A/N: I would randomly like to note on Sess's late weaning. Some ppl (I don't know who they are) take offense to breastfeeding. But seriously, that's why we're mammals. That name, "mammal" even comes from it: mammary glands produce the milk that our offspring must have to survive. It makes mammals unique. As for when human babies are weaned there is no set time when the mother's body has to stop making milk. Even men can produce milk under the right stimulation. So you could nurse a child until he was seven as a human, there's no limit on the mother's side. As far as nutrition goes there's nothing better than the real thing, breast milk. It's good for mom and baby all around (except maybe for ease because it's not publicly accepted and aesthetically for the look of the breast). I heard once that Neanderthals probably breastfed until five. FIVE. In many other "primitive" cultures breastfeeding probably continues into 2 years of age, maybe more. Some mothers breastfeed that long here. So it sounds weird to say he was seven, but I'm thinking like developmentally he ages a year for every two years that actually pass. So 7 should be divided by 2 to get his real age. Anyway that's my rant on breastfeeding in case anyone is listening…
(crickets chirping).
Anyway, and for this chapter I returned to Shiroihana's viewpoint. Notice in her blurb that she is lying.
Disclaimer: I do not own them.
Last Chapter: Sesshomaru's earliest childhood. Began his education at seven, made his first kill at 10 when the bear cub Keikan of the Yajin clan attacked him in his sleep, a purposeful attempt to kill the heir of the Western Lands to offset Shiroihana and Inutaisho. Sess won by way of luck in that he had poison. When he heard of the attack, Inutaisho at last stepped forward and just forced his way into Kagetsu to see his son. Sessmom was not all that happy about that.
A Word to Husbands by Ogden Nash
To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
Shiroihana
Sesshomaru was a beautiful child, perfect in every way. I loved him completely, with all of my being. The same cannot be said for my husband. While Sesshomaru was an infant, Inutaisho had no interest in him at all. He felt the daily inconveniences, the messiness of a tiny pup, were beneath him. He busied himself elsewhere and with other women, mongrels and human females and probably anything that was willing. Or that he could overpower and force himself on.
It was only later, when Sesshomaru was further developed and educated, that Inutaisho decided to visit. I never had any doubt of my son's worth, of his strength and prowess, but nothing was good enough for Inutaisho. For reasons I cannot understand, Sesshomaru longed for his father's approval and affection. I was heartbroken, for in spite of my hard work and devotion, my son did not view me with the same loyalty and love.
Sons are cruel to their mothers. By nature we love and adore our sons, and by nature our sons betray us and leave us for their fathers.
It must be clear to you now that I think very little of my former husband. What you may not understand clearly is why I chose to remain married to such a lowlife, pathetic excuse for a father and husband. The answer is very simple: Sesshomaru needed Inutaisho and I could not bring myself to do anything that would harm my precious son. So as the years passed I watched Inutaisho mistreat my fine son, underestimating him, disregarding him, ignoring him as inadequate. And throughout those years I felt my son withdraw from me, seeking his father over me, longing for the approval and affection that Inutaisho refused him.
I'm sure you have heard where Inutaisho chose to bestow this missing affection. On a human woman and a half-breed bastard son.
A Destiny Given At Birth
Shiroihana began drinking the herbal tea to stave off heats while Inutaisho stayed in Kagetsu. She lingered in hallways and empty rooms, disturbed and depressed by his presence, her fears and other complicated emotions, trying to think.
To her horror, Sesshomaru and Inutaisho were bonding. Inutaisho was surprisingly playful and tolerant of his young son's rambunctiousness. During the first week that her husband was in the palace, Shiroihana often had her afternoons interrupted as the palace trembled faintly with the clamor of feet pounding on the floor in a separate wing or on the terrace. And then the shouts, barking, yapping, and other noises would commence. Inutaisho yelled mock attacks at his son and taught Sesshomaru to imitate them, then they dodged each other's pretend blows.
Shiroihana spent her afternoons and early evenings writing and researching, or receiving visitors and messengers. Inutaisho had those same responsibilities, but they could be put off and funneled to Shiroihana instead. She began seeing exactly that as messengers who had been seeking Inutaisho were sent away from his castle Nejiro to find her instead. Husband and wife were supposed to be joint rulers of the Western Lands, so one ruler was as good as the other.
But Shiroihana despised Inutaisho for using her to attend to his work while he invested all of his time with Sesshomaru.
She began watching father and son as much as she could, conducting her business in the same wing of the castle as where they were playing. When she learned that Inutaisho was napping with Sesshomaru and even sharing his bed with the little pup, Shiroihana wanted to kill him.
The playing started out small and grew until Inutaisho was damaging the floors, scratching them up accidentally with his powerful claws. Shiroihana caught glimpses as he dashed about on all fours, growling and rolling with Sesshomaru like two dogs. Shiroihana did not usually engage in such highly physical play. It was not that she was unable, but that she refused to risk the flooring—and that her own mother and father had not played with her in such a way.
It was undignified, unworthy of a young lord. Yet Shiroihana did not want to stop them because it would cause a fight and because she sensed Sesshomaru would resent her for it. When she spotted the scratches on the floor, Shiroihana knew she had an excuse to approach Inutaisho about it.
"You're ruining the palace," she told him one night after she had purposefully separated father and son and made sure Sesshomaru went to bed in his own room, alone. "I will not tolerate it."
Inutaisho was unbothered by her complaint as he sat in his room, cleaning his armor and arranging his swords. "I will take him outside then."
"No," Shiroihana snapped. "I want you to leave."
Inutaisho paused, staring down at his armor and the swords. He tapped his claws on the metal once, a short, sharp sound of irritation. "I am not leaving my son here if I go."
Shiroihana's claws bit into the flesh of her palm. She hissed, "His name is Sesshomaru and he is my son. Or have you forgotten that you killed him?"
Inutaisho looked up at her and sneered. "Ridiculous. Do you hear yourself?"
"If you try to take my son from this castle, from the Kosetsu, I will kill you."
"Must we live in the past?" Inutaisho asked, growling. "Shiroihana—it has been ten years. Have you no capacity to forgive?"
For a moment Shiroihana was distracted by the clearness of Inutaisho's words, of his obvious mastery of Japanese. It startled her because Inutaisho often wrote in Chinese script in his letters and Shiroihana answered him that way. But in person she realized that indeed, ten years had passed and during that elapsed time Inutaisho had reacclimatized to the language of the islands of his birth. The clumsiness of the earliest months of their marriage was gone permanently. Inutaisho no longer tried to hide his ability to speak intelligently, even movingly. She had once seen this male inuyoukai as a dumb brute, a stupid breeder. Now she could not fathom how she had been so deceived, duped. He was a conniving, scheming, hateful beast.
She almost missed the content of those pretty, perfect words and was silent for a time before answering. "My brother would not forgive you. My brother would not forget."
"By your own reasoning he already has," Inutaisho snarled.
"What are you talking about?" Shiroihana demanded, insulted.
Inutaisho motioned toward the door behind her, the hallway beyond that. "If our son is your brother's reincarnation as you have insisted over and over again," he sneered as he said it. "Then surely he has forgiven me. My son harbors no ill will toward me."
Shiroihana spluttered in outrage. "The reborn soul forgets its past life!"
"If he can forget—can't you?"
Shiroihana bared her teeth at him but closed her throat around the angry, vicious growl that tried to escape her lips. "Sesshomaru doesn't know any better!"
"Because he is my son, my boy," Inutaisho insisted. "Can't you see it, Shiroihana? His scent—I can smell the Okou in him, my own mother. He is the same as I was when I was a pup. He is not your brother!"
"He is my heir!" Shiroihana shouted. She laid her hands over her abdomen, recalling vividly the months of expectation and the first watery movement of her son squirming inside her. "I gave him life! He is my son. Not yours. We agreed you would have nothing to do with him until he is mature and able to make decisions on his own."
The age of maturity for inuyoukai was around 100 years. Sesshomaru would be fully able to make decisions and comprehend the world around him much sooner than that, but at 100 years he could begin carrying a sword and begin to access deep youkai powers. He would be like a fledging bird at that point, stretching his wings, readying himself for flight.
For a father to miss so much of his son's early life was unthinkable to someone like Inutaisho who had come from a male-dominated, father-ruled clan. For Shiroihana, who was only dimly aware of her father through her childhood, it was easy to understand and accept.
Inutaisho put his armor down on the floor, off his lap. He stood and faced his wife, glowering at her in mounting rage. He started walking toward her, danger and threat emanating from him.
Shiroihana lifted her chin and stood her ground. "I am Queen of the Kosetsu. The likes of you—filth—do not frighten me."
"If you cannot forgive me, if you cannot see beyond the mistakes of the past—why do you keep me bound to you!"
"You are as free as the wind," Shiroihana said quiet and harsh. "And just as destructive."
"We are married," Inutaisho reminded her. "There are other reasons why I wanted to visit the Kosetsu."
"Swine," Shiroihana muttered. She took a step back, intimidated in spite of herself. She had lost much of her fear that he would physically harm her over the years, but she did not put it past him to kill her and take Sesshomaru by force. Yet she did not interpret his advance as entirely violent or threatening. There was an underlying sexual tension, a need in the set of his shoulders and jaw.
Inutaisho closed the distance between them and one hand wrapped around her neck and jaw. He tilted her face upward and stared into her eyes. Shiroihana did not resist him and did not return the touch in either welcome or attack. She glared into his golden eyes and seethed inwardly with hate and—ashamedly—her own strong sexual desire.
There was no denying that Inutaisho was attractive, but Shiroihana had no intention of reconciling their marriage. Even so, she did not break the physical touch.
She realized that this was the first time they had been together alone and privately since Sesshomaru's death and rebirth.
"If I wanted to leave I would have," Inutaisho said. "Instead I have let you mourn alone for ten years. I have let you keep my son from me. I have tolerated your coldness and cruelty for ten years. Now I have come to collect."
"Get away," Shiroihana snarled, slapping at his wrist. She did not bother controlling her claws and Inutaisho released her and stared down at his wrist where she had drawn a smidgen of blood.
With feral, glowing eyes, he slowly lifted the offended wrist to his mouth and licked the wound, recycling the lost blood.
The warmth that bloomed in Shiroihana's loins was undeniable and pleasant. Her mouth watered at the thought of tasting his blood.
"I grow tired of living alone, Shiroihana."
"I want you to leave," Shiroihana said, but the words were bland, meaningless. The passion had left her voice. Hate still colored her view of her husband, but Shiroihana was a practical woman and she too had missed sex. The major difference between herself and Inutaisho was that she had Sesshomaru to distract her from it. She had company, someone to love. She doubted Inutaisho had remained faithful to her in the fullness of ten years, but she knew without a doubt that none of the other sexual encounters he could have had were of equal standing. None of them could have been fulfilling. None of them could give him a powerful son. None of them could have been as delightfully matched to him in physical strength.
"If you want me to leave," Inutaisho said, growling. "You will annul our marriage and release me for good."
In spite of her desire, Shiroihana liked the idea—a little. Not because it would dissolve their marriage and the chance of future sex, but because she could make sure Inutaisho had no legal right to his son at all.
"I will annul our marriage."
Inutaisho bared his teeth at her and rumbled in warning. "I can see what you're thinking. Annulling the marriage would not take away my right to see my son."
Shiroihana scowled. "You've had a week with Sesshomaru. I think that's enough."
"Please," Inutaisho muttered, his voice grating like metal on metal. "Please, enough of this. I refuse to live apart from you and our son. Shiroihana—what more do you want of me? Must I beg on my knees?"
Before she could stop herself, Shiroihana smirked.
Seeing the fast expression, Inutaisho dropped down onto the floor and bowed. Shiroihana stepped backward, startled at the swiftness of the action. She wanted to scold him for humbling himself in such a way, but at the same time it empowered Shiroihana and filled her with a desire spawned by power.
What power I have, she thought, to make war heroes bow at my feet. She was almost giddy with it and her hands shook. Shiroihana hid them in her sleeves. She pressed her advantage, ordering her husband to humiliate himself further.
"Beg me for permission to stay."
Inutaisho muttered for a moment and then spoke to the floor, "Shiroihana—I beg your indulgence. I plead for your forgiveness. I have wronged you in the past. I have been faithful. I have known no other woman. My dreams are filled with you and our son. My life is empty without you both."
Shiroihana stared down at his full shoulders, his thick white hair. She knew she would give in eventually. She knew that Sesshomaru would benefit from having Inutaisho around. She knew that she could move on from her brother's death and accept Inutaisho into her bed. She knew their marriage could be one of fondness—perhaps not love, but affection, tolerance, and warmth. It would be the right environment to raise Sesshomaru in.
But a stubborn, stiff, cold part of her soul refused to forget. He must never be finished suffering. He must always beg. Sesshomaru must never love him.
She was aroused enough to slake her lust with him that night, but Shiroihana ignored and dismissed that chance. Inutaisho must suffer. Nothing must be easy for him. She turned away from where he was still bowing on the floor and walked for the door.
"You may stay for an additional week. At the end of which I expect you to leave. Do you understand?"
Inutaisho sat up readily and glared at her. "Shiroihana," he called.
"What is it, swine?"
"If our marriage is to remain intact I expect to share your bed. I expect another pup."
Shiroihana made a face. Her mouth tasted suddenly bitter. "Another son for your prophecy, perhaps?"
Inutaisho growled but did not answer.
"We shall see, husband." But as Shiroihana walked out of the room and shut the door behind her, she was thinking of just how she could punish her husband for the next several hundred years. The possibilities were endless.
It was not long, only a few days later, that Shiroihana gave into her desire and invited Inutaisho into her bed. He was desperate, fast, and out of practice, but Shiroihana thoroughly enjoyed the carnal, physical intimacy. The burly, intimidating inuyoukai warrior—Shiroihana's husband—dozed in the bed beside her.
Shiroihana enjoyed the physical warmth, the presence of another being in the bed with her. In the previous years her companion had been Sesshomaru, but now her son was starting out on the road to independence. She had been lonely, though she refused to acknowledge it.
But when she opened her eyes and found herself staring into Inutaisho's face, Shiroihana felt hate roiling inside her, like water coming to a rolling boil over the cooking fires. The passage of ten years had not dulled her memories of her lost brother. She vowed to herself, and to her brother's spirit, that she would never let this creature sharing her bed, who happened to be her husband, weasel his way back into her heart or her soul.
And she would never allow Inutaisho to delude Sesshomaru into loving him or trusting him.
The years that followed were tenuous, fragile in their stability.
First Shiroihana and Inutaisho declared a personal war against the Yajin bear clan. Inutaisho unleashed hordes of loyal minions upon their lands to track them down and slaughter the lot of them, young, adult, and old alike. Male or female. Unlike Shiroihana, who knew so little about bear youkai, Inutaisho made a point of educating himself about the other species. He knew when they were most vulnerable—during the earliest spring, after hibernation. Inuyoukai were active regardless of the season, but bear youkai preferred to spend winters tucked together in tight, damp, smelly burrows, waiting for the snows to begin melting in spring.
Inutaisho led several attacks over three years, each spring, into the ancestral lands of the Yajin. He located their burrows, new and old, hidden or obvious, and sent in dozens of youkai to spread miasma and other toxins. The young and old succumbed to those tactics, but the healthiest adolescents and adults rushed out in a rage. If Inutaisho had attacked them in the fall or even in the dead of winter, they would be stronger, with more fat and muscle reserves. But in waiting until the earliest parts of spring, when the valleys and passes were still clogged with snow, Inutaisho assured his greatest success.
As enraged parents and adolescents rushed out of their burrows, choking on miasma and shuddering with poison, Inutaisho cut them down effortlessly. Only the strongest of the Yajin managed to give him any trouble, but they too fell.
Very few of the Yajin survived the onslaught, and those that did survive did so only because Inutaisho pitied them or felt they were not a threat. He let a young female escape when she crawled from the burrow and cried, pleading for mercy. In another instance a cub escaped and Inutaisho did not chase it down. He preferred to kill the young and weak with poison, not by his own blade.
Shiroihana despised him for these reports. Inutaisho had not hesitated to cut down her own unarmed brother on her very doorstep, to send him to the underworld with his mythical sword. Yet he would spare the lives of bear youkai cubs, he would show them mercy and share the tale with her solemnly. Shiroihana thought this was a calculated act to impress her with his respect for life.
It failed, but Inutaisho also tried to share these tales with Sesshomaru, to impress some sort of code on him. Shiroihana took action to counter her husband's defilement of their son.
She began to set up time in her day to teach Sesshomaru. Inutaisho was already instructing the young pup physically, teaching him to wield his claws and fists. Shiroihana stepped in and decided that she should also teach her son. He was younger than she had been when Samidare began teaching her about the genealogies and the ways of the Kosetsu, but Shiroihana was frantic to stop the damage that Inutaisho had started.
By this time Sesshomaru was in his teens and sharp, alert. His attention span was lengthening almost every day. His body was rapidly growing and he was constantly eating. He appeared no older than ten years, if he had been a human. Teenagers were still young children among inuyoukai. But though his body was far from mature, his mind was forming quickly and would outpace his body for many years. He was ripe for learning.
It began with the genealogies, as it had when Shiroihana learned of her homeland, her heritage. Sesshomaru had never seen genealogies for his own family before, only for distant heroes, legends of the mainland and the beginning of the world. Now he stared with open fascination that delighted Shiroihana, scanning the names. Before she had set the documents out for him, Shiroihana wondered whether to scratch out her brother's name or to leave it intact. She risked leaving it as it was and watched tensely as her son registered the same name.
Sesshomaru laid his small clawed hands over his mother's name and then traced the line toward the uncle who shared his name. Then, slowly, he tapped his own name. "Mother?" he asked.
"Yes?" Shiroihana feigned disinterest but smiled with encouragement. She did not want Sesshomaru to read any secrets from her demeanor. She wanted to know what he knew, what he felt. Had the sight of the repeated name jolted a memory in his soul? A memory of death?
"Who is this? He has my name." Sesshomaru's small brow creased with concentration. He delicately traced the characters of his name over the top of his uncle's, double checking.
"That is my younger brother," Shiroihana answered. "He would have been your uncle."
"The marks under his name mean he died?" Sesshomaru was still in the process of learning to read and write dates. Shiroihana hoped that he had not learned enough to realize that his uncle's date of death was the same as Sesshomaru's date of birth. She had wanted to scratch out the data, but found herself unwilling to lie, or to dismiss her brother's suffering.
"Yes," she replied. "I missed my brother so much that I named you after him."
Sesshomaru touched the dates of death under his uncle's name in the genealogy and then squinted at the mark that represented his own birth. "When did he die?"
Shiroihana cursed inwardly while simultaneously praising Sesshomaru for his great intelligence. He did not know how to read the dates exactly, or to write them, but he knew they were identical.
Shiroihana sighed, deciding to tell the truth. "He died on the same night that you were born." She hesitated, uncertain of whether or not she wanted to push further with the details of her brother's death.
Sesshomaru gazed up at his mother, his golden eyes narrowing. "What happened, Mother?"
The cold shell of bitterness on Shiroihana's heart extended its reach, overpowering the caution in her mind. She recalled her vow to keep Sesshomaru from loving his father and decided that, in spite of the selfless part of her, the mother within her that whispered how painful the truth would be for her young son, she would tell Sesshomaru at least part of the truth. She would tell him the most important part of how his uncle had died—who had killed him.
She met her son's curious, innocent eyes with a solemn frown, a look that reflected pain and bitterness, decades above what her son could understand. "Sesshomaru," she said and when she blinked Shiroihana saw for a moment her brother as a child instead of her son. "My younger brother, your uncle—he…"
She did not know how to convey her emotions to her son, how to tell the story so he would understand it as completely as she did. Her hands closed up into fists of frustration.
"Listen very carefully to me, Sesshomaru."
Sesshomaru leaned closer, his young gaze bright and intense. He sensed his mother's darkening mood and craved an answer.
"You know Lord Inutaisho, your father. Chichiue."
Sesshomaru nodded vigorously. His white hair, still short, bobbed about his shoulders. Shiroihana did not miss the affection that passed over her son's face. The observation made her plunge onward with vehemence.
"Your father killed my brother, killed your uncle. I loved your uncle very much, and your father was jealous of him. He took him from me and from you."
Sesshomaru blinked with shock. "Chichiue?"
"Yes, your most honorable father. You must never forget this, Sesshomaru. On the night that Lord Inutaisho killed my brother it hurt me so much—" Shiroihana laid a palm over her chest, between the breasts, tapping where her heart beat, still clenched with the old pain of the loss. "It hurt so much that when you were born, I named you after my brother, your uncle. I gave you his name for a reason, Sesshomaru. When you are big and strong you must avenge your uncle's wrongful death."
Sesshomaru's mouth fell open in shock and fear. His eyes darkened, moistening with childish tears. "Momma!" he lapsed into a childish speech that he had begun to shed with Kuenai's lessons. "Momma! No! Chichiue would not do that!"
Shiroihana sighed with a mix of anger and grief. Slowly, cautiously, she reached out and touched Sesshomaru's cheek, cupping it gently. "I understand that you like your father. It is very natural, but you must understand that you cannot possibly trust him, Sesshomaru. He will hurt you. He will deceive you, just as he did with me."
"Chichiue told me stories," Sesshomaru cried, mumbling as his voice weakened with tears. "He said the bear, the awful bear that hurt me—he said he let some of them go free, babies and girls."
Shiroihana detected the confusion in her son and seized it. "You do not understand why he did that," she observed.
"No!" Sesshomaru sobbed. "Chichiue says that it was dishonorable to kill weaklings, but the bear—the bear—the cub, he tried to kill me! Momma! I was so scared! He was bigger than me, stronger!" Sesshomaru quivered, ashamed and terrified to admit his weakness.
Shiroihana's throat burned, aching. She scooped Sesshomaru up with both arms, though he was already getting too big to hold. Sesshomaru leaned into her and wrapped his arms around her as he sobbed. Shiroihana shushed him and stroked his hair, murmuring comfort.
"My son, my beautiful baby—you will one day be stronger than any that lives. You will crush any that stands in your way." When Sesshomaru had caught his breath and quieted, listening to her and enjoying her touch, her scent, her closeness, Shiroihana plunged onward with her message of hatred.
"I am sorry to hurt you with this hard truth, Sesshomaru, but I could not let your father lie to you. You must never trust him. You are my son, and your uncle's nephew." She pronounced nephew carefully, knowing it was a new word for Sesshomaru. "When you see your father again, ask him about your uncle. Ask him what happened on the night of your birth. We will see how honorable he truly is, if he will tell you the truth as I have."
"Why, Momma? Why would he kill your brother? Why would he let the bears go when they would only kill me?" Sesshomaru asked, pulling away and demanding the information. His golden eyes glowed, fiery and fierce.
Shiroiahana smiled sadly, bitterly. She touched Sesshomaru's cheek. "Your father wants to impress you with his mercy. He wants to influence you and your behavior. He wants you to doubt what I have to say, but I only want you to know the truth. I only want you to be safe, Sesshomaru. Lord Inutaisho wants you to believe I am the cruel one, because I will not love him, and I would not have let those bears escape. I would have torn them apart to make them pay for what they did to you."
It was the truth. Shiroihana did not care that the bears Inutaisho had spared had nothing to do with the attack by Keikan on Sesshomaru. She wanted every bear she saw dead for that night when Sesshomaru had come to her, shaking, covered in blood. The scent of it was as precious and intimate as her own blood on the night of Sesshomaru's birth, or of her brother's death.
Sesshomaru stared into her face gravely. "I would have killed the bears too, Momma. I do not think you are cruel—but I can't understand. Why would Chichiue kill your brother? Why do I have to avenge him?"
Shiroihana struggled, trying not to cry herself. She touched the crescent moon on her son's forehead tenderly. "Your father was jealous. So jealous. I know you don't understand, but I don't either, Sesshomaru. You cannot avenge your uncle now. You must promise me you will not say anything about vengeance to your father. He cannot know that I have said this—or he could kill me. Do you understand, Sesshomaru? You must not say anything to your father about avenging your uncle."
"I promise, Momma!" Sesshomaru said, squeaking. He blinked away the fresh tears that had come on when Shiroihana said that Inutaisho could kill her if Sesshomaru broke the promise. "But can I ask him why he did it?"
"Yes, but only that. Sesshomaru, he may lie to you. You must not listen. Do you understand?"
"I do," Sesshomaru said, nodding.
Shiroihana spent the next several days watching her son and her husband warily. Sesshomaru astounded her, playing almost as if nothing was wrong, but he watched for her constantly. Their gazes locked across long empty halls and meaning, tension, passed between mother and son. When Inutaisho playfully wrestled his son down and pinned him, Sesshomaru panicked, clawing and crying out in fear. Inutaisho always withdrew with a perplexed, almost wounded expression. The relationship between father and son cooled as Sesshomaru viewed his father with wary eyes, constantly recalling his mother's warning.
It was the very first step in Sesshomaru's education on controlling emotion, on cementing the impenetrable mask of cold, unreadable resolve. His mother was a rock in his life, but he had quickly grasped at Kuenai, Daken, and Inutaisho, trusting them with the natural innocent love of a young pup. Now that naivety was shattered, vanished for good. His mother's word had no equal.
He thought of asking Inutaisho about his uncle often but never did. He had his mother's permission, even her encouragement to ask Inutaisho for the truth, but he did not doubt his mother's words. Inutaisho's mercy stories made no sense to him, only irritated or hurt him. Not for the first time he realized that chichiue and his mother were peaceable with one another, but not comfortable. They did not play with him together, they did not often speak. They did not share meals.
With the socially-aware cleverness that should not have awakened inside of him for several more years, Sesshomaru began to see adult complexities. He doubted his father and feared for his mother. When he felt especially close to his father, during play, or with a lesson, or when Inutaisho smiled at him or told him stories, Sesshomaru rejoiced at the attention of this strong, powerful male—his father who shared his scent, his blood—and then felt guilty if he caught a glimpse of his mother in the hallway or thought of her in passing.
It was difficult, painful, to constantly pull back from his father, to reevaluate him, to wonder about him and how he could have let bear cubs escape him, but had killed Sesshomaru's uncle. Thought he did not have a brother and could not really understand Shiroihana's pain, Sesshomaru did not have to think hard about how deeply it would grieve him to lose his mother. When he imagined life without knowing she was there, Sesshomaru always felt the intrusion of unwelcome, childish tears and a pain in his chest, a heaviness, as if he were going to die from the inside out.
Over time, however, his mother's warning lessened in severity. It was like living with a poisonous snake or spider, handling it every day, learning its moods and habits. Years passed, decades passed and Inutaisho did not strike, did not bite. He yelled when Sesshomaru got out of control, he occasionally smacked, scratched, or thumped his son in practice sessions where the fighting could become sloppy and extreme, but never outright dangerous. Sesshomaru learned and grew, he ate heartily and slept, and he developed a wary trust of his father, regarding him as powerful and unpredictable, a force like fire.
The mood between his parents developed and changed over the years. By the time Sesshomaru reached his 50s they had mellowed, settling into a lukewarm partnership.
Sesshomaru was old enough to understand, by his twenties, that these two unlikely creatures had combined physically, through sex, to create him. He also realized that they still engaged in such an activity. The thought both intrigued and disgusted him—more the latter than the former. He wondered at their capacity to behave so strangely. He had only a partial understanding of why two people, male or female, would join together in such a brutish, bizarre act. Kuenai had given him a brief outline of it as a necessary process to create new and original life. It was almost universal, inescapable for the continuity of life.
"Then it is like eating," Sesshomaru said. It was not a question, he felt confident that that was the answer.
Kuenai sat across from Sesshomaru in the small enclosed space, the classroom where each morning for decades, Sesshomaru had endured a variety of lessons. From the art of war, to reading and writing, to literature, and to behavioral and cultural lessons. At 25, a traditional age among inuyoukai that corresponded to a human's 13 or 14th year of life, Kuenai first explained reproduction in a very dry, matter of fact way. Sesshomaru had not been allowed to learn more than the very basics then, there had been no questions either. But at 50, another traditional age, Sesshomaru was almost fully mature in height, though not in weight and was allowed to dig deeper into the subject.
It was not a hard subject between them. Kuenai took his role as educator very seriously. Sesshomaru, like all young inuyoukai males, needed to be prepared when the first sexual urges crept into his body and mind. Females were more docile and did not require the same level of instruction as early or as often. They reached sexual maturity faster than their male counterparts, but tended to find controlling themselves much easier.
"It is somewhat like hunger, yes." Kuenai nodded thoughtfully. It was hot in the room and he used a metallic fan, gold-pleated, to fan himself. "But you will not die if you do not engage in the act. Like eating it is often more satisfying with a partner—or two." Kuenai chuckled.
"Two?" Sesshomaru asked, confused. "It is a biologic imperative. I do not enjoy eating more or less with the presence of another." He was always very careful to speak carefully and intelligently with Kuenai. They were friends, having spent so long together, but even so, Sesshomaru saw enormous value in mastering communication. He would be eloquent, he would be succinct.
"You do not yet understand the desire," Kuenai told him. "You are yet too young. There is much to learn. Sexuality comes usually with the first emergence of your true form. Your inner power as a youkai has not ripened. You are only a bud on the plum tree."
"I am not eager to understand this subject," Sesshomaru admitted.
Kuenai let out a sharp laugh, a sort of bark. His face was bright with merriment.
Sesshomaru fought to hide his disgust at his teacher's reaction. "What is so amusing?"
"Oh Sesshomaru—you do not know what you are saying, but there is no point in wishing it away. It will come. You will learn to appreciate it at least. Dare I say—I think you will wonder how you ever existed without it. Besides, if you did not engage in this activity you would have no way of carrying on your bloodline. I know that would make both Lord Inutaisho and Queen Shiroihana most unhappy."
For a moment the childish desire sprang into Sesshomaru's mind to confide in his teacher, to ask about his parents and their strange relationship. He had no true knowledge of how sex really worked between adults but there were enough stories in literature that he'd read by 50 to guess that it was supposedly about "love." The only "love" that Sesshomaru felt was for his mother. If he was being honest with himself he would have to add Chichiue to that short list too. But although his parents would tolerate one another's presence, Sesshomaru knew that they did not feel comfortable, they did not choose each other. And yet they engaged freely in the act. Kuenai had said it did not kill inuyoukai if they did not have sex. It was not like starvation.
It frustrated Sesshomaru not to understand "love" and "sexuality." Or to comprehend his parents. As a child it had perplexed and disturbed him, now it became a weight or a pressure like choke a collar at his neck. He could not talk or ask about it—he had been silent this long, why change now? He doubted that his father would kill his mother as Shiroihana had suggested so long ago—but he did not, and could not understand them.
They were part of him, but so apart. So different. It made him angry, ready to tear apart some small creature, anything that got in his way.
"Don't trouble yourself over this, young lord," Kuenai said, reaching out to tentatively touch his ward. "You will understand—in time."
Kuenai was wrong. He never really did understand his parents. Sexuality, however, was another matter entirely.
At around the same time as Sesshomaru's second lesson on sexuality from Kuenai, Shiroihana and Inutaisho reached a turning point in their own relationship. They had never reconnected emotionally with one another, though from time to time they did share each other's bed. Inutaisho often left for one reason or another, for various periods of time. Shiroihana always suspected and expected that he would be unfaithful, but she had ceased caring.
Their only shared emotion was on Sesshomaru. Both parents beamed over their son, proud beyond words as he grew into his fuller stature. By 50 an inuyoukai would appear mostly mature, as tall as most adult humans. Sesshomaru was no different. He was still shorter than Inutaisho, and lankier, lacking the musculature of an adult, but otherwise Sesshomaru could almost pass as mature. In scent, however, other inuyoukai knew he was physically still a boy.
For the first time Inutaisho began taking Sesshomaru with him on short excursions. He tentatively allowed Sesshomaru to wield two of his famous swords. Sounga and Tetsusaiga. Sesshomaru held the weapons and sensed the demonic power inside them, but he was immature, unable to use them at all. When they returned to Kagetsu palace Inutaisho left swiftly for the winter. Sesshomaru casually mentioned his first touch of both swords during a meal, unable to hide his pride that Inutaisho had allowed him to hold such powerful, magnificent weapons. Shiroihana was not excited to hear about it and showed little enthusiasm.
"You must have your own sword," she said. "Not one of his. You are worthy of more than an heirloom."
"Chichiue has three swords. I am sure one will become my own," Sesshomaru said, but the passion had left his voice. The dull mask of cordiality had replaced it. Shiroihana had successfully numbed his experience, his pride in the swords and his father's favor.
"Your father finds imaginary fault in you, Sesshomaru. He is unsatisfied. He demands another son from me." Shiroihana, being fully matured, was not hungry often and only drank some greenish-brown tea. She eyed her son next to her, the high set of his shoulders, the stiffness in his strong spine.
He was watching her critically. Shiroihana guessed that he was trying to fathom her words, unable to believe them.
Shiroihana was actually telling partial truth. Inutaisho did have a problem with Sesshomaru. Inutaisho had never expressed it to Shiroihana, but he had spoken to Kuenai and Daken about it, foolishly believing them to be loyal as well as tight-lipped. But both the sensei and the messenger had come to Shiroihana to report Inutaisho's odd complaints. As for Inutaisho's desire for another son—he was not afraid to ask Shiroihana for that. But Shiroihana enjoyed denying that request.
"Mother?" Sesshomaru asked. There was a small note of irritation and disbelief in his voice. He had never questioned her before and this reluctance disturbed Shiroihana. She had rarely mentioned Inutaisho's crime in recent decades, coming to trust Sesshomaru's cold mask and admire it. Now she saw that in spite of his outward control, Inutaisho had won over Sesshomaru, to some extent.
The thought horrified her.
"Lord Inutaisho believes you are stone. Immovable and cold. I believe it is only fitting for you because you were born in a bitter winter. Inutaisho holds some mysterious standard up against you and says that you have failed it. He sees fault in you only because you are closer to me in disposition than you are to him." That was Inutaisho's complaint to Kuenai and Daken, that Sesshomaru was cold, hard to read and connect with. He was respectful but constantly distant, much like Shiroihana.
"Ridiculous," Sesshomaru muttered, unable to hide his emotion.
Shiroihana reached over to her son's plate and speared some of the raw, bleeding meat from it with her claw. Red liquid oozed out underneath it. "Do not doubt me, Sesshomaru. You recall your uncle? Your namesake?"
"Yes," he murmured, watching the blood on the plate.
"Have you ever noticed that Lord Inutaisho does not often call you by name? He calls you son or heir. Does this seem odd to you?" she asked. Her claw pulled back from the meat, tearing out a small, raw chunk.
Sesshomaru was silent, still watching the meat and the plate, his mother's claw.
"You also recall the sacred task I have charged you with?" Shiroihana demanded. She drew the bloodied claw to her lips and licked at it delicately.
"To avenge most honorable Mother's younger brother."
"Yes," Shiroihana hissed, leaning closer to her son, speaking into his ear. "And in doing so you will wipe his dishonor and crimes clean. You will surpass him. Your uncle's soul can rest—and mine too, when I pass on."
"Mother is in no danger of passing on," Sesshomaru muttered. He sighed and frowned very briefly. "I do not understand your desires, Mother. Where exactly does Father find fault with me?"
"You do not believe what I've told you," Shiroihana said, withdrawing from him and feigning a sudden, intense sorrow.
Sesshomaru fell for it. "Mother—I am sorry…I did not mean…"
"If you have any doubts about me, Sesshomaru, I ask you to be open with them. I have learned that your father is displeased by way of both Kuenai and Daken. Speak with them. You will find I am nothing but truthful." She held her head high, thrust her chin out. "I am not like your father. I have nothing but admiration and love for you."
"Father is not the creature you think he is, Mother." He lowered his head, almost slouching. "I do not understand what lies between you, but I know you would do better to—"
"Sesshomaru!" Shiroihana interrupted, laying a hand over her chest. "What nonsense is this? You are in no place to advise me. You are not only hundreds of years younger than I, you are also my underling. I am your Queen. Before you are the heir to the Western Lands, you are my heir. You must be obedient."
"Forgive me for questioning you," Sesshomaru said, but the words were hollow, dry, unfeeling, almost insincere. "But I cannot believe Father is so unhappy with me that he wants another son as a replacement."
Shiroihana let out a sharp, bitter laugh. Sesshomaru turned and glared unrestrainedly at her. "Mother?"
"You do not understand at all," Shiroihana said. "He is not looking to replace you, only to prevent you from surpassing him. If there are two sons there will be nothing but competition and fighting between you both. Neither of you will ever surpass him then. Or perhaps he intends to turn his other son against you, to stop you." She paused, glowering. "I will never allow that. I have one child, one son, one bloodline. There must never be another."
This had the desired effect. Sesshomaru closed his eyes and bowed, his long white hair, a full nearly adult mane of it, fell to the floor in a silky mass. "Most honorable Mother, I am forever in your debt for such wisdom."
"Yes," Shiroihana said, smiling with triumph. "And don't you ever forget it." When he sat upright again she embraced him, relieved that once more she had set a wedge between father and son, chilled their relationship by controlling, manipulating Sesshomaru.
She had almost completely made up the plot involving a second son. She knew of no such plans by Inutaisho, only that he intended to have more than one son. It didn't matter whether she guessed with any accuracy or not—Sesshomaru had believed it.
All was well in Shiroihana's world. Sesshomaru was hers.
Endnote: Woot! I have returned! Sorry for my absence. Still planning my wedding, writing on a whole lot of different projects. I have completely absolutely LOVED making this view into the creation of Sess. It may not be too far from the truth either. I keep forgetting but if you watch the 3rd movie with English subs (or whatever language) Sess is just preoccupied with "defeating" his own father! What? WTF? Why? Everyone says "Well they were close" but somehow I doubt it. Now it is a different culture, and in the "Tales of the Otori" series a son's duty often involved "releasing" his father into death. Maybe that is closer to the truth. Maybe when Sess says "defeat" Inutaisho, he only means like overcome in battle, not kill. But still, it seems counter-intuitive. Why would a loving father and son have this sort of understanding? I ran into a great youtube video that suggested (via song) that Sess was REALLY pissed with his dad for going off and dying before he could "defeat" him and in doing so surpass him. Instead he's left with Inuyasha, and he just does NOT compare, he's not a suitable enemy. So Sess remains untested and he especially hates Inuyasha for his weakness, for the fact that he will never measure up to their father, so Sess can't just "defeat" Inuyasha and "surpass" their father that way either. I suppose for one obsessed with power, that would be maddening.
But basically I feel bad for our Sess. I do. Maybe he does just want to defeat Inutaisho to surpass him, but he doesn't seem to want to do the same with his mother (who seemed very powerful. I would love to see her in action.) But yeah, so what's the deal here? That's why I'm writing, having fun, answering those questions.
Hope you are enjoying it too!
So Questions we answered this time! Sesshomaru's comment about "defeating" Inutaisho in the third Inuyasha movie, as well as the stance between father and son in the beginning there where they may be about to fight (ever notice how Sess backs off and looks upward as his dad transforms. He always seemed to me about ready to fight.) and Inutaisho's comment about "will you kill me, your own father?" So by way of the past and Sesshomaru's own name, I set up some reasoning behind that. But ultimately we know Sess fails. Ouch, what a thorn in his side.