Sesshoumaru dried his hair carefully, running the towel over the long locks as he looked about the bedroom. Her scent permeated the air, though there was no trace of her touch or presence. The only sign that hinted at her previous occupation was the color of the walls and the few pictures of her with other women her age.
She was younger in the pictures, more carefree. There was a liveliness there that he had not seen in her, a joy and smile that she had never shown him. He wondered if she was even capable of smiling like that again, let alone being that person without any care.
Thinking back to the night he had first met her, the night at the bar, Sesshoumaru remembered the way she had moved with grace and quiet kind of confidence. There had been an almost reckless courage in those wide blue eyes that he didn't doubt had been of the liquid kind, the type of resolution weak men found in tall bottles.
Looking at the picture of the laughing young woman and thinking back to that woman at the bar and compared them both yet to another woman, a lady more child than not, who was hesitant to laugh and to smile, to hope and to plan. The woman who had risked her life, not just for one child, but for two.
