Unseelie 18

The girl was about twenty.

Kenshin stepped into his quarters and cast her a quick glance then, somewhat embarrassed, he looked quickly away. The same barrier spell that had been on Torin's quarters kept her imprisoned here and she'd doubtless been waiting for him for hours.

She was naked -- Torin had a tendency to force his captives to strip, mostly because he was a sadistic bastard but also because they'd become wary of hidden weapons. When magic was involved, even tattoos could be weapons. However, since this girl was supposed to be a reward for him, Kenshin figured there were better than even odds that she hadn't been violated in more vicious ways.

Most captives that Torin dumped, naked, into Kenshin's quarters grabbed a blanket or one of his spare uniforms to cloth themselves in. She was still unclothed and he wasn't sure if it was terror or defiance that had kept her from acting.

Angry blue eyes blazed at him from beneath a fall of dark brown hair. She was a brunette so dark that her hair looked black until she moved and you saw the mahogany highlights. Brunette everywhere he noted involuntarily, and the demon in his head giggled in reaction to that.

/She's a natural brunette!/ the demon sounded thrilled with this discovery. Kenshin ignored his gibbering run of crude comments as best he could.

She already had a bracelet on -- Torin would have put that on her right away. He wondered if she'd had a taste of the pain that the jewelry could deliver. Maybe. It would explain why she wasn't attacking him straight off. She looked angry enough to slay him with a glare.

Kenshin grabbed a blanket off the bed and tossed it at her. What he really wanted to do was offer her a spare uniform and an assurance of safety, but he couldn't risk his cover. "Wrap yourself in that. I don't want my next meal dying of a cold."

It took everything he had to stay in character: cold, calm, collected. A vampire, but one who was experienced and intelligent.

"What's the point?" She dropped the blanket at her feet, refusing to hide herself with it. So it was sheer, bloody-minded defiance that had kept her from grabbing a blanket. "You're going to kill me, aren't you? After you rape me?"

She bit her words out, but she was also shaking.

"Not right now." He gave her a keener look. She was about twenty, and pretty. Short. Muscular, with abs of steel, but then, most Slayers were athletic. And, ah, defiant. He wished he could tell her that he was on her side, but how could he convince her of that? Anyway, he didn't know if he could trust her. Just because someone was a Slayer, it didn't mean they were automatically on the side of the light. She might betray him if she thought it would improve her chances at survival and escape.

And then she launched herself at him, stake in hand -- she'd broken a leg off a chair, he saw. This was not unexpected.

Deftly, he disarmed her, planted her butt on the ground with a couple of efficient blows, and tossed the stake out the window to the ground four stories below. She was not much of a challenge -- yes, as Torin had said, she was a Slayer, but an untrained one. He snorted. "Do you even know what you are?"

The girl stared blankly at him.

"Are you working for Buffy?"

"Who's Buffy?"

Apparently not. So she hadn't been found by Buffy's people. He asked, "Why were you following Torin?"

"He's evil." The girl glared. "You are too. I can sense it."

Doubtless, she could. He wasn't evil, but she probably was picking up on his demon. He suspected that she'd followed Torin with the intent of fighting him, and had stumbled into more trouble than she'd expected. This, he suspected, was why Slayers had Watchers. The Watchers had the brains to know when an opponent was too much for a Slayer to handle unprepared.

"Go sit." He pointed at a comfortable chair in the far corner of the room. He'd figure out what to do about her later.

She suddenly snagged the blanket up and retreated. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she sat in the chair. Her stare was hot and angry, and full of frank hate for him.

Kenshin said mildly, "Behave, and you'll stay alive. I don't need you for the blood, and it's nice having a pretty girl around here."

"I'm going to kill you in your sleep."

"You can try." He lifted an eyebrow at her. "But I can guarantee that Lord Torin would turn you over to the trolls if he did. You did see the trolls, yes?"

Silence.

"They like pretty little girls. I'm not sure what they like more, raping them or eating them."

His words tasted awful in his mouth, but they were in character for the vampire -- and he hoped they would make her think twice about staking him. What he'd told her was true enough, anyway, though Torin would probably have his fun with her first -- Torin liked his hitokiri general and the last time someone had tried to assassinate Kenshin, Torin's revenge had lasted for days of bloody fun. The vampire had taken gleeful part.

"I'll just kill Lord Torin, then."

He held his own wrist up and tapped his bracelet. "Torin dies, we all die."

More silence, but he was unsettled by the sudden light that gleamed in her eyes.

"And there's a few hundred prisoners down in the dungeons that will die with us." That made the light fade -- she blinked, and suddenly looked hopeless, and he wanted to stake himself for her. Because to make a girl hurt like this -- terrified, scared, alone -- was anathema to everything he'd ever stood for.

Once, he thought with only deep personal grief, you were sworn never to kill again. Now you contemplate the reality that you may need to kill a multitude of innocents to end a worse evil and immediately, here, now, you let an innocent suffer.

The young Slayer had tears brimming in her eyes now. The defiance wasn't entirely gone, but she was scared to death and the light of hope was fading from her eyes.

Kenshin regarded her for a moment, wondering if he should tie her up for both their benefit. He couldn't break his cover -- he couldn't -- and yet, he wanted desperately to do something, anything, to set her at ease. Nothing came to mind, however, so he finally grabbed his laptop off the shelf and retreated to his bed, where he sat crosslegged and tried to focus on drafting an e-mail of the pertinent issues to Buffy via Kagome and Hanako. There really wasn't a think he could do about the girl, except ignore her for the time being.

She tucked her knees to her chest after a moment, and wrapped her arms around her legs, and began to silently cry.

It was well after dark when Kagome sensed a rapidly approaching youkai.

Inuyasha had flatly refused to give Sesshoumaru access to his land. He'd said, "Fuck that idea," in a tone of voice that told her he would never bend or compromise. It had taken some convincing to get him to let Kavan in, despite the fact that Kavan struck Kagome as inoffensive at best. Sesshoumaru was never going to happen.

So the youkai stopped at the edge of Inuyasha's land.

Kagome rose from the couch -- she was keeping the early watch, and the others would take over from her later. Inuyasha didn't seem to think a watch was entirely necessary, but Kagome figured that the wards were not proof against human attacks and despite Inuyasha's faith in Amelia's work, she knew anything could be broken given enough time and energy.

They'd completed some impossible tasks of their own in the past. And as a Slayer, she'd learned to never underestimate the motivation -- or intelligence -- of evil.

Outside, it was cool. Half a moon hung a quarter of the way above the horizon, and there were few stars: too much moonlight, too much smog. There was no breeze, and only crickets and distant city noises for sound.

Bow in hand, she walked down the drive to meet Sesshoumaru. From a hundred yards away, when she turned a corner in the road, she could see him standing on the far side of the gate -- his white hair, and the fur of his stole, gleamed in the moonlight. He looked now as she'd seen him centuries ago: cold, distant, alien. Young. Far too pretty for anything male.

And there was a tiny child at his feet, one hand clutching the pelt and the other stuffed in her mouth. Rather than a thumb, she was sucking on her knuckles. Rin had been a bit older, but the image of youkai lord and young girl was ingrained in her memory. It made her truly nostalgic to see it.

Ruining the illusion, however, there was a limousine behind him. Somehow, she wasn't surprised that he had one. And for a man who was supposed to be dead, the blacked out windows of the vehicle were proof against spying eyes.

Beside the limousine, there was a diaper bag and a suitcase on wheels.

She drew closer, and saw the girl had puppy ears and wild white curls. Curls. A proliferation of them, swept back into a pony tail, but escaping around her temples. When Kagome flicked a flashlight over them, she could see that the little girl was wearing a Kermit the Frog t-shirt and shoes that had googly froggy eyes on them.

"She's adorable," Kagome said, when she came close enough to speak without shouting. She sensed no one watching -- and likely Sesshoumaru had checked as well -- but there was no sense in advertising their presence to

The child shrank back, shy, and buried her face in Sesshoumaru's legs.

For a moment, he was stern and alien, and then -- his face softened. He crouched, and picked her up, and held her close. It was the briefest of hugs: so quickly did he embrace his daughter that she might have blinked and never seen it. Then he set her down again, pushed her gently in Kagome's direction. "You will take care of her."

"Of course." Kagome bent over, and held a hand out to the little girl.

She hid behind Sesshoumaru's legs.

He sighed. "Anna, go with Kagome."

"No!"

Kagome crouched. "That's a cute t-shirt."

"Jaken got it!" the little girl said, in fluent and unaccented English.

"I like Kermit. And Jaken. Did Jaken get your shoes, too?"

She nodded.

"Do you like Jaken?"

A happier nod. "My froggy!"

"I'm sure Jaken's thrilled with that," she said, in a happy tone, but unable to keep the irony entirely out of her voice.

"Surprisingly," Sesshoumaru said, "he is. He wanted to come with her, but I doubted my brother would tolerate him, and I'd hate to lose my best servant to his claws."

Kagome looked up, shocked that Sesshoumaru would suggest such a thing. "Inuyasha wouldn't hurt him."

Though, granted, convincing Inuyasha to permit Jaken access to his land would have been a battle. She was somewhat glad that she didn't have to fight that one out with him.

"Hnnnh." Sesshoumaru reached down, picked his daughter up, and handed her to Kagome, who reflexively accepted her. "We're exposed out here. Get her to safety, girl."

"Of course."

The child started crying, and wriggling.

"Anna, stop it." Sesshoumaru said, very sternly.

Anna hiccuped and fell quiet. "Daddy ..." she started to hold her arms out.

Sesshoumaru's expression again softened. He reached out, and suddenly was closer to Kagome than he'd ever been before -- inches away, as he tucked one of his daughter's stray curls over her shoulder and then stroked her cheek with his knuckle. Softly, he said, "You can't come with me, little one. I shall be fighting bad people, and it's too dangerous for you to be with me. I can't keep you safe apart from me and I cannot keep you with me. Here, behind Amelia's wards, you shall be safe -- and, I suspect, loved."

Kagome met his eyes.

He'd never looked more mortal, more a man and less a cold, alien, youkai lord. There was an honest expression on his face -- naked, open, fear. Not for himself, but for the child in her arms.

"Sometimes, to keep someone safe, you cannot be their family." He looked suddenly away. "Have you ever wondered where hell dimensions come from, Kagome-san?"

She blinked at him, startled by the slipping of barriers between them. He'd let his defenses down, just for a second. She shook her head.

"Most hell dimensions are worlds where the forces of good lost the fight against evil. I am not a force of good. But I much prefer peace and prosperity to war and misery. Therefore, I oppose the forces of chaos and evil. I do not wish this world to become a hell dimension. I wish it to remain a place where my daughter can grow up safe, in a pleasing environment."

He stroked his daughter's hair with one clawed hand -- those poisoned nails were inches from Kagome's own cheek. It didn't even occur to her to flinch.

"I've made many enemies, over my life. It is not a good thing to be my family." He met her gaze again. "Do you understand me?"

She nodded. "Inuyasha doesn't understand."

"I never intended him to." And in a blink of an eye, he was cold, impassive, unemotional again. His mask settled back in place and a cold chill ran down her spine in response, because she could sense as well as see the change in his demeanor. He wasn't just acting -- he really was that stony, icy, much of the time.

And yet, her curiosity was piqued more than ever. She said, "Yet you loved a human woman."

He inclined his head in acknowledgment of that fact. "A weakness, on my part."

"A weakness that gave you a daughter."

"And cost me my daughter's mother." His expression was bleak now. He stroked his daughter's hair one more time, then turned away. He stepped into the limousine, and pulled the door shut after himself, and then the vehicle backed up and moved away. As quickly and simply as that, he was gone.

Anna snuffled in Kagome's arms. "Daddy."

"Shh." Kagome slung the diaper bag over her shoulder, and then her bow, and grasped the handle of the rolling suitcase. Thus laden, she began to trudge back up the hill to the house on the ridge. By the time she reached the top, Anna was crying in earnest for Jaken and for her father.

Kagome said quietly, "Shh. People are sleeping."

But it did no good. The toddler continued to wail miserably, and she started to push away from Kagome with surprising -- or perhaps unsurprising -- strength. She had claws, and those talons threatened to scratch Kagome's arms.

"Down!" The toddler insisted. "Down! Down! DADDDDDDDY!"

"Oh, hush that noise." Inuyasha stepped out of the front door.

"Owe," Kagome said, as the child's claws drew blood on her arm.

Inuyasha's nostrils flared. He reached out and plucked the baby from Kagome's hands and held her up and studied her. The child fell silent, staring back at him with enormous golden eyes. "So this is my niece."

"She's scared," Kagome said, in defense of the child -- but she needn't have bothered.

Inuyasha, surprising Kagome a great deal, cradled the child in his arms. Anna snuffled and clung to him. "Are you scared?" he asked, and stroked her hair. The gesture was somehow similar to the way his brother had soothed his daughter -- the similarity was eerie, and made Kagome blink.

She nodded silently.

"It's okay to be scared." He set her down, then, and crouched so that he was on eye level with her. "But I promise you, we'll take good care of you, and you'll be safe here."

"I want Froggy."

"Jaken," Kagome murmured, in explanation.

Inuyasha smirked. "I'm sure he loves that. -- Froggy's not here ..."

"Want Froggy!"

He rested his hands on her shoulders. "Froggy's not here, and I can't get him for you. But I'm here. My name's Inuyasha. I'm your uncle."

"My un-cle?" She stared up at him. Then, suddenly, she reached out and touched one of his ears. "Ears!"

Inuyasha ruffled her hair. "That's right. We have the same ears. Claws, too."

He held his hands out, showing her. Then he reached up, and somewhat roughly yanked Kagome down so that she was crouched beside him. He pointed at Kagome's arm. "You hurt Kagome with your claws. You have to be more careful."

"Sorry." She stared at Kagome's arm, where a small bead of blood was forming. Then she burst into tears. "I'm sorry!"

"Shhh. It's okay. You didn't mean it." Kagome had not noticed the scratch until Inuyasha had pointed it out. "Kiddo, it's okay."

"Hurt you!" The child suddenly stumbled towards Kagome and offered her a hug. "I'm sorry!"

"It's okay to be scared." Inuyasha stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "But it's not okay to hurt people when you're scared. What are you going to do to avoid hurting Kagome?"

Kagome wondered if the child understood, because it was a bunch of big concepts for a toddler. However, Inuyasha continued, "Make your hands into fists."

She stared up at him, big golden eyes brimming with tears. Kagome was reminded of a soulful, sad-eyed puppy -- not, she decided, an inappropriate analogy.

"Like this." Inuyasha demonstrated, hiding his own claws inside two fists. "Now you can't scratch her."

The child mimicked him.

"Now hug Kagome."

With her hands carefully balled, the little girl threw her arms around Kagome's neck and hugged her. "I'm sorry."

"Good job." Inuyasha picked her up then, and carried her the rest of the way into the house. The little girl seemed calmer, somehow. Amazed, Kagome followed them.

He set her down on the couch and held his hand out for the diaper bag. Kagome handed it over, and Inuyasha dumped it out -- there were a couple of diapers, and assorted supplies, plus a sippy cup, and a few outfits -- many of them with a frog theme. Kagome suspected Jaken did most of the little girl's clothes shopping. Somehow, she couldn't see Sesshoumaru buying a Muppet bib.

He turned to the suitcase, and zipped it open. Inside was half a case of diapers plus more outfits, and a neatly folded set of Miss Piggy sheets. There were also several small toys -- dolls, toy cars, a plush frog the size of a basketball, picture books, and a short length of feather boa.

Anna pounced on the feather boa and wrapped it around herself. "Like Daddy."

Inuyasha smirked. "Yes, like Daddy."

"What size are those sheets?" Kagome asked, then unfolded them. Twin, it turned out. The couch folded out, but it was a queen sized mattress, as was the guest bed upstairs -- which was also currently occupied by three very tired Slayers. Kavan had claimed the floor in Inuyasha's office. She had been highly amused to walk past the door and hear the elf snoring.

She asked Anna, "Do you usually sleep in a big kid's bed or a crib?"

"No crib!" Emphatically, the child stamped her foot. "Big girl!"

"She'd just jump out of a crib, anyway." Inuyasha ruffled her ears. "Tonight, she can sleep down here with me -- I'm going to keep watch until dawn. We'll figure out where to put her tomorrow. Maybe a cot in our room. Safest, that way. My brother's right to be worried -- she's going to be a target for years until she's old enough to defend herself."

"Miss Piggy." The toddler patted the sheets. "Miss Piggy!"

Inuyasha draped the sheets over the couch. "C'mere, kiddo. You can have your Miss Piggy sheets." He scooped her up and set her down on them. "How about I tell you a story?"

Impressed, but also a little concerned, Kagome settled down on the other side of him. However, Inuyasha told a perfectly appropriate story about a little girl who liked frogs, and kissed one, and it turned into a prince. Kagome was shocked by how quickly Anna fell asleep -- she was curled in a still, slumbering ball moments after Inuyasha started the story.

He draped the top sheet over her and tucked the stuffed frog next to her, then rose. "Go on to bed," he said, low, to Kagome.

"Inuyasha," she pulled him into the kitchen, ignoring his order. "You're good with her."

He shrugged and looked away

"You used to be awful with kids."

"Oh, with Shippou. He liked it." Inuyasha scuffed a foot on the floor. "She's scared to death. I could smell it. Brave, but scared. She's so little. Too little. She doesn't understand why her daddy went away. At least I was old enough to know ..." he trailed off. "To understand shit."

"When did you get so good with kids ...?" She wouldn't let it rest.

He shrugged. "Amelia couldn't have children, but sometimes we took in brats that needed us. They're mostly all dead now. Mostly they were human." He eyed Kagome for a moment. She saw old grief in his eyes. She wondered about the 'mostly' bit and resolved to draw some stories out of him later, when they weren't both dead tired and busy with a war.

Softly, hesitantly, and with his eyes searching her expression, he said, "You could have kids."

"Not yours." She said, without really thinking about it. He was sterile. Hanyou always were, she'd learned. She'd found that out from Shippou, and had never asked Inuyasha about children. She had always assumed she would never be a mother if she married him. Besides, she'd never expected him to be so caring towards a little one. He'd tormented Shippou endlessly when the kitsune had been small. Inuyasha didn't like kids, did he?

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "They'd still be mine. It's not about blood."

"Oh." She frowned at him, wondering why she'd never seen this part of him before. He wanted kids?

He glanced towards the living room. "I was five. Three years older than she was." He hunched his shoulders. "She'll have the same problems with controlling her youkai as I did. Be careful with her, Kagome. She's little, but she's got fangs and claws and if she's scared she could badly hurt you without ever meaning it."

"I ... figured that out."

Kenshin woke to the sound of hysterical tears, and the bright, sharp scent of blood.

He was on his feet in an instant. He'd only been catnapping, expecting an attack. He could, of course, have put the girl in the dungeon -- but they would have certainly victimized her there. He could have tied her up, and had seriously considered it, but when she had remained seated in the chair for hours he'd allowed himself to drift into a half-doze.

She was crying now, and rocking back and forth as blood dribbled down her arm. When he stood up she looked at him in surprise -- perhaps she'd thought him deeper asleep -- and said, "I don't want you to hurt me. I won't let you!"

So her answer was suicide, instead. And a half-assed attempt at it, too. Kenshin, vampire, had a pretty good idea of the amount of blood loss it took to kill a human. Enough blood to fill his belly with enough left over for a minion or two. Not the amount of blood that was trickling from one small vein on her wrist. It looked like a lot, but it wasn't, really. The cut was shallow. She thought she was going to die, but was nowhere close. He figured it would probably clot long before she bled out.

Kenshin swore anyway, grabbed his sheet off his bed, and stalked over to her. "Don't be an idiot."

The words were his, surprisingly, and not the vampire's. He found he was truly annoyed and more than a little impatient.

"You're going to torture me to death. I won't have it!" She was shaking, her eyes enormous. "Torin said ... Torin gave details about what you'd do."

"Torin's a sick bastard who probably enjoyed terrifying you." Kenshin mashed a couple folds of the sheet to her wrist. She was tense, scared, eyes enormous. The smell of blood was making him hungry -- a sharp reminder that the last he'd eaten was the pig's blood Hanako had given yesterday. His stomach growled. "For future reference," he stared at his letter opener in her hand, "if you're going to kill yourself, you need to be more enthusiastic about the effort. This is just messy."

Absently, he licked her blood off the palm of his hand -- then realized what he'd done when the demon cackled in his head.

Well, fuck.

She tasted sweet and young and nubile, with a delicious frisson of adrenalin, too. The entire concept nauseated him -- worse, he realized he would once have savored every drop.

She was staring at him.

He retreated, and she put pressure on her own wound. She didn't want to die, he realized, but she was so terrified of what he might do to her that she'd decided that suicide was an acceptable alternative.

Her eyes were huge.

Blue.

Beneath a fall of dark brown curls.

He sighed. "What's your name?

"Katherine. Kay." She spoke shakily.

She was a Slayer. That counted for a lot, in his book -- Slayers were chosen because they had the ability to fight evil. Ability wasn't just about physical traits, it was also about mental strength. There were exceptions -- Slayers gone bad -- but they were few and far between.

She was terrified.

She was young, and beautiful.

Hesitantly, he said, "Miss Kay ... I am not going to torture you."

"You're a monster."

"A vampire. Yes. I'm not going to hurt you." He wanted to smack himself. Pretty girls had always been one of his weaknesses. It had never turned out badly for him before, but now, it was no exaggeration to sat that the fate of the world was on the line. If Lord Torin found out that he was acting out of character, it could expose him.

He rose, shaken, wondering what in the world he was supposed to do.

He could pretend to kill her, and smuggle her out ... but there were all sorts of ways that could go badly.

He could tell her about his secret, but she could expose him -- or simply not believe him.

He could leave things as they were, at least temporarily -- but she was so terrified of what he might do, she was willing to die to avoid it.

"Are you ... are you going to make me a vampire?" Her eyes were huge. Terrified.

She didn't know about the other Slayers, but he suspected from her reactions that she'd discovered what vampires were -- and perhaps had fought a few. Her terror was palpably real.

"Keep pressure on that arm." He rose and retreated back to his bed.

She started crying quietly. He would have left his room, and let her sob, but he was concerned that she might try something else. She was so very scared.

After long minutes of tears she suddenly lunged to her feet and bolted across the room back to her chair. There, she huddled in a ball under the blanket, staring at him.

He closed his eyes, and watched her with his other senses. When her ki calmed, and her even breathing announced she'd drifted off into a restless doze -- and this took a couple of hours -- he finally stirred. There would be no more sleep for him tonight.

Well, she would have to be fed. And clothed. He rose and silently extracted a more-or-less clean uniform from his wardrobe and left it folded on the chair beside her. Then, though he was worried about what she might do while left alone, he went to find a servant who could obtain food for her.

"You." He spotted one of the scullery maids. "I need food."

The servant girl -- she was human -- stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. She looked just as scared of him as Kay did.

"Not you, ma'am ... idiot." His demon had never eaten the staff. It was bad for moral, and kept the household from running smoothly. And it pissed off the butler and the head housekeeper, and that was bad for the hitokiri's level of comfort. Both were Unseelie, and the demon was scared of both of them. However, he was less than kind to the servants -- he tormented them on a regular basis, just because being cruel amused him. "Go get some soup from the kitchen. And some bread. Suitable for a human. I have a guest."

"Yessir." The girl bolted for the kitchens at a dead run.

Kenshin closed his eyes. Suddenly, painfully, he craved the calm, the peace, the quiet, the comfort he had been so rudely wrested from. He wanted to go back to that, to not have to worry about the fate of the world or even the fate of one pretty, traumatized young woman. The fate of the world had no longer been his responsibility; he had simply been at peace.

--