Well that was a long hiatus. Hi...sorry...So long story short, one grandma passed away from COVID, the other had a stroke, the kids were in and out of school and the pandemic finally caught up with me.

I'm not responding to reviews in this chapter, cause I kinda don't really know to start with that. This story again is done. I just need to finish posting. We're in the last 5 chapters roughly. I make no promises on when I'll post again because I am starting school again.

I have been asked many times what I think of Yashahime...We'll just leave that at the end.

Part 4

Renewal

Sesshomaru-present

When he first came to after battling the final effects of the illness, he was unsure if he would have to kill his co-workers and destroy a century of work to keep the secret that keeps kind safe. Again, spilling blood and wasting valuable lives.

Then Haruto assured him that he, Yoshi and the nurses would never reveal them. It wasn't their secret to tell. They argued back and forth over the merits of exposing what's left of demon kind to humans, but in the end it was decided because of the disease, because of his children who hold the cure, that nothing would be said. The cure to Leukemia is too valuable and the danger to their species too perilous. Mankind has shown itself over and over to be brutal. To stalk. To hunt. To commit genocide when they don't understand. They can't even exist in social media without tearing each other apart.

Sesshomaru went on Sabbatical to recover completely which took longer than even he expected. During that time, he couldn't help but check on Nina, wondering how she was living her life.

He knew about Eiji and recognized the same scent as Kohaku. There were times in the past when he wondered if she would have been better off with the slayer, rather than himself, but if he had, she never would have lived as long, their children wouldn't exist and he never would have known the true meaning of sacrifice and love.

Now he stands before a packed room full of his peers in Las Vegas. He's finished the lecture on the studies and results of their treatment for Leukemia and Cancer, refusing to reveal the source of their cure. Over time, he's released snippets and questions have been asked, such as where he finds a blood donor with such high concentrates of T-cells and with leukocytes that seem to be able to battle any illness. As always he answers, the donor wishes to remain anonymous and it's true. Tsukimaru has never wanted recognition for his acts.

Because of this, he's forced to encrypt the data in their computers. Even if something was found, all they would find is a series of numbers and nothing more. Answering the final questions about the after effects, he bows in traditional Japanese fashion and exits the stage. "You don't think one day someone will ask how you still look the same?" Haruto asks him in Japanese.

"I assume they will ask and once again my son will impersonate me long enough for the transfer to happen. People believe what they want to, not what they see." There are things on his mind while he's in the states. He left Natsuki behind in Japan, this time not wanting her company. The last time he called Taka before he departed she said that she and Nina were going to be in Colorado for a book signing. Nina just published her fourth book, to which he asked when the first three published. Taka shook in her shoes, mentioning that they had been years before.

The knowledge that the woman who holds Rin's memories has been writing, sends him to the first bookstore he can find. It's on a strip where the people are plenty and mill about in giant waves. America is not like it was centuries before, where he could travel on foot and often passed through Native American villages who had hidden and treated the sick demons, keeping them alive long enough for him to come.

He has old friends in this place, Buffalo and Owl demons who continue to remain hidden on the reservations and high in the mountains, where the air is thin and difficult to breathe for humans.

Entering the Barnes and Nobles, he goes to the computer to search for Nina's book, to see if it's in stock. He finds it in the Fantasy section, surrounded by pictures of dragons and great mythical monsters. "The Beast in the Sakura Petals?" he raises an eyebrow reading the title. The cover art looks like him, a waif with pale skin, striped cheeks and moon on his forehead and next to him a woman who is much more curvy than his Rin was with wavy black hair.

His teeth clench reading the summary, the story of how a girl and a demon fall in love, set in ancient Japan. He finds the first three books and takes them too, intent on reading them in one shot. He keeps one in his pocket when returns to the convention and begins reading it in between lectures and talks from his peers. The first is an easy read and the shortest of the four.

She captures Rin's sweet innocence and how she followed in his footsteps because there was nothing left for her in the village. But what she doesn't, are the weeks he spent questioning his own sanity and how dangerous it was keeping her with him. In hindsight, she would have been safer left in the hands of villagers, even before he left her with Kaede.

Then as she aged, how she stopped seeing him as a protector and guardian and found herself blushing and feeling flustered whenever he came. She compensated by acting out, by fighting with him, refusing to do as he said until that night beneath the full moon.

His mind races as he reads the novel, ignoring the next speaker. He adjusts his black pants, trying to avoid becoming solid from the memories of what happened that night. His eyes had changed, his body begged him to take her then, but he couldn't. It wasn't right. He knew it then, if he had, if they had both fallen prey to lust, she would have been bound to him without understanding what it meant and the ramifications for both of them.

It's impossible to put it down. So much so that Yoshi asks him what he's reading and why he isn't paying attention to the speakers. "I've heard it before."

"But you don't know everything," Yoshi tries to interject.

One eye slides back to take in Yoshi. "What do you think I do when I don't sleep?"

"You really don't need to sleep more than once a month again?"

"No," Sesshomaru answers candidly.

"But wouldn't it be easier to spread hours of sleep once a week than over an entire day once a month?"

"Shhh," someone next to them hisses. Sesshomaru returns to the first story, to when he first learned what it meant to love someone more than he loved himself.

That night, he skips the dinner, opting to continue reading the stories, wondering what else she had done with Rin's memories. The next batch of months pass the way he remembered. Awkward and confused because Rin was so hormonal when she was pregnant, so quick to tears and often inconsolable when she started crying. They had lived for walking through the forest, for making love, for the quiet conversations at night. He got used to being idle, holding her at night, letting her sleep against him while he counted the stars

But then Touma came and with it, shattering of their tranquility. That day, Sesshomaru remembered those days as if they had just happened. Just like humans, who either remember it in vivid detail or attempt to forget, he remembers how they came, the youkai and the ogres. He had hacked and slashed at them, only for more to come. Rin was pregnant. It was too dangerous to keep her with him, so he sent her in retreat behind him, without knowing he was sending her into a trap.

It was her fear that called him, fear, desperation and how she struggled to breathe. Touma held her over a cliff and with it his heart. He had never told her how it affected him. How he had to turn himself into ice to send her away with Inuyasha, assuming that she would be safe. And then finding his brother dead. There was no time to mourn, for kindness, for all the things he would do now upon finding his brother's mauled body.

Then her pains began. He sits on the edge of his seat, remembering those moments. Each one passed like an eternity and with each pain he heard her screaming and howling in pain but his target was outside the cave and not inside. And that connection that was forged through the sword he gave her, that when it woke, he felt what she did.

The pain swallowed him, it ate him alive and distracted him enough that he too succumbed to death the day his daughter was born. He finishes it disappointed. There's no mention of his time with his father, no mention of how he had left because he was faced with his own mortality, only that she bore the pain of separation and went back to him because she knew nothing else.

He's left with a bitter taste on his tongue as he starts on the third, half knowing that this one too would miss what he had felt when her memories were stolen. She paints him as a negligent husband, when he's forced to leave her to create a safe place to raise his children.

Although the tales are told from the both the demon and the human's points of view, they focus unfairly on the female as if it's only her that matters and a part of him wonders if this is how Rin felt.

Did she forget that he held her between his legs when she birthed their children, and the days he spent by her side after, refusing to leave, even when it meant that his borders failed and he had to claim his lands again. There's no mention of his loss of honor, or how he was forced to become reclusive, living far from his kind. No mention of the battles he fought to keep her safe, how the home he claimed as his was meant to protect her.

Then when her memories were stolen, the nights he spent in agony watching her, wanting to be near, to be her constant as he had in the past only for her to reject him. Those days, they were amongst the darkest he could recall, to have her so close and not at all. To say that his lover was gone when she sat in front of him, to tell his children that he didn't know when she would return, or if she would. Harutoga woke in fits at night, afraid that Ka-san no longer loved him. Sesshomaru was helpless in those moments and yet Touma's hand in it is glossed over.

By two in the morning, he's finished the third book and moves numbly to the fourth. Long ago he had stopped stifling his feelings. He allows the anger to seep through, the hurt, humiliation and betrayal. Taka knew and she said nothing to him. Every time he called her, she had said she was translating for Nina part time to make extra money and looking for work in teaching but the competition was fierce.

His lips tremble reading through the fourth. Natsuki was a ploy in Touma's game and yet here she acts like an aggressor, in league with him. More than the healer broke him, the final battle with Touma tore at his soul, at the essence of who he was and it's written as if he enjoyed it. That because she's pure blooded like he is, that he fell so much easier for her.

Instinct, he tells himself as keeps reading. Rin had not known what instinct felt like until she took Touma's halberd for him. It aches and as he reads, the words tear at his essence, breaking him down until the pages are stained with his tears.

She forgave me, he hangs on to that. Rin forgave him for his body betraying them both. Because he acted like a mindless animal when he fucked Natsuki not once but twice. But after that, there is more of the female's time by the ocean than the days and nights he spent searching for them.

He beats the back of his head against the wall a few times, recalling how lost he felt, how scared and alone and how even that is missing from this story. She writes him as arrogant, selfish and unforgiving, as if Rin is the wife of an abusive lover who she keeps returning to. But he never laid a hand on her, ever except for when they sparred. And in those moments he would have done her little favors by holding back.

By the end, as the sun begins to rise and shed an orange and red light through the window, painting his pale skin in morning rays. He folds his knees to his face and buries his eyes against his hands. How could you write this? A lump forms in his throat that scratches when he swallows it. He wants to tear the hotel room to pieces, to ask Rin if this is how she really felt? And if she did, why stay? He had never forced her to, except for after the disease, when he needed to know that she was there waiting for him. But after…

He picks the story up again, reading through the author's note and Coming Next: section to find that there will be a fifth story. The story of the illness and why these magical creatures no longer exist in the future. Rage fills him, bubbling within his bones and manifesting in trembling hands. She'll pervert that too.

He scratches the top of his head and then stands up. He texts Yoshi and Haruto that something came up and he'll meet them back in Japan in a few weeks, there's something he needs to do.

It starts with a shower, with washing his body clean of the twisted lies in the story. He scrubs at his skin until it's frothing with soap, the same way he had after he had bedded Natsuki that first time. He came home and had no time to bathe before helping Rin through the contractions. As luck would have it, he took her into the bath to ease the pains of Taiyomaru's birth, giving him a chance to get Natsuki's scent off before Yuki or Harutoga might notice it.

But after…after Rin had fallen asleep and his mother had left and the children were asleep, he went into the hot springs and scrubbed himself raw. He knew it was wrong, he knew that it would hurt Rin to know he had bonded another. If he scrubbed hard enough, digging his claws into his chest, he could take it out, banish the damn bond to Natsuki as if it never happened.

He leans against the shower, letting hot water run over his body, then gets out and towels off. He braids his hair behind his back and stairs at himself in the mirror, touching the faded scar on his chest. She used to trace it with her fingers, and kiss the edges, so grateful to be by his side.

He dresses quickly, grabbing Tenseiga on the way out the door and leaves the hotel looking for a secluded alley way. If he flies fast enough, he'll be in Denver in four to six hours.

There's something freeing about the skies and the way air rushes past him. He knows the topography by heart, after spending nearly a century in this land, watching cities sprout up and people move. He follows the rushing rapids of the Colorado River until the sun peaks high into the sky and he begins to thirst.

Even the waters don't taste the same. Before they used to be cold and crisp, now he can taste the pollution, but doesn't need to worry that he'll become sick. He splashes the water over his shoulders and neck, still feeling sullied by what he's read and then flies into the skies again.

On the way, he tracks Taka's iPhone. When he's only miles from Denver, he can smell her scent. Spring rains and lilies, as delicate as the day his baby girl was born. He stops off several blocks from his target and lands behind a restaurant. He's dressed plainly, a simple T-shirt and slacks. She'll know soon enough it was a mistake. He wills his mokomoko away until nothing's left and then begins stalking down the sidewalks.

She's in a small bookstore signing copies of her latest release. Taka stands next to the table, signing for Nina, who answers with nods and smiles. From the sparse interactions he knows that she never learned to speak, only to sign.

Pushing his way past the line, he approaches like a wolf hunting its prey. Taka's mouth drops open. She says quickly in Japanese, "What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here?" He's made no effort to hide the stripes on his cheeks and hands or the moon on his forehead. He's left them revealed if nothing more than to make it obvious who and what he is.

He slams his hands down on the table in front of Nina. She jumps and then her eyes widen as she stares at him. "You are in so much trouble," he tells Taka in English, but stares at Nina the entire time. "Did you think you would get to write something like this and I wouldn't find out about it?"

Nina shakes her head and then shrugs. Her eyes harden and her hands raise. "Chichiue yamente!"

"Udasai!" he shouts back at her, shaken.

"Is there a problem here?" a store clerk asks. She reeks of fear, making Sesshomaru revel in his power. He releases enough yoki to give the people around him chills, raise goosebumps and make them back away.

You deserve it, Nina signs furiously. It was you all along? She glances at Taka and then back at Sesshomaru.

"I deserve it?" he scoffs and grabs her by the wrist, not entirely sure what he's going to do other than drag her out of the store.

"Let her go!" Taka protests chasing after them, out the door of the bookstore. "Let her go! She can't sign!"

Ignoring his daughter's protest, he drags her through the throng of people, shoving one of them out the way and then pulls her into an alley way. But just as he rounds the corner, he throws a hand up, blocking Taka's whip. "I said let her go!"

"Don't test father little one," he chides her back, throwing his hand behind his back and slamming Taka into the brick wall. He keeps her lassoed while she struggles against it. "And you," he speaks coldly to Nina but then he's dumbfounded. He was so sure on the way over that he would know what to say.

"She can't sign if you hold her hands!" Taka shrieks at him.

"Is that my fault? That you never learned to speak?" he growls at her frustrated but then he sees the fear in her eyes, the way she shakes her head and her fingers struggle to speak what her mouth can't.

As soon as he releases her, her palm crashes into his cheek. You bastard! You knew! All along you've been watching me and you knew! I knew you were a sick bastard! Monster! Coward! He grabs her hands and forces them down before she can say anymore. "You know nothing. You don't know the years I spent sacrificing everything I am for her, for our family, to protect her! You don't what love is!"

"RAAAAAHH!" she screams in his face and then spits on him.

He wipes it off and smears it on her clothes. "You know nothing." He breathes shallow and rapid, so furious he can't speak.

"Chichiue onegai!" Taka screams at him.

Nina's eyes shoot over to Taka and glaze over with tears. She garbles out something else, trying to twist her hands out of Sesshomaru's grasp. "Did you know she was my daughter?" Sesshomaru gloats, "did you know the reason you are even here is because of her?" He lets Nina go. "Your best friend is the daughter of Rin's rival lover." He signs the entire time in tandem with speaking.

Nina glances at Taka and then back at Sesshomaru. "What? You didn't notice the resemblance?" He takes his phone out and holds up a picture of Natsuki. "She looks just like her mother."

Nina's bottom lip shakes. Her eyes dart back and forth between Sesshomaru and Taka. He can smell her fear rising. She tries to run from him, but he grabs her by the upper arm and pulls her back. "You are the coward," he hisses at Nina. "You have no idea do you?"

"Daddy please," Taka finally says in English. "Please…"

"Please?" He keeps a death grip on Nina's arm and turns his wrath on his daughter. "Please? Years of writing this? Writing our secrets, my life and you say nothing?" He chokes out her betrayal. "What were you thinking?"

Now it's Taka's turn to tremble in fear and the sting of sorrow, "Grey…you made me have a baby when I didn't want to and then—"

"You chose not to keep him."

"I never would have been in that position if you hadn't sent Katsumoto to me when I was in heat!" Taka screams.

Monster! Nina's hand shakes in front of his face.

"I loved her," he bites out. "I loved her more than I have ever loved anything in this life and ever will again. You may have her memories but you are not her. You are nothing but a selfish, self-centered, entitled American who knows nothing about the life I lived with her. You dishonor her and yourself." He finally releases Nina and Taka.

"I know her memories," he hears Taka tell him. "I know that you hurt her over and over. That you were unfaithful, that you chose your pure blooded lover over her."

"I never chose Natsuki over her!" He pivots, once again furious.

"Then why did you leave her? After everyone got sick and died…you kicked her out of your house and only ever came back to have sex."

"Because she wanted it," he starts laughing at Nina. "Do you think she was so chaste that she would sit in a corner and deny herself my body?"

Nina's face falls.

"Did you forget China? When I returned to her? The century after that we spent together?"

"She went back to you?" Taka asks for Nina.

She doesn't know…or she doesn't remember. He stunned into silence. "You still don't have all of her memories." He caresses the side of Nina's face with his index finger and shakes his head back and forth. "So that was Bukoseno's price."

"Price?" Taka asks, just as confused as Nina. But then she continues for Nina, "It doesn't matter. By the time I finish the last book the world will know what you really are. Did you think coming here and threatening me would stop me from writing?"

His ire returns, but before he can answer he hears the wail of sirens, the sounds of commotion as if everyone inside the book store finally decided to act on him dragging her out of the office. "You are coming with me," he grabs Nina by the shoulder again, hauling her into the skies.

Taka flies after him. "Chichiue stop it! You're overreacting! They're just stories!"

"Perverse stories of my life with her."

"She doesn't want to go!"

"Well, I am a monster," he says, his voice steadily changing from a tenor to a growl and then he releases a cloud of dokkasu knocking both Nina and Taka unconscious. There is only place to take her, to retrieve what was lost. My heart, you don't remember how I earned your forgiveness…what brought you back to me.

Please Review! You know I never realized how much I still love this story until I just re-read this chapter. I've been working on originals. I'm in love with my new characters. But I still love this series and at some point I may still go back and writer a longer version of the 10 years in China.

What do I think of Yashahime?

What most of the fandom does. It sucks. First off I want to make something very clear. I have never ever shipped Rin with Sesshomaru while she was still a child. I have never and will never be comfortable with that. Do I have issues with people who do? YES. That's why I left a tumblr chat back in August because I do not see anything but child and guardian in the original series and I do not support pedophilic shipping. It's illegal. It's wrong. It's really not what I wanted to see in Yashahime.

As interviews were coming out recently, I was literally hoping and praying that the script writer and director would make it clear that Rin was an adult. Ken Narita said that Rin was in middle school. The director encouraged the VA to think of Rin as a child. Basically, Rin was turned into something that I desperately do not like, and that is a child who is obsessed with a demon Lord, who never does anything but pine over him and then somehow they fell in love while she is a child, having children and the series is marketed to children.

So I literally stopped watching at episode 8. I stopped in for for 15 and literally felt sick to my stomach for about a week, because what I saw was a man taking babies from a baby, and telling her off. People keep putting badass Rin qualities on Yashahime Rin and to be honest they aren't there. She has around 10 lines in the series, 7 of which are people's names, none of which are questioning Sesshomaru's actions. All of which have led to her children suffering.

Then the script writer says that Sesshomaru might grow to love his children. So now the fucking creators are confirming what we knew all along that Sesshomaru doesn't give a fuck about his kids. Followed by that he said, Sesshomaru only wants to raise the strongest children...

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So basically remember how someone on SessxRin drabbles said Sess was a bad dad in my stories because he didn't change diapers? Sess in Yashahime doesn't even want to raise his own children. He wants them to prove their worthy of him, not that he was worthy of them. Why have half-demon kids at all then?

Now the girls...oh the girls. Moroha is cute, but I honestly hate that she is sidelined so badly. I do not think for a minute Koga and Ayame would be cool selling her into child slavery. I think a great story-line could have been the twins trying to free her, but no everyone seems cool with Moroha being a slave.

Then there's Towa. Who is clingy as fuck to Setsuna...gets powers way too easily. Inuyasha wasn't raised by his father and had to struggle. Towa and Setsuna everything is handed to them on a silver platter despite not being raised by their parents. They have magical powers that have nothing to do with where they come from...(I honestly think Sunrise is trolling Sesskagu shippers. If there is a flip and Rin isn't the mom I'll be shocked. At this point it's just let's make shit up as we go along.)

Towa for most of the first season doesn't even look for the butterfly demon. Setsuna doesn't care about anything. Everyone keeps saying, I want to see a happy family reunion but the main characters literally don't care about their parents. The OG cast don't care about each other. They literally committed the sin of dragging the OG characters in order to try to make Sessrin look good, which I have never supported in fanfic is one of the big turn offs for many readers. You can ship sessrin without dragging the OG cast.

Moroha doesn't care about her parents or what happened to them. The Twins don't care. So at this point, I question why the audience cares and most people just want to know what happened to the OG.

The whole scorned lover BS with Zero is dumb. Like so dumb. And look by the end of Season 1 of Inuyasha we knew that if Naraku got the shards he would plunge the world into darkness. So who cares if Kirinmaru dies right? Why does that even matter?

Basically it was a massive let down. I'm not happy with their version of Sessrin. Sess seems to have back pedaled in his character development with no reason, other than the script writer openly admitting he didn't know how to pair the two and doesn't want to raise his children if they aren't strong enough. So that's what I think. I don't like. I badly don't like it. I think the fandom could have lived without it because there are sooo many amazing canon-based sessrins out there that empower Rin and give her a real voice not one we have to imagine because it's literally not written in Yashahime.

Also hello sexist as fuck. The script writer boasted about how Kohaku had gotten powerful so Sango could take her place as a housewife. Kagome was now a house wife. Rin a house wife...you're telling me my badass killer females just get to be sidelined in domestic roles? NO...