Reposted from Fanfiction Online, as I've decided to not post there. Edited and changed, as of Feb. 2nd.
DISCLAIMER: Inuyasha is property of Rumiko Takahashi.
A/N
I'm back, serving another AU nobody asked for, while aggressively ignoring updating my other fics, despite repeated requests to do so. I can't help it, I procrastinate. I don't abandon, though, so rest assured.
This will be a slow-burn Ses/Kag, exploring different aspects of a relationship and how it develops. Told through short chapters, almost snippets.
Description: Sesshomaru meets Kagome first, nearly fifty years before the original story takes place. They decide to keep each other, in different ways.
a Path Less Trodden
Something to Protect.
'Do you have something to protect?'
The Inu-no-Taisho had asked this question of his firstborn son sardonically, never expecting an answer nor imagining that there should be one. He was a demon confident in his place atop the world, one who firmly believed in the path he'd chosen and stubbornly clung to his ideals. He though himself wiser than others, that he'd seen it all and knew all there was to know about anyone and anything. Truly, in most cases he was right; but in this particular instance the Inu-no-Taisho had made a grave mistake, though not he nor Sesshomaru had known it at the time.
Sesshomaru watched his father leave, unspoken words of condemnation and insult struggling to escape from behind his tightly closed lips, and did nothing. He did not assist the man who'd sired him, nor his legal concubine and her newborn child. He'd not extended a hand to his half-brother when the human mother inevitably died while the boy was too young. He'd not come to comfort his own mother over the death of her husband. He'd not retuned to his father's lands to take up the mantle of 'Lord'. In fact, for decades after the great dog demon's death, Sesshomaru simply wandered across Japan, pondering his father's empty question and making a name for himself through combat, conquest and never ending hunt.
The Killing Perfection was a title given to Sesshomaru at birth not by his parents, but by his father's dearest friend in Japan. The ancient tree demon Bokuseno, who'd been a relic of the past before the birth of the Inu-no-Taisho's own father, took a long look at the babe presented to him before bestowing a heavy name onto the tiny thing. After the meaningless death of his father Sesshomaru strove to earn it through actions and sought opponents all over the country, determined to reach the pinnacle of strength, title and honor.
But eventually, as Japan's opponents had been defeated and all types of beasts on its land and in its sea hunted, Sesshomaru had felt the itch his father spoke of once, and realised it was time to return to his territory, so far in the West. He should have returned sooner, but his age - still so young in demon eyes and standards - gave him leeway where there should have been none. His mother, from her airborne castle, watched him go and hadn't held on.
She could have.
Inu-Kimi could have demanded her one son remain with her until she'd found another mate, until such time as she successfully bore the heir her line needed: a female, a girl, a princess for the Matriarchal silver dogs of Japan. Still, she didn't. She had no use for a male son and Sesshomaru had much to learn and much to do in his father's lands, the territories he'd inherited upon the general's death by right of blood, which he now had to earn through conquest and hard work.
In the West they did things differently. Blood could only carry you so far.
Sesshomaru first came to his lands alone and he conquered them alone. He subdued those who stood against him, earned the loyalty and devotion of vassals and servants, built up cities he'd previously razed and plowed fields he'd destroyed - alone. He was young but he was strong, even back then, and he was capable. Two hundred years after his birth, a century after the Inu-no-Taisho's death, Sesshomaru became the Lord of the West in full. He had a vast territory, thousands upon thousands of people who depended on him, and still his father's mocking words rung in his ears at night and the bitter answer clawed at his throat, demanding to be spoken even though there was no one to hear it.
'Do you have something to protect?'
"This One has many things to protect," Sesshomaru would say, if he could. "This One has villages, cities, palaces and fortresses. This One owns fields, forests, mountains and rivers. This One has people, vast and ever-changing. This One has a mother. This One protects them all."
And it would be a wrong answer still, for it wasn't what his father meant and Sesshomaru knew this - he knew it, for his father's scent had told him this much. His father's scent, mingling and clinging to a hanyo's body, whispered of a hidden plea Sesshomaru failed to hear the night the creature was born, but he was stubborn even now. He covered his ears and shook his head and refused to acknowledge anything at all that would pull him to this thing, this beast, this...
Half breed.
Half-human, yes, but still quite strong. Sesshomaru had only glimpsed him once. The child had the white hair of their father and twin puppy ears on his head, dressed in robes made of fire-rat fur, a treasure no human emperor could afford, but otherwise beaten and bruised. Even as a tiny thing, no older than five, he refused to bow and cower in the face of those who sought to break him. He lashed out, pushed back, and for the brief second he'd scented Sesshomaru on the air, he instinctively bared his neck to the alpha of his line. That boy, Inuyasha, he may yet become something if he kept on.
It was for this reason that Sesshomaru sought his brother out, fifty years after his ascension as a true Lord of the West, to enlist him into the fight against the panthers. Halfling or not, Inuyasha was a son of the West and had a duty to that land, even if he'd never laid eyes on it before. It was a good decision, no matter how hastily and unwittingly made. It showed Sesshomaru his mistake in thinking Inuyasha could ever be more than a dirty half breed.
"Repeat your words."
"E-eh?" the elderly flea demon cleared his throat and shivered in fear. "Well, Sesshomaru-sama, you see, err–"
"Speak clearly, flea," Sesshomaru growled, his patience growing thinner the longer he stared at his - his - no. At this disgrace, pinned to a tree by a flimsy arrow to the chest, deep in peaceful slumber when their lands by blood suffered under assault. Weakling. Filth. Stain on their honor.
"Inuyasha-sama has been sealed by the Priestess Kikyo last year, Sesshomaru-sama!" Myouga managed to squeak clearly, not stammering once. "A most unfortunate turn of events, they were so well-matched. A bonding was nearly decided, and yet -"
"Bonding?" Sesshomaru sneered.
"Ah, y-yes, Sesshomaru-sama."
"Ridiculous," Sesshomaru muttered. Inuyasha was far too young for such a thing, not yet full grown. To bond so soon, and with a human priestess to boot, would undoubtedly end in disaster. A child, outcast and disliked, and a sheltered woman, taught to hate everything unlike herself. What could possibly be well-matched about such persons? Unconsciously, a disgusted sneer made it's way onto his face and he turned around, averted his eyes from his father's senseless bastard and began to slowly make his way out of the forest. He had nothing left to do here.
Then he heard a scream and lingered a moment longer. It changed everything.
Torn from Time.
When people found out Higurashi Kagome was raised in a family owned Shinto shrine they were usually confused and a little sceptical. It made little sense: she avoided anything to do with tradition and vehemently refused to set foot in any temple festival unless bribed with oily festive foods.
'But aren't you a shrine maiden?' a classmate had asked curiously when they were still in elementary school.
'Ew, no way,' eight year old Kagome scrunched up her face in annoyance. 'that's so boring! I wanna be a vet.'
Since then she'd wanted to be an architect, a pâtissier, a florist, a dentist and a schoolteacher. She'd mellowed up a little and agreed to help her grandfather sell fake fortunes and talismans during festivals, and put up with her classmates being ridiculously excited about the fact she lived on a 'legit' shrine. But even at the cusp of fifteen Kagome still thought the whole affair was boring.
Oh, she'd tried to care about it. For a period of a few months when she was twelve Kagome honestly attempted to remember the different tales and myths her grandfather regaled her with. She did her best to remember the prayers, the rituals, the dances and rhymes, the folksongs and hymns that made up her family's profession for four generations now. When she'd forgotten the legend of the shrine's founding after being told about it for the eleventh time, Kagome took in her grandfather's befuddled and mildly annoyed expression, and officially gave up. Her brain refused to absorb the information and frankly, it wasn't exactly useful or interesting. She far preferred to memorise the celebrity gossip columns of popular magazines, anyway.
When she turned fifteen, finally, no one could tell Higurashi Kagome had anything to do with any shrine unless expressly told about it, and Kagome never told. The pretty girl from class C-1, with shiny black hair, clear skin and pristinely manicured nails just couldn't be meshed with what people expected of a girl raised in a shrine. Not with the latest magazines always clasped in her hands, her habitual daily browsing through fashion boutiques and squealing conversations about the juiciest gossip with other girls.
Kagome wasn't an idiot, mind. Yes, she struggle with math to the point of tears, but what she couldn't achieve there no matter how hard she worked, she made up for in other subjects. She was also part of the volleyball club, helped out her friends in their own activities when they asked nicely, and worked part-time at the local bookstore during holidays to earn her own spending money. Let it be said that though Kagome consistently disappointed her grandfather with her inability to ever inherit the family property, she made her mother proud by working hard and striving for an otherwise brilliant future. If Mrs. Higurashi overcompensated her daughter for such efforts, Kagome wasn't about to enlighten her mother on the topic. The extra love, attention and spending money were always welcome.
In short, Kagome was an average teenager of the twentieth century who knew how to crack down on her studies but hadn't experienced any real difficulties through her sheltered life in a first world country.
So when a true-blue monster grabbed her at the wellhouse and pulled her through time, Kagome was unprepared and reasonably freaked out. When the half-centipede woman licked a trail from the face of Kagome's throat to her left eye with its disgustingly slimy tongue, in a borderline sexual assault, Kagome's panic skyrocketed into sheer desperation.
She raised her right hand, the one she used to rain super-harsh pain-bringing serves on the volleyball court, and slapped it onto the creature's four-eyed face with all the strength she had. It immediately let her go with a horrifyingly loud screech, too dramatic no matter how hard Kagome had slapped it, but Kagome didn't care. She didn't notice the strange vortex of black around her while the creature had her in its arms, didn't take in the overgrown vines on the previously pristine well walls. She just grabbed onto the stone, sinking her nails into dirt and wood and plant alike, and scrambled her way up – up – up, towards clear twilight skies and chilling autumn air.
The change of scenery brought Kagome to a halt. She would've crumpled to her knees and stayed put while her brain tried to figure out a logical explanation – because there weren't such things as monsters, magic did not exist, the old well was just a dried up well – but the shrieking from behind her had changed into an enraged howl and that was all the motivation she needed.
Kagome ran faster than she ever did before. Her feet pounded on the ground, sinking into grass, then dirt, then the muddy and overgrown forest floor. By some miracle she didn't slip or fall once. Like a machine, her legs moved one after the other while her arms shoved aside moveable obstacles. She dodged, jumped, ducked and swiveled, her breaths came out in frantic pants and the only thought in her head was to keep running – there.
Where? She didn't know. But it was there, not right or left, straight ahead, never behind, no.
Kagome didn't need to look to be certain the monster was following her. It was like a disgusting rotten taste filled her mouth, made her stomach roiled and her nostrils flare. It was hot on her heels, she didn't doubt it for a second, and for some reason – perhaps divine intervention from the gods she never believed in – convinced her salvation was right ahead. She just had to keep running, only a few more steps, a few more breaths.
Just as was about to Kagome break through the trees into a clearing a clawed hand clamped onto her shoulder. Pain registered and she screamed: loud, shrill, desperate. She fell, took the creature with her and rolled in a desperate struggle to escape, but it held onto her stronger than before, leaving stinging cuts wherever it touched.
"Give it to me!" the monster demanded.
"Get off!" Kagome wailed, arms flailing and legs kicking in vain. "Leave me alone!"
"Give it to me!" it groped at Kagome's back and legs with it's arms and spindly, centipede legs, and Kagome screeched in horror and disgust. "It's mine! Mine!"
"Disgusting."
That one word, spoken in a frigid tone by a deep voice, was the last thing Kagome heard before her head hit something, hard, and everything went black.