A/N:
About Sesshoumaru's sword in this chapter. Since Rin was the first being Sesshoumaru used Tenseiga on and that event doesn't take place in this stories timeline, I decided that if he had a new sword forged to rival Tessaiga, like he did in the original series, it wouldn't be Tokijin (since Tokijin's creation was dependent on the Tenseiga reviving Goshinki.)
Ergo, Sōryūjin.
Sesshoumaru hasn't seen or heard of the spider hanyo since they left him in pieces years before but he knows that tell-tale miasma stench anywhere. The fact that Naraku managed to survive is somehow less surprising than the fact that he's confronting Sesshoumaru in person, rather than using a puppet. Or sending one of his detachments.
Everyone is coming out of the woodwork, he mentally scoffs. First he catches wind of that human's scent and now back comes Naraku and his whole bothersome existence.
That human woman was turning out to be just like her would-be daughter; a bad omen.
"Naraku," he acknowledges his newly-reappeared enemy. Sesshoumaru tries to keep his voice as neutral as possible while still maintaining an aura of obvious contempt. Jaken immediately springs into action, cursing the spider and making threats on behalf of his master.
"I'm surprised you've decided to show your face again." A face that had not visibly changed since their last confrontation. Other than being healed and fully-intact, Naraku looked much the same from the days when Sesshoumaru had become entangled in his complicated web. The one that included Inuyasha and his companions, among countless others.
"When I, Sesshoumaru, and Kirinmaru of the Dawn confronted you years ago, you fled with your tail between your legs and did not return."
Sesshoumaru had never believed Naraku defeated for good. They had only succeeded in chasing him back into hiding. Inuyasha and his band of friends had attempted to hunt him down and finish what the two daiyokais had started but with no luck. Whatever crevice the threatened spider wedged himself into had proven too dark and deep to find.
"Only one of us here has a tail, Sesshoumaru," comes Naraku's reply.
Sesshoumaru smirks. "You'd think with all your downtime Naraku, you would have better comebacks prepared."
"You're one to judge, Sesshoumaru," he scoffs, then chuckles. "Why—You famously have a way with words."
"How dare you insult Sesshoumaru-sama!" comes Jaken's squawking defense. "He is a man of brilliant eloquence. That you're ignorant of that is only based on the fact that such a great yokai would never waste his oratorical gifts on the likes of you!" Jaken shakes his Nintojo at the spider demon during his speech for emphasis.
"Oh?" Naraku responds, skeptically. "And who does he share them with? You, little yokai?"
Jaken sputters as he tries to come up with a response.
"Well, there's uh...uh...there is no one truly worthy of my master's poetry, you see! No one with whom he can converse on his own level—"
"Jaken!" Sesshoumaru interrupts him, having had enough. "Silence."
The imp stiffens and ceases his useless chatter.
"Naraku; should Kirinmaru and I need to deal with you again? Is that the reason you've returned from whatever sinkhole you crawled up from?"
"Threatening I, Naraku with the superior Beast King?"
The spider's tone is ruthlessly mocking and Sesshoumaru narrows his eyes slightly as he imagines his claws bursting out the back of that boned armor.
Where did this vermin get off, having that attitude? Like he hadn't been scared into hiding for all this time. Like they hadn't had him on the verge of death.
"Go, Sesshoumaru," he teases. "Tug on Uncle Kirinmaru's hakama and tell Father's friend he needs to fight a battle for you again. I'm sure he's in a charitable mood."
"This coming from one who so often relies on manipulating others into doing his dirty work for him," Sesshoumaru counters. "Aided or not, you were confronted with raw power and strength. Not detachments and trickery."
"Trickery'" Naraku repeats. "Manipulation of others." His tone is placidly condescending. ‟You are no stranger to these, Sesshoumaru."
"It's true," Naraku admits. "I, Naraku, will use anyone and anything as a tool. But you, Sesshoumaru, are a great daiyokai. Shouldn't you have more faith in your own abilities?"
"You're correct that I'm a daiyokai," he responds coldly, masking his rapidly dwindling patience with this interaction.
"Unlike you, I don't derive my power from thousands of demon parasites. But all that means is that you have no right to say anything to me. You're a disgusting thing, Naraku." He adds, "Like all hanyos."
Naraku is undeterred by the pushback. Being much too aware of Sesshoumaru's insecurities, he moves to a subject he's certain remains a sore spot.
"I see you still don't carry Tessaiga at your hip. Am I to assume your half-brother, Inuyasha, retains possession of your father's fang?"
Sesshoumaru's mouth tightens. He hears Jaken gasp; appalled by the audacity of invoking Inuyasha's ownership of the Tessaiga.
"So it's me you've come to first to announce yourself, and not my hanyo brother," he points out. "Should I be flattered? Am I, Sesshoumaru, your new obsession?"
"It was curiosity that brought me to seek you out first," Naraku says. "Was it not a human woman I discovered you conversing with the other day? It seemed like she had an awful lot to say to you."
Sesshoumaru fights to keep his face impassive. Unless Naraku had used a puppet, he should have been able to smell him or any of his detachments if they had been that close. Just what form of Naraku had been watching—And from where?
"Humans are numerous and unavoidable, even to this one," he responds, careful not to protest too forcefully.
Naraku persists. "She approached you without fear or hesitation."
"Are you really expecting I, Sesshoumaru, to explain the behavior of a human?" Again, he treads lightly, measuring his response. He will use no more words of explanation than necessary. For a moment, he wonders why. It's not as if he's trying to protect her.
He's not.
Sesshoumaru thinks back to the encounter by the river. The damn woman had been so eager to talk . Would she talk to Naraku?
On the chance that she did, whether willingly or by force, what of it? Even if she told him all about Setsuna, she was entirely unaware of the girl's true nature.
And if Naraku managed to surmise that information regardless...well, it might actually work to Sesshoumaru's advantage.
Let the spider think he'd found a weakness of his to exploit. Let him try to use it against him. Sesshoumaru would stand proud, smugly belittle him for having such a ridiculous idea and show the fool just how little he cared.
Sesshoumaru's hand goes to the battle sword at his left side. In one swift, fluid motion, he unsheathes Sōryūjin and makes a swipe at Naraku. His target dodges the blade and floats into the air.
"Run to Uncle Kirinmaru," Naraku taunts him, his dark curling hair rising in a curtain above his pale head. "You'll find I, Naraku, will be ready for him."
With that, the spider hanyo flew away, drifting off into the horizon.
"Why, the nerve of him!" Jaken huffs.
His vassal looks up at him, radiating with outrage. "Sesshoumaru-sama, will you go after Naraku? He's getting away!"
"No, Jaken," he says to the imp's consternation. Sesshoumaru needed the opportunity to consider what action to take. Naraku was nothing but a pest, and if he was going to insist on infesting their lives once more, Sesshoumaru would destroy him for good. With or without the Eastern Lord's help.
Sesshoumaru asked Setsuna no further questions and ceased any appearance of cordiality. As far as he was concerned, this is where his business with her ended. He told her so, and in language he imagined to be as devastating and offensive as the situation deserved.
(Years later, he'll try to recall what exactly he said to her. He'd wanted to make it brutally clear just how he felt about the existence of half-demons but, for some reason, he hadn't really wanted to insult her personally. In the end, he can't remember if the generic condemnations he's thinking of are things he'd actually said to heror lines he'd taunted Inuyasha with around the same time.)
Tainted blood courses through your body...A hanyo whose mother is a human is a disgrace to all our kind...Don't come near me again, stick to humans—It suits you...Infinitely vulgar beings...I won't fall to a weakness of the heart...What can half-demons do? You're useless to me...
His contempt for humans and half-demon's had stock phrases.
Sesshoumaru had needed something to keep his mind occupied during long days of fruitless hunting for the Tessaiga. It was easy to become fixated on what had left him in that situation in the first place.
For her part, Setsuna seemed deeply unimpressed.
His cruel rejection of her is met by vacant boredom. If anything he had said had gotten under her skin, her face denied it. Inuyasha would have called him a bastard and made several clumsy attempts on his head by that point. Again, he was forced to recognize part of himself in her stoic refusal to be baited into a reaction.
"Are you finished?" she asked, after one last condemnation of her as existential terror.
"Do you understand that we are not to come into contact again? That you are to act as if we have no relationship to one another?"
"It's not as though that'll take any getting used to," she replied sardonically.
"Kirinmaru," he reminded her. "Leave him to me. You're not to seek him out for any reason."
Setsuna shrugged. "He's no business of mine. I already told you; I declined that offer."
"Then there's nothing else to discuss. We should not cross paths again."
With that, he turned his back on her. As far as he knew at the time, that might be the last he'd ever see of the girl; her back against the tree, arms folded, her face defiantly expressionless.
Would she ever make it back to her own time, to her sister? Sesshoumaru certainly wouldn't be worrying himself with such concerns. The only thing he cared about was that she stayed out of his way and didn't draw any attention to herself.
Farewell, Setsuna; you're on your own.
He wondered once more if he should go the extra step of ending her life. It would be the most convenient thing to do. He decided against it, telling himself it was because she still possessed pertinent knowledge of future events. Things it would help to know but hadn't yet occurred to him to ask about. Never mind the fact that he'd just deliberately set that bridge on fire.
His rationalization complete, Sesshoumaru's thoughts turned to what to do about Kirinmaru. He wasn't sure if it would be wise to confront him. Damn Inuyasha—The Tessaiga was wasted on him. What use did the hanyo have for such a powerful sword? What had their father expected his eldest to do if it ever came time for him to confront the Lord of the East?
His desire for his own powerful fang was stronger than ever now. Totosai, the old geezer, would still refuse to forge him one. There were other swordsmith's—None as good as Totosai, but Sesshoumaru wielding would more than make up for any deficiencies in craft.
He wondered if his Other had ever succeeded in taking Tessaiga from Inuyasha. Or had that demoralizing failure only pushed him even further from his intended path?
Setsuna might've known the answer to that; if he had thought to ask about it. But it doesn't matter and it's not worth dwelling over; he's already returned to the correct path; the roads have already diverged. He was the real Sesshoumaru and it was what he did from here on out that truly counted.
All the same, the image of Setsuna's face lingered in his mind; it's fine details memorized against his will. Pieces of their conversation play back to him and the voice that says "we're complete strangers"with nothing indicative of caring is her own low one.
He thought back to Tessaiga; that sword meant to be inherited by a half-demon; the sword that had protected Inuyasha's human mother. It's the only semi-rational explanation for what his Other had done but...perhaps, Setsuna's birth had been an experiment. A last ditch effort at taking Tessaiga for himself.
Lack of compassion for humans was supposedly what had repelled Sesshoumaru from wielding it with his own hands. Would he really have gone that far in pursuit of his father's fang? If the experiment had proven to be a failure then, that would explain why his other self and his progeny were strangers.
There was a part of him that would like to believe in that scenario but, ultimately, he can't. (Hanyo or not, he would never abandon his children.) But again, it doesn't matter. Whatever the reasons for what the Other had done, that future wasn't his anymore.
Regardless, as things stood then and there, Tessaiga remained stubbornly outside his grasp. He still would need a blade sufficient enough to battle any opponent; from his lowly half-brother, to Naraku to, potentially, Kirinmaru.
Sesshoumaru had a notorious swordsmith to seek out. Kaijinbo would craft him an impressive blade, he was sure of it. He just needed to locate a suitable fang.