought many confusing scents to the three yokai, but they were used to this, so it affected them little, only irritating their noses.

Sango too gazed at the towering clouds, walking alongside Koga. Her mind was filled with the urge to avenge her family and friends, as well as the impossible idea of saving Kohaku... or what was left of Kohaku. It was true that he was seemingly regaining his memories one by one, piece by piece, but yet it was still just the shell of Kohaku that Naraku only used in order to screw with Sango's mental health.

InuYasha was smart that way, she thought distantly, he could always see through Naraku's head games most of the time. Yet even so, he was determined to help me in saving Kohaku even when he knew that we were both aware it was nearly impossible to do so if we wanted to complete the jewel. I guess that was his way to show us he did care about us, he just helped when he was needed, even if it was dumb to his mind...

The slayer sighed as she lost herself in the past, half seeing the world around her as she followed behind Koga almost involuntarily. She missed them all so much, she knew that, and was now just beginning to heal.

But unfortunately, the same could not be said for whom she considered a sister.

Kagome sighed her deadly sigh, the sun blazing down upon her. Rin may be able to talk ninety-nine miles an hour, but most of it was nonsense. With half an hear the little one's way, the miko looked off into the distance.

Those clouds sure were huge.

Sesshomaru noticed them as well, and glared at the scent of the demons. Naraku's demons. He didn't want to waste his energy on them, he wanted to fight him, to destroy him and teach him the lesson that he was the only one that controlled the decision of murder amongst his family. Him and only him. Yet the man remained cool, and kept his thoughts to himself. But soon those thoughts drifted to the miko behind him, listening to Rin's undying blabber. The young woman was pregnant with his half-brothers child, and probably didn't know it. (Yet, once again, he was wrong about this.) Even if this child was not even a half yokai, Sesshomaru somehow felt the need to protect the child, he felt it his duty and he didn't know why. This baby would be another disgrace to his family name and yet another reminder of how he was unable to kill Naraku before his brother was murdered. Yet another reminder of his few failures. Not something he needed right now. And then there was another problem. The child's Mother. Right now she was an emotional wreck with no current view of healing, and even if it was a while off until this child was born, it would probably be a while off until Kagome healed.

And, on top of that, what would her reaction be to finding out?

But Sesshomaru had learned it was better not to avoid the inevitable, and silently decided to confront her in a time that seemed oh to soon.

--

Everyone sat beneath a tree, the shade over them, with the exception of Rin and Jaken. Those two were out in the meadow in front of the tree both miko and taiyokai sat under, Rin running around with deaf ears towards Jaken's annoying yells. Kagome was gazing upon them lazily, lost in her mind while Sesshomaru gazed upwards, lost in his head.

Then his voice sliced through the silence between them, but he bothered not to look at Kagome.

"Miko, are you aware of what is happening to you?"

All he got in return was a blank stare from the miko in question, who hadn't understood the question in the way he did.

"Are you aware that you are pregnant?" This time his eyes were upon her.

"Oh." She turned her gaze away from him as she hugged her stomach, "Yeah, I am."

Silence lingered between the two uneasily.

"I'm worried," She said quietly, "that Naraku will kill him too..."

Sesshomaru turned his gaze away as well, closing his eyes, "No, he won't. This Sesshomaru will not allow it."

A.N. Soooooo? How'd you like it? REVIEW!!!! o.O