Disclaimer: InuYasha is still not mine.
This will, of course, change once I and my flying ninja monkeys conquer the Earth.
Yet again, this story is rated R for language and violence. What can I say, my Amy is a potty-mouth, and Sesshoumaru…well, we all know how Sesshoumaru is. There's also some nudity, but nothing graphically described.
A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone! Sorry this chapter is coming out later than I would have liked – I got WAY too caught up in the home-made gifts that I had to have done in time for Christmas (it's kind of hard to type when your fingers are busy crocheting scarves…)
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Discourse
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"Whaddya mean, she's gone!" Kouga demanded.
Ginta and Hakkaku shifted uncomfortably under their fearless leader's gaze. "Just that, Kouga!" Ginta exclaimed. "Yesterday morning, she was still in our territory."
"By noon, she and her cub had taken off." Hakkaku added.
Kouga stared, eyes narrowed, at his faithful lieutenants. "Why didn't you keep an eye on her like I ordered you to?"
The two wolves continued to squirm under his steely gaze. "Ah, well, you see, Kouga…" Ginta faltered.
"The idiot jumped off of a cliff, Kouga." Hakkaku stated bluntly.
"What!" he roared.
"She landed safely, Kouga!" Ginta hastened to assure his leader. "There was a lake below the cliff."
"Of course," Hakkaku mused as Kouga began to relax, "there was that water youkai that she attacked."
Ginta jumped in as Kouga's face began to turn an odd shade of purple. "She stole its prey, Kouga, a young human girl. The water youkai was quite injured, but she did not appear to be any the worse for wear."
"Except for that burn on her leg." Hakkaku added darkly.
Ginta lost his patience, and smacked Hakkaku upside the head. "Ow! What the hell was that for?" Hakkaku growled. Ginta nodded wordlessly at the silently fuming Kouga.
"Oh." Hakkaku said meekly.
Kouga fought to keep his temper under control. "Why didn't you two go after her?"
"Kouga," Ginta began, speaking in as soothing a tone as he could muster, "you ordered us to remain out of sight. If we were to continue following her, we would have had to make our presence known."
"Which you forbade us from doing, remember?" Hakkaku added quickly.
"Besides," Ginta continued, "we don't think she's traveling alone anymore."
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"Hello? Are you listening to me? I said I'm going hunting, Lord Sesshoumaru."
The tall youkai continued to ignore her, and Amy fought the urge to wave her hands in front of his still face. 'Geez, he could at least acknowledge my presence. Ass.' She shrugged, and began to move into the underbrush.
"You cannot possibly require food yet, hanyou." Sesshoumaru's chill voice stilled her feet, even as her head turned to coolly regard the still-seated youkai.
"No," she replied stiffly, "I do not. However," she inclined her head towards the still-sleeping younglings, "those two will when they wake up. In case you haven't noticed, children need to eat more often than adults. Human children especially – your Rin is hardy, but she is showing the early signs of malnutrition, Lord Sesshoumaru. A good, daily morning meal would go a long way towards maintaining her health."
She turned to move back into the woods, startled when a clawed hand grabbed her newly-healed arm and yanked her back into the clearing. Sesshoumaru gazed coolly down at her, his face unanimated except for a reproving look in his eyes. "You reek of dead blood, hanyou." The fastidious youkai wrinkled his nose. "There is a hot spring near here. Go bathe yourself – I will hunt."
As Amy gazed at him in shock, Sesshoumaru released her arm and melted into the woods. 'Wait a second…just he just say that I'm stinky' she thought in outrage.
"Hey! Sesshoumaru!" she yelled. "Bring back some fruit or vegetables, will ya?"
'You smell…I'll show him who smells…the ass.' she fumed as she gathered her bathing supplies, glaring at the snoring Jakken. "Hey! Jakken!" she whispered fiercely as she toed him in the side.
"Snn..huh, what? Are we under attack?" The sleepy imp jumped up, Staff of Heads at the ready.
"No." Amy said sourly. "Lord Sesshoumaru has gone hunting, and has 'suggested' that I go take a bath. That leaves you to watch the kids, Jakken."
Amy followed her nose out of the clearing, ignoring Jakken as he grumbled about being turned into a babysitter. Once out of sight, she casually lifted her arm and sniffed. 'Phew!' she thought in disgust. 'Okay, maybe I can't really call him an ass…but he could have been more tactful about it!' she fumed.
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So just what did humans – and meddling hanyous - consider to be 'nutritious', anyway?
This was the question plaguing Sesshoumaru as he began to scour the woods. He'd never paid much attention to what Rin considered edible. He knew, all too well from past experience, that he and human food didn't get along. 'Rice. Ick. Only a human could eat that swill and enjoy it!' he thought in disgust.
'And just look at them…weak, pathetic. As insubstantial as what they consume. No,' he decided, 'if Rin is to grow strong, she needs what any growing pup needs – meat.'
He paused in the dense forest, letting the wind carry its hidden message to his nose. A slow smile spread across his lips as it practically whispered in his ear, telling him where he could find proper food for his Rin.
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Amy sank deeper into the hot water. 'Mmm…five more minutes, then out with the soap.' she promised herself, lazily examining her healing limbs.
The cut on her arm was fully healed, if still a bit itchy. The flesh of her leg was being a bit more stubborn. The wound itself had finally begun to shrink, but the meat surrounding it was still showing mild shades of purple and red. 'At this rate,' Amy thought glumly, 'it'll be noon before we end up going anywhere.'
Amy sighed, and reached for the soap. She didn't want to think about how long it was taking her to heal, or how long she was going to be stuck traveling with Lord Frostbite. 'Honestly, is that man incapable of smiling? Would it kill him to laugh?' she thought sourly. Amy considered herself to be an easygoing person, but after a mere few hours in the youkai lord's presence, her patience was stretched thin.
And all he'd done was to stare at her. Stared at her while she tried to sleep, stared at her as the sun found its way over the horizon, and he'd continued his staring for nearly an hour before she'd finally had enough and declared she was going to look for food. 'What is his problem, anyway?' she wondered.
She stretched her leg out of the water, carefully applying soap between her toes. 'You'd think he'd never seen a hanyou before, the way he was looking at me. And what was up with that weird jolt of energy? It wasn't his youki, that's for damn sure – it felt way too pleasant to have come from that jerk!'
'Besides,' she thought as she dipped her foot back into the water, 'he had WAY too much of a surprised look in his eyes for him to have done that on purpose.' Amy shifted her weight carefully, pulling her leg out enough to examine the wound on her calf.
She hadn't imagined it – the wound had truly begun to heal with that energy surge. Despite her sudden bout of pessimism, the irritation was really almost gone, and the wound itself was beginning to flesh out. 'I don't think there will even be a scar.' she thought, pleased.
Amy suppressed a yawn, reaching for her bottle of shampoo. 'That's enough thinking, girl.' she scolded herself. 'If I don't finish this up quick, I'm gonna fall asleep in here…and the last thing I need is for Lord Frosty to come looking for me!'
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"So, remind me why it is that we're out here again?" Hakkaku grumbled. Ginta rolled his eyes. Figures that his brother would choose to act so dumb over a situation that he had helped to create.
"We're looking for the princess, remember?" Ginta scolded. "You remember –red hair, green eyes, great legs?"
"Funny accent, weird taste in clothes, extremely rude? Yeah, Ginta, I know who we're looking for. What I asked is 'why'? Why are we looking for that mutt?" Hakkaku growled back.
Ginta counted slowly to ten. "Because Kouga promised to watch out for her, remember? If anything happens to her…" he paused ominously, "you can say 'good-bye' to the treaty between our tribe and the Moon Wolf Clan. They're some of our fiercest allies!"
"Ha." Hakkaku said dismissively. "A clan of half-breeds. Who needs 'em?"
Ginta rolled his eyes. He had the feeling that Hakkaku wasn't as put out as he appeared to be – the visiting princess had made more of an impression on his brother than she had on any other of Kouga's wolves.
It was just too bad that the biggest impression she had made was that of her fist on Hakkaku's face.
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Sesshoumaru looked at the deceased sika, allowing the corners of his mouth to turn up in the slightest of smiles even as he rolled his injured left shoulder in irritation. 'It should have been a clean kill, damnit.' It had been pure luck that the sika had been able to gore him. At least it had gone for his empty sleeve, allowing Sesshoumaru time to feint and quickly sever the beast's spine with his claws.
He gathered up his kill, casually swinging the carcass over his shoulder. 'This should keep that hanyou from complaining for a while.' he thought smugly as he began to walk back towards his retainer and faithful ward.
He hadn't traveled far before he smelled water and heard someone mumbling. Curious, he stalked closer.
Peering through the trees, he was surprised to discover the wolf hanyou, partially dressed and muttering to herself in another language.
She had obviously taken advantage of the hot spring, and Sesshoumaru felt a spark of satisfaction that she had followed his orders. He inhaled deeply, savoring her scent now that it was…unfettered.
'Wolf musk, there's no hiding that, though it is faint now that she's cleansed herself. Perhaps it is merely lingering on her clothing?' he mused, slowly exhaling and allowing the next breath to caress his tongue. ' There is also…something floral? Yes…jasmine. But so faint…and something else, diluting the scent…rain, perhaps? Yes…hers is the scent of jasmine blossoms in a rainstorm.' he decided, giving himself a mental pat on the back.
It was a soothing combination to the dog youkai's sensitive nose. Pleasant, yet not overpowering as so many of the perfumes favored by the denizens of the high youkai courts could be.
'Clean.' he declared to himself. 'She smells clean.'
She had obviously just emerged from the spring. She wore nothing but a strange set of flimsy undergarments, and seemed to be in the process of toweling her long hair dry. Sesshoumaru allowed his eyes to rove appreciatively over her trim form. Barely reaching his shoulder in height, the hanyou had a stockier frame than most of the females he normally encountered, but she was still quite small compared to him. Her skin gleamed with health, and her hard-earned muscles betrayed their presence only as she moved, their twitches rippling along her luminescent skin. Sesshoumaru frowned as his eyes focused on a thin white line that started on her right shoulder and curled down to rest in the small of her back. 'A scar?' he realized with a start. 'But what injury could have been so great as to permanently mark a Moon Wolf?'
She had pulled on a fresh undershirt and had just begun to step into a pair of black pants when Sesshoumaru realized what, exactly, it was that he was doing. 'Spying on a bathing female…a bathing hanyou, no less…what is wrong with me? Such behavior is beneath this Sesshoumaru.' he thought in disgust as he turned on his heel and prepared to walk away.
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She was getting dressed when she heard it. A sharp crack, the rustle of leaves. Something had stepped on a twig in the woods just behind her.
"Shit!" she swore softly as she hurriedly finished fastening her cargo pants.
"Hey!" she yelled fiercely. "Who's out there?"
Her hand itched for the dagger lying but a few feet away, next to her bathing supplies. She settled for taking a defensive stance as the bushes next to her parted…
And revealed Lord Sesshoumaru with a dead deer slung over his shoulder.
"Hanyou," he said in a deadpan voice, "do you always make so much noise when you bathe?"
Amy fought down a blush, pulled herself out of her defensive stance, and stared at the cold lord with her arms crossed. "Hmph! Do you always sneak up on people when they are bathing, youkai?"
Their stare down lasted a few moments longer before Sesshoumaru shrugged, turned on his heel, and began to walk away. "If you are finished, hanyou," he said without looking back, "I would suggest that you come get breakfast."
Amy stared, fuming, at the retreating youkai's back. 'The nerve of him!' she thought. 'How dare he order me around like that! And what if I'd still been bathing when he sought me out? Why, I oughta…wait a minute, what if he did show up while I was still bathing, and just waited until I was dressed to announce himself? Eep!' she thought in mortification.
Sesshoumaru allowed a smirk to cross his face as he heard the hanyou scramble to collect her supplies. Her emotions had played like a sweet melody along her scent, the undertones ranging from outrage to horror, and then to outright embarrassment.
'Tenseiga,' he thought bemusedly, 'at least the females you collect are…entertaining.'
It didn't take long for the hanyou to catch up, remaining a step behind and a step aside of his left side. She wrinkled her nose as she looked at the dead deer. It was shocking that Sesshoumaru didn't have a trail of blood down his back, the way he was carrying it. 'Must've bled it out,' she thought, 'though I didn't think it was possible to bleed even a sika in less than a few hours.' She craned her neck skyward, checking out the sun's position.
It was still fairly early in the morning, though dawn had come and gone two hours previous. 'I guess breakfast would still be a good word, though by the time I get some of that cooked for Rin a better term might be brunch.' she thought grumpily. She tried to stifle a yawn, not missing the glance Sesshoumaru gave her from the corner of his eye.
"Why did you not sleep while you had the chance, hanyou?" he said quietly, so quietly that Amy's ears had to strain to hear him. Her back stiffened as she retorted, "I could not escape the feeling that I was being watched, youkai. I wonder; would you have fallen asleep while being stared at by a stranger?"
Amy held her breath as the proud youkai straightened his back even further. "No." he conceded. "This Sesshoumaru would not have."
They continued to walk in silence, Amy trying carefully not to stare at the youkai in front of her. 'Must not be far now…wow, for an icy kind of guy, Frosty here sure has a nice ass…whoa! Where did that thought come from? Bad Amy, bad girl!' she scolded herself. 'No lusting after the arrogant youkai guy! It's not like you have the option of sticking around him for long anyway, remember?' She shook her head slightly, trying to clear it of such wayward thoughts.
Sesshoumaru was pulled out of his own musings by a faint thrum of energy from Tenseiga. Glancing at the hanyou, he caught the small smile on her face being replaced by a faint scowl as she gave her head a slight shake. 'What is running through her mind, I wonder, to cause such a change?' he pondered.
"Hanyou." he spoke suddenly, breaking the silence.
"Hmm? What…ack!" Amy looked up to see the dead sika sailing through the air towards her. Quickly dropping her bag, she held her arms out, barely keeping the animal from hitting the ground. "Hey! What did you do that for?" she demanded angrily.
He gave her a scathing look as he continued walking. "You wanted to feed the children, did you not, hanyou? We are almost back to the clearing."
She stood staring at him, eyebrow twitching, as he continued walking. 'Why you…' she thought angrily, hefting the heavy animal over her right shoulder and collecting her bag with her left hand. "Egotistical bastard…" she muttered under her breath as soon as the youkai in question was out of hearing range.
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They'd been walking for nearly half a day before Amy noticed it.
It had started as a small dark spot, slowly spreading out from beneath Sesshoumaru's armor until it widened into a palm-sized patch of red on the youkai's white-clad back.
Now the arrogant lord was sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere, his haori was soaking in a nearby icy stream, his human was running around the woods playing "Fetch the Staff of Heads" with a wolf cub, his retainer was chasing the children and screeching every five seconds for them to behave, all while an irate hanyou was brutally examining his shoulder and relentlessly assaulting his ears.
"You should have told me you were hurt." Amy ground out through clenched teeth. Sesshoumaru let out an irritated "Hmph," and casually turned his head away from the hanyou's furious eyes.
Amy sat behind the larger youkai, carefully examining the wound. The entry point on the youkai's chest had healed without a trace. The problem was the sliver of antler that had remained in the wound and was now slowly being expelled from Sesshoumaru's body via his back. The sliver was sticking halfway out, preventing the new wound from closing fully
"What did you plan to do? Walk around all day with a piece of deer bone sticking out of your back?" Amy said snidely as she carefully extracted the offending sliver.
Sesshoumaru stiffened in resentment. "It was not life-threatening, and it was nothing that my body could not heal. You worry too much over a mere annoyance, hanyou."
Amy resisted the urge to smack Sesshoumaru upside the head. "And what if that deer had gotten you lower down? In your belly, for instance? Sure, for you it would have been nothing more than a 'mere annoyance', but you still would have been aggravated for days as that shard worked its way through your bowels."
"Besides," she sniffed, laying her palm flat against the torn flesh of his shoulder, "it's stupid to allow yourself to remain injured when you have someone like me around."
Amy concentrated, carefully focusing her chi into the palm of her hand. 'Careful now, don't want to burn the arrogant, stubborn pig.' she cautioned herself, as the healthy energy of her chi sought to balance that of the injured youkai. She closed her eyes, concentrating on her mental picture of his chi, using her own to soothe his. She frowned as she felt his chi twist, flowing jerkily in fractured spurts. 'What the hell? It feels like there's a drain on his chi, and yet…something is pumping more energy into him to make up for the lack.' She opened her eyes a slit, allowing herself a swift look at where his upper arm ended in a stub. 'Could his body be trying to grow a new arm?' she wondered. 'I thought such a thing was impossible, even for a daiyoukai. Not without gathering massive amounts of energy…unless…' Amy concentrated deeper. Something was definitely pumping more energy into her unwilling patient, but she couldn't quite pinpoint where the energy was coming from.
'This energy,' she mused, 'it tastes…it tastes familiar.'
With a start, Amy pulled her hand away from Sesshoumaru's healing flesh. 'It's the same energy that healed my leg.' she realized. 'But where is it coming from?'
Shaking herself, Amy watched in satisfaction as the wound finished closing. "So, what happened to your arm, anyway?" she inquired in a cheery voice.
One golden eye glared at her through a veil of silver as the dog lord moved his head the barest of inches. "I lost it."
Amy rolled her eyes, ignoring the stiffened set of Sesshoumaru's shoulders. "No kidding. How'd you lose it?"
"You ask a lot of questions, hanyou." Sesshoumaru swiftly stood, his hair billowing out and brushing the hanyou's face as he began to walk towards the children.
"Never ask, never learn." Amy said quietly.
Sesshoumaru paused. "What was that?"
Amy shrugged. "Something my big brother used to tell me. 'Never ask, never learn.' If you want to know something, but are too scared to ask about it, you'll never find out what it was that you wanted to know."
Sesshoumaru inclined his head the barest fraction of an inch, still refusing to look at the hanyou. "And why is it that you wanted to know about my arm?"
Amy sighed. 'How am I going to explain this to him?'
"Something strange is going on with your life-force. It's almost like..." she paused, trying to find the proper words to express what she had felt. "Well, it's odd, okay? It almost felt like your body was trying to regenerate the missing limb, which should be impossible. The energy drain alone would kill you long before the limb had been able to regenerate."
Amy stood up, carefully brushing away the dirt and leaves that had accumulated on her pants. "But the weird thing? The really weird thing? Something is pumping energy into you. Something is compensating for your energy loss so that you don't die."
She walked towards the still youkai, turning her head as she came abreast of him and he began to walk next to her. "Do you know what it was that shocked me when you, ah, grabbed me last night?"
Sesshoumaru allowed his gaze to fall coolly upon his unwilling companion. Her scent had traces of nervousness, mixed with determination. 'She doesn't like reminding me of that, and yet she still asks.' he realized. 'How…odd.'
Sesshoumaru was startled to discover a look of expectation on the hanyou's face, though she was trying to be subtle about it. Her hair, swinging loose today, prevented him from seeing her eyes as they undoubtedly examined his own expression.
"Tenseiga." he said shortly, laying his palm protectively on the katana's hilt. "This blade has the power to restore life to those it chooses. It would appear that it has decided to protect me from myself." he said dryly.
The two walked in companionable silence, stopping to regard the wolf and child as they chased Jakken in and out of the icy stream. With surprising speed, Amy managed to retrieve Sesshoumaru's haori from the stream before it became covered with muddy pawprints, and carefully began to squeeze the water from the heavy cloth. Satisfied that the blood stain had been rinsed out, she hung it over a convenient branch to dry.
"So why did it try to heal me?" Amy wondered aloud. "I wasn't in any danger of dying." At the youkai's slight snort, she amended, "Well, not from my wounds, at any rate."
"Tenseiga has a will of its own." Sesshoumaru admitted grudgingly. "It often chooses when it will…and when it will not…be used." He snorted. "All in all, a damn useless sword."
Amy stared at him, her eyebrow quirking up in interest. "Useless? What makes you say that?"
Sesshoumaru coolly regarded the hanyou, disgust lacing his tones. "Tenseiga is a sword of healing and resurrection. What good is a sword that cannot kill?"
Amy stared at him in shock, her mouth hanging slightly open before she shook herself. "Any sword can take life, Sesshoumaru. How many can give it back?"
Sesshoumaru snorted. "You forget, hanyou, Tenseiga only gives back life when it chooses to. What use is a sword that cannot be controlled?"
"Cannot be controlled, Lord Sesshoumaru? Or simply chooses not to be controlled?" Amy said sharply. "Perhaps you haven't been sweet-talking it enough?"
"What are you getting at, hanyou?" Sesshoumaru growled. Amy looked at his red-tinged eyes and gulped, forcing herself not to take a step back. 'Note to Self: Never insult a daiyoukai's relationship with his sword.' she thought wryly.
"I'm saying that force isn't the best way to accomplish everything." she retorted. "Obviously you value Tenseiga, despite its apparent lack of usefulness, or you wouldn't carry it around with that jyaki-infested broadsword of yours. So perhaps instead of trying to force Tenseiga to do what you want, you should learn to make Tenseiga choose to do what you want."
"And perhaps you should not speak of things when you obviously have no idea what you are talking about, hanyou." Sesshoumaru growled.
Amy rolled her eyes. "Whatever, Lord Sesshoumaru. In case you haven't noticed, the day isn't getting any longer. We don't exactly have a lot of time to argue right now."
Sesshoumaru forced himself not to strangle the impudent hanyou as she began to walk haughtily away from him. Grabbing his still-soaked haori from the tree, he hastily pulled it on before following the female. 'Irritating wench…how dare she start an argument with me and then act like she had nothing to do with it?' he fumed.
He glanced down at the silent katana resting on his hip. 'Tenseiga…whatever has you interested in her had best be worth it.' The katana thrummed, its faint pulse causing his untied haori to ripple. 'Oh? You think so, hmm?' Sesshoumaru thought faintly, his attention caught by the sight ahead of him.
The hanyou had finally approached the children, confiscating the Staff of Heads and handing it back to Jakken. "So!" she said brightly. "Are you two ready to get going again?"
The wolf barked and began trotting ahead, looking over his shoulder to make sure his companions were following. Rin and the hanyou began to walk hand-in-hand, doing some complicated skipping thing that would be bound to have the child exhausted within a few minutes.
Sesshoumaru shook his head, restraining a smile as a grumbling Jakken resumed walking at his heels. 'I will never understand what that child sees in that…that…woman' he thought in disbelief.
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Dusk had fallen, and the hanyou insisted on pressing forward, regardless. Rin lay cuddled on her back, the hanyou's hair her blanket, the strands puffing out from her steady breath the only sign that she was still alive under the shining mass.
"Tomorrow is going to be a bad day." the hanyou murmured.
"How so?" the youkai answered back, the bass in his soft voice causing shivers to run down her spine.
Amy smiled wryly at him. "Can't you smell it? Already, most of my youkai senses are gone. With the dawn, I will be completely human."
They walked a little further in companionable silence before Sesshoumaru's curiosity got the better of him. "What is it like?" he said quietly. Amy looked at him with startled eyes. "What's what like?"
Sesshoumaru rolled his shoulders in what Amy was quickly coming to recognize as his version of a shrug. "Losing yourself. Becoming weak…becoming…human."
Amy chuckled, her low laugh disturbing the little girl on her back. Rin burrowed deeper into Amy's hair, and the hanyou waited for the girl's breathing to even out before answering the taiyoukai.
"Well, I wouldn't say that I was losing myself." she said in amusement. "The senses become less sharp, true, but with the proper training they're not that bad. My fangs and claws disappear, but they're not that noticeable normally, anyway. On the upside, my healing powers grow stronger as my youkai blood fades. So it's really a pretty even trade."
She shook her head as Sesshoumaru thought over her words. "So why will tomorrow be a bad day?" he murmured.
Amy smiled grimly. "Because tomorrow's the day our quarry will come hunting us."
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A/N: Sorry for ending it there guys, but I'm suffering from a mild case of writer's block, and I really wanted to get this chapter out by Christmas. (As Fanfiction . Net will no doubt show, I'm about fifteen minutes too late for that).
The ending of this chapter might end up getting revamped before the next chapter comes out, just because I didn't really get a chance to edit it.
Now if you'll excuse me, there's a couple Excedrin pills with my name on them...