Lessons Learned
Author - Shortey 83
Chapter 30 - Return
Disclaimer - I do NOT own InuYasha or Skyrim
Story Start -
Sesshomaru rushed back to the Bone Eaters Well, determined to make it back to his mansion before Takara woke up. With her not remembering him, he doubted she would be pleased to find that she had been taken from her bed and by someone who she couldn't remember.
"What if she can't go through the well?" he heard Kagome ask, but Sesshomaru wasn't about to let that happen. He was determined to bring his mate home. He wasted no time entering the little building that housed the well, adjusted his hold on Takara and jumped in. Something had to be said for his will as the flash of purple light surrounded them and he gently touched down. Looking up, the clear night sky along with the lack of foul scents greeted him and he knew they had returned. With one leap, he was able to clear the lip of the well with ease.
Takara had yet to stir in his arms even as he readjusted his grip on his mate. Instead, her head leaned into the fur at his shoulder and her breathing remained even. From the corner of his eye, he saw his father rise from where he had been sitting, waiting for their return. He slowly approached and leaned forward to inspect Takara.
"She is well then?" Tōga asked, inhaling her scent. "I can smell she has been upset."
Sesshomaru nodded. "She had an argument with one of her brothers and it upset her a great deal." He didn't know why, but when his father reached out to gently stroke Takara's head, Sesshomaru didn't move her away.
"I see," his father nodded, stepping back. "Then you must get her home before she wakes. I doubt she will be happy to wake in a strange place, so it may be best to have Kagome nearby when she does."
Sesshomaru didn't respond to him either way. He just took flight and headed in the direction of home, hoping to get there before Takara could wake. While he flew, his demon reveled in the scent of his mate, coaxing him to lean in to her neck and take a deep breath.
She was like a drug made just for him and he was completely addicted. Part of him didn't like that one bit, but it was a small part. The rest of him couldn't wait until he could sink himself into her welcoming flesh, knowing that coaxing her into his bed again would be worth it in the end.
Perhaps after this, his little mate would learn that he occasionally enjoyed her playing 'hard to get', but that was mostly due to the fact he knew he would always get her... on her knees or her back... without fail.
When they were nearly halfway home, Takara began to stir ever so slightly in his arms. Thinking she would wake and struggle, he held her tighter to him and she settled back into her sleep.
Sesshomaru had been sensing his father's presence since the well, but he had waited to get Sesshomaru's attention.
"What do you plan to do with her until she remembers what she has forgotten?" Tōga had asked.
Sesshomaru thought for a moment before he gave his answer. "For now, give her time. I do not want her attempting to flee, but at the same time, I do not want to force her attention." He sighed as he realized a truth that he hadn't been readily willing to admit. "She may never regain those memories, so I must ensure that any new ones that are created are good ones."
His father smirked in response, but it was not an unpleasant reaction. Sesshomaru could see the pride in his father's face at his response. "That is a very wise choice, my son."
"Rin will not be happy. I have not told her that Takara has lost her memories."
Tōga nodded. "I will speak to the girl. Take care of your mate."
He didn't wait for a response. Instead, he flew off at a more rapid pace, most likely racing to beat them home in case the little girl was awake. It was odd for Sesshomaru to look at this situation so objectively. For years, decades even, he had longed for nothing more than to battle his father and prove his strength against him, but now, his thoughts were for nothing but the human girl in his arms and his seed that had taken root inside of her.
The thought of having offspring again thrilled and terrified him. The challenges of raising a child didn't put him off, but the thought of losing that child as he had his first had kept him from pressing the issue with Takara. It was why he had allowed her to wait those first few months, aside from their mating night, to truly try for a pup.
Once more he looked down at the girl in his arms, admiring her delicate features in the glow of the moonlight. He had seen InuYasha's mother before and while he reluctantly admitted that she had also been lovely (for a human), in his eyes Takara was infinitely more alluring. Of course, he realized that he was biased to a certain degree, but there was just something so mesmerizing about her blue eyes and sweet smile that made him want to give her the world.
His mind drifted to thoughts of their children and how he hoped he would have another daughter. Even more than that, he hoped that she would be as beautiful as her mother, but perhaps not as disobedient.
He considered that train of thought for a moment; taking note at how difficult Takara could be when she set her mind to something. Then it occurred to him, he only felt that Takara was difficult because she was his mate. From the outside looking in, she seemed to be a human woman doing her best to be helpful and self-sufficient, but it was different to be mated to her.
It was then the nameless, faceless, possibly yet to be born suitors began to creep into his mind that made Sesshomaru growl. Perhaps he should reconsider wanting a daughter. After all, he doubted there would be a single male who would be able to impress him enough to mate with his daughter... that was also yet to be born.
He growled at those nameless, faceless males anyways.
The bundle in his arms stirred briefly at the sound, but quieted as he did. Now who is acting foolish? He thought to himself.
Once he landed back at the mansion, he was thankful it was still dark and tried to decide which would be the best room for her to wake in. While he longed to have her in his bed once more, he decided the shock of waking up next to someone who she considered to be a stranger would be too much. Finally, he opted for her rooms, but with the condition that he would hold her until just before she woke.
Ayako met him at the steps to the mansion, but before she could speak, he gave her the instructions that they were not to be disturbed under any circumstances. He entered her room and found that her futon had already been prepared for her, so he gently set her down, unwrapping her from her blanket enough to set her parcels aside.
With extreme care, he positioned her as he had noticed she generally preferred to sleep. For a moment, he hesitated. While he didn't want to frighten her, there had been too many nights without her that he couldn't deny himself from lying down to hold her. He hadn't noticed too much tension in her posture, but no sooner than his arms pulled her body against his, Sesshomaru felt her go completely slack.
She knew what felt right.
For several more hours, he held his little mate in his arms, but once she began to stir, Sesshomaru reluctantly released her and left her rooms to sit out on the porch and wait for Takara to collect herself...hopefully.
Takara was reluctant to wake from her dream. It felt as if it had been so long since she had a restful night's sleep with pleasant dreams to accompany it. She lay there for a few minutes, reluctant to open her eyes for fear of losing the safe, secure feeling the dream had left her with to deal with her family.
Her dream had begun with the angry look on her brother's face, yelling at her for all the wrongs she had done while being unable to look away or yell back. The dream had been on the verge of becoming a nightmare when a pair of arms wrapped around her, holding her in a strong embrace that pulled her away. She turned to face her savior but found herself unable to look up. She was pulled into a strong chest and left with the feeling that everything was as it should be.
A reluctant sigh escaped her as she finally allowed the dream to fade and opened her eyes. Unfamiliar surroundings greeted her, and she closed her eyes, believing herself to still be in the dream, but upon opening them again she found the same paper and wood walls.
Takara bolted upright and looked around. The room she was in was a traditional room, with a massive chest on one side, a small table with writing supplies neatly arranged and two large chests for clothing storage.
"Dad?" she questioned, trying to figure out how she ended up where she was, but only a distant rumble remained. She listened to try to discern what the rumble was and finally concluded it was a waterfall somewhere nearby.
A thousand different scenarios ran through her mind and she wondered if her dad had taken her away and if he had, for what reason. Panic struck her, and her hand instantly went to her stomach wondering if something may have happened to her baby.
Calming herself, she did a quick assessment of her body and found that she didn't feel as if anything had been done to her or her baby. Again, she called out for her dad, but no answer came.
Gathering her courage, she slowly opened one of the sliding doors and found a beautiful garden with a waterfall on the far side of it. While the growth didn't seem to be very mature, it had been meticulously maintained. A few flowers seemed to be blooming sporadically around the area, perfuming the air with their scent.
She took a few careful steps out onto the porch to look around and found the area empty, but as she looked around, a familiar sight came into view. Sitting on an extended area of the porch off in the distance was the same man from the previous day. At least, she thought it was from the previous day.
He sat starring ahead at the waterfall, and she felt her heart skip a beat just admiring how handsome he was. Takara tried to remember what Kagome had told her and tried to figure out she had ended up married to someone as beautiful as him.
What did she say his name was? She tried to remember. Sesshomaru?
As soon as she thought his name, he turned his head towards her, his amber eyes meeting hers and she felt heat rush to her cheeks at the intensity in his gaze. She adverted her gaze, feeling a little insecure when confronted with those molten honey eyes.
Watching him stand and make his way towards her, she felt her stomach twist and turn as she wondered what she was supposed to do and what she was supposed to say to him. Takara had so many questions for him but found her mouth had dried up at the thought of speaking to him.
When he stood in front of her, Takara tried to speak and ask him what had been going on but couldn't decide what to say first. His hand lifting to her face distracted her, she noticed briefly the shape of his nails and how they appeared thicker and more pointed than regular fingernails. Unsure of what to expect, she closed her eyes, but his rough, calloused hand gently cupped the side of her face, his thumb stroking her cheek gently.
She opened her eyes for a moment to look at his face, but a familiar feeling, like she had felt in the dream of safety and security made her eyes close again. Sesshomaru gently put pressure on the back of her neck, pulling her closer and Takara allowed herself to lean into him. Her face brushed against the soft silk of his kimono and came to rest on the solid muscle underneath. His chin came to rest on the top of her head and his hand moved to the small of her back to hold her close.
It was so odd to allow a someone (who was supposed to be a complete stranger) hold her so intimately, but it was even more odd that she felt so familiar with returning that embrace, wrapping her arms around him. His feel was so comforting, but it was his smell that was the most soothing not just to her senses, but also to her stomach, settling the morning sickness that had begun to rise ever since she woke as it usually did.
"I'm sorry," Takara finally whispered. She felt his exhale as if letting out a breath he had been holding.
"You have nothing to apologize for, My Treasure. It's I who owe you an apology."
She pulled back from him to look up, confused. "How come?"
"I gave you my word that I would not fail you, and yet I almost lost you." Sesshomaru stated, a soft growl in his voice as one of his hands settled on her stomach. "I almost lost both of you."
"How did you know...?" She began to ask. The only person she had told was her father.
Sesshomaru leaned in again, this time putting his face beside hers, running his nose up the column of her neck and inhaling deeply. "I can smell it."
"Oh," Takara said, feeling gooseflesh breaking out all over her body. She didn't get to say anything else as his nose drifted even lower, pushing the neck of her robe aside until the scared area of her should was exposed. Before Takara could pull back, she felt his hot mouth close over the area and her insides quivered at his touch and her knees grew weak.
Pleasure twisted through her until a soft moan escaped her as Sesshomaru's arms wrapped around her again to keep her from falling.
"What can I do to earn your forgiveness?" Sesshomaru asked, allowing a brief break between assaults on her shoulder before returning to the wonderful torture he was inflicting.
Words wouldn't form but he finally relented and allowed her to catch her breath. "I...I don't know...?" she panted, trying to gather her thoughts. "Maybe could you tell me about what things were like before...whatever happened...happened?" That caused her to pause. "By the way, what did happen?"
Sesshomaru took a moment to gather his thoughts before guiding her further along the porch to a different room. On a rack off to the side, she could see the armor that he had been previously wearing hanging and eventually settled on the fact that it was Sesshomaru's room.
As his back was turned to her, she gave him a suspicious look. Oh... you are crafty... she thought. Oddly enough, he looked at her over his shoulder with a brow raised in question.
"What?" Takara asked.
"That is what I should be asking you. What are you suspicious of?" He asked, a hint of a smirk trying to creep onto his face.
That caught her off guard. "How do you...?"
"After we first mated, you chose to bond with me in my true form. That allows me to feel what you feel." Sesshomaru explained as he sat down next to a table, motioning to a pillow beside it for her to sit.
" 'Mated'?"
"Meaning I claimed you as mine,"
Takara tried to process that information. "Oh... Well maybe we should start at the beginning..."
Sesshomaru nodded. "What would you like to know?"
Takara considered a moment before she spoke up. "What I would like to know and what I need to know are two different things."
A smirk finally crept onto his face and once more, Takara's heart skipped a beat. "Then what would you like to know?"
Takara felt her face grow red, but she was so curious about one particular subject. "Well, I don't remember anything from the time after I fell through the well until I ended up in the hospital."
Sesshomaru nodded his acknowledgement.
"And, I'm pregnant, so we obviously had sex..." She trailed off.
"Regularly"
"Was it... any good?"
"I was able to please you, regularly."
With a huff she slumped against the table. "Well that figures." At his raised brow she continued. "Only I would have the luck to end up pregnant and not even remember having sex."
She may not have remembered him, but she got the distinct feeling that humor wasn't a familiar emotion for him to express. So, when he laughed at her she allowed a reluctant grin creep onto her own face.
"Don't worry, My Treasure. I will be able to perform whenever you are ready."
Her face turned red at the thought, but she continued on with the important questions. The two of them talked back and forth for some time and much of what he told her, filled in the gaps between what Kagome had told her and everything made sense despite how unlikely it seemed.
"What has you upset?" He asked at one point.
"I just feel... guilty... for not remembering any of this, for not remembering you or Rin."
"It is not your fault, Takara, and when I get my hands on the dragon that created this mess, I will ensure he is never reborn again." Sesshomaru growled, his eyes beginning to glow red around the rim.
"It is pretty cool that I could speak the dragon language at one point. Do you think I could meet this Yolheimin? Maybe it will jog my memory."
Sesshomaru nodded his acknowledgement of her request. "I expected you to be more resistant to what I had to say."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"Not at all, but I wonder why it is so."
"I can't explain it, but I just feel more at home here. It's so strange that I can't remember anything and yet here and you feel so... right." Takara explained. "I was so lonely, and I was always fighting with my brother who made me feel... worthless and unwanted. But here, I feel like I was... happy." She shrugged and began to fidget under his stare but continued. "Then there is the baby. When I went to the doctor, I was so overwhelmed and confused but when she started discussing...options..."
"Options?" He questioned.
"If I didn't want to keep the baby-"
At his growl she quickly continued.
"But that's the thing. No matter how overwhelmed I was with everything that had been happening, it was never a question of 'if' I was going to keep it, but 'how' was I going to keep it. I've knows some girls who've treated the possibility of children as a burden, something they'd 'rather not' deal with. However, I knew, without a doubt, that I wanted to keep my baby."
Sesshomaru's growl changed from an angry tone to one that was almost inaudible and sounded... content.
"I guess just knowing that, it made me feel like I was..."
"Like you were?" Sesshomaru prompted.
"It made me feel like I was loved."
Takara had been avoiding his gaze for the last bit of their conversation, but once she made that statement, she looked to him and found his eyes had softened but they had not lost their intensity.
"Because you are, My Treasure."
Before anything else could be said, Sesshomaru's gaze turned to the screen towards the inside of the house and let loose an annoyed growl. "I said we were not to be disturbed."
"Forgive me, My Lord. I only wished to bring the Lady something to eat." A woman's voice came from the other side of the screen. Takara flushed as her stomach let loose a small growl right on cue.
"Very well," Sesshomaru allowed. "Bring it in and leave."
The screen opened and an older woman, accompanied by two younger women, entered, the younger women carrying two trays, both of which they set down in front of Takara. They both gave her a gentle smile and Takara thanked them as they excused themselves. The older woman said nothing except to excuse herself for interrupting their conversation. Without another word, she left the room.
Takara eagerly looked over what had been prepared before finally settling on some rice and fish. The pickled vegetables that had been brought looked delicious, but the smell of them made her stomach do summersaults. When Sesshomaru commented that she usually ate them, she explained that their smell just wasn't one she could handle.
While she ate her meal, Sesshomaru turned to his table and began looking over a few scrolls. She couldn't help but admire how handsome he was as she ate. There may have been a few curious items in the room, but he was the most interesting item in sight.
When she finished with her meal she stood and moved her trays to the hall. Instead of returning to the place she had been sitting, Takara moved her pillow closer to Sesshomaru. He glanced over at her but continued to read the document he had in his hand.
It was his hand that captured her attention once again. She hesitated for a moment, but once it looked like he wasn't going to be writing anything, Takara gingerly reached out and grabbed his hand. He released the document, turning his head to observe her as she pulled his hand closer. There was no resistance as he allowed her to turn his hand this way and that, inspecting them with a particular interest in his nails.
Sesshomaru must've picked up on her interest because he flexed his hand and she watched as his nails lengthened into claws.
"That is so cool," she mumbled more to herself than to him, but he still let out a small chuckle.
After a few more minutes of inspecting him- the markings on his wrists and face some but mostly the enormous mass of fur he carried on his shoulder- Takara finally felt the past few weeks catching up with her as a yawn slipped from her. She made to excuse herself back to her room, but when Sesshomaru offered to let her cuddle with his fur if she stayed with him, she gave in without a fuss.
"I get the feeling that this was used to your advantage numerous times before the whole dragon incident." Takara yawned as she curled up on the futon, Sesshomaru's fur wrapped around her.
"I did." He confirmed as he continued to read his scrolls.
"You don't fight fair." Takara mumbled as she finally allowed her heavy eyelids to close, snuggling into the luxuriousness of the silky fur surrounding her.
Sesshomaru waited until Takara's breathing evened out and his demon could feel her blissful contentment before he moved closer to stroke her face gently. "And now that I have you back, I will do whatever it takes to keep you, my treasure."