Title: Conquest
Ship:Sesshomaru/Rin
Timeline: Post Naraku.
Word count: 1,305
Rating: Eventually, M
A/N: Inu Yasha doesn't belong to me—I own absolutely nothing, and I'm making no money off this, so please don't sue me, thanks.
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Chapter 1
Sesshomaru had taken three steps into the house when he heard the noise and turned.
A young woman was running toward him, and her eyes, though heavy with sleep, were shining like stars in her face.
'Lord Sesshomaru!' she cried happily. 'I knew it was you!'
He took the moment to stare at her. He had left a child, but he had come back to what was undoubtedly a woman. If it hadn't been for her distinctive scent, and the nearly invisible scar that ran down her left cheek, he would not have believed it was her.
'Rin,' he said, acknowledging her presence as she stopped in front of him.
She beamed at him, and he experienced a moment of disorientation. She still smiled as she had when she had been a child, and he was struck anew by how fleeting was the life of a human.
'Lord Sesshomaru!'
The shrill voice interrupted his thoughts, but he continued to look at his ward, observing the changes that time had wrought. His intense scrutiny brought a flush to her cheeks, and he was aware of a twinge of annoyance at this new development.
He turned his gaze away from her and glared at Jaken, but the little demon was too overjoyed at the reunion to notice.
'Lord Sesshomaru, you have returned!'
Abruptly, his eyes misted, and Sesshomaru watched, mildly amused, as Jaken blinked away his tears.
'Do not leave us again, my Lord,' the toad begged. 'We do not know how we spent these years without you!'
Now he could hear the sounds of doors sliding open and shut elsewhere in the house, clearly, the servants had been roused by the noise.
'We shall talk in the morning,' he said, realising that he was keeping both of them from their beds.
They nodded happily, turning to smile back at him before returning to their rooms.
Shesshomaru watched as Rin walked away from him, her steps slow and measured, where before they had been graceless and childish…
Expelling a breath in sudden irritation, he turned away.
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He had come back.
She had known, somehow, that it was him. She had heard a noise in the night, and she had come out onto the balcony to see a shadowy figure float to the ground.
She had rapped at Jaken's door as she had rushed downstairs, and then he was entering the house, looking as self assured and calm as always, while she felt like she was going to break apart with the excitement of it all.
Rin smiled giddily as she reentered her bedroom.
It had been eight years, but he had not changed. Of course, she had not expected him to, he was Lord Sesshomaru. He would not change unless he wanted to.
She lay down, but the exhilaration running through her body wouldn't let her go back to sleep. She felt like singing, or dancing round and round until she felt dizzy.
He had come back!
She had always known he would, even when her tutors had sighed, and the servants would whisper that he wouldn't return, after all, why would he come hurrying back to a human?
But she had trusted him.
'I shall return once Naraku is defeated,' he had said, and she had believed him.
She hugged herself, feeling like her face would split in two from her smile.
It felt like it was only a few minutes later that she looked out of her window and saw that it was dawn. She rose, and made her way to where her lady in waiting lay sleeping.
'Hitomi,' she said softly, tapping at the other woman's door.
Her maid soon stood before her, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. 'Would you like me to draw you a bath, my lady?' she asked, stifling a yawn.
Rin nodded apologetically. 'You can go back to sleep once you're done,' she said kindly.
Soon she was done with her morning ablutions, and standing before her mirror in a red kimono embroidered in white.
As she combed her hair, she wondered which flower she would put in her hair.
The white one, she decided. She remembered that it didn't seem as cloying to his highly developed sense of smell.
She waved Hitomi away, telling her to go back to sleep, which her maid gratefully did. With quick footsteps, she glided down the corridors on her way to the gardens.
She smiled fondly at the flowers as she took a deep breath of their fragrance. She had spent most of her time in this part of the castle when Lord Sesshomaru had first left her here; it had helped her make believe that he was only gone for the day, and that she waited for him with AhUn, amusing herself in a field of flowers.
It was still her favourite part of the castle, and she often went there when she was thinking of him.
She was reaching for the white rose when she saw movement in the corner of her eye.
'Lord Sesshomaru!' she cried in surprise.
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The next moment, she gave a cry of pain.
And then he caught the scent of her blood.
He was by her side in an instant, lifting up her wounded finger so he could examine the injury.
'It's nothing, my Lord,' she was saying in a distressed tone. 'It was just the thorns of the rose…'
'Yes,' he said. 'I see that.'
He did not let go of her hand, finding its shape and texture on his skin an oddity. He had held her only occasionally when she had been younger, and he was not used to what felt like her much larger hand in his own. The skin, too, was different…
What would the skin on her forearm feel like, he wondered idly.
His brow quirked at the strange thought, and he gently dropped her hand. He watched in consternation as she blushed.
He suppressed a snarl of annoyance. She never used to do this before, why had she started now?
The little girl he had saved was gone now, he thought with mingled sorrow and anger. This woman standing here in her place was someone else entirely, someone he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
He looked at her closely. She was wearing red and white, the colours of his house. This more than anything seemed to state to the world that she was his, and not even he could change that.
'Why are you here, Rin?'
'I wanted the rose,' she said quietly. 'I wished to put it in my hair.'
He nodded, and she moved to quickly pluck the flower and set it in the hair that flowed over her shoulders.
She had changed, his ward, where before her hair had been the bird's nest of a child living in the wild, now her hair swept to her waist like a dark river.
But then, had he expected any different?
Yes, he thought in astonishment. He had.
Before him stood this shy stranger in red, but in his mind she was still a child running to him in a white and brown chequered kimono, prattling on about flowers and the latest adventure she had had with AhUn…
'Lord Sesshomaru?' she said hesitantly.
She had changed, but she was still his ward.
She was still Rin.
'Yes?'
'I missed you, my lord,' she said shyly.
He said nothing, but it was then that he decided to accept the fact that somewhere in the course of the past eight years, his Rin had grown up.
Her stomach growled, and his mouth twitched in amusement.
But perhaps the new Rin was not so different from the old one.
'Come,' he said, and she nodded, blushing again.
She followed him as he led the way to the dining hall.
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A/N: And there you have my tiny, tiny tribute to 'Escaflowne'.