Accountable

An InuYasha fanfiction

By Amber C.S.

Chapter 7: Joy

"When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all

I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you

I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

Sail on Silver Girl,
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind"
--Simon and Garfunkel

Kaede pulls two arrows out of Kagome's quiver. With heated up metalsmith tools ordinarily used to repair her hiraikotsu, Sango cuts tiny holes down the arrows into the shafts. She hands the arrows back to the old miko.

Kaede's arthritic hands do not easily bind the two shafts together, the sharp ends both facing out, as Kagome instructs.

Sango moves to help her as promised, her eyelids red and swollen from her earlier tears.

Sesshomaru says nothing but a feral growl creeps dangerously along the bottom registers of his throat. His eyes heat, the whites leaking red.

Miroku steps forward, and next to, Sango. "What is your complaint?" he murmurs in a soothing voice, like deep running water.
"Not her," is all Sesshomaru replies. "Not her. Attempted infanticide is on her list of crimes." In a state in which he was less tensed to the brink of sanity, Sesshomaru would have spared Sango, who was once deluded by Naraku into almost killing Rin to save Miroku, such a scathing remark. After all, on the cusp of that horrible near-deed, she had slipped her gas mask on Rin's little face and nearly died of the shouki that consumed all the humans in the vicinity of the battle—more than atoning for her deed.

But right now, Sesshomaru is a scared and hurting father, under those hundreds of layers of frost and composure. So he feels like being cruel to the most convenient human outlet.

Sango seems to reel in place. Her eyes water, she clears her throat and nods, and steps out of range.

Miroku looks conflicted—irritated and insulted on Sango's behalf, but also coolly aware of the child's need for help, and Sesshomaru's tendency, much like his younger brother's, to be bullheaded about things being his way. "Very well," he says. "Do you have any problem with me helping Kaede?"

"No," Sesshomaru grunts. He has not moved from the stance he took several moments ago—left, newly regrown, arm oustretched, wrist up, offering anything and everything to the salvation of Rin.

"Then do it," Kagome mutters sidelong to the monk. She procures an alcohol swab from the first aid kit in her tote, and wipes it hastily across the inner skin of Sesshomaru's forearm. The inu daiyoukai does not flinch, but his nostrils flare at the burning scent of the antiseptic. Standing directly next to his brother as though to silently support his elder, an uncharacteristically reverent and obedient Inuyasha bites his lip and rolls up his left sleeve as well.

"Pump your fists," Kagome tells both dog demons, pantomiming the gesture. "It'll get the blood flowing."

Sesshomaru robotically mimics her. Inuyasha attentively mimics Sesshomaru, with a touch of flair to his interpretation. Neither dog demon looks at the other's face. Not yet. Inuyasha is looking at Sesshomaru's exposed wrist. And Sesshomaru is looking at Rin.

"Hurry up, houshi-sama," Kagome mutters half-sarcastically to Miroku. "Use those hands that love to stroke bottoms more usefully."

Miroku nods, his dark head bobbing once on his slender young neck. A pensive scowl settles on his comely, and ordinarily crafty, features. He begins to wrap waxed cords around the shafts of the primitive blood transfusion IV, while Kaede holds the arrows steady. Without a word, Jaken and Shippo both move in to help Kaede, bracing her hands. Shippo seems to be muttering comforting words to the toad youkai, who snivels and snorts to himself ceaselessly.

Miroku's work is quick, his fingers long and slender and deft, his right hand no longer cursed. "It's ready," he murmurs in Kagome's ear, offering the fastened-together shafts to the girl.

"Okay, Sesshomaru," Kagome breathes. "Get ready for…for the pinch."

He does not answer her. He does not seem to realize anyone is there. Anyone except his daughter.

The sharp arrow tip slices coarsely into his flesh, into his protruding blue vein. There is no indication that he feels pain—except for the sharp little sucking-in of air through his squeezed lips. Ordinary physical wounds are negligible to Sesshomaru's powerful body. For that reason, it is by his very will to save his child that the arrow is able to pierce his skin in the first place.

Sesshomaru watches Rin's steady descent to total stillness, total pallor, as she lies there on the rice mat with Kaede dabbing a cloth at her brow. The gash to her middle is sewn up, but the damage is already done—so much blood lost. His jaw grinds.

Kagome takes his spastic facial expression as physical pain. She draws back, pulling the arrow shaft out.

"What are you doing?" The daiyoukai hisses, turning at once to nail her to the spot with his furious gaze. "Put it back in."

"Easy," Inuyasha grumbles.

"No. I will not be 'easy.' Kisama, put it back in!"

Kagome swallows and musters both courage and patience. "I thought that…"

"Forget what you thought," snaps Sesshomaru. "Do not think. Fix her. Just fix her."

She obeys instantly, and with a gruesome squishing and pop-popping sound, the arrow slides fully back under the surface of Seshsomaru's skin. "It…seems to be working," she muses. "You were bleeding a lot when I pulled it out…a-ha, there, it's coming out the other arrow tip. Perfect!...now…we need to cut into Rin's wrist too."

Sesshomaru's eyes squint closed at this thought, far more painful than his own wound—the soft, peach-like flesh of Rin being further punctured. "If it is necessary."

"It is."

"Then do it." He smells the overwhelming, precious, metallic smell of his own blood. Only once before has he smelled it this potently, on the night at his father's tomb, when he lost his arm to Inuyasha's Tessaiga. His stomach churns and threatens to empty itself all over Kagome and Inuyasha. He makes a sickened gulping sound before he gets a grasp on himself.

"You alright?" Inuyasha, astonishingly, murmurs.

"Is it in Rin yet?" the older brother counters with a question of his own. His eyes are still closed. He struggles for an expression of serenity, or at least of control.

"…yeah. It's in her. You're savin' her right now."

Sesshomaru's eyes slide open. They drink in the crude connector between his wrist and his child's. Rin is so far gone that she does not even stir in pain. His own wrist throbs, and then begins to feel cold, and tingle.

A weird thought occurs to the inu daiyoukai at that moment. "…she is really mine now. My blood…runs in her."

"I think she's been yours for a while," Inuyasha replies, looking, too, at Rin. "The blood's just…makin' it official."

"Is it so obvious?" An incredible softness descends on the ruthless warrior's face now, as he looks at the child's slumbering form, at her round little cheeks, which begin, just slightly, to bloom with spots of life-proving pink. It's a tenderness. Not a loud or proclamational love. But it's an irrefutable love, nonetheless, to someone who is really studying his face—as Inuyasha is, right now.

"Oh yeah. It is."

"Hmph. This Sesshomaru can admit a failure. I have failed to mask my affection for a mere human child. Perhaps Rin's power over me is that formidable that…hoh.." The room tilts. His ears tingle and his face goes cold. The great Sesshomaru nearly swoons. He realizes he has not conceded this much blood since recovering from the loss of his left arm, two years past. Then, too, he was nearly delirious. "Hoh. Strange feeling. Like…Bees in my skin…Naraku…"

Jaken yelps.

Inuyasha jerks out an arm to steady Sesshomaru, who is so dazed, at the moment, that he does not think to buck that hand off his shoulderblades. The younger dog demon bites his lip again. He thinks of being a little boy. Of having someone picking him up on his way into a bathhouse after he had lost blood, over and over. He thinks on returning favors, and recognizing what family remains in this life. And on celebrating a remarkable change of heart in that single family member. "Kagome," he says, "my turn."

The modern miko has already been dislodging the arrowhead from Seshsomaru's wrist—his depletion of blood is noticeable to her, as well. "Well…Inuyasha, Rin is already loads better, look at her complexion…and her breathing's not so shallow, so you don't really need to…"

"I said my turn. I just wanna do it. Okay?"

Maybe it's to prove he can match big brother for physical stamina—to boast that he didn't swoon like some pansy.

Maybe it's something a lot more tender than that.

Either way, Inuyasha shoves his wrist at Kagome, just like Sesshomaru did. "Just a little," he adds.

"Let him," croaks Kaede, suddenly kneeling there between them, and wiping the excess blood from Rin's wrist. She transfers the cloth to Sesshomaru's wrist, nursing him as well.

The older brother is watching the younger brother keenly now, his senses having returned. His expression is as unreadable as ever. "Hai," he finally says, rejoining Kaede.

Inuyasha jumps and turns to his brother. He scowls in shock as Kagome wipes alcohol over the arrowtip and punctures his wrist. He gives a startled yowl, but falls into stoic silence after that.

Sesshomaru just stares back.

A long, uncomfortable pause.

Inuyasha clears his throat. "…So. Every day. A pile of fish. You."

Sesshomaru's eyebrow raises. "Hai. It was me. Every day until you were old enough to hunt your own food."

"…alright then." Inuyasha clears his throat again. His cheeks are ruddy as he averts his eyes to the floorboards. "Why are you doin' this? For…for this little human girl? What's up with you keepin' her? Are you waitin' till she comes of age, to…" he flushes. "Er…you know…"

"Do not be revolting. She is my daughter. And always will be."

"But why?"

"I really do not know why. Why she is so precious, other than the fact that she finishes a part of me that could not be finished before I saved her with Tenseiga."

"Oh. Oh yeah. So that's why you didn't even try to use it tonight. Word from Sango's brother is you even saved her from hell once."

"Hai. I did."

"So…"

"I said I do not know why, Inuyasha. Or… I do, yet cannot seem to give it words. But I…"

"…yeah." Sesshomaru doesn't need to finish his sentence. Inuyasha knows how hard it is to say the word "love." He glances at Kagome. It's a very different kind of love he feels towards her, and keeps precious, held inside and against his chest. But it's just as hard to say it. He knows. He lets out an introverted, contemplative sigh.

Sesshomaru gazes vaguely at him, fascinated by his embarrassment and deference. "It is a shame you did not behave this way the past hundred or so years. I might have been able to stand the sight of you. And the smell of you. Well. Perhaps not the latter. You reek of wet dog."

"I could say the same thing," the hanyou snarls back, immediately rising to the bait. "You're different lately. It's good. Stay that way."

Sesshomaru lets out some kind of snort. "Your gesture just now was melodramatic.."

"OH YEAH, WELL…"

"…And valorous. And very…very…honorable."

Inuyasha blinks. He winces as Kagome pulls the arrow out of his wrist, and out of Rin's, for good. Kaede shoves a cloth over Rin's wrist to stop her bleeding.

Sesshomaru nods, soberly, once. The look he offers Inuyasha is one of…

Respect.

And…approval. Real approval.

"Inuyasha, in return for this deed, I swear never to raise a hand against your miko Kagome again. Under any circumstance."

The little brother cocks his head at the big brother. Then he nods, and that is all.

"You two should lie down," Kagome gently suggests.

Sesshomaru bristles just a little. "I shall not sleep until I am certain Rin is alright."

"She is more than out of danger, great dog demon," Kaede happily barks, gesturing wildly from where she is crouched over the child. "Far more! Look—behold!"

The trio of human, hanyou, and youkai all freeze.

Sesshomaru, as usual, is the first to recover.

"What?" he murmurs. Every inch of him is tingling again, but it is not because of his blood loss. He lurches forward on all fours over Rin's body, glaring fiercely down into her face. He realizes he is holding his breath, but he can't seem to expel it.

He searches, searches, for Kaede's meaning. "I do not understand," he growls, incomprehensibly frustrated. "She is not awake." So still. So very still. He leans down closer into Rin's face, to make sure that the sound of her breathing is not a deception of his anxious mind. Faint sweet tea-cookie-scented breath rises from her mouth and tickles his nose. "…though…she is alive…" He lets out his own breath at last.

"Look at her ears, great dog demon," Kaede guides him in a hushed and tear-shaking voice. "Look at thy daughter's ears!"

Ears. Sesshomaru glances around. Human ears are rounded, soft. Demon ears are…different. His blood. Rin has his blood now…ears…

Oh. It could not be. Nothing so perfect and wonderful. After a lifetime of hardship, Sesshomaru cannot imagine a deepest hope being fulfilled this perfectly.

He is afraid to look. His eyes squeeze shut and for a second time he reminds himself how to exhale.

If he has misunderstood Kaede, it will destroy him. He has let his stoic shell crack, and he has let a desperate longing ache to the fore of his mind. If he has misunderstood her…

Must look. Must.

"Are you mad?" Jaken snaps at Kaede, jolting the inu daiyoukai's eyes open.

What Sesshomaru sees makes him gasp—just audibly.

"…Oh…" he breathes. He doesn't sound like himself at all. The great Sesshomaru-sama's voice would not ordinarily sound so small. But…

"ZIP IT, Jaken," Inuyasha snarls, from his place peering over Sesshomaru's shoulder. And then, "What is it? Lemme see…Ano…Sesshomaru? HEY. Let me SEE…"

Sesshomaru is worlds away. Universes. His eyes are wide and unguarded. His mouth hangs just slightly open. He reaches both hands magnetically towards Rin's tiny, sweet, messy head.

"Oh my God," Kagome breathes. "Of course…" Her hands fly to her mouth. She has already seen it. The rest of the company gathers hastily behind her. Jaken starts bawling again.

Sesshomaru lifts up Rin's sleeping head, and with the gentleness of holding a paper-thin glass orb, he turns that head just to the left. Her right ear, like her left ear, is pointed.

Not human ears.

Hanyou ears.

"Hoh…" he whispers, a second time. Stupid. How stupid he feels, to have no more adequate way of expressing the magnitude of his joy. Insufficient as always, in that one regard—of showing emotion. But he had guessed Kaede's meaning right…and his ears hum with the feeling that is bottled up within his core, that cannot quite seem to expel itself.

"Then she is all but immortal now, too!" Jaken chokes out.

Dread fills Sesshomaru. He nearly gags on it. He is mute, unable to voice his sudden fear. He kneels there, stupidly, just holding Rin's head, and gazing at her, overwhelmed, shocked.

For the first time in their lives, however, he and his little brother are on precisely the same mental wavelength. Inuyasha speaks. "If it was just one time with our blood, though, will it run out? Or is she…like this forever?"

Kaede roughly wipes at her aging eyes. Through milky cataracts, they still burn with joy. "My sister saw this done before. Many times, and usually by accident, when some filthy bloodsucking youkai or another mingled the blood of his victims. One of the hanyous that Kikyo knew, rendered a hanyou by this very process, is to this day still a hanyou."

An even longer silence. A very pregnant silence.

"Are you…" Sesshomaru cannot finish his sentence. His throat is so tight. He tries again. "Are…you sure?"

Kaede's smile is incredibly gentle, incredibly understanding. She wipes a wisp of white hair from her wrinkled face. Wrinkles which Rin will not, now, know for many centuries. "Hai, Sesshomaru-sama. I am sure."

The Lord of the Western Lands softly relinquishes his hold on the sleeping Rin's head. Stiffly, he stands. Rigidly, he walks to the door. And he continues to walk—right outside.

Propelling…gyrating forward…ever forward in the eternal whiteness of the snow. Arms behind him, abandoning all dignity, eyes wet and burning and fluttering closed against the pellets of ice and snow that the heavens fling down on him. He lets out a roar of triumph that is lost to the shrieking winter winds, but that he feels, nonetheless, exquisitely.

This must be what it is like to let go.

To let go completely.

To be simply happy.

His chest aches, it is slicing into windburned slivers, it is exploding open, it is losing all the weight it has carried for over three hundred years, the weight of being perpetually alone. Lifted.

Ecstasy.

She is alright.

She is alright.

She is alright.

Rin is alright! Rin is really alright!

She will not die before him.

He will not lose his Rin. He will not! He has protected his treasure! He has succeeded unquestionably!

Joy.

Joy in she for whom he is accountable.

Joy!

Sesshomaru runs and runs through the winter landscape, with boundless energy, panting, for some time. A lifetime of pent up emotions takes a lot of time to spend in one burst.

Back in the hut, everyone gawks. Kagome exchanges a bewildered look with Sango, before stooping over Rin and removing her yukata, replacing it with a clean oversized robe of Kaede's.

"What the HELL…? Is he in shock?" Inuyasha begins to go retrieve his brother.

"No." And Jaken of all people slips in front of the younger dog demon, spreading wide his arms. "I understand. Heed me."

Inuyasha's ears twitch. "So spit it out, froggie."

"Sesshomaru-sama has finally allowed himself to be overcome with emotion. He cannot, nevertheless, show it in front of any of us. So he has excused himself outside until he has regained composure." Jaken places the Staff of Two Heads on the floor beside him, and simply plops down on his hindside, with finality. "It is because of his fondness for the child. No one could compete with that." He echoes words he has spoken to himself before, at a campfire, watching Rin sleeping in Sesshomaru's arms to ward off her nightmares. "It is as large as a mountain and as persistent as a river, that…ano..that love."

Another moment of collective slack-jaws.

"Oh," Inuyasha finally thinks to say.

"Yes, oh," adds the loquacious Miroku.

"We owe Rin a lot for the things she's done," Kagome whispers. "Sometimes I feel like I can really understand her…" Her thoughtful dark eyes wander to Inuyasha's face.

Inuyasha's cheeks color a faint scarlet. He coughs, and smiles rather dopily at the floor.

Sesshomaru bursts back into the room. His mokomoko fluffs up like the feathers of an alarmed fowl. His eyes, uncharacteristically wide, slowly narrow back to their half-hooded, calculated blankness. He forces himself to breathe a bit more steadily.

There is no evidence of tears. No puffy redness around the eyelids.

Inuyasha smells something briny though. Salty. And it only surfaced in his nostrils when his brother returned.

Sesshomaru is wet from head to toe, including his face, from the snow through which he has been racing. There would never be a way to prove it.

But Inuyasha still wonders. "Keh!" he mutters, still grinning.

"What?" Sesshomaru almost sounds grumpy, glaring around at the whole room confrontationally. "Hmmmph," he adds, in that grunting cave man fashion, after a moment.

"Nothing, Sessho-nii-chan," Inuyasha smirks.

Miroku, Sango, Shippo, Kaede, Kagome, even Jaken and Kilala, seem to avert their eyes with an effort not to burst into giggles.

"Do not call me that," Sesshomaru snaps, well aware of the collective mirth. Were his stoic mask not firmly back in place, he might be blushing just like his little brother moments past. As is, he glides over to Rin, and squats down next to the fire. In a very canine fashion, he shakes off, a safe distance from getting a drop on the child. Then he reclines fully next to her form. "This Sesshomaru shall sleep right here tonight."

"More like today," Miroku comments quietly, glancing out at the long-since-risen sun.

"Whatever," Sesshomaru sniffs, with more than a touch of hauteur. "What I meant was, I shall sleep right here until she awakens." He stretches out, curling his body in an arc around Rin's.

Many glances are exchanged. The rest of the company, except for Inuyasha, Kagome, and Kaede, trails to the back of the hut, settling down for a day of sleep. Jaken lies down in front of the fire, but his yellow orb eyes are watching Sesshomaru and Rin without blinking.

Inuyasha is dabbing at his puncture spot on his wrist, from where he helped save Sesshomaru's greatest treasure. Kagome wipes up some of the blood with another cloth, before she mutters something in his ear and follows the rest of the group.

Inuyasha watches her, hesitating. He looks tired but satisfied.

Sesshomaru stares at his little brother for a long moment. And then he speaks. "Inuyasha."

The hanyou casts a bleary gaze at his brother. "What now?"

"When we were quarreling, you accused this Sesshomaru of saying you were unfit to know what our father looked like."

"Yeah? What about it?"

Sesshomaru shifts weight on the floor next to Rin, draping an arm over her body. He gazes at her as he presents a great gift to his brother, as though drawing resolve from her sweet little soul in order to bestow that gift—the gift of precious knowledge: "You saw him…briefly…after the Sounga and Takimaru affair, when his ghost spoke to us. Nevertheless…Father was extremely tall. He walked with the gregariousness of a great loving gorilla. He ate entirely too much and embraced entirely too hard and his voice was like a thunderclap. He had a great respect for women and children...for women perhaps a bit too much, or at least, his taste for variety in females got in the way of his better judgment…but anyway. A moon crescent adorned his forehead and he had only one magenta streak on each of his cheeks. He wore his hair back and up and his eyebrows were like mine, but thicker. His laugh was exactly like mine. However this Sesshomaru laughs far more rarely than he did. Perhaps if you are around and listen closely, you will hear his laugh coming from me."

Inuyasha is stunned, yet again. "I…arigato…Sessho-nii-sama."

"There is no need." Sesshomaru turns his head brusquely, signaling the end of the conversation. He listens as the bare feet of his little brother and first ever protective charge fade to the other side of the room.

But there is one more bit of gratitude he needs to express.

"Old woman," he murmurs.

"Hai, great dog demon?" The miko pauses by his side, where he lies against Rin's tiny body.

"Hear me: The next time that I love a child as I love her," and he nods at Rin, "her name will be Kaede."

Kikyo's little sister smiles, and bows her head suddenly. She swallows. "I see. Sleep well, milord." And she leaves him to his daughter.

Sesshomaru rests his head on the floorboards next to Rin's peacefully dozing face. And what will happen now? Now that his Rin is as immortal as he? Will it stop the constant worrying for her safety, her happiness, her wholeness? His fervent fear that she does not realize how much he cares, because it is not in his nature to show his emotions?

Never. Never will these concerns end. It's the blessing and curse of a true parent.

"Did you hear, small one? You have felled a great warrior." Sesshomaru's chin rests on Rin's shoulder, so slightly, so delicately. He whispers in her ear, now pointed, like his. "This Sesshomaru loves you. This Sesshomaru is at your mercy. Does it make you happy?"

"Itsumo," the child mumbles in her sleep. She turns her forehead against his, without really stirring. She trusts him so.

"Hai." He smiles that tranquil, infinitesimal smile into her yukata sleeve. His glazed, determined eyes soften. "Hai, forever."