Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha but this idea is all mine!
"Words"
"Memory words"
'Thoughts'
Memories
Rin ran ahead of Sesshoumaru on the dirt path through the forest. They were in the west and Sesshoumaru had promised Rin he would go with her to the lake she wanted to swim in. He knew the lake well. Everyone knew the lake well. It was a popular place to swim. Sesshoumaru himself had enjoyed swimming there when he was a boy.
'I stopped going there though' he thought as they continued to walk closer. His mind wandered to his past where he was going to the lake to beat the heat of the day.
He ran quickly throwing off his haori as he did. His shoes, his pants, everything was tossed aside as he got closer to the lake. It was too hot to run but the thought of the cool water was too much to think about and not run. Everything was good in the West. A famine had broken just a year ago and everything was returning to normal. Sesshoumaru mentally shuddered at the thought of the cries of hunger that were everywhere. His younger sisters and brother had died. Leaving only him.
"Poor father," Sesshoumaru sighed. He never knew his siblings that well so it didn't bother him as much they were dead. After all you can't really miss what you never had. The lake came into sight and just looking at it made the young prince feel even hotter.
Rin laughed and spun along the way. This would be the first time in a long time she had been anywhere alone with her lord. Just the two of them. She looked at Sesshoumaru and saw the distant look in his eyes.
"Everything alright my lord?" she asked.
He dove into the water and felt at once cool. The young boy didn't even notice the elder dog demon closing in on him.
"Just what Suka ordered," the little dog demon sighed and dove under the water again and looked at all the fish. The elder demon was at the shore. Sesshoumaru surfaced and looked at the demon. His face is s cold but not to the small boy. "Hi father," Sesshoumaru smiled, "you coming to swim too?" No answer came from his father. The only thing that did seem to move was his father's eyes. Gold; like Sesshoumaru's. The one jagged stripe on each cheek, much bigger than his own, made him seem all the scarier but Sesshoumaru knew better. His father was not scary. His father was one of the nicest demons you'll ever meet. "Father?" Sesshoumaru asked. Waiting for an answer to come.
"Lord Sesshoumaru?" Rin asked looking at him, "you alright?"
No answer every came. No verbal answer anyway. There was a physical answer and that answer was his father putting his hands on Sesshoumaru's shoulders and pushing him underwater. The movement was much quicker than what Sesshoumaru was used to so he didn't have time to react. He was thrashing around but it didn't help. His father held him down until his little lungs burned for air and he couldn't help but open his mouth and take a gasping breathe, or really a gasping drink. He started couching but in order to cough you must first inhale. This meant more water. Everything went dark.
"My lord? Is everything alright?" Rin was getting worried about her lord.
Sesshoumaru opened his eyes. He was on the bottom of the lake. No air was in his lungs yet he still swam upwards and pulled himself onto shore and started coughing. Slowly but surely water left his lungs and it was replaced with air. He had no clue who or what he was. No memory did he have that would justify on how he got here. Only fleeting memories of someone holding him down under the water. Demons were there and started chasing him. He was going to be their food but they didn't expect an eight year old boy to be able to run so fast. He kept running but the demons kept a steady pace behind him. He wasn't watching where he was going so he ran into a demon cat. The demon cat looked at him then the demons and flew over the frightened boy and attacked the demons. A human priestess came out and looked at him.
"Hello there," she smiled. Her smile was so warm and comforting that the fear and confusion felt disappeared into the darkness where his memories lay hidden. He collapsed at her feet and all became dark once more.
"Lord Sesshoumaru?"
Sesshoumaru woke up in a hut with a fire going.
"You must have been tired," the woman smiled. He looked around not knowing a thing.
"Where am I? Who are you? Who am I?" many more questions poured from his mouth but it wasn't long before they all became tired together and the poor priestess couldn't separate one word from another.
"It's alright. You're in my hut. I am Midoriko and this is Kilala. And you don't know who you are?" Midoriko asked. Sesshoumaru shook his head.
"I don't remember anything before climbing out of the water and the demons chasing me," he looked down ashamed he didn't even know his name. Midoriko walked over and looked at him up and down. She had dressed him in one of her haori's. It was quite big on him.
"You are a dog demon and your name is Sesshoumaru," Midoriko told him.
"How do you know that's my name?" Sesshoumaru asked. She looked out a window. There was no way she was going to tell him that he the only surviving child of Lord Seibushi.
"Being a priestess I have the ability to tell the names of people," Midoriko lied. Sesshoumaru bought it.
"My lord is everything alright?"
For many years Sesshoumaru lived with Midoriko and Kilala. For the most part it was in comfort but of course demons had to be dealt with and Sesshoumaru proved to be quite good at killing demons.
"His father named him properly," Midoriko sighed when she watched Sesshoumaru and Kilala come back from a nearby village with a demon head thrown over Sesshoumaru's left shoulder. She had given him such a good and happy life here that it didn't bother him that he had no clue where he came from. He was thirteen when Midoriko left to battle a demon. She never came back but him and Kilala waited for two more years then went their separate ways. Kilala left to help the newly started demon slayers and Sesshoumaru left to wander and eventually found Shikobira and Kiba. Well he didn't find then, he saved them. It turned out he had saved Shikobira when the wolf dog was only four and Sesshoumaru only five. The three became inseparable.
Happiness lasted decades but a few decades before Sesshoumaru was to be a century old, some creatures taught humans how to enslave dog demons and the humans did start to enslave dog demons. It was a decade before Sesshoumaru was to be a century old when he had been caught and enslaved. Most dog demons died from being enslaved but Sesshoumaru held on until he was a century old and then the dog demon that tried to kill him so long ago came to his rescue. All the other villages where dog demons were enslaved were destroyed and the dog demons were brought back to the west. It took only three months for all those dog demons to die. The only one that survived was Sesshoumaru. Those three months he had been unconscious.
"Lord Sesshoumaru? Please answer me"
For centuries Sesshoumaru lived in the west and for a while wondered why Midoriko didn't tell him he was a prince but after the explanation Suka gave him, he no longer cared. Suka became a mother to him. His real mother was a terrible woman who tried to use him every chance she got and his father ignored him and sometimes even denied his existence.
The fuzz ball Inuyasha was born and immediately got his father's love. Sesshoumaru had been trying for centuries for his father to love him or even know he existed and not once had it worked. Now here was this little half demon that immediately got his father's love. For a long time he hated the child but never actually saw the boy after he was born. Their father forbid it. It wasn't long before the child Inuyasha found Sesshoumaru and instantly became the answer to his misery. For a long time it was like that until their father attacked Ryocutsai and was killed. The brothers were split for all time.
'Father tried to kill me when I was boy and then he hired that demon to kill Midoriko then tried to get me killed through enslavement and finally he tried to deny me my brother. He hated me to the core. Could he have known my fate? How could he. If he had left me with Midoriko I would have been happy and not once found out I was a prince. I would have preferred it that way' Sesshoumaru thought. They were at the lake now and Rin gave him one last questioning look before she dove in.
'I never really had a family to call my own. They always left too quickly. No one really wants to be near me. I don't blame them. But I had to become cold. Being enslaved means being hit and they enjoy seeing pain. I couldn't show pain' he thought as he sat down and watched Rin swim.
"Is everything alright my lord?" Rin asked when she surfaced.
'Rin is near and she sees through my mask. It is a lie I do have a family. We may not be blood related but it's a family'
"Yes Rin. Everything is fine"