Kagome never wanted to ride a demon ever again.
Her hair was a right mess and her lips were as dry as Rin's uncapped play dough.
"Alright up there, girls?" He'd landed on the roof, using it as a landing pad of sorts, "don't let go just yet. We've got to go in through the window."
The window in question was closed when they approached it, but he didn't mind hovering there until a dark haired woman came and pushed the panes out and open.
The mess they faced was traumatic.
Blood pooled beneath her friend, painting her skin and clothes in colors that were not her own.
"When you said you needed my help… you didn't tell me that it was…" she motioned for Rin to stay back, a wasted effort, and crept closer. "I'm just going to get started. Add more leaves as I go, alright?"
Rin didn't hesitate to kneel into the puddle, peering at her white faced guardian with a tangible apprehension.
"Papa?" She went for the cool rag soaking in the bucket nearby and began the futile and impossible task of trying to clear the blood from his chin on down. "Are you alright?"
"He's sleeping, Rin. Don't worry." Sango's voice sounded hollow as she reassured the girl at her side, "just sleeping."
"Then why isn't he waking up?"
She didn't hear whatever excuse Sango gave as she closed herself off to outside distractions. It had been years since she'd done something like this and she had to be sure not to mess up.
First, she blessed the herbs, thanking them for their efforts and their cooperation.
Sesshomaru grunted and she imagined that spiritual energy wasn't doing him any favors, "I can only remove some of the poison, otherwise I may purify him, but I'll take out as much as I can."
She might as well have been talking to no one, because their focus was on Sesshomaru. No one moved and no one spoke until she finally began plucking the ruined bits of herbs from his chest and throwing them into an offered bag.
Inch by inch, his skin stitched itself together in a nice, neat line and she knew her work was done.
"Shouldn't he wake up now?" Sango asked tersely. Her fingers dug into the fabric of his shirt -as if he'd turn to dust and fly away if she didn't keep him tethered.
She was shaking.
Kagome forced her fingers between Sango's clenched fists and worked her hands free of the stained fabric.
"Why don't we get you into something that isn't so… red? Meanwhile, Touga will get him all cleaned up and put him back in his bed so you can go see him as soon as you're all better?"
But Sango shook her head vehemently, yanking her hand away from Kagome and wrapping herself more tightly around the body in her arms.
"That- she… she was so angry that I was here to get some stuff. She-," when Sango glanced up at her again, she was crying. The tears that spilled along her honey tinted cheeks were too big to keep at bay. "I'm sure there's more good to him than his face and so I told him that sometimes I don't hate him- that's it! And she insisted I was trying to steal him away."
Her voice broke when she explained, "he pushed me out of the way when she tried to cleave me in two-. And then… I guess… she ran away?"
"She ran away because Kimi threatened to kill her if she ever touched our son again," the human woman at the demoness' side motioned for Sango to pass him over and -reluctantly- she did. "I'm sorry you got caught up in their nonsense. He really is too handsome to stay stuck with such a terror."
"He doesn't like being called handsome." Sango muttered and -when his mother insisted he never had- she insisted again, "he really doesn't like it. Says it's one of the only two good things about him."
Kagome grabbed her friend's blood encrusted hand, trying to offer her whatever comfort she could
The door swung open again, revealing InuYasha -still in his workout clothes. And -maybe- he'd taken a dumbbell to the brain. Maybe his performance had reduced oxygen flow to his brain so truly that the damage was irreversible.
"Hah! Told him that crazy bitch would cut him up in his sleep."
Kagome was very aware of every moment leading up to grabbing his furry ear and dragging him back through the door he'd waltzed through.
"Are you insane? Is that your problem?" She twisted the ear when he only yelled for her to let go, "do you not see all of that blood? Do you not see that my best friend is covered in it?"
She only set him free when she decided she'd much rather punch him.
"Someone nearly cut that girl in two because she wanted to pick up clothes for Rin- and you're strutting around making jokes- are you fucking brain dead?"
Her body felt like it would combust any moment and his only response was to stammer at her with that dumb as bricks expression plastered across his face
"He'd do the same to me-."
"Are you twelve?" She'd never been more ashamed of a person in all her life. All of her admiration and fuzzy feelings seemed to crash at her feet, kicking up dust, but finally showing her exactly who he was.
How could his only response be, 'he would do it too'. How could he not be sick with remorse when he walked into a child's room and took in the bloody scene that awaited him?
"Because Sango called your parents and told them the situation. From them either your mothers or your father called you. You took your sweet time, finishing your set, banging your fiancée, whatever. And then you sat there and you what? Thought up jokes for your entrance?" She pulled back, glaring daggers that he couldn't seem to meet anymore, "all the while Sango was here. Alone. Helplessly holding on to your brother, hoping that same psychotic bitch didn't come back to finish the job?"
There was nothing satisfying about the way he muttered his useless apologies.
"I'm going to see if I can get Sango cleaned up. Try not to be offensive while I'm gone. Alright?"
InuYasha's apology was a change of clothes for Sango- pilfered from Sesshomaru's closet- and a bag of sweets from a nearby store.
"He's awake, but -fair warning- he's in one hell of a mood."
Rin was sitting next to Sesshomaru, pressing her wrist into his face, "you gotta rep-ernish your irons," she insisted. "I can do it. I can do it."
He was paying her next to no attention, only nipping at her pudgy hands when she became too aggressive.
"Don't you bite her," Sango muttered, but she climbed into his bed, staring at him as if he were nothing more than a hallucination.
"How else would you reprimand her?"
She didn't answer that question. It was clear as day to any person- any human- that Sango was unsure if she should breach the distance between them. Her worry had overcome her a thousand times and there was nothing that could soothe that ache better than the feeling of another person against her.
The swell of his chest, the pounding of his heart, all of it was like a balm.
But her uncertainty kept her in place.
"You're such a shit, honestly," InuYasha broke the ice, throwing his arms around his brother and crawling on him as if they were still children. "That poor woman was worried stupid about you, you know!"
Rin giggled as her uncle pulled on her father's cheeks, joining the dog pile despite the protests from the grumbling man on the bottom.
"And you're asking her stupid questions! Terrible."
Sesshomaru groaned, long and low, like he was being tormented.
"Get off of me," but his demands fell on deaf ears as InuYasha placed two loud, theatrical kisses to his pale cheek.
"Then stop being a dick."
"I'm actively doing nothing."
InuYasha was having a bit too much fun, "you should thank her for helping you."
"Get. Off."
Touga was leaning against the door, "it's usually the other way around."
"Go on," he cleared his throat, bringing up whatever phlegm he could collect and said, "thank her," before letting his spit dangle over his brother's face.
Sesshomaru was swearing upon the graves of distant relatives, but his words went unheeded as spit dripped onto his face.
InuYasha crashed into the closet, a victim of Sesshomaru's outstretched foot, but Sango was laughing- that haunted expression melting like ice.
"God, you're strong without that seal." The first few breaths came as a wheeze, before he was reminded of something. "How did you even get it off?"
"Stop asking." He used his shirt to clear his face before yanking it off, balling it up, and throwing it at InuYasha's face. His back was like a mosaic, covered in fading tattoos of gangs long since dissolved.
Sango reached for the insignia on his shoulder- a strange, golden design that neither of them had ever seen before- but stopped short when InuYasha's screaming caught her attention.
"No! Tell me how you got it off."
"You should be far more worried about my retribution."
She watched as Sesshomaru coated his finger in spit and shoved his knee into InuYasha's back. The begging and bartering that followed told Kagome all she needed to know about their childhood.
He shoved his wet finger in InuYasha's ear, grinning wickedly as his brother bucked and squirmed, helpless against that slimy, invasive feeling.
"You're too old for this shit," he cried, "Rin, help me!"
And poor Rin came running regardless of the fact that she'd likely be his next victim.
Her cries for reinforcements fell on deaf ears when Sesshomaru reminded them, "I have ten fingers. Feel free to fuck around and find out."
"Sorry Rin," Sango closed her eyes to the carnage, "I can't help you this time."
xXx
They'd left Sango and her new posse to their own devices soon after. Kimi and Izayoi insisted that he needed to rest before he reopened his wound and InuYasha had wanted to show her something either way.
"He never lets me up here," InuYasha told her, all hushed tones and secrecy, "but the view is too good to pass up. Besides, what's the chance he'll catch us?"
They climbed the hidden staircase in silence, popping out in a large room with a domed, glass ceiling.
"If he never lets you up here, then how did you know about it?"
"I helped him build this place. We spent two years drawing up the plan and another year putting it together. It changes style every few hundred years, but this is one bit that -more or less- stays the same."
She picked a spot on the floor and tipped her head backwards, "how old are you guys, exactly?" InuYasha hardly looked twenty five despite his 'every few centuries' comment and Sesshomaru didn't look too much older than InuYasha. Maybe thirty -if she had to guess.
"I was born in the Muromachi era, about five hundred-ish years ago. I don't think Sesshomaru still remembers how old he is. He usually just shrugs and picks a number between 2,000 and 3 whenever Rin asks."
"So… won't you be alone again in sixty or so years? Isn't that … I don't know, depressing?"
He snorted, "nah, because once I'm married I have one mark to give. That mark binds us in every way. It guarantees that I'll never be alone."
"But what about divorce? How do you know you're choosing the right person for all of eternity?"
"Even Sesshomaru won't live forever, and fate guides you. You follow the pull and eventually you find where you're meant to be."
She thought to ask about Kikyo, curious if he felt that pull with her, but found that she simply didn't want to know.
"What if you don't find them before they die?"
"If you don't mark them before they die then they find you again in another life- or.. that's what mom and dad told Sesshomaru. I don't have any solid proof that it's true though."
"He lost his mate?"
She didn't know why that bothered her so much, why the thought of him being completely alone made her so uncomfortable.
InuYasha glanced back at the door, as if he thought his brother would come kicking the door in with a sword in hand, before finally saying, "yeah. I was still a kid when it happened, so don't ask me for details."
"But you do know something."
"I do."
She waited patiently for him to bend beneath the weight of her silence.
"The first time I met her, Sesshomaru was picking on me. I don't remember what I'd done to him, but he was tugging my ears and being a massive bitch- as he is known to do. She was this dark haired spitfire in pink wearing a boomerang bigger than she was on her back and she told him, 'leave him alone or you'll regret it'."
Kagome couldn't imagine young adult Sesshomaru being any more cooperative than adult Sesshomaru.
"He basically told her to beat it before he lobbed off her head. So she kicked him in the nuts." The memory made him giggle, "then she picked me up and took me home long before he could feel his feet well enough to chase us down. They met a number of times after that but I wasn't there and Sesshomaru hated me at the time so he certainly wasn't telling me things. All I really know is that he thought she talked too much shit for someone so human."
"They fought a lot, but whenever she got fed up with him and stop coming around he'd always go hunt her down and you could hear her screaming bloody murder as he dragged her back home from near the river. I'm pretty sure he was terrible to her, honestly. She always told him that she didn't deserve to feel hated by someone who was always chasing her around."
Kagome was feeling less and less bad for him as this story went on.
"I don't know what the final straw was and Sesshomaru won't say. If you ever want him to break your nose, ask him why she ran away that day." He rubbed his face -like he was speaking from experience. "But, she took off into the forest without a goodbye and I never saw her again. Sesshomaru refused to go after her for days, but by the time he did go searching the only thing that was left of her was this bloated, mutilated carcass. Too far gone for Tenseiga, but still recognizable."
She hated the forlorn look in his eyes and wished she could wipe it away.
"I ran off to get dad, but by the time we got back Sesshomaru had taken the body and left."
"I thought I'd feel worse for him, but it seems like he abused her."
"He did," InuYasha was pulling books from a shelf, "but I still feel bad for him. He didn't talk for three full centuries, because he was certain that his words killed her, and when he did start up again it was because he had no choice. In order to help people how she did, he'd need to be able to communicate with them. He got a tattoo of her clan's emblem on his shoulder and spent the next few centuries doing what she always wanted him to do."
Kagome moved to get a better look at the wooden box he was pulling from the shelf.
"He still can't stand to look at women with long, dark hair and warm eyes- absolutely despises Kikyo for that reason- but it seems like Rin was the beginning of that change."
InuYasha sat on the floor again and uncapped the box, careful beyond belief with the contents. There was a wooden sphere covered in spikes and studs with two worn holes for the eyes, a long red sash knotted about an even longer yellow and blue one, and a dark wooden container that had long lost its contents.
"He talks to Sango fine."
And then he smiled, "how curious is it that they share a name?"
A chill climbed along her spine, making tears spring to her eyes.
"Then why is he repeating his mistakes? Why is he being so mean to her!"
InuYasha happened upon what he'd been searching for and tipped the box so she could see the laminated, yellowed parchment that had been tucked under a false bottom.
She was the spitting image of her dear friend. Even though the color had faded and the paint had cracked, Kagome could see the kindness the artist had worked to capture.
"He's dumb when it counts."
"And all of this… this grand, insurmountable love… is that how you feel about Kikyo?"
He seemed uncomfortable with the question, but forced out an answer anyway. "Not exactly. Mom says that things are different for me, because I'm a half demon. I won't feel things as violently." After a moment he packed the box away again.
"But I like to think that my status as a half demon gives me the strength and the right to deny fate at every turn. I can be ambitious and compassionate, strong and vulnerable, but I think, with Kikyo, for the first time- I don't want to be defiant."
I was posting this on Ao3 and decided to post it here too :) reviews are welcome