CHAPTER 6: ALL MY DARKER MOOD

"I bade men tell me which in brief,
Which is fairer, flower or leaf.
They did have the wit to say,
Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bar, leaves and bark,
To lean against and hear in the dark.
Petals I may have once pursued.
Leaves are all my darker moon."
(Leaves Compared with Flowers, Robert Frost)

As he walks away, adamantly telling himself that he is not storming away from a conversation with two young, human, females. He is a taiyoukai. He is Lord of the Western Lands. He was absolutely, definitely not bested by the large doe eyes of his ward and the crackling attitude of his current houseguest.

But how dare that woman lead that insolate, half-witted, idiotic, prince of wolves to his castle. Did she honestly think that he would do as she bid? That he'd go bounding off to Inuyasha, someone who he hated, would tell him that he'd dropped the priestess off with Sesshomaru, someone who they both despised, and that would be the end of it? Sesshomaru was under no illusions that they would team up and come to retrieve her jointly, but he could expect that they would show up, probably one behind the other, in singular efforts to rescue her from him and preserve her honor.

That would be just perfect.

An opportunity all but falls into his lap for him to restore both his face and his title, all before Inuyasha getting wind of how close he is to inheriting the western lands, and that miko had to go and ruin it with the idiotic faith she had in others. His brother was going to take one look at the dilapidated state of what had once been such a grand and imposing sight, and his small, little brain was going to connect the dots, add two and two together. He would not know exactly what had caused this, but he would know it stemmed from Sesshomaru's power, from his place as Lord, and he would attack. Whether or not he wanted to rule would be irrelevant to him. Inuyasha would want to defeat him just to say that he had.

To add insult to his already numerous and apparent injuries, Rin had taken it upon herself to place the miko in quarters she very well knew were off limits. The fact that it was probably the only clean suite in the entire castle that wasn't currently inhabited was besides the point. Sesshomaru, through seemingly imposing and commanding, actually placed very few rules and restrictions on his ward. She was free to roam the grounds as she wished, came and went at her own discretion, ate when she was hungry, slept when she was tired. As long as she remained clean and dressed, and did not venture off the grounds without Jaken, Sesshomaru had little regard for placing limitations on her life.

But one of the few rules in place here was that his room, the adjacent room, and his primary work room on the opposite end of the hall, were off limits. They were off limits to staff. They were off limits to his ward. So they were clearly off limits to guests.

Though there is a plus side to the absolute aggravation of seeing someone in those rooms again. Kagome was enchanted with the suite – the look on her face as she took in the carvings, painstakingly carved over centuries, and the artwork, a continual work in progress over the course of the previous inhabitant's life, was full of astonishment and awe. He did not understand her words when she spoke of it, but he understood the tone: wonder.

It was possible that staying in those quarters, rather than staying someone which would have been covered in dust and grime and would have had to be cleaned for her use, might endear her to him in a small way. So, though his heart and mind loathed the thought of it, perhaps some good would come of those rooms being used once more.

It was a much smaller problem than the issue of impending visitation from two mongrels he had not the slightest wish to see.

Perhaps he could convince the girl to act like she was not here when they showed up?

No, those two upstarts would probably raze the castle to the ground in an effort to convince themselves that she was no longer there. Or to insure Sesshomaru wasn't hiding her body in a vacant room.

Well, he'd deal with that problem when it unsurprisingly arrived on his doorstep with blustery words, shouted threats, and false bravado.

His hurried steps start to slow as the ire slowly melts from him, until he's come to a halt at the end of the long hall, near his office, where he concealed himself for much of the last year, trying to find some way to undo the will of his father and keep his lands. Twisting his neck to alleviate the remaining tension in his shoulders, he wishes he could just retreat to his study, leave his ward and his houseguest to themselves. The girl will wake in the morning, and no doubt leave of her own accord if he does not venture forth. It would be quiet again. Empty.

He could withdrawal back into his papers and scrolls, trying to find an answer.

But he knows that he has looked at every scrap of parchment in this entire castle. He knows that there is no answer except the one set forth by his father.

So, he squares his shoulders, turns on his heel, and heads back towards the room he had just left, to make some semblance of an apology and salvage this plan. The potential blow to his pride was well worth the possibility of being able to return his life to some semblance of normal. Perhaps he could invite the miko to dine with Rin and himself, he'd seen precious little of his ward the last few months, it would be pleasant to see her, and the priestess seemed fond of her.

With that thought in mind, he returned swiftly down the hall, his footsteps light and easy instead of hurried and echoing. The knock on the miko's door went unanswered and, when his keen demon hearing heard a murmured voice from Rin's room he moved to that doorway instead. The door opened quietly under his gentle push and he paused in the frame.

"And then, the Princess Buttercup said – You're the dread pirate Roberts. Admit it! And the dashing man in black, bow to her mockingly. With pride, he said."

Rin gasped, from her place huddled in the thick, downy comforter on her bed, only her face visible. Kagome leaned over her, her expressions matching the characters of the story she was spinning. Sesshomaru had never heard this tale before, and wondered if it was just something humans knew or if she was imagining something just for the sake of his ward. He refrained from calling out, instead listening quietly as she played out a conversation between the two. She made her voice high and thin for the princess, but smooth and deep for the pirate lord. Rin's eyes are wide when the man exclaims that life is pain and they get wider when the girl pushes him over the edge of a steep embankment. But when Kagome, her voice long and bouncing to emulate his tumble down the hill says, asssss yoooouu wiiiishhh, Rin gasps loudly.

"It's Wesley! It's Wesley!" She almost sits up in excitement, but Kagome laughs softly and pushes her gently back against her pillow.

"My, aren't you smart. Yes, it was Wesley – they come to a bouncing stop at the bottom of the hill and the man in black – Wesley – crawls over to Buttercup to make sure she's alright."

He watches as she regales a conversation between the two of true love, watching Rin's eyes growing bigger and wider with each word. There's a feeling in his chest that can't quite be called nostalgia, because something like this has never been a part of his reign here. He tries to imagine any of the youkai females that he has courted in the past, even ones he has met in court or in passing, doing something as motherly as reading a child to sleep. He cannot picture it. The demon women he knows are all hard edges and cold hearts. There was not a mothering bone in their bodies.

Until this moment, he had not factored Rin into the equation of acquiring a mate.

Until this moment, it had not concerned him.

But now he knows he is looking at something that Rin craves and wants and needs, but that she will not be getting in the very near future. It's a hollow weight inside his chest and, with a feeling of foreboding, he turns and walks away.