Chapter 13
The Twin Dragon of Temperament lay, panting and sporting a wickedly satisfied grin, as she waited for her heart to stop racing. The room smelled distinctly of her pleasure, and she breathed in the thick musk as her breathing slowly began to even out. Next to her, the bear youkai had already succumbed to sleep. She was only mildly amused with how thoroughly she could tire her sexual opponents; now, she had bigger things to think about.
And so think about them she did, as the heat between her legs began to cool and the faint sheen of her sweat dried where it remained on her skin. Today was her victory - all elements of the delicate game she now played were serving her flawlessly - and when her efforts reaped success rather than failure, Katsumi always took her successive mood out on her subjects in a distinctly less fatal exchange.
Of course, it had been a relatively vexing struggle to get to this point. She had lost six decent youkai, and their deaths had gone to the last person in the world she tolerated. It had been infuriating to unwillingly grant Sesshomaru the mortal pleasure of making quick work of her minions. Obviously it wasn't them she cared for, it was the whole damn principle of the thing.
But those things were well over and gone. She had been blessed with the most excellent information from her informant within the Western shiro, and it was for their hard work in acquiring such feedback that she took her favorite youkai to bed.
As she saw it, they had a cover to keep, and so while they were unable to indulge in their rewards, she would for them.
Wasn't she just such a gracious master?
In his sleep, the bear draped an arm over Katsumi's naked chest in an attempt to wrangle the Twin Dragon closer. Katsumi repressed the urge to burn the offending limb with her glare, instead rather forcefully removed it from her person and exited that place in between the sheets that still smoldered with the heat from their bodies. She liked the bear quite well: despite his lazy demeanor, he had a pleasurable stamina and a pleasant . . . wideness to his person. However, all her feelings of tolerance evaporated once he slept - he was terribly fucking cuddly, and that simply would not do.
Completely nude Katsumi prowled the floors of the room she used specifically for her late night visitors and made her way towards the bathroom where she had a robe and water already prepared and drawn for her. Idly she bathed, and years of attending to herself in the aftermath of her desire left her body moving mechanically as her mind roamed elsewhere.
Yes, her little traitor had done well on this night. How pleased had she been to learn that her idiotic rival in their shared gift had not known of the Inu no Taisho's death. Oh, how Katsumi had cackled when she was told. How amusing indeed that the woman turned recluse for days afterward!
There had been a small souring of her mood when the spy who conversed with her via the link made of her power she had established prior to the youkai's infiltration had told her that this woman - Megumi Madarame was the name the spy gave - not only had the professional relationship with the daiyoukai for Rin's sake, but much, much more. Katsumi's anger has flared brightly when she learned that her spy overheard that the Lord himself had given Megumi his word in protecting her, and not only that - the woman had been seen flaunting about one of the gardens in the Lord's unmistakable outer kimono. Apparently she still had it displayed on a stand in her borrowed quarters. But there was more: not only did she seem to have the Lord of the West under her whims, she seemed to have its Lady as well. Knowing that the two most powerful daiyoukai currently alive were in open support of the pale-eyed woman made Katsumi very, very displeased.
But her frustrations were quick to leave once her spy told her that Megumi and Sesshomaru planned to depart for something they called a moon pool once the sun rose. That, now, had made her wicked smile return. Those two would wander off alone - the reason she cared not for - and she would be ready. She knew where they were going, after all. And as she had heard this, a plan had been quick to form. As it stood there was still a youkai who had visited their destination personally, and for the task Katsumi had given him she knew he would perform flawlessly.
The Twin Dragon of Temperament was much older than people normally guessed when they looked at her; she was over seven hundred years old now, and with her age came her wit. She was not naive: none of her subjects even posed a decent threat to Sesshomaru or Kimi, but there were people under the inu's overly developed noses that her efforts could indeed reach. It was such a funny concept to Katsumi that she actually chuckled as she finished cleansing herself and reached out for the robe prepared for her. How funny indeed, that even those superior senses could carry such obvious blind spots. And Katsumi would do with them what she did best: exploit them.
Those high and mighty Western rulers would not realize how deeply a fool they had been until she had her prey in her possession.
And by then, it would be far too late.
Yes, the stage was already being set, and Katsumi could hardly wait to perform. The daiyoukai were separating and spreading their charges thin . . . such a trivial thing it would be to delay a certain inu's trip while she had Rin recreate one of the most vivid scenes of her past.
Katsumi repressed a shudder as she slid the robe over herself and secured the front. She could still remember all the strong emotions that had welled up within her on the day twenty five years before she would see Toga last. She had been no more than one hundred and fifty years of age when that servant - the one she later would come to know as a traitor among Western loyalists - had told her Toga had gone to the cliffs just away from the shiro. She had been no more than a child in daiyoukai terms when she slipped and fell the length of one of those cliffs in search of someone who had never actually been there; had been nothing more than a child when the servant sent others to cart her broken body away, to bind her service - of her inexperienced mind, of her underdeveloped body, of her untamed power - to the daiyoukai the traitor served: that poor mockery of a dragon - Ryukotsusei was his name; not like she could forget.
Katsumi decided that if Toga happened to be watching her from beyond the grave, then she would give him a view fitting to the suffering he had brought her. She would have Rin do what she had, and she would bring the child here, and the young human would be broken so easily in the time between her capture and Katsumi's activation of the next step.
She wondered with little humor if perhaps Rin would manage the same thing she did: would she bide her time and escape back to her Lord? She certainly would not find what Katsumi had, though, upon her return. Katsumi smiled grimly at nothing as she exited the room and made her way towards her true one. That was the difference between Toga and Sesshomaru, she decided. Sesshomaru would never settle for a servant's claim of having spotted Rin's missing body and then burning it in a volcano to honor her life. And that was the difference between Rin and Katsumi, she realized a moment later. Rin would never return to her captor after her escape, because Sesshomaru would never move past her memory. Katsumi, however . . .
The Dragon of Temperament scowled at the servant who dared walk past her. Memories had sobered the last lingering sensations of lust in the woman, and she was in a rather testy mood once more. She glared freely at the near-full moon and swore to it - and the other Dragon that worshiped the celestial body of the night - that she would not rest until she had completed the cycle of suffering. For whatever reason, Katsumi's bending of Toga's fate hadn't reaped what she desired, but she would make up for the lapse in judgment with his next of kin as was right.
The bending of one's soul to her will was a skill of the highest level that she, as the one to be trusted with her rage-red eyes, could employ. She had been but one hundred and fifty when she first used the skill in its most potent form to bend Toga's soul to her command - more specifically, the part of his soul yet undefined by the uncertainty that was the future. She had needed five hundred and twenty seven years to regain the skill; it was lethal, sure, but it was not something she was capable of frequently using. And since using it in a milder form to bind Rin's soul to her command (this time though, quite literally) she would need another five centuries.
She would make sure all traces of the Inu no Taisho's legacy were thoroughly nonexistent well before that time.
And then, perhaps, Katsumi would take a deep breath for the first time since that long night by the cliffs.
Rin certainly did not pout, and neither did Jaken. And yet, the pair had curiously similar expressions as they watched their mutually beloved Lord Sesshomaru turn his back to them and proceed to walk away with one hand placed on the back of that pretty healer that Rin had only had the chance to see all of four times - and she figured one of them didn't even count since Megumi had been unconscious the first time.
Rin wouldn't ever mention her newfound feelings to her Lord, but a curious thing was settling over her. She was lucky indeed to have known Hina as long as she did; her main servant happened to be Megumi's as well, and Hina had learned a great deal about the woman by what she had seen from serving the healer. Rin could even remember the specific sound she had made when Hina told Rin that Megumi had been gifted by Sesshomaru-sama himself one of the Lord's distinctive kimonos.
Rin could not help but feel her heart clench at that bit; she had never been given one of his kimonos like Megumi had. Rin knew the inu cared for her deeply, but still! And then there was the whole touching thing she heard about. Rin has worked hard in her years of following Sesshomaru to warm him up to interpersonal contact, but it had taken a mere inability to see for Megumi to have the Lord of the Western Lands' constant guiding hand on her when they went anywhere in the shiro together.
The rational part of Rin that had appeared after she started to leave her childish form and enter the metamorphosis phase resulting in womanhood tried to remind Rin, not for the first time, that the woman was literally blind and Rin wasn't. It tried to remind her that she was well-versed in reading Sesshomaru's body language (how else were you supposed to read a man like him?) and she knew that the way he touched Megumi signified nothing more than strict professionalism, down to a t.
Still, that unshakably childish part of her countered, he's taking her on a journey and not you.
Rin humphed as she watched the last lingering images of the pair's figures disappear beyond her line of sight, one distinctly tall and proud, carrying for the other their supplies, all while keeping a hand over the red kimono she wore.
"Your main servant," Jaken squawked abruptly, startling Rin enough to turn quickly to the toad. By the time she'd look back to the way her Lord had left, he would be gone completely. "What is her name?"
Rin was too surprised to wonder why the sudden question. "Do you mean Hina-chan?"
Jalen nodded gravely. "Hina . . . "
"Furuya," Rin supplied. She watched as the toad seemed to contemplate what she said, making thoughtful noises before finally nodding and trodding off.
Weird.
"I don't think Rin likes me very much," Megumi confessed once they were well away from the shiro.
"Oh?"
"Mhm," Megumi insisted and she found herself puzzling over the young woman's behavior when she had made a final check up before leaving. "I can't help but feel she might consider me an enemy, of a sorts. I can only help but surmise that she might see me as someone who threatens to pull your attention away from her."
Sesshomaru made a noise in the back of his throat, but said no more. Still, with that warm and sure hand pressed just firmly enough so she could feel it, Megumi found herself inclined to continue. A smirk slipped past her defenses and ended up on her face; she hoped he wouldn't look at her until she'd managed to get at least half of her jab out.
"Of course, she has nothing to worry about: I have no intention of drawing things out with you longer than they must be." Megumi expected the daiyoukai to give that typical non-committal response, perhaps even a grunt; but she did not expect him to suddenly pull his hand away and stop walking.
"You wish to leave once your seal is broken." His tone sounded for the first time more guarded than usual, which Megumi instantly understood as a sign that he would be listening to her response closer than he had been in their entire conversation thus far. Megumi stopped walking, and she found herself fumbling lightly over how she wanted to give her answer. That part of her well developed in the art of redirection took over when she waited too long.
"My decision is trivial considering my place," she said instead, and even as she listened to the way she sounded she decided she didn't like the forced humbling tone. "I'm in no place to extend my stay if that is not the will of the Lord and Lady of the house." She felt herself shrug as she said that, but she refused to allow any part of her body to turn back to where the inu still remained statuary behind her.
Just when Megumi was sure he would say nothing and their pace would resume itself, she heard him speak up, and this time he sounded more calculative than anything else. "If I did not tolerate your presence, I would not have asked what you intended to do after our deal ran its course. I seek to know what you think; I seek to understand."
Megumi's brows furrowed lightly in confusion, and then she was turning back to him. She couldn't put a finger on it, but something was certainly, irrevocably, unmistakably different about the inu today. What had changed for him in those past six days? What had he seen pass between them on that last night, the one where she confided in him a part of her story? Megumi took a wary step back. Was that it, then?
She said the only thing she could think of to phrase. "Why?"
She could hear one, two steps, and then he stopped advancing towards her. Megumi stayed firm where she was too, and sent a silent prayer to the kami, though for what she wasn't completely sure - to be wrong in her current line of thought, or to be right and then just be done with it?
"You perplex me. I have found myself intrigued with the idea of learning what you hide behind those eyes of yours; with why you've been given them at all." Flashes of pain, of words carved into her and of crude tongues spitting profanities and lapping at the blood her torturer's blades drew suddenly had Megumi picturing the inu before her as something different.
A shark.
Megumi bristled. She had been wrong to think she could trust someone because they shared a past neither of them remembered. She had been wrong to think there were people beyond Shimuzi and Kimi and Toga that wouldn't hurt her. She had been wrong to think even for a second that her history wouldn't find a way to repeat -
"I ask what you intend to do after your sight is returned to you because I intend to make it clear that your room will stay in your possession as long as you wish it."
Megumi's thoughts flew away from her faster than she could blink.
"What?" She winced at the way she sounded to her own ears; if she hadn't been obvious in her sudden lapse of trust, she was now. A more self-conscious part of her felt mortified with her behavior.
She was being terrible, and she knew it. This was the son of two of her most beloved people. She knew that should she ever need him to be, he would be there for her. He already had been in his own way.
"Sorry," she said instead, before he could get a chance to elaborate. "I'm sorry. I'm letting all the wrong things give me an ear." She drew in a quick breath to calm the cheeks she already knew were burning with shame and embarrassment. "I want to keep my relationship with Kimi, now that I have found it again. I want to find Shimuzi and tell her that I'll be okay. I want to tell her to come with me, back here, to your shiro. I don't mind the idea of my power being used by others if that means I can earn a place in your and Kimi's home as a healer. And," her voice softened, and she wished it hadn't after her irrational reaction moments earlier. "And, I want to recover what I've forgotten, all of it."
Silence.
Then, "Shimuzi?"
At first Megumi was too stunned to process the single word he had given her. Then, like all the stress and anxiety she had been overwhelmed with had just suddenly fizzled away, she burst out into one of the first completely genuine laughs she had made in a long time. She missed the way it sounded; and privately, she was glad that Sesshomaru was the one to bring it back.
She slapped the back of her hand over her mouth in order to muffle the sound a little, but she couldn't help it. She couldn't stop - really, years of tension and trauma seemed to finally fade the longer her laugh rang out in the space between them, and it felt so good that she couldn't have stopped if she wanted to. Finally, though, she forced herself to calm down enough to gasp out, "of everything I've just said, that is what you take from it?"
She heard a sudden rumble in the daiyoukai's chest, and with a start she realized he chuckled. "So it seems," he conceded. Megumi wondered suddenly what he looked like when he smiled.
Finally, the atmosphere shifted between them, and the realization of what had changed in the daiyoukai finally hit her like a brick. She found herself cursing her brain for jumping to such an illogical conclusion once more as everything shifted into place: he really, genuinely was just curious about her. How could he not be? She had presented herself as some mysterious, unreadable person full of mystery and composure when they first met and journeyed to that shiro. And it had all suddenly become personal for him, in light of her obvious unspoken love for his parents. She had in the span of a few hours suddenly evolved from some passerby that you could look at and think, what's their deal? before turning back to what you were doing to now become someone that you stopped in the street to continue staring at, because now you had seen a glimpse of what hid behind those walls in a private moment. Suddenly, there was an unspoken bond between them, one that prompted the stoic daiyoukai to lend her clothes with his scent to counter her first night sleeping on the loss she had found and prompted the Twin Dragon of Timidity to yearn to open herself to someone new.
Sesshomaru told her that Inuyasha had helped fill the void left by his father; and Megumi now knew that Sesshomaru in turn was starting to do that for her.
Megumi made up her mind. "Sesshomaru," she breathed out, all while her internal mind finally shifted and relaxed. Resignation was a terribly calming thing. "I did mean it when I said I was willing to trust you. And I mean it now when I say I'll trust you with my history, if you'll have it."
She heard those soft footsteps approach her again, and she felt as he slowly slipped his hand around to rest it on her back. It was such a simple thing; he was putting it back exactly where it had been before, but there was just something different to his touch now.
Whatever it was, it comforted her.
"Tell me while we walk," he murmured to her, and that low voice of his had Megumi's heart fluttering unexpectedly for a second. Seriously, he could work wonders in a bedroom just by speaking alone. She had a brief vision of a woman actually fainting if he talked and touched her, but Megumi was quick to banish the thought. She wasn't going to let such things ruin this moment, in this place and time.
It was the moment she knew they had become friends, after all.
Sesshomaru carried their bundle of supplies in his left hand as he kept his right on Megumi's kimono. It felt like it was destined to fit against her skin for the first time, and so he decided not to ruin the feeling by telling Megumi to carry her own kimonos and provisions so he could have a hand always ready to draw Bakusaiga. The Western Lord was content in his decision to carry their wares for the woman since he had been the one to insist she bring spare clothes and food in case the weather turned sour or he couldn't bring in sufficient meat from hunts (he had also been the one to subtly make color recommendations to Hina, but he certainly wasn't going to tell Megumi that).
He only grew more confident in his position as designated guide and bag holder as Megumi started to talk about her past. He learned, with some amusement, that she became slightly animated during her recounting of the parts that she particularly liked. It wasn't just the gentle waving of her fine hands, it was the way her face would soften as the memory danced before her in place of the trees they worked their way past.
If she had been a picture of serene beauty when illuminated in the moonlight last night, then now in the day she was the very image of beauty full of life.
Sesshomaru smiled, and listened both to her story and the forest around them. Should anything dare interrupt before she finished, he might find himself struggling to be merciful with it.
Megumi was born to two human rulers. From her father she took the dark, fine quality of her hair, and from her mother the gorgeous woman's features. And her good genes as a female, of course, but baby Megumi was centuries away from awakening those genes properly. Her parents raised her as their heir first; humans made up for their lack of power in sheer wickedness, and the quickest solution was to prepare Megumi so perfectly that their ploys could find no purchase on the impenetrably smooth front of a flawless heiress she was told to develop and display. They did take time to raise her as a normal child, though, but it was always where they were safe from the eyes of the court. Megumi was still very young, and had yet to fully decipher the difference between her treatment in public and private. Course, if she had been a normal human that would have been the end of it, but her wet nurse had become fixated on the idea that her eyes declared her as one "blessed by the kami," and likely to have high spiritual power.
Close, but not really.
Everyone stopped listening to her once Megumi's parents passed. Her uncle took all of two weeks after their deaths to bend all in his favor and silence those against him. An extra two days, and Megumi was sprinting for all she was worth in the night away from that place that wanted to end her life so soon. It was hard for her in those years; she had been raised with skills that common people had no need for - what good was an education if she hadn't developed strong enough calluses to tend to the home or till rice fields? Megumi wandered, barely scraping by, because it was hard to find work when all people wanted was the help of young boys and not girls.
Megumi grew severely thin, and spent countless nights curled against reedy trees in hopes that the barren branches would prevent her from being soaked through to the bone when the rain pounded so ferociously overhead. It wasn't very hard for the rain to reach those hard parts of her beyond her skin in those years, though. The young discarded hime quickly grew desperate, and turned to the only thing her childish brain could think of to give her hope - those words of a so-called delusional wet nurse. It took her quite a long walk before she finally stumbled upon her first shrine, and Megumi had broken down to tears of relief when she heard the mikos there were willing to take her in and train her. Unsurprisingly, she had no spiritual power. She had the mikos convinced that she had something, though, and not even the occasional wandering monk passing through could take a stab at correctly guessing what that something was.
However, they kept her in their home once they realized that she could see things they could not. The shrine had some curiously old scrolls and whatnots, in languages none of the mikos could even understand, but for whatever reason whenever Megumi looked at some of them they would rearrange into the kanji she was familiar with. So she was permitted to stay not as a miko, but as a translator, rewriting the scrolls on different parchment as her curious eyes deciphered them.
It was through one of those scrolls that she learned more about what she was (Megumi left this part and all mention of the dragons out of her story; she would trust her past with Sesshomaru, sure, but she was not yet ready to satisfy his curiosity by unveiling the whole mystery. That would be no fun at all). She read of the myth of those two Dragons of Timidity and Temperament. Once she had, Megumi's mind was made up: she would stay at shrines as long as she could, dragging her stay out just as long as possible before people started to notice she wasn't aging like normal humans do. Then she'd make some excuse to leave and set out for the next one, always introducing herself after the first as someone capable of translating languages long forgotten. And nearly all of those shrines carried parchments she could read, so she'd decipher the ones without information about what she was starting to suspect she was before continuing on her way.
On, and on, until she understood all that she was. Her powers hadn't awoken but Megumi had lasted her first century on her own merit, and no one was the wiser. Once she was finished with the mikos Megumi turned to the monks, trying to find if there was anything they knew in their archives. This is how she spent much of her second century, and it was in this one she learned which dragon's powers she had been gifted with, along with its celestial body. She learned there were pools that further channeled the draconic gifts - a saltwater pool miles away from the ocean for the Dragon of Timidity, and a volcano for the Dragon of Temperament. Megumi even remembered questioning why she couldn't have something cooler, like a lake, since the other dragon got a freaking volcano.
Towards the end of her second century the gaps in her memory started. There were things that felt abnormally off; places she couldn't remember reasons for going to, things that she couldn't have had if she was going there alone. And then a few years after the start of those blanks, she met Toga.
She had learned from some of the first mikos she found that youkai tended to live longer than humans, but Megumi had never expected one to notice that so did she. Apparently she hadn't been as careful as she thought. Toga found her based off nothing more than coincidence - she was looking for that moon pool she was supposed to have - and she had run into him. She was surprised someone existed that was so perspective, and she was hardly a good liar. He practically saw through all of her, but did what she least expected: he brought her to his home instead of killing her or worse, because he said it would be safer if she lived with people she was most similar to.
Megumi met Kimi, and she got along well with the two inus. They had been surprised to learn that she already had experience in courtly behavior, though she was certainly very rusty. Megumi's heart was yearning for a place to belong and she had finally found one among creatures that aged as slow as her, and with them she remained for fifty years. She opened up to them, trusted all that she was with them, and it was Kimi and Toga who helped awaken the young girl's powers. Megumi was halfway into her third century when Toga finally found her moon pool, and the two set out to find it. And find it they had - she had been so excited when some of the runes on the walls morphed into kanji for her, and she was able to learn more about what she was.
(Megumi left the part about those last moments with Toga out of her story too; she wasn't ready to tell him the role she had played in the person he was now).
There were gaps in her memory after they had left to return to the shiro, but when Megumi awoke she had been far, far away, on a youkai pirate ship captained by a daiyoukai named Shimuzi Hamasaki. The woman apparently had a soft spot for discarded children and had picked up the unconscious child and taken her with her, traveling via the river (she was a shark youkai after all) to reach her ship in order to patch up the wounds Megumi did not remember attaining. Shimuzi had not seen anyone near Megumi. They made an agreement that there would be no hard feelings if Toga or Kimi found her on the seas in the first two years of her disappearance - if he did that would prove to Shimuzi they cared, and she would send Megumi back in all good cheer. If they didn't show, though, she wanted Megumi to stay on with the crew until she was mature by daiyoukai standards.
No one came for her in those two years, and Shimuzi gave her the option to go back anyways, but Megumi had stayed. She wasn't even three hundred yet, and she had no way of protecting herself if she was to try and make it back to the shiro on her own merit.
Megumi bonded well with Shimuzi over those first four hundred years. It was Shimuzi who rounded out Megumi's skill set by adding knowledge of herbs and meditation, of a well-earned capability in combat - with or without her powers - and sailing skills, of course. Just as she had done with Kimi and Toga, she eventually told Shimuzi the truth about her power.
What she hadn't anticipated was the backlash from letting Nakano find out too. It started a quite a few years before Toga, somewhere back in Japan, would hunt down Ryukotsusei and perish in the aftermath. Nakano developed a generous portion of the crew willing to overthrow the Captain because Shimuzi was unwilling to take advantage of Megumi's special gift. All at once, Nakago's sympathizers attacked. It was the element of surprise and that alone that allowed them to fasten the seals and subjugation chains they'd got from a miko at their last stop at port to Shimuzi in her sleep, and weigh her down enough so that once tossed overboard, she would sink. She was a shark daiyoukai and could breathe underwater, of course, and Nakago visited just frequently enough to prevent her twin sister from starving. They were quick to catch Megumi as well, threatening the lives of crew mates she'd grown fond of in order to gain her surrender. In order to keep those alive she still cared about, she was forced to use one of her specific powers to strengthen the ship in the night. The crew would receive the buff as well, and it made them terrifying to fight against while Megumi's power in the moonlight protected them. Much blood had been spilled on the decks above her head in those years, and some had been spilled in her room as well. (Megumi was vague about her torture; she couldn't bring herself to tell exactly what had been done to her). Megumi remained that way for over twenty years. She had only been physically tortured that one time, but after the death of Hansuke she'd been left alone. Hansuke was the last to go, and with him went the last of Megumi's defiance.
They kept Shimuzi alive as an incentive for Megumi's willing cooperation, but that was also what ended up being their downfall. One of Shimuzi's most trusted merchants had grown concerned when she hadn't shown up in years, and so she had searched to find her. With her help the seals and subjugations cementing her to humanoid form and suppressing her youki were broken, and in a surge of fury once hearing all that had happened in her absence, Shimuzi returned and slaughtered them all.
Megumi became First Captain, but the new crew would always remark that the First Captain kept some sort of impenetrable invisible wall between her and everyone else. It seemed only the Captain, who still called her Meg, had a way to vault over those walls to reach the woman now terrified of who she was.
Megumi had grown much, and was now over six hundred and seventy. She worked hard to regain the prowess she had maintained before those near thirty years chained to a wall in a room full of stale excrement. Eventually the memories surrounding that place started to suffocate her, and she developed a tendency to have nightmares frequently. Some of them turned back to life in Japan, and eventually she knew she needed to get away from that ship and catch her breath.
Shimuzi had hugged her, kissing her forehead and telling her to take however many centuries she needed.
Her Captain would wait.
Megumi finished her story with her slightly sour retelling of how she was swamped with fixing what Naraku broke for several years more, noticing her not-so-subtle indication that while she considered Sesshomaru off the hook about the whole thing, she was definitely displeased with his brother's crew and their grand decision to do a whole lot of nothing. She remembered hearing him grace her with another one of those deep, rumbling chuckles of his.
She figured they might be the death of her.
Author's Note:
So we learn much, much more about some characters in this chapter! I figured it was time to drop more tidbits on some of Katsumi's past. And there was almost all of Megumi's past! Woohoo! I'm honestly still a little surprised at how I've already hinted and given away so much, and yet there's still many twists and turns waiting to be sprung upon you all . . . *cackles as I revel in the knowledge of things yet written*
Hope this update was on par with the ones prior! I'm trying to take advantage of all the free time I'll have this month. I'll be weighed down more starting in July, but I hope to be close to wrapping things up by then. (Probably not though). I mean, I've only been on this story for three weeks and I've already written over 75,000 words!
Please continue to support me with your lovely feedback and views! They give me the motivation to update as frequently as I do. :3
