Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of InuYasha. But Jennifer is owned by me.... Spluh!
Strange Interlude
Chapter Seventeen
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Days passed and evidence that there ever was a human in the cave had all but disappeared. The grimy rock seeped back through to replace the marble, the fifth room was closed off and locked, the bags of food in the front room were gotten rid of, and life for Sesshomaru and Jaken returned to "normal".
But...it wasn't normal, Sesshomaru soon discovered. The death of the human girl was so sudden. There was no grieving, no acknowledgement of her disappearance between the two of them, just a return to normalcy. The two of them carried on as if she had never existed, and this is what made the situation abnormal.
Sesshomaru could not forget about her, no matter how hard he wanted to. Something about her death did not seem real. The blood on the rock was hers, and the smell in the wind was of her, but there was something else among the smells of blood and fear, something he couldn't quite place. That day, when he had discovered her blood, he had also searched the area for her aura, or really, any active ki of the forest. If she had fallen and was still alive, Sesshomaru should have been able to sense her life force, but the strange thing was that he found none.
He could sense no active ki, human, demon, or otherwise for miles around. Even the trees seemed dead and dreary. If the girl had died, there would have been a corpse, which was also missing. Had it been eaten, then surely Sesshomaru would have smelled traces of the scavenger's scent.
But...the entire area was barren of active energy. And as Sesshomaru thought on this, he could come across only one reason as to her disappearance. She had, in fact, been taken. This was the only viable reason. But by whom, he wondered. And how could that demon have invaded Sesshomaru's space, stolen the girl, and escaped without leaving a scent?
And then Sesshomaru remembered something he had overlooked. On that night Sesshomaru had received the human arm and hell insects from the demon Naraku something he couldn't quite determine was lingering in the air. It was the same smell as the hell insects themselves—a thin, barely detectable poison. A poison that spread through the air so quickly that it had surrounded him, as if watching him. This was the odd sense of nothing Sesshomaru had smelled around the mountain. This stench, so slight that to Sesshomaru it was annoying, was of Naraku, whom Sesshomaru also knew as Basoni, the shape shifter who had trapped him in stone.
One would think that once discovering the identity of the strange foreign girl's abductor, Sesshomaru would become enraged and charge after the malcontent, but learning of her captor only took the girl's abduction off his mind. He instead focused on how the ignoble demon could have gotten past Sesshomaru's barrier and why he would steal the girl in the first place.
Sesshomaru pretended he didn't care. Sesshomaru pretended he didn't know. But the truth was that he did. He knew why Naraku sought the girl. It was because of that ridiculous prophecy. That power-mad fool. Naraku would go to great lengths to increase his own strength, even fight over that age-old prophecy with a demon of noble birth and three times his age.
Sesshomaru knew this. He knew what she was worth, and he let Naraku take her. The reasons above were enough to support his inaction. Sesshomaru was the nobler demon. If Naraku needed her so badly, then why not let him have her? Why squabble with the fool in this petty demon's race?
His father believed it. Did that make him petty? No. At first the Prophecy was thought to be true. His father was trying to achieve what was thought to be real. The thing that made his father weak was his love for the human whore. Sesshomaru would never lower himself to that level.
But why then did Sesshomaru keep the girl? The answer always eluded him. That he had even found her was completely by coincidence. She had set him free from Basoni's entrapment. But this was not what made her the one spoken of in the Prophecy, which is why he did not take her then. Not to say he actually ever believed in that load of crock.
The prophecy was thought of as true up until the Shikon Jewel had resurfaced and was handed to the human priestess, Kikyo. Then the 100-year-old Prophecy thousands of demons had tried to fulfill was forgotten. All forgot the "hallowed words" of the seer, and a new hunt for power began. But Sesshomaru could not forget as easily as the rest could. Because of the Prophecy, he had a brother. And not only that, but he had a hanyou brother. Sesshomaru felt that because of this he and his family were forever shamed.
It was for this reason that Sesshomaru swore hatred against his younger brother and swore to kill him. He saw this as the only way to lift his father's shame. But then his father had the two swords, Tetsusaiga and Tenseiga forged, making it so that Sesshomaru could not carry out his pledge. Soon after, his father died, sealing himself and the great sword Tetsusaiga the young InuYasha's eye and away from Sesshomaru's reach. Sesshomaru, as heir, received his father's Western Lands and the Sword of Healing, Tenseiga. The half-brother and his human mother were driven out from the lands, and life went on.
Many years later, while Sesshomaru was traversing his wide expanse of territory, he experienced something he could never forget. The Prophecy Sesshomaru had despised for so long was revealed to him as his birthright. This happened one day while traveling along an old forgotten road. The path led him deep into the forest to a small, grassy clearing. Sitting along the roadside was a cracked and weathered tomb. The name scrawled into the stone was that of Wei Zhen, the oracle responsible for the Prophecy and his brother's birth. Although she had been born in China, the oracle lived and died in Japan. How strange that Sesshomaru, sworn enemy of her words would find her disregarded grave.
Sesshomaru, once having found the woman's tomb, felt so reviled that he spat upon it. How dare her presence, even in death, disturb his walk!
The moment this thought was uttered, a great wind blew up, and the wispy vision of the dead woman appeared before him.
"I should have known that the son of the Great Dog Demon would resent me," she said to him.
"Return to your eternal sleep, wretched woman. Your blasted prophecy has tormented me enough to last the rest of my life."
"You speak of your brother then?" she replied.
"That foul halfling is not my brother!" spat the temperamental young lord.
But she continued to speak, "The birth of your half-brother is the least of what my prophecy has done to you."
Sesshomaru glared at the smoky phantom in front of him.
"Like it or not," she continued, "You are inevitably linked to your brother and the Prophecy."
Sesshomaru glowered. Even in death she would not quit her evangelizing. He turned away from the ancient apparition.
"Sesshomaru," she began, "do you not even wish to know your destiny?"
Sesshomaru did not stop walking.
In increased volume, she told the demon lord's retreating figure, "You will kill him, you know...the one you despise so much."
It was this that caused Sesshomaru to stop. What foolery would she speak of next?
She continued, "And you'll use her to do it."
Sesshomaru scoffed and started walking down the road again. "Not another word on the Prophecy, wretch," he cursed her.
"Pity," she spoke, "You would be the one to fulfill it."
He thought, Will not this tireless old bat pass on?
As Sesshomaru continued down the road away from the old shrine and restless spirit, the air grew colder, and as soon Sesshomaru came to the realization of this change, all time seemed to stop. An icy sensation filled his entire being as the frail form of the woman's ghost filtered into his mind. In his mind's eye he saw the ghost's face, while old and wrinkled, it also appeared supple and glowing.
"You will meet her, you know, whether you like it or not. But what you do of it is up to you. The children of her womb hold a special gift. They will change the world..."
As she spoke to him, flashes and tangled images of a child's face, spurts of blood, and laughter rising through ash and smoke flooded his vision.
"...You can fulfill the prophecy and kill your brother, if that's what you desire, or spend countless years finding some other way."
The ghost appeared to him once more. Her stern, aged face suddenly morphed to a younger, brighter one. Her heavy gray eyes blinked and revealed new browner ones. The oracle's pale skin turned fresh and freckled. Her grayed hair once pulled into a tight bun fell loose around her face, turning black and wavy.
In a new voice the apparition spoke, "She's yours if you choose. Do not run from destiny."
Sesshomaru woke from his lapse and turned to look down the path behind him. The oracle's gravesite, several yards behind him, sat dusty and cracked. The sunlight shone through the trees and a small black butterfly flitted around the stone.
A single bead of sweat formed at Sesshomaru's temple, "Sesshomaru doesn't run from anything."
And with that, he turned away, back home to the west.
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That was so long ago. It's a wonder Sesshomaru hadn't remembered the encounter earlier. If the girl really was of the 'Prophecy' as that dead Chinese woman had said, then she was his to do with whatever he pleased. So what if he was to leave her to the fool demon Naraku? Clearly Naraku needed the power she might give him while Sesshomaru did not. Or, at least that is what he told himself
But...
There was something Sesshomaru couldn't let go. There was something he felt he owed to the thief. A revenge for all the tricks Naraku has played. Naraku's first treachery was on that cold night fifty years ago when Sesshomaru was set in stone. The demon went by Basoni back then. And then a second time, much more recently, Sesshomaru was tricked by Naraku when he was given the jewel-poisoned human arm.
This third trap would be his last. Even though Sesshomaru would lose nothing by the absence of the human girl, he could not let Naraku think he had won against him a third time. Now he would settle the score.
"A petty demon's race? No. It isn't about prophecy or destiny anymore. It is about pride and putting that upstart demon back in his place."
And so Sesshomaru decided to leave the comforts of his dreary cave and take back what was so easily stolen from him.
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A/N: After many a month, a new chapter of SI comes out. Summer has come and gone, and I have done less than I thought I would. I'm going to have one busy fall and winter. But no worries. An update at least once a month can be expected. I'm getting up to the big second quarter of the story I've already written, (It just needs typing.) so there'll be less of a creative strain on my brain. Hee, hee that rhymes!
Well, it's after midnight, so time for me to watch some Great Detective Conan AKA Case Closed and turn in. Happy August to all and to all a good night!