Rise and Fall of the False God
CHAPTER 4
Sesshomaru fell silent then and returned to sipping his tea. He did not answer any more questions, and vaguely only realized that she was even still there. His eyes closing.
"I am tired." Sesshomaru said coming to his feet. Kagome took his arm after approaching him making a good deal of noise. She led him over to the bed, and he allowed it. He was still weak, and his head hurt from the unfamiliar concentration, and his eyes itched horribly. He would sit on the edge of the bed and start to strip off his haori and his shirt under it, placing them aside he would lay back on the bed. He was aware that this was her bed, but it didn't smell like her anymore. She had been sleeping in a guest room, but Sesshomaru was too weary of new sleeping places to allow himself to be polite and offer her bed back to her, even though he knew that he should.
He allowed his eyes to close, reveling in the fact that it seemed to help the irritation some now that they were closed, even though he could not see from them. Feeling himself relax he fell into a dream like state faster than was normal for him.
He was standing in a large field, trying to judge where it was that this field was. He didn't know, it looked familiar but there were things all around him, things that he had never seen before. Large monstrosities that towered over the largest of buildings he had ever seen. There were things flying overhead, not dragons, nothing like Kirara or Ah and Un. Nothing like that at all. They were metal too.
Moving Sesshomaru felt as if he were part of a nightmare. As if he did not belong in his own body. His clawed hand would slither up his chest, which was bare, and grab onto the heavy collar around his neck. 'Who could have done this?' he thought. Indeed, who could have collared the great Sesshomaru? He would shake his head, short silver hair falling over his shoulders and tickling annoyingly over his neck. He heard a woman scream and started toward her; unaware of why he felt compelled to aid this woman. As he approached her room the guards standing outside of it moved out of the way, nodding to him.
The woman was on the bed; her knees pulled up, a man stood between her knees with a towel over the top of them.
"Please Hundiri!" She screamed out. "Please! I have to go to the hospital! Something is wrong!"
"Shut up!" The man between her knees growled. "You can not take this baby to the hospital!"
He felt the hair on his hackles rising. He dropped what he was carrying towels he presumed. Moving forward to the woman's side, he took her hand in his slender clawed digits, but they were not his, the marks on his hands were gray, and waved, not red and straight. He was confused. If he were not Sesshomaru, who was he?
"Don't touch her bastard!" The man growled coming forward. Sesshomaru yipped and slunk back from him, part of his mind begging the man for forgiveness, the other part cursing the weakness that this Inu he was dreaming showed in the face of adversity.
"Hundiri! Leave him alone!" She gasped out. Again her scream ripped through the room.
"No youkai can be here when we summon the gods to our son!" The man, Hundiri called out. He threw something large at Sesshomaru but he didn't run, he simply backed away; shaking so bad he couldn't stand.
"The Beast Gods hold nothing against the Youkai, that is you!" She growled at him before she fell into panting. Sesshomaru could smell the rot on her getting stronger. All humans were immediately dying from the moment that they were born, but this woman was very close. "Please Hundiri! If I continue this I will die!"
"If you die than it was meant to be!" The man growled at her. His eyes like the eyes that Sesshomaru had seen in the mirror so many times, cold, uncaring. He had no love for this woman.
"But Hundiri! Our son!" She cried out. He looked at her coldly, laughing at her worry.
"Our son?" He said. "But darling… he is my son… now that you have carried him to term I have no further use for you."
Sesshomaru was enraged. He gathered his muscles and leapt forward at the man, the man turned, raising a hand and the Inu reeled back against the wall. His body twitching and convulsing as if currents of imaginary electricity were coursing through him. He felt his ears pop first, and then his eyes, and then everything went still.
"NO!" Sesshomaru called sitting straight up. Panting for breath, his one arm balancing him. He felt warmth over his body and his face, he couldn't identify it, he couldn't wipe the cold feeling of death out of his system, even as that warmth engulfed him, and when it left he felt even more alone. "no.." It was so softly said.
"Sesshomaru?" The door opened and suddenly the world was too bright for him to handle. His hand coming up over his eyes he growled and turned his face into the pillow. "Sesshomaru!"
"That hurts…" He growled.
"But Sesshomaru!" Kagome's voice came clearly as she came closer. "The light! That means you can see it!"
"What?" Sesshomaru sat up, blinking. It was not clear but she was right, he could indeed make out the lights and the darks. "I can. I can see the lights." He said calmly.
"Sesshomaru-sama." The voice of Myouga came from beside him. He turned to look, but the dark flea against the dark bed, he couldn't see yet. "You're eyes are healing much faster than your Lord Father's eyes did!" He seemed almost disbelieving.
"Sesshomaru, are you alright?" Her mother had entered the room. He felt foolish now, having gotten so worked up over this dream. He remembered it still, the images emblazoned into his thoughts and his memory. It seemed so real.
"Yes." He answered turning toward her. He would push himself up so that he was no longer resting on his hand so that he could rub his itching eyes. "I simply had a nightmare."
"A nightmare?" Kagome asked. He nodded slowly. Remembering still how real it all seemed. As if he were truly there. He remembered the painful way that he died in that dream to, as if his nerves were still recovering from it. It was like someone was trying to tell him something. But it left off so badly, he wanted to know what happened next. Did the man kill the woman, did the child survive? How odd, it almost seemed as if the feelings of the other being were still inside of him. Suddenly he was scared and longed to embrace this human woman that was sitting next to him, Kagome's mother. It was an odd feeling. Something he hadn't felt in years and years, or really moments. He felt that in the dream. He felt like he wanted someone to love him, he wanted anyone to love him, even if only a little. The woman on the bed had loved him like a son, but the man thought he was a vile creature. And he could feel the hurt, something stinging his eyes, he bolted to his feet, brushing by Kagome and her mother, Myouga and Sota who were there as well simply moved aside as he locked himself in the bathroom, leaning against the door.
A slender digit would trace up his cheek from his chin. Tears? What was this? How could he be crying? He knew no reason for these tears, but as he thought about that woman, again they came. Slowly as he sat there, the feelings started to wane, thinking of that woman didn't hurt as much, until finally he felt as if it were his emotions that were reflecting on her.
"Sesshomaru, are you alright?" A voice came from the door. It was a little boy's voice.
"Yes whelp." He answered. "This… I am fine…"
"Sesshomaru?" He asked opening the door and slipping in. "Why were you crying?"
"You saw that?" He asked, a bit angered and ashamed.
"Hai."
"Did your mother and Kagome?"
"Nyah" he answered shaking his head no. Sesshomaru nodded, he didn't move from the stairs of the bath tub he was sitting on with his long legs crossed, he heard the boy's bare feet pad across the floor and him settle in next to him. "So, why were you crying?"
"I don't know." Sesshomaru answered.
"You don't know?" The boy asked.
"Indeed." Sesshomaru responded, he focused his gaze on the boy, seeing his dark silhouette against the lights behind him.
"Sometimes I cry because I miss my dad." Sota said. Sesshomaru didn't understand why this boy was telling him this. "The kids at school say that boys don't cry."
Sesshomaru nodded to agree with that statement. Men were meant to be strong, and able to handle anything. Men didn't cry, and they learned that when they were boy's, because boys didn't cry, men didn't cry.
"My mom said…" He said softly. He felt Sota stand and take his clawed fingers into his own little ones. "That my friends at school don't know what they are talking about."
"How so?" Sesshomaru asked, his fingers not responding to the hand holding them.
"Because." He said. "She said that real men do cry. That they cry when they are hurt, and that is how they make the pain go away so they can be strong."
"Keh" Was the closest to what the sound that came from Sesshomaru was, but it didn't discourage Sota any and with that Sota's hand slipped from his own and he left the bathroom, Sesshomaru heard the click of the door closing and let his mind wander. Real men do cry? No one ever said that to him did they?
"It does hurt! It hurts Momma!" He had cried when his mother broke his spirit for fighting.
"Listen to me Sesshomaru." She said taking his wrist and his elbow. "I am not going to lie to you, before I can make the pain stop there will be more pain. Cry if you must, scream if you must."
"But I can't momma! I am a boy. Boy's don't cry." He sobbed.
"You are right, boy's don't cry my son." She said softly. "But men do. And you are a man right?"
"Yes momma."
When she pulled the bones back in place he did scream and he did cry.
Sesshomaru let the tears fall from his chin onto his knees as he finally fell asleep there against the tub, thinking of things that he had not let touch him in years. The death of his mother, his father, more recently, the death of Rin, and of InuYasha, whose departure hurt him more than he cared to admit. He slept soundly there in the bathroom, no more dreams, no more night mares, the only nightmare he faced was Kagome in the morning banging on the door to get in to get ready for school. He growled and ignored her, drifting back off to sleep.
Kagome was gone to school, so was the boy. Her mother had left to go to the market and Sesshomaru had the bliss of being alone in the house. He sighed gently and moved out onto the front lawn of the house, sitting under one of the trees near by he simply reclined and relaxed like he used to back home. He supposed he should try the well, but he didn't want to. He didn't have anything left there to go back too, and was fairly content with making a life here in this world.
The blackness cleared. It was not so easy to kill an immortal creature with a pathetic sonic vibration like that one. He climbed to his feet again. The woman had stopped screaming, he looked at her, pale and sunken in. How could this be? He knew, right then and there that she wasn't going to make it.
"Damn it!" Hundiri growled. She couldn't push any more, something was wrong. He could see the baby stretching it's tiny arms through the taught skin. But his mother wasn't breathing enough, she was dying, and her body had stopped contracting. "Very well, useless wench!" Hundiri said moving to the desk where the equipment to bath the baby and clip the umbilical cord was stored. He took the knife and walked over to her. She was watching him with half lidded blue eyes. Sesshomaru couldn't move to help her, he was trying, hard, but he just couldn't will this Inu to move, it stood there, in fear and shock staring.
"By the will of the Beast Gods! Suzaku, the Red Phoenix of the South, Sariyu, the Blue Dragon of the West, Genbu, the Black Turtle of the North and Byyako, the White Tiger of the East, come to me. Heed my call! To my son I bequeeth thy power my Gods." Suddenly the room lit and the creatures appeared, from the urn of fire came Suzaku, from the fountain rose Sariyu, from the pot of soil rooted Genbu and through the open window leapt Byyako. Sesshomaru looked in horror.
"Honorable Priest to us, Hundiri." The tiger spoke. "What have you done?"
"I have given you child!" The priest said insanely.
"Is this child bastard born?" The dragon growled, lowering it's dripping head over the scared woman.
"Nae." The man said. "Such a thing I would not dream of. This child is of my blood, and there by it is of yours!"
"Is that so?" The phoenix asked.
"It is." The man said.
"Than so be it." The turtle said slowly. Suddenly there was a flash of red and the fire of Suzaku leapt from the urn into the woman who screamed in pain.
"Stop!" Sesshomaru cried out. But he went unheard as the water from Saryiu's fountain splashed over her, in her mouth and her nose, she gasped as though she were drowning. "Stop!" He cried out again as the soil from the turtle seeped through her skin, she screamed again in pain. "STOP!" he yelled as the wind whipped and tore around her.
"And now the final step." The voice of Suzaku said.
"And from the death of blood the ashes of death, rises the new child!" The man said as he plunged the dagger into the woman's chest.
Sesshomaru jerked to up, hunching forward and gasping from breath. It was hot, and he had fallen asleep against the tree. Blinking off the other Inu's feelings again he would come to his feet, he was shaky, not understanding what had happened. It took him a moment to realize that there was someone standing in front of him. He sniffed the air, familiar but from where. He closed his eyes against the bright sun and when he opened them the dark figure was still there. He stood a hair shorter than Sesshomaru, he could make out some form of creature's tail flickering behind him.
"Never thought I'd see your ass again. Thought you were dead." The voice said.
"Who are you?" He growled.
"Come on man. Don't recognize me?" He asked. "Pompous bastard shoulda thought you wouldn't." Another low growl came from Sesshomaru as he tried to gather who this person was. Sniff. It was a Youkai and that did not ease him any. Kouga was one youkai too many to know that he could not see. Sniff. A fox, he was sure of it. "I used tah hang with yer brother. Name's Shippo."
"Sesshoma…" He started.
"Hell I know who yah are!" Shippo said waving a hand dismissively. Sesshomaru was taken slightly aback by the kitsune's laid back nature around him.
"Well than, before you thieve this shrine bandit you should know to whom it belongs." Sesshomaru said growling deeply. There was nothing more he would have liked than to remove the insolent brat's tongue for the way he dare speak to him. "It belongs to my brother's wench."
"Really?" he asked throwing himself down next to Sesshomaru's feet, leaning against the tree where Sesshomaru had just been sitting. "I know that, but thanks for the four-one-one."
"What?" Sesshomaru asked, canting his head at the fox slightly.
"The four-one-one… the information…" Shippo said sounding only slightly irritated.
"If you know that and you are not here to thieve than what do you want?" Sesshomaru growled, he made no qualms of showing Shippo that his thieving company was not wanted here. Shippo looked up at him and chuckled.
"How long you been stayin' here?" He asked.
"That is none of your business." Sesshomaru retorted.
"Long enough that the place reeks of dog." Shippo laughed. "Long enough that having another male in your space is rising your hackles."
"How dare you?" Sesshomaru growled.
"Oh give it up fluffy." Shippo growled. He would stand again, looking Sesshomaru dead in eyes that could not see him. "It is completely obvious that you are not up to your game. And since you died you musta come through the well, which makes you what? A hundred? Maybe a hundred and fifty? I have lived the last four hundred, do you want to try your luck?"
"I should kill you." Sesshomaru growled.
"Pah-lease!" Shippo huffed. "You ain't king anymore hot shot. Here, in these times, your power and influence have waned, and you are nothing but a myth."
"Myth?" He gasped.
"Yeah, you, InuTaisho, InuYasha and the entire House of the Moon… the whole damned youkai world. You ain't gonna make it extremely far here if you don't get rid of the 'tude." Shippo growled. Something poked Sesshomaru in the ribs. "Because then someone is gonna pull one-a these on yah, and you ain't gonna know what to do with yourself because you don't know what it is do you?"
"What is it fox?" He asked, making it seem as though he looked at this odd cylinder that was thrust into his ribs.
"It's called a gun." Shippo answered, "and it is powerful enough that from right here, with no time to put your shields up, it can kill even the strongest youkai. Even you."
"You have grown into a cunning fox." Sesshomaru mused.
"And you have grown into an old blind dog." Shippo said.
"How…"
"You never woulda let me put this against your stomach if you could see it." Shippo answered before the question was finished.
"True." Sesshomaru admitted slipping down the tree to the ground.
"Hey, I gotta talk to Kagome." Shippo said.
"She is at 'school'." Sesshomaru said as he leaned back against it again.
"Yeah… well shit!" He growled. Sesshomaru said nothing about the Kitsune's offensive language. "Then I'll come back later. Later fluff-ems." And with that Shippo vanished as quick as he arrived.
Sesshomaru simply sat back against the tree. This time he tried to force himself asleep. He was so confused by all these visions that were coming to him. Why was he being shown all of this? He did not understand it.
"You killed her!" Sesshomaru growled. "The only woman that has ever loved me, ever cared about me and you killed her! You bastard!"
He could feel his control waning. His body tensioning to strike.
"And you can join her!" The man growled, launching another of those vibrating attacks at him. He would reel back, feeling the blood dripping from his eyes, his nose and mouth and his ears, as well as under his cuticles.
"It will take more than that to kill an immortal creature like me." He growled, his eyes now lighting up as he came to his feet slowly. But then it all changed. His eyes flashing back to normal as the woman's body jumped and lurched. "You killed her before the baby came out?"
"No worries." The man said, he looked over at the body as the tiny dragon like fist suddenly tore the woman's abdomen open. He closed his eyes and turned away, Sesshomaru willed him to look back. 'Damnit! Stop being so weak' he chastised. The Inu did indeed look back, seeing the man pulling the bloody baby free from the woman's torn womb. It looked to most like a baby but this Inu knew that it was a monster.
"Satoshi. Here. Now!" The man said. The Inu did not obey, this man was not his master, his mistress was dead. He growled softly at the man who turned to him now, his own eyes blazing with hatred at the Inu.
"Damn you dog. I said now." The man yelled.
"I might be a dog, but I am not your dog." The Inu growled.
"All Inu are the dogs of man." He snarled.
"Wrong. I was her dog." A clawed finger pointed at the dead woman. "Now that she is dead there is nothing holding me here. You can take your horrid spawn and rot in hell for all I care!"
"Satoshi! Get back here!" The Inu did not listen, he just walked out of the manner back into the field and kept walking.
Suddenly the dream went black.
"You are wondering why I showed you this aren't you?" Satoshi's voice asked from the darkness.
"Indeed." Sesshomaru's cold voice called back.
"You are the great Sesshomaru No InuTaisho are you not?"
"Indeed."
"You are our hope."
"How so?"
"You must defeat the spawn that you watched born."
"But how?"
"I can not tell you that Lord Sesshomaru," The voice said.
"Where was that?"
"Tokyo."
"No!" He gasped.
"Yes in the year 2110."
"He is a time walker?"
"No more than yourself. He also found the Higurashi Shrine." Satoshi explained. "It brought him back to your time, but why we don't know. Odd things have been happening since. You must defeat him."
"Well that is about it Shippo." He roused to hear Kagome talking to that little brat again.
"That's fucked up yah know?" He said softly. "So no one knows why peoples memories are changin' then?"
"No." She answered.
"You sure it doesn't have something to do with Captain Puffy Pants over there?" Shippo asked, Sesshomaru could see from his shadow that he was thrusting a thumb at him.
"No. I'm not. But what can I do. I can't exactly thrust him head first into the well Shippo." She said gently.
"Sure yah can!" Shippo bemused. He chuckled. "No, but seriously. We have to teach him something about living here if he can't get back to where he is supposed to be, guy let me put a gun to his stomach because he didn't know what it was."
"You pulled a gun on him!" Kagome gasped.
"I felt threatened!" Shippo's black figure against the bright light recoiled a little.
"You little jerk!" She said tossing something at him, might have been a stick or a 'pencil'.
"I am not!" Shippo laughed, dodging the item with ease. "I really did feel threatened! I might pretend to be a bad ass around him, but he is damned scary!"
That amused Sesshomaru slightly. Knowing that the little fox was still afraid of him eased some of the tension that their encounter had built.
"I suppose he can be." Kagome milled over the thought. "But really a gun."
"What would it have done?" Sesshomaru finally asked aloud. He didn't have to open his eyes to feel the shock and the fact that the other's jumped.
"I told you." Shippo answered. "The thing can kill even you."
"How." One word, it was all the fox would get from him, his eyes now open, not turning from Kagome though his tone almost told them he was talking to Shippo.
"With a bullet." Shippo said, he was being purposefully vague. A fact, which only irritated Sesshomaru more.
"A bullet is a small piece of metal, they use gun powder, the same stuff that the Chinese used to make their fireworks go… Well they use that to ignite an explosion inside the base of the gun, called the chamber and it propels the bullet out of the metal cylinder, called the barrel, at high speeds. That piece of metal is sped and shaped perfectly to rip through human flesh and most bones that get in it's way." Kagome explained. "I have not met a Youkai yet that has completely blocked a bullet they couldn't see coming."
"Yeah, myself included." The fox said. He moved as if unafraid over to Sesshomaru and took his fingers. The slender fox lifted his shirt and placed two of Sesshomaru's fingers very low on his rib cage, near his where his leg and his hip joined, almost a little too low for Sesshomaru's comfort. He pushed the tips of his fingers into the skin. Sesshomaru could feel a large rounded patch of scar tissue and a divot in the bone he could only assume, knowing his own physique quite well, didn't belong there. "That is from a gunshot."
"Amazing." Sesshomaru said gently withdrawing his hand from Shippo. "Such damage from a small piece of metal?"
"Small indeed." Shippo said, Sesshomaru heard a serious of clicking and metal grinding on metal and then something small, and oblong was placed in his hand. "That is a bullet."
"This?" He mused fingering over it, than tucking it back into his palm he came forward, his hand smoothly tucking under Shippo's shirt as if a professional at smoothly undressing someone, and pressed against the wound one more. Shippo gasped, he hadn't expected that. "Caused that?"
"Umm-hmm" Shippo managed to get out, as his wide green eyes stared a little shocked at Sesshomaru, who's fingers remained on the wound. "Could you…"
"Hmm." He mused his fingers slowly withdrew, he didn't jerk away simply withdrew, turning and walking toward the tree with the bullet. "Teach me."
"You wouldn't like it." Kagome said. "Guns are very loud."
"How loud can it be?" He asked. Before the noise came he heard something wiz past his ear and a section of the tree next to his head exploded in wooden shards just as it came. A noise so loud that Sesshomaru clasped his one hand over one of his ears and collapsed to his knees, causing Kagome to wonder if Shippo had hit him with it. Sesshomaru did not move, he wouldn't admit to anyone that he was afraid, but it had scared him as much as it had shocked him.
"Sesshomaru?" Kagome was saying, her hands were on his shoulders, but he did not move, he simply remained, his hand shaking, the other ear ringing horribly, he had no way to protect it from the noise. "Sesshomaru? Are you alright?"
Sesshomaru answered with a nod, willing his body to stop shaking as he drew himself to his feet, his head instinctively shaking like a dog with a fly in its ear, trying to get the ringing in his ear to stop. His fingers moved up and moved over the hole in the tree. Amazing he thought as he rolled the bullet then between his fingers, then tucked it back again touching the hole.
"What kind of magic is this?" He asked.
"It ain't." Shippo answered. "It is science."
"Science." He mused. "How intriguing."
"Human's are pretty interesting once yah get tah know 'em." Shippo said nodding. "They ain't everything you always said they was. They ain't weak and helpless no more. They showed us their might about a hundred years ago when the Japanese army over threw the House of the Moon and killed almost all of the Youkai there. They left each race with a scant few to breed with and then reminded us that we now exist because they allow it…" Sesshomaru turned his head sharply to Shippo. "That ain't the worst of it. 'Bout sixty years ago we went to war, with America, we gots flyin' machines called planes and we was against an enemy twice our size and strength…"
"As was the way most of the time." Sesshomaru nodded, he didn't ask what America was, he assumed it had to be the enemy.
"Well if you fly East from here you come across some islands before you get to America that's called Hawaii, It is owned by America. In Hawaii there is an area called Pearl Harbor. There was a celebration going on, and a lot of their battle ships were in Pearl Harbor, so the Japanese army decided to drop bombs on them."
"Bombs?"
"Kinda like really big bullets, that blow up." Sesshomaru nodded. "We dropped a lot of them. Over a hundred, and we sunk onna their ships and decommissioned a few. Well they retaliated by dropping two bombs."
"Two."
"Yeah man, that was all it took. Bombs so powerful that it completely wiped the two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely off the map. They threatened to drop one on Tokyo if we didn't surrender, so we did." Shippo said softly. "That is the type of power humans hold now. That is the reason why the Youkai hide from them rather than stand in the light like we used to."
Sesshomaru pondered this for a few moments. Again he held the bullet up over his shoulder.
"Teach me."
Teaching these things to Sesshomaru was really easier than she thought that they would be. He had of course assumed that he would fight her on it. But he simply listened, unable to read the books on his own, as she read them too him. He would sit across from her sipping his tea as she read the history books, and she read the myths that they both knew to be true, or based in truth, most of them were over glorified and names changed or forgotten.
He asked questions when he was perplexed, but most of the time he listened. Sota would read to him when Kagome was busy and from time to time he was treated to the smooth voice of their mother reading to him.
He listened to the radio a lot when he was alone there, or when he was there with Kouga, who didn't trust him enough to leave him alone in the house. Once he had found out that Kagome and Sota were going back to school the damned wolf started spending almost all his time here, lurking over him. He was never so happy when he figured out that he could, like the bathroom, lock the door to Kagome's room.
His initial discovery of the workings of the radio was humorous to look back on. It had been playing when Kagome left for school, and he poked and prodded at it, trying to understand where the music came from. Somewhere in his prodding he found a button that when pushed seemed to have no effect, until he held it down and suddenly the music was so loud that he could not handle it. It ended badly with the Inu King smiling an elongated fanged grin as he ran it through with Tokijin. That had not made Kagome happy at all, but he did not apologize for it, and she didn't talk to him for two days after.
His time here was waning on slowly. And there came a day, some weeks later that he woke and itched the film off his eyes and found that he could in fact see out of them again. He did not tell anyone at first, simply sat contently on the lawn for hours looking at the world that he had not seen in a long time. He had never seen clearly before now; he had not realized what he was missing. It was a beautiful place this shrine and he walked around it for hours, simply appreciating the colors of the grass, and the pretty red birds landing on it, how the contrasted.
He realized all the things that he had taken for granted. The colors of the world, the blue of sky, the grass, the yellows of the fallen leaves and the greens of the living ones. Even the crimson marking on the back of his own hand seemed to be viewed in a completely new light for him.
He didn't talk to anyone that day, actually joining the family at the table for dinner, forced, against his wanting to eat some of the food that had been made by this human woman that was the miko's mother. He hadn't eaten in some time, eating occasionally when the mother wasn't there, and he could mill around and find something on his own. He did not pay much attention to his food; he joined them so he could finally get a clear look at the people who had been tending to him.
Kagome's hair was black as pitch, her eyes a deep brown. She was pretty, and not silhouetted against the darkness that was his depression he saw her for that. His golden eyes didn't linger long, taking in the color of her skin, the odd coloration of her nails, he would ask her why it was her nails were an abnormal pink later, he didn't want the other's to know yet. He liked watching them while they thought he couldn't. He like Kagome's choice of colors on her clothes, much more than the green and white piece of trash his memory put her in. Sota looked a lot like Kagome, dark hair and eyes the same, but he was small, his face was darker from running around outside in the sun more. His clothes were not as impressive, most of them had dirt marks on them, and his fingernails were normal. Apparently the disease of the off colored nails ran only in the females he thought as he glanced at their mother. She was kindly looking, not beautiful and not ugly. She had short hair and a fair face. She too had odd colored nails.
After that his eyes shifted to a sight they knew. Kouga. As soon as he saw him clearly for the first time since he had been here the hair on his hackles rose. It was Kouga's pack that had killed Rin. He never did completely get over that. Kouga had changed a bit though, his black hair was worn down, and cut to frame his face, he assumed it must have been in style, he had on a nearly offensive yellow shirt and black pants that had been poorly made because they were too big, and the seems were yellow instead of black. Surely Kouga had fallen on hard times to make do with such poor craftsmen ship. But this, he thought, was from the man that ran around in a wolf skin.
Next was Shippo who had also come for dinner. He remembered the little fox, but this was nothing like that. He was tall and slender, only a hair shorter than Sesshomaru. His red hair was long and still messy, tied in a ponytail. His red tail lolling behind him, he wore a white shirt with no sleeves and a pair of big blue pants, that like Kouga's looked to be poorly made.
No one seemed to notice him watching them eating and talking. At first things had been tense because they were not used to having him there, but it only took a few moments for them to relax and start talking. They engaged in civilized conversation about how the day had been, he listened as Sota talked about the boy that picked on him in school, and Kagome told them that she passed her Algebra (whatever that was) test even though she was sure she would fail. Mother told how she had run into an old friend of the family at the market place, and Kouga and Shippo talked about the girls they saw skipping school when they went swimming to pass the time.
"What did you do today Sesshomaru?" Mother asked politely smiling at him, he took a silent note that her lips were painted the same color as her oddly colored nails and wondered for a moment if maybe that was paint too.
"Walked." He said stoically.
"Did you enjoy the shrine?" She asked him.
"It is beautiful." He said softly. She dismissed the comment as mere kindness, but Kagome looked at him, smiling as if he said he had met a beautiful woman.
"Beautiful?" Kagome asked. He raised a slender brow at him. "Sesshomaru, what color is my shirt?"
"Orange." He said. She scowled at him because she was wearing pink.
"Sesshomaru!"
"It is pink Kagome." He answered. She jumped up and ran around the table, hugging him in spite of herself.
"You can see!" She squeaked. The revelation was joined by a chorus of congratulations and that's greats. Even those that didn't care for him seemed honestly happy for him.
"Kagome." He said, as she was getting ready to leave the room to go and sleep in the guest room as had become habit. "This is your room."
"Hai." She said looking at him, canting her head some.
"You should… sleep in it." He said, for the first time in a long time he was looking at her not through her.
"You are comfortable here Sesshomaru." She said softly.
"Now that I can see, I will be comfortable there too." He answered. He stood, gathering the few things that he had and walked to the guest room that smelled strongly of her. He sighed and moved into it. He had just curled into the bed when there was a knock at the door.
"Enter." He said. The door opened and the stale smell of Kagome was wafted with a fresh one.
"Sesshomaru…" She said softly.
"Yes." He responded turning to look at her in the darkness.
"Thank you." The door was closed, and he rolled back, smirking to himself.
"You are welcome Kagome." He said knowing she could not hear him.