Exhilaration
By Miss Kagura
Chapter Twenty — Unexpected
"Sure."
"What? Stop joking around with me, you mangy piece of shit!" Inuyasha shouted at Kouga, who had just agreed to enter into an alliance with them.
Kouga looked from one brother to another, deciding that Sesshoumaru had to be the 'reasonable' one of the two, since it was quite possibly impossible to be as impossibly unreasonable as Inuyasha. That thought made the wolf's brain cramp, but the point stood. "I think that you should be a little nicer to new allies until they become used to the fact that you're a dick," he suggested.
"Both of you! Watch your language around our son," Ayame growled from the back of the den.
Kouga gritted his teeth, thinking he was about to get jostled by Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru, but instead he was met with sympathetic eyes. "Not a word," he growled.
"You have a pup?" Inuyasha asked.
Ayame bounced the red-haired boy on one hip and brought him to the cave entrance. "Say 'Hi!'" she said.
The boy shyly hid his face in his mother's shoulder, and Inuyasha leaned down, as if hypnotized. "Hi!" he gently cooed. The pup turned and peeked at Inuyasha with one eye, and then shyly waved at him.
Sesshoumaru rammed his elbow into Inuyasha's ribs. "Back to the issue of war…"
"I've got a son, he's just a few days old," Inuyasha offhandedly remarked.
Kouga took the boy from Ayame. "What the hel---ck heck are you doing out here then? Ayame would have cut off my balls if I went off to fight when this guy was a newborn." He rubbed his head after it was slapped. "What? 'Balls' is not a bad word. Kids play with balls!"
"Baaaaalls," the boy said.
The female growled some threat and took the boy back, leaving the three men to reflect on the obvious changes they had undergone. Inuyasha, who was previously the most detached, awkward creature on the face of the planet, had shown a certain amount of glee over the presence of a pup. Kouga had been punished by his mate, just as Sesshoumaru or Inuyasha would have been by their mates if they misbehaved in front of a baby.
Even Sesshoumaru felt silly for a few moments. There stood three warriors, prideful fighters who never let anyone insult their pride or body…except their mates. Two years before, any meeting between the three would have been insults and testosterone, steel and stupidity, but now, they were mellowed out by sex, strong women, and fatherhood.
"I…that asshole Hoshi tried to kill my son. I had to send them away to be safe," Inuyasha nearly whined.
Kouga sympathized for once. It was something any father would understand, and on that level, he and Inuyasha saw eye-to-eye. Hoshi tried to kill a pup. "Like I said before you started screaming, you've got the wolves behind you. Just tell me what you need."
They decided to branch out from Kouga's den on the northwest coast. The first large human city they came to presented a real challenge. It was a fortress, and there was a new lord. They were brought into the main hall to see him and one Akitoki Houjou threw his arms up in the air. "Inuyasha! It's been quite some time. How are you?"
"Keh, good. Are you still clumsy?" he shot back.
"We've come seeking an alliance," Sesshoumaru interrupted, wondering if Inuyasha had any idea what the word 'tact' meant.
"For Inuyasha? My family owes him quite a debt. He's helped us several times. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't come to my rescue," Akitoki said. "The Houjou Family stands behind you fully."
From there, it was a village Sesshoumaru saved from bandits, then to a shrine Inuyasha had saved by killing a monster, and on to a den of bats, where a hanyou named Shiori and several hundred bat youkai had been saved from after several hundred years of oppression.
That night, Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha were sitting alone around a fire when a conversation about their popularity started.
"I thought that would be harder, but everyone seems like they like us." Inuyasha said.
Sesshoumaru arched a brow. "Tell me, something, Inuyasha. Was every village headman's house haunted by evil spirits? Perhaps there is some sort of youkai that is drawn to comfortable beds and good food." he said.
"Miroku did it so we could eat well and he could ogle rich girls," Inuyasha barked.
They ate in silence for awhile, and then settled down to rest.
"You know what the weird thing is? Some of these people I barely remember. These fights didn't mean anything to us," Inuyasha said.
Sesshoumaru nodded. After he became attached to Rin, he disposed of any bandits he came across. It was no big deal, usually about one second of his time per bandit, if that. The real affect of that was becoming apparent; for every bandit he killed he had saved all the people that bandit would have killed. Japan became safer, more stable, and a better place for humans to live.
"You know none of them seemed to care that you were a hanyou," he noted.
Inuyasha nodded, almost in disbelief. The world that had rejected him as a child had accepted him as an adult and he was so busy trying to prove something to everyone that he didn't even realize he had won. He had friends. He had allies. There were people that would go to war for him, and it was for no other reason than they believed in him and trusted him with their very lives.
He had learned a lot about humans over the years, mostly from Kagome. They weren't born prejudiced, and most weren't cruel by nature. Misunderstandings and misinformation were behind quite a lot of the suffering they had come across. When the villagers had been ready to kill Jinenji, for instance, they could have killed Jinenji, Jinenji could have killed them, and either way, the ending would have been bad. Kagome refused to allow it though, and pretty much force-fed everyone the truth.
The villagers thanked Jinenji and helped him rebuilt a hut, and Jinenji had the courage to help them when they were sick. Everyone won. A happy ending for a hanyou, something unheard of even a few years before, was as simple as helping everyone realize that hanyou could be good or evil, just like humans or youkai could.
Kagome had told him a thousand times that uneducated people were naturally more bigoted because truth was simply out of their reach. Given the chance, and the capability to understand that hanyou weren't always bad, most people had chosen to accept him, even look up to him in many cases.
Sesshoumaru found an odd sense of relief as he stumbled across Japan and into the members of Inuyasha's shockingly populous network of willing allies. There was a time when being a hanyou was a death sentence. Either humans or youkai would ensure that hanyou were killed, but things had changed. Inuyasha had changed the way the world behaved toward hanyou and his own hanyou pups would benefit from it.
Inuyasha was passionate and angry and extremely willing to be the champion of those slighted by the world. He had never really been cheated or screwed over the way Inuyasha typically was, so he never felt the compulsion to go help someone for the simple reason that they are helpless. It was admirable, but probably also a sign of mental disease leftover from Inuyasha's turbulent childhood.
"These people are the reason we have to do this. If it were just about power, I think I could just walk away and not care. It takes so little of us to make a big difference though," Inuyasha said.
"Almost nothing," Sesshoumaru said in agreement.
Being a lord was about power, right?
Sesshoumaru sank deep into thought, trying to find some way to work what he had learned that day to his advantage. As long as he had been Sesshoumaru, Lord of the West, he hadn't made many allies, and allies made up a huge portion of a leader's total power. As far as he was concerned, alliances were about posturing and paperwork and selfish intentions.
It felt strange to have people volunteer friendship and support for the simple fact that they had faith in him and his brother. It had nothing to do with paperwork, or self-serving interests. The allies they were picking up were genuine and completely committed.
People wanted to throw their support behind a leader who wouldn't send their sons to die in border disputes. They wanted lords who weren't interested in taking over Japan, or engaging in the war that was exhausting and crippling the whole country. Most people wanted the very things Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha wanted — a safe place to live and raise families, food, clean water, and peace.
Mateship and fatherhood was molding them into the type of leader everyone wanted to live under.
China
The first night, she fell.
The second night, she jumped.
The third night, he was waiting for her on the other side of the windowsill.
Rin laughed when the boy caught her and brought her down to the beach. "Are you going to tell me your name?" she asked.
"No," he laughed.
She laughed and sat down on a rock, watching as he took out two pipes and handed her one.
"I'm being shipped off to the war front in the east tomorrow, so I figured I'd get you something before I go, since I'll probably end up dead like everyone else," he said as he lit her pipe with a shaking hand.
Rin puffed it and coughed. "What is this?"
"This will make all of our troubles go away, just for a night. I am afraid of dying, and you're afraid of living. Opium doesn't care either way," he explained.
Rin frowned as she puffed again, waiting for the magic he promised. They talked about nothing as they slowly climbed an invisible ladder into drug-induced euphoria. Her tongue became loose, as did his, and as promised, the world became something else as the poison in her blood convinced her everything was okay. When she got cold, she didn't have sense enough to not to crawl into his lap like Sesshoumaru allowed her to do.
He didn't have sense enough to push her off, and some part of his mind made a dishonorable argument in favor of encouraging her. "My best friend, I grew up with him. We went on our first tour of duty together," he said.
Rin turned so she was facing him, her legs straddling his waist. He was so beautiful, even more than Sesshoumaru to her eyes.
"We were fighting, side-by-side, and this bastard turtle youkai fired a cannonball through his stomach. At first, I thought he had been missed because he was still standing." His voice cracked, and Rin felt fingers squeeze her thighs as he continued, "Then I saw he had this huge hole in his gut, and the cannonball had crushed his insides onto the top of my foot. I see it every time I close my eyes," he confessed.
"Dying isn't scary," Rin whispered onto his lips.
He swallowed hard and tried to convince his body not to react to the fact that there was a pretty girl sitting on his lap. His want to die honorably weighed more heavily than his want to not die a virgin. She was too cute, too sweet, and too good for what he wanted to do to her.
"What happened to you?" he asked.
"I died. I'm still dead. I keep waiting to feel alive, but…Life doesn't seem to find me as easily as Death," she said.
The heat, the foreign need knotting her stomach as she sat in the boy's lap had returned. She ran her fingers through his black hair, and looked into his bright blue cat eyes. Something instinctive told her what it was that her body asked for, and an image of the bandits that killed her family came to mind, rutting her tiny little body until she couldn't walk anymore. It would be different if this boy did it. He could make her feel alive. She didn't even care if he hurt her; she just wanted to feel the vibrant clarity and emotion that living people felt. Rin wanted to feel the heat she felt when he touched her to consume her whole and burn away the darkness.
"You can make me feel alive again," Rin said.
"This would dishonor us both," he said.
Rin pushed her body closer to his, unintentionally grinding against the arousal he was trying to tame. "Please!"
He didn't know if it was the way her hair swung, or the desperate tone of her voice, or the motion of her body against his cock that broke his self-control. She repeated the action and he groaned, allowing his smooth fingertips to wander over her young body. "In the water. It'll hide the scent for the most part. If people knew about this, they'd say bad things about you."
Rin walked to the water, watching the waves move in and out. She pulled the green obi and let it float to the ground like a ribbon lost in the wind. She wasn't sure why she wasn't embarrassed, although any adult would have easily linked the lowered inhibitions with the drugs that clouded her sensibilities. They only kept her from what she needed. She lay down in the sand and let the cool water washed over her.
He knelt in between her knees. Rin closed her eyes tightly when she got a glimpse of his cock, and clenched her fists in the sand as she felt pressure against the peculiar slippery fluid she had found on herself the other times she had seen him. He was fumbling around clumsily, and then thrust in completely, clamping his hand over her mouth when she inhaled deeply to scream.
"I'm sorry!" he apologized.
There was no foreplay, and no experience between the two of them. They were foolish, untried kids who were trying to find some way to escape from the crippling fear in the safety of their odd attraction.
The darker part of Rin's mind was wiser for her experiences with Sesshoumaru and realized that being enslaved to what her soul craved wasn't that bad at all. She waited years for Sesshoumaru to admit he loved her like a daughter, and during those years, everyone said she was a fool for believing in him.
Discussions and lessons she learned over the years had proven that her instincts never lead her astray. When she peeked around a tree to a wounded taiyoukai, her instincts said not to be afraid. She loved Sesshoumaru then, because he brought out that intuition and helped her find herself after the tragedy of losing her family. She went hungry for him, she was beaten for him, and then, when her life was on the line, she ran to him.
Rin had been overcome by darkness then, when she was much younger. She couldn't speak, she couldn't think, and the things she dreamt about would frighten a grown man. She felt like she had been beaten down, and everyone in the village had written her off as a lost cause, including herself. Her soul felt the same way now. Dark, cold, and crippled. This time, she knew what she needed — that strangely primal stirring of her nature, the revival of the girl that she knew she was.
Rin wasn't a child anymore. She knew any number of boys could make her feel the heat that was spreading through her core, down her back, and into her stomach. Their attention could distract her, making her more lost and more frightened when it was gone and she was alone again. Only this boy could touch her soul, and she knew it just as she had known that Sesshoumaru could before.
She didn't want to disappoint her father, her Sesshoumaru-sama, but she knew he understood her. They shared in many a dark conversation since she had come back. He told her how she had saved his soul as much as he had hers when they met. He told her of how Tenseiga awoke for the first time because of her. He told her he too felt the connection then, even if he didn't understand if for a very long time.
They fell into an unsteady rhythm, caused by a boy who was terrified of hurting the girl or finishing before she 'came,' although he wasn't sure he would know. He really didn't know much about what it meant other than what he had heard from other men. Something was going to happen, and he couldn't finish until it did.
He touched her with hands that had never touched a female in that manner before, and made accidental discoveries. The places he liked to touch she liked to be touched. When his middle finger found the raised bud in between her folds, she arched her back and moaned into his ear.
Perhaps the instinctual tug on her heart was only one half of the bond? She wondered if the boy also felt what she did. Rin was sure he did, since it was clear from his behavior that he was neither used to being close or touching others.
He thrust into her, burning the image of her body, her voice, her silky skin, and her hot sheathe into his memory. She was amazing, and he was sure she would haunt his dreams for years, maybe forever. Thick brown hair, big brown eyes, and her desperate cries nearly drove him to embarrassment.
Rin felt like she was slowly waking up as he drew extreme pleasure from her body. Death never felt so hot, or so amazing. She felt like her life force was coiling up in her belly, and when it was set free, she'd spring to life. It felt like it took an eternity, until he started to rub her clit. Her body demanded more and she clawed into his back. "Harder…please…" she begged.
At the blistering center of her soul, under layers of lust and need, there was something unbelievably pure and untamed about her connection to his boy. And for that, she would not regret this choice, no matter how foolish it seemed to everyone else.
His hips jarred into her with desperate fervor and Rin's world came crashing down as the tension was released. She couldn't see, or think, and her body clenched down on the boy's erection, causing him to cry out as if he were in pain and reach his own peak. One set of his claws scratched the back of one of her shoulders, but she hardly noticed.
He collapsed in the sand on top of her, panting. "If I live, I swear to every god I can't remember the name of right now that I'll find you," he promised.
Rin smiled gently, listening to their hearts pounding. She looked into his eyes and knew he meant it. It was a promise that there would be more life, more pleasure, more reasons to feel as good as she did right then. It was a reason to live that didn't involve making other people feel better because they loved her.
She gave him her kimono and he gave her his silk shirt. He carefully took her to the windowsill, and told her to take a long bath before she was caught. "Goodbye, Love," he said, kissing her on the cheek.
"Don't forget me," Rin whispered.
She watched him leapt back down to the sand and whispered something else. One word. "Rin." She knew he heard her because he turned his head and smiled at her, and then continued on his sandy path away from her.
She turned to get her things ready for a bath, but ran right into someone else. "Abi," she said, identifying the person who had just caught her.
Abi stared at her with wide eyes. Her nostrils flared out in recognition and she covered Rin's mouth and dragged her down the hall to the empty bathing room. She locked the door and pushed Rin into the large hot public bath. "Rin, have you lost your mind?"
"Are you going to tell Sesshoumaru-sama?" she timidly asked.
"That his little Rin smokes opium and had sex with a taiyoukai prince? No, I think he'd string me up by my own intestines and that doesn't sound all that appealing right now," Abi sputtered.
"He's a prince? What's his name?" Rin asked.
When one runs into a twelve-year-old girl who smells of semen, desire, and opium, there are things that can make the situation worse, like the words 'What's his name?'
Abi sat down at the edge of the bath and stared down at Rin. "His name is Sun. I met him the day after we got here. He's my nephew and the heir to all of this."
Rin blinked a few times and ducked her head under the water, swimming along the bottom of the bath. She surfaced right in front of Abi and said, "He's a prince? Is that why he can do the Wind Scar? It looks like a giant cat scratch, so that means Tessaiga stole it from a cat youkai, right?"
"The Wind Scar was taken from one of my brothers," Abi said.
"Can you do it?" Rin asked.
Abi shook her head. "Cat youkai are one of the species of youkai where the males are much stronger than the females. I can't even smell it. That boy that had his hands all over you will probably be as strong as Sesshoumaru when he grows up. Stop trying to change the subject."
"Do you think I did a stupid thing?" Rin asked.
The cat snorted. Kids wouldn't be kids if they didn't do stupid things, would they?
"That depends on why you did it. Most of the reasons kids have sex are stupid," Abi said.
Rin sighed, trying to find a way to explain what she had felt. "I can't explain it. I don't think anyone would understand."
"Of course not," Abi sarcastically spat.
Her hair moved out of the way and a fresh wound on the back of Rin's shoulder caught Abi's attention.
Rin had been marked.
Young people were generally stupid. Everyone knew this, as everyone was either young and stupid, or old and wise after being young and stupid. This was exceptional though, beyond the realm of normal idiocy. Rin had been marked by someone she had known three days. "I'll be back later. Don't get out of the water for at least another hour. You reek of him," she said.
She stalked carefully across the grounds to the scent that had saturated Rin.
Sun was sitting on his bed, hugging his legs when Abi opened the window and crawled in.
"You idiot! You marked Rin! What the hell is wrong with you?" Abi hissed.
He buried his head in his hand. "I don't know what happened. It was like instinct or something. Grandfather is sending me to the eastern front tomorrow, I'll probably die anyway."
"You're going to die, that's for sure," Abi said.
"If I live through the rest of the war, what happens?" Sun asked.
"Of all the humans in the world to do that to, you picked the only one who was adopted by someone who can and will kill you," Abi said.
Sun rubbed his forehead and said, "I ruined my life."
Abi slapped him on the cheek. "You aren't allowed to say things like that. Rin is fragile and you just made a lot of her decisions in life for her. Don't tell anyone about this, not even your father. I was told you had some semblance of common sense!"
"Not around her. She's amazing," he mumbled. "We could keep it a secret, right?"
"You know of Sesshoumaru, the Inu Taiyoukai?" Abi asked.
"Mean, possessive, cruel, cold, reportedly most powerful youkai in the entire world," he said, recalling something he'd been taught in school.
"Also, Rin's adopted father," Abi said.
Sun stomach somehow turned even harder, nearly making him vomit. "He's going to kill me. What am I going to do?"
But why were kids stupid?
Was it hormonal? Abi made a mental note to ask Kagome if the scientists of her time had discovered what made teenagers act like idiots. Kagome was a prime example of a stupid teenager. She traveled from her safe, good world to the dangerous Sengoku Jidai for a pair of twitching dog ears, and then had an affair with Sesshoumaru.
"I'll convince your father send you to Japan as part of the alliance I negotiated with your grandfather. You'll be working right under Sesshoumaru. You have to make him like you enough not to kill you when he finds out what you did," Abi said.
"So, befriend him? How hard can it be?" Sun asked.
"Trying to make friends with Sesshoumaru is like hugging a porcupine," Abi warned. "Then, while you're there, you're going to relinquish your claim to the throne. You know what will happen to Rin if other people find out their heir mated a human," Abi said.
Maybe kids were stupid because everyone has some amount of stupidity sealed up in them and it leaks out at the same rate as hormones?
It was dawn by the time everything was set in place, and Abi returned to her room. She picked up the baby and bounced him softly. "You're not ever going to do something like this to your mother, right? You're a prince too, and if you want to mate with a human, that's your choice, but please, please learn her name first."
Katsu yawned and squeezed his mother's finger, and then demanded food.
Kagome sat up and yawned. "He woke up while you were gone, but all he needed was a change," she said.
Kagome furrowed her brows in confusion when Abi muttered something about 'name first, mate later,' and smiled when she saw Rin sleeping on the other side of the bed. "Look at Rin. She hasn't slept that peacefully since she came back from being dead."
Rin sighed in contentment and rolled over, away from Kagome's voice.
Abi didn't tell Kagome what had taken place, or even hint that she knew anything about Rin had changed at all. The three claw marks on her back — the mark of the Wind Scar, of her mate — had probably saved her from slipping into more dangerous forms of escapism. Everyone knew a girl that craved physical attention to dull the pain of something tragic, or the one that became lost in a world of opium and booze.
As foolish and reckless as what they had done was, it gave Rin something she had failed to find in all of them, even in Sesshoumaru. At some point, being raped as a child, watching her family massacred, and dying three times washed away whatever childhood she had left. Lots of humans her age were married, and many even had children, so it wasn't completely unheard of to have someone her age interested in sex, which Abi knew from once being her age many years before.
The door barely made a sound as Kagome walked out and down the hall to the fortune teller. She had spent the last two days making a list of all the people she knew that had taken numerous innocent lives. She told herself it didn't matter, that a person wouldn't be evil because they were in another life, but she had done so many of the things that Kikyou did.
What if her baby was Onigumo's reincarnation? Or Ryuukossei? Or one of the Shichinintai?
She entered the black room and sat across from the fortune teller. "Is my pup going to be a killer?"
"A killer of what? Innocents? Youkai? Humans?" he asked.
"Innocent people," Kagome said.
She held her breath, and gritted her teeth together, waiting for the answer. All the evil people she knew, except Naraku, theoretically had mothers. They came into the world somehow, and she didn't doubt that at least that one person loved them. Her mother had told her that mothers love their kids no matter what they do.
The fortune teller held his open hands out, and gestured for Kagome to press her hands against his. "A truly evil person…will never reincarnate."
Kagome saw a flash of light and a silver-haired boy with blue eyes and pointed dog ears. She knew the face though, and she knew the metallic song of his weapon.
She put a hand on her stomach and gasped.
"Kohaku."
Please Review!
Chapter Twenty-One — Instincts
Distance makes all of them confront instincts long buried under learned behavior. Is instinct something that makes a person truer to themselves? Or does it simply negate reason? A tale of a battle won by instinct to follow!
Author's Note:
I am well aware that the issue of age and sex is a serious issue with this chapter. In context, this is the Feudal Era, and most girls were engaged, married, or had kids around 11-16. Rin is clearly more mature than the average person her age, and in the case of Sesshoumaru, she has already proven that she willingly obeys the calls of her heart, no matter how strange they seem. She was a tiny little girl and he had never spoke a kind word to her when she unapologetically took a beating from the villagers because she had taken care of him. I apologize if this offended anyone. I can understand the issue being cause for concern if Rin was with someone much older, or incapable of consenting, but at least within the context of this story, she wasn't coerced or too immature to make such a decision.
The physical act of having sex is, in the best of instances, a reflection of emotional consummation. That level of emotional intimacy can be more dangerous and blissful than physical intimacy. A woman's soul is just as delicate as her body, in my opinion, and to be capable of trusting someone else with both means the woman is responsible enough to make that decision.
People make decisions that other people don't understand all the time. When Rin blindly followed Sesshoumaru, I think readers neglected the emotional risks of her doing so because they all wanted it to work well. Rin is one who follows her instincts instantly and completely and I consider it one of her strong points.
Special thanks to Silverinomiko, blueishadow, ArizoneBay, Kibi.s2, kagome past and present, darklove, sayuri-girl, Kagome357, elvenarcher516, LadySafire, Arodwen, aimdiscord, TheMikoShivae, Britt-sempai, SessyLover180, flirtymiyu, Amadoni, juusan'ya, llebreknit, sesshyandkags4ever, Dominik Journot, and kittyb78!