A/N: I repeat: THIS IS STILL A SESS/RIN STORY. Anyone asking me to "redo" things and get rid of Ginrei will only succeed in angering me. I have a busy life, with two weeks of much-needed vacation in California coming up. I am tolerant of a lot of critique, you can write in and say you hate Ginrei, I had someone tell me they wished Sesshomaru had killed her a few chaps ago…that is acceptable, it even amuses me. Telling me to rewrite it because you have lost interest? Not acceptable. I enjoy suggestions for the future of my story, in fact I encourage them since reader inpu. Feel free to write in with suggestions of what you'd like to see, how you want this story to end, in fact:
Write in and help me people, I am a little lost. I wanted to keep Rin with IY and Kagome or somewhere away from Sesshomaru for a while, but I have trouble seeing it happening, he's not likely to leave her alone for very long. What are your thoughts?
I recently read the most astounding Inuyasha manga thing ever, I think. (SPOILERS! I warned you!) I ran across it while randomly looking at images my boyfriend sent me online from It was a picture of young Rin and Sesshomaru. I was intrigued. There was a link to the manga, scanned in and put online, fortunately translated too. I read it and discovered that Rin was dead. Of course I was shocked. I read around it and tried to get the background. There was also this female demon with light hair and the crescent moon on her forehead. Imagine my shock…Sesshomaru's MOM!!! So not only did Sesshomaru's mother, who we all assumed was dead, appear in these couple chapters of the manga, but also Rin dies and teaches Sesshomaru the meaning of compassion, or a real fear of death, not for himself, but for others. Tenseiga can only save a person once. When Rin dies after she's been swept into Hell accidentally, he cannot save her. Also, he cannot cry, but he fights for her, holds her close, and by all appearances was very, very upset. FYI Sesshomaru's mother takes pity, and she seems to have some control over life and death too, and she brings Rin back with some tool of her own…anyway, very interesting.
Disclaimer: Nooooo I cry but noooooo ownership!
Last Chapter: Rin had nightmares as she slowly recovered from her near miscarriage. She did not lose her baby after all, at least not yet. Inuyasha and Kagome are fighting about what to do with Tsukiyume and Rin. While she was recovering, Rin began speaking to Hyakka, one of the priestesses. She appealed to Inuyasha, asking him to protect her and keep her secret in his household. She offered to trade her swords, forged as gifts from Sesshomaru, to him. Inuyasha refused, so Rin threatened to appeal to Kagome instead and Inuyasha left her under Shippo's watch.
Aishou: Sorrow
It was early; the sun had barely crept out from the eastern horizon. The shutters in Inuyasha and Kagome's bedroom were closed; the room was slightly stuffy and very dark. Inuyasha waited in the doorway, watching his sleeping wife. Kagome was wrapped up inside the covers, one child on either side, snuggled into her.
The scene was so gentle, loving, peaceful…Inuyasha wanted to ingrain it into his memory, to preserve it for the rest of his lifetime. He longed for one of the kam-er-uhs from Kagome's era that caught mirror-like images and froze them for all time. This scene was one Inuyasha had longed for most of his life. Comfort, security, love.
Footsteps came over the hallway floor, making one of Inuyasha's ears turn toward the sounds. They stopped in the same moment, and Inuyasha reluctantly turned his head around and found himself staring at Rin, whom he'd left moments ago under Shippo's watch.
He sighed and moved away from the doorway. "Dammit Shippo." He grumbled, glaring at Rin. "Get out of here." He snarled, "Kagome's sleeping."
Shippo came bounding down the hall, stammering apologies. "I'm sorry, Inuyasha! I tried to stop her but she has that sword…"
The kit's voice was too loud, Inuyasha heard Kagome stirring in their bed, heard one of their children whimper sleepily. He growled out in a low voice, "Shippo, shut up!"
But it was too late. From inside their room, Kagome's voice called out his name, thick and slurred with sleep. Inuyasha groaned, ears flattening as he stared at Rin. He stepped into the room, moving through the dimness to crouch down at her side. He began whispering to her, explaining shortly that Rin had tried to bribe him and he had turned her down. They began to bicker the moment Kagome started to rise, trying to speak to Rin herself.
"What the hell are you doing? Stay in bed with Aki and Koinu." Inuyasha snapped.
"You can stay with them. She isn't going to hurt me, Inuyasha." She slapped his hands away and Inuyasha growled, irritably.
As Kagome pulled herself out of the bed, slipping slowly past her husband, the hanyou snarled after her, "She isn't staying with us, dammit!"
Akisame started to cry and Koinu stirred, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. Inuyasha moved onto the bed and cuddled Akisame, sighing and frowning as defeat sunk in on him. He had lost this battle, but he figured he had yet to lose the war.
"Daddy?" Koinu murmured sleepily.
"What is it?" Inuyasha lifted his arm and pulled his son closer to him, tucking him against his side.
Koinu accepted this, yawning and wrapping one of his little arms around his father's waist. "Why don't you want that lady to stay?"
"Cuz it ain't our problem, Koinu." He replied, gruffly. "And believe me; we don't want it to be our problem. We want her gone. Your mother is just out of her mind, that's all."
"She smells like Auntie Sango does." Koinu remarked. With one cheek smashed to his father's side his words were muffled and slurred even more.
"That's because she's going to have a baby." Inuyasha stroked Akisame and adjusted her so that she was lying across his lap. The toddler fell almost at once back asleep, in spite of the quiet conversation going on around her.
"It smells like you, Daddy." Koinu murmured, his voice fading fast.
Inuyasha's fingers on Akisame stilled, he blinked several times and then let out a short, sharp breath. "Is that so?"
The boy nodded against him. "Yes."
Inuyasha waited, listening to his son and his daughter's breathing. They lengthened and steadied, becoming little puffs. Akisame squirmed in her dreams and eventually let out a tiny growl. Koinu's ears flicked lazily, as if scaring off a pesky fly. Inuyasha's own eyelids became heavy as he listened to his children and wondered about their dreams.
Rin presented Kagome with the same bribe of swords, but in this instance she didn't instruct Kagome to touch the blade—it wouldn't repel her in the same way it had Inuyasha. Kagome was drawn by the sword as well, staring at it silently for some time after Rin made her offer. She could feel the power inside the blade with her miko senses, and it troubled her that Inuyasha had apparently endured the same test—feeling Hikitsuru's power—and had still refused Rin's bargain.
At last she lifted her eyes and stared not at the sword, but at its owner, Lady Rin. "Inuyasha refused your offer?"
Rin nodded somberly. "He did." She bowed, touching her forehead clumsily to the matting of the sitting room where they'd taken their little impromptu business meeting. "I ask only for protection and secrecy. I wish to remain in your home without…" she choked on his name, "Sesshomaru's knowledge."
Kagome shook her head slowly, dismayed. "I don't understand…Inuyasha has been sketchy with me on this: why did you leave him, and while you're pregnant?"
"I could not stay after…" she breathed in once, deeply, "Sesshomaru deceived me."
"Inuyasha lied to me many times about another woman, years ago." Kagome murmured, staring down at her hands clasped together neatly in her lap. "I was always sure that I came second place in his heart." Her face colored and she cleared her throat uncertainly. "I know a little of what it must feel like but I stayed with Inuyasha…"
"You believe I shouldn't have left." Rin filled in the rest of it for the miko. Her shoulders were beginning to shake; her gaze was narrowed and angry. "You can't understand my situation." All of the dead babies, all of the grief. Could you have stayed and pretended to be a saint and all the while wondered if he'd left you because you couldn't give him a child? Could you have stayed when you knew he fought a whole war and killed a whole family to get one woman? Could you lie with that same liar at night, knowing that a week later he'll be with his "wife" using her like a breeder because you're just not good enough? Hanyou cannot be royal heirs…
Rin began to cry silently, but she batted viciously at the offending teardrops as they escaped her eyes. Kagome watched her with pursed lips and furrowed eyebrows.
"How would you like a bath?" Kagome asked, her voice warm and gentle. "I'd heat the water. I'll even lend you some clothes. Those that you're wearing look like they need to be washed anyway." She smiled timidly, trying to infuse the room and the other, younger woman with warmth.
Rin nodded eagerly. "I am in need of a bath."
Kagome nodded and smiled brightly. "I'll go start the water and get you some new clothes." She started to get up and then paused, her lips pinching in on themselves. "You…wouldn't mind wearing something from my era, would you? Just until I've washed your robes…"
Rin hesitated, feeling both caution and curiosity. Kagome wasn't of their world. The word "era" baffled her again, but Rin hid the emotion and nodded with as much assurance as she could muster. She flicked her tears from moments ago away with force borne of irritation. "No, I wouldn't mind…"
Daken didn't bother touring the Middle Lands again. Sesshomaru had already been through them, wreaking havoc and destruction in his heartbroken, bitter loss. The old, grizzled inuyoukai worked with Sesshomaru's many spy networks, trying to learn of any hints as to the whereabouts of the runaway Rin. When this turned up nothing, Daken began fishing quietly with the other spies, spies for hire who had no loyalties, and then eventually he went on to researching the spies loyal to other lords, other clans.
The kitsune clans were the best for information, generally. They were small, often weak, and unseen. They might pose as a mushroom and wait, growing in a garden of a great lord, until some unwary servant murmured something that could be seen as valuable if it were to slip into the right, or perhaps, the wrong hands. Human samurai lords often employed kitsune youkai the most often, calling them sorcerers and cursing them for their black magic behind the fox demons' backs, but to their faces they were polite enough, and their pay was real.
The kitsune's loyalties, however, were not. The kitsune frequently betrayed their human employers as well as their youkai ones. In this way they avoided association to any one lord, human or youkai. They were not creatures who believed in dying for noble causes, unless it was for their own friends or family. They were simple at their core, selfish, and usually tricky.
The clan in the Middle Lands that often served Shimofuri and the other inuyoukai lords of the territory, was slightly different from other kitsune groups. They were established as relatively loyal. Shippo's ancestry led back to this group, which considered itself not as much trickster as survivor. By serving the Middle Lands more loyally than the other clans, these kitsune—the Aojiroi clan—had monopolized their services and ensured some small protection underneath the lords of the Middle Lands. They were unlikely to talk to Daken, recognizing him as something of an enemy spy. Daken didn't even try to break into their network. A number of them had been slaughtered by Sesshomaru when he'd come across them randomly in the wildernesses of the Middle Lands. They would be hurting and bitter, absolutely unwilling to help the spy of the one who'd killed them.
Instead Daken used the looser kitsune clans, searching for the saboteur that Sesshomaru believed had poisoned Rin. A kitsune named Kaiban eventually offered him information in simple exchange for Daken's own news on Sesshomaru's search for Rin. The rampage of the enraged inuyoukai lord of the Western Lands was common knowledge in the Middle Lands, but in the Western Lands it wasn't announced by the smoldering crop fields, or the graves of the dead. Daken allowed word to be spread of it—and what had caused it. The people, in spite of the devastation wrought just a stone's throw away in the Middle Lands, were clamoring for good stories. Those governed by the mysterious Sesshomaru would adore the story of his lovesick madness. They would condemn his bloodlust quietly and then withdraw into pity for his lost love. They would wonder about the mortal woman that had captured his heart in such a profound way, and then they would keep their own ears pealed for news of her.
Kaiban's information was seemingly insignificant. The kistune had been asked to provide a certain plant root, mashed and ground, to one of the cooks in Sesshomaru's main castle fortress, Nejiro. This was the castle where Rin and Sesshomaru had settled after becoming mates, it was also the castle where Rin had suffered miscarriage after miscarriage, unrelentingly. Although Kaiban had no idea what the root was used for once the cook got it, he understood that the information was important to Daken and refused to give up the cook's name unless Daken paid him with actual money and not just a trade in information. Daken refused the steeper price and left to investigate Nejiro directly.
There were several dozen chefs that had been shuffled about, coming and going over the years that Rin had suffered her miscarriages. When Daken reviewed the records of their employments, he was able to narrow the list of suspects into three different cooks that had actively been serving Rin in the years of her miscarriages. This narrowing was good enough for Daken—but it got better. One of the chefs had asked on several occasions to be switched from Nejiro to Jouka when Rin had left.
His name was Fumou, and, very briefly, he had been transferred to Jouka to serve Rin, but that had been just before she'd run away. Currently he was missing, having left Jouka with many of the other terrified servants when Rin had vanished with Shimofuri.
Daken switched his quest now for Fumou. The chef was a monkey youkai, from a weak, impoverished family. He had a flare for cooking, and his dexterous hands—which he possessed in both his humanoid form and his true youkai form—gave him an advantage in the kitchen equal to human chefs. His superior taste and sense of smell furthered that advantage. He was young, a new recruit to the business, and with his natural skills could likely grow rich, given time and effort.
But apparently Fumou, like many monkey youkai, had felt the itch of impatience. The money wasn't enough, so when he caught wind of an offer that involved a non-lethal poisoning of Lady Rin's meals, he took it. This increased his wealth at a faster, more monkey-acceptable rate.
Daken sent one of his trusted messengers, a distant relative, to give Sesshomaru the news. An edict would be issued; Fumou would become one of the Western Land's most wanted criminals. With Rin's disappearance the monkey had lost both sources of income, he was unlikely to stay hidden for long. He was probably already working again, perhaps for the very people that had hired him to poison Rin.
When Daken's messenger returned, his young inuyoukai nephew named Oushi, he was informed that when Fumou was found Sesshomaru wished to do the interrogation himself. Daken smirked nervously all day after the news arrived. Somewhere out there a monkey demon was doomed, and chances were he wasn't even aware of it. Sesshomaru was unlikely to take pity on the monkey for any reason. No amount of begging or pleading would dissuade Sesshomaru from exacting some small bit of revenge out on him.
As well as that news, Oushi also relayed the message to Daken that Kaiban, Daken's informant kitsune spy, was to be hunted down and slaughtered as well. Daken obeyed the order grimly, searching out Kaiban under false pretenses, telling the fox spy that he would pay for the chef's name, Daken had the kitsune killed and his head sent to Sesshomaru as evidence that the deed was done.
More and more, it was becoming apparent to Daken that Sesshomaru was ruthless, bordering on heartless, and perhaps a little off his rocker, thirsty for blood and vengeance. How long would this quieter hunt go on, he wondered, before all-out war would break out between the Middle and the Western Lands? How long until Shimofuri and Sesshomaru would go to war over Rin?
Rin regretted her decision that Kagome's clothes would be acceptable. Kagome's clothing was tight and constraining, it nipped into her skin uncomfortably. The pants she'd been given were made of a rough, thick blue fabric. They hardly stretched at all and adhered closely to her skin, form fittingly. The shirt Kagome provided was loose, long sleeved, and made of a light cottony material. Rin was accustomed to robes, multiple layers of the richness surrounding her, bathing her in it. The clothes Kagome gave to her were unlike anything she'd seen before, though they did give her more freedom to move her legs.
The bath had been strange as well. Kagome kept her own bathhouse in a room at the far end of her home. Rin hadn't expected such luxury in Inuyasha's home. He wasn't a lord; she hadn't expected him to live as if he were wealthy. Rin gazed with curiosity—as well as astonishment—on the tiled floor, the strange, smooth surfaces of the building materials. She wanted to ask what things were made of, where they'd come from, but found her voice had fled from her. Kagome's home humbled her into speechlessness.
The bathtub wasn't ceramic, porcelain, or metal or wood, but instead it was made of an off-white, hard, smooth substance that Rin couldn't identify. It was set against the far wall of the little bathroom, not rounded but rectangular in shape, and not as deep as what Rin was accustomed to. Kagome had guided her to the tub and pulled on a strange, shiny, sleek fabric that was suspended from metal hooks on a rod. When Kagome pulled on the bizarre fabric it slid with a gentle grating noise along the rod, curling its way around the inside of the tub.
"It's a shower curtain." Kagome told her as Rin battled to control her own awed, stupefied expression. "Of course we don't actually have a shower, but…" Kagome trailed off, laughing uncertainly as she saw that Rin was still baffled beyond words.
Shower curtain? Curtain Rin could understand, shower she couldn't. Was it raining outside? The fabric was strange, Rin wondered what magic lied behind its sleek shine—why would Kagome leave this thing where it was, partly inside the tub, as if she wanted to get it wet?
Kagome pointed out another strange shape inside her bathroom. This one wasn't recognizable to Rin at all. It was white like the tub, and rose only about thigh level, if that. It was a mashing of shapes, the bottom was boxier as it rose out of the floor, the middle was rounded like a cup or a bowl, and the top was strongly rectangular, pushed back against the wall behind the odd contraption. The bowl part of the thing loomed open, but Rin couldn't see inside it. Rounded shapes lied against the top of the bowl, against rectangular tank behind it, like lids.
"That's the toilet. I'm sure you've never seen one but it's…" Kagome stopped, her face clouding with annoyance. "Inuyasha." She growled out and walked forward hurriedly to slam down the toilet seat, huffing. "This is where you go…" she smiled uncertainly, and then began to laugh lightly. "I was about to say potty."
Rin failed to catch the amusement in the strange word. The toilet and its purpose continued to elude her. "I don't understand…" she said, at last finding her voice again.
"Well this is where you go to…" Kagome's face colored and she cut herself off, rolling her eyes heavenward. Rin was younger than Kagome was but the young woman exuded stiffness and formality. The least formal thing Kagome had seen her do was cry at the thought of Sesshomaru. To explain the use of a toilet to her seemed horribly impossible. But the words she needed at last came to Kagome. "This is the privy, the outhouse. All of that."
Rin blinked, startled. She didn't possess Sesshomaru's fine sense of smell, but if she had she would've scented the very faint stench of the family's waste, the tentative system of pipes that tried to carry water for the toilet—surely the only of its kind in the Feudal era. She nodded wordlessly at Kagome, accepting all of the strange things around her wonderingly, almost as if she were a child again.
Kagome encouraged her to use the shower curtain if she was at all bothered by her presence, or if one of the children, Inuyasha, or Shippo had to stop in and use the "toilet." Rin tried the strange curtain but found that with it encircling the tub she felt claustrophobic, cut off from the world, trapped with only herself. That loneliness ate at her, and Rin pushed the curtain aside, refusing to use it again.
She sat in the cooling bathwater a long time, staring at the shower curtain, the "toilet" and the strange tiles. Kagome came and left again, bringing soaps and perfumes, a towel, and fresh water for the sink in case Rin or anyone else used the "toilet" and needed to rinse their hands.
Rin was a small woman; she'd never recovered in some ways from her earliest childhood as a starving orphan. When she stretched her legs out in Kagome's strange tub, her toes barely touched at the bottom before her head went under. She kept most of her head submerged like this for a time, wetting her hair and closing her eyes, trying to clear her mind. Her ears stayed underwater when she stayed still, she could hear her heartbeat, the gentle tinkling movements of the water, her joints and muscles grumbling when she moved even slightly, and even more amazing still, Rin thought she could hear a secondary beating in the water, the sound of her daughter.
It was this fascination that made her miss the commotion outside of the bathroom. Only Kagome's sudden appearance inside the bathroom brought Rin back from this world of sound. The door slid open loudly, clattering, and Rin sat up hurriedly, moving to cover herself instinctually even as she blinked away the water droplets and soap bubbles that had gotten into her eyes.
"Sorry." Kagome told her curtly and Rin watched as Kagome set a neat square shape onto the floor. It was like one of her towels that way, folded up carefully, but Rin could see multiple types of fabric and realized that it wasn't towels. "You can put this on when you're done."
From outside Rin heard Inuyasha's voice cursing irritably. "Hurry up Kagome!" beyond his complaining, it was also possible for Rin to hear the sounds of children crying. The sounds drew instinctually at her heart. Rin felt a jolt of something like panic. Her first thought was that Sesshomaru had found her and was attacking.
"What's going on?" she asked breathlessly.
Kagome looked up at her as she was about to slide the door shut again, but although it was clear to Rin that the other woman had heard her, Kagome made no response. She pulled the door shut, and Rin found herself shivering and alone inside the bathroom as the sounds of Inuyasha and Kagome's footfalls receded down the hall.
She stepped out of the bath, leaving the chilled bathwater inside the tub because she had no idea how to operate the strange drain, and toweled herself off clumsily. Maids had always helped her with this. They would cover her body with towels, they'd scrub over her skin, they combed her hair while it was still wet, they held up her robes for her as she slipped them on. They even tied her obis and styled her hair. Now Rin was taking care of herself, and feeling as clumsy as a child.
When she pulled out the folded clothes Kagome had left her, Rin was baffled anew. The sounds of the crying children outside continued to pull on her, leaving her no choice but to put on the clothes, however strange they were. The underwear she grasped the purpose of at once, the pants and the shirt came later. She thought Kagome had made a mistake when she saw the pants, as well as another bizarre bit of white fabric: two cup-like shapes connected by straps and strings of fabric. Surely Kagome had given her the clothes of a peasant? She had no idea what to do with the white scrap with its cup-shapes, so she tossed it aside. Her hair was dripping wet when she emerged from the bathroom; Rin had never tied a towel around her head before, or draped it over her shoulders. She hadn't made an effort to dry her hair at all. At any rate, however uncomfortable her dripping hair was, the crying drew her curiosity more.
Tsukiyume was in the hall outside the bathroom, seemingly waiting for her. The hanyou girl was timid but pleased to see her. Kagome had provided Tsukiyume with clothes as well—but this was something Rin recognized. A simple green kimono with a yellow under robe. "Lady Rin!" her orange eyes widened as she saw Rin's odd clothing.
"Tsukiyume." Rin felt her shoulders drooping a little with relief, dropping her tenseness. Tsukiyume was one ally in all of this. She moved close to the hanyou girl, longing to hug her on some level while at the same time wishing to remain strong, distant, and reserved as if she were in court. "What's going on?"
"I was out with the kitsune Shippo when some children came to the gate." Tsukiyume's ears flattened, she swallowed nervously. "Two of them I've seen before, with the monk we met on the road—his sons."
Rin frowned, remembering the monk and his sons. "They were so young and already he had them out killing people." She muttered, sourly. Her hands crept to her belly, where her daughter was miraculously still nestled safely inside her, beneath the uncomfortable clothing Kagome had given her. It infuriated Rin to think that the monk could risk his sons in such a way, expose them to such harsh things at their young age. How could he be so careless with something so precious as one of his children? Didn't he know that in some instances a child was an unattainable gift, an impossible blessing? She cocked her head, listening to the crying sounds of the children, once in a while interrupted by Inuyasha or Kagome's voices. "Has one of them died, or the monk?"
Tsukiyume shook her head, seeming to shrink. "No."
There was something inside the hanyou girl's tone, in the way she flinched, as if afraid to stare at Rin directly, that told Rin that she knew what was wrong, and it would somehow be unpleasant for her to hear. "What is it?" she demanded, a little stronger this time.
Tsukiyume's jaw clenched. "Their mother, as I understand it, sent them away."
"Why?"
"She has lost her latest child."
Rin didn't react to the words, but her eyes lost their focus, glazing over. Her first thought, instinctually, was: What have I done…?
After sending Daken on his first mission of revenge, Sesshomaru wandered the Western Lands for nearly a week, listlessly. His thoughts were scattered, his emotions cloudy and muddied. He tried to go to Nejiro to continue meeting with the various retainers and other dignitaries, to resume his role as the lord of the Western Lands, but the memory of Rin was too much. Her spirit waited in the halls, and Sesshomaru could never sleep in his room, Rin's was too close by, as were the many memories of their lovemaking. And beyond those memories there was also the grief. Nejiro had seen all of Rin's miscarriages.
Before leaving Nejiro behind, and ordering his meetings to be scheduled elsewhere once a week, Sesshomaru visited the small Shinto and Buddhist shrines of the castle. They were controlled by humans, for humans. Youkai generally didn't believe in either system of religion, choosing instead to squabble amongst themselves and to focus on their existence in the here and the now. The afterlife was a useless idea and place for most of them.
Sesshomaru had never bothered with these places before. His presence in both small shrines caused a small panic as priests and monks filed into their ranks, bowing before him. The Shinto shrine here was staffed only by priests and by priestesses who took care of it, keeping records and other monotonous things. There were no mikos or monks gifted with spiritual powers. Sesshomaru had made certain of this himself. A youkai that invited in mikos and monks that had the powers to possibly harm or purify him just wasn't a smart move. These priests, priestesses, and monks were all accustomed to serving the humans that served the inuyoukai lord. Whatever they believed about youkai, they kept it private and performed their duties diligently. Sesshomaru had always been satisfied with that, he allowed the humans their beliefs.
But now he was entering their shrine, their temple. In the Buddhist temple there was a statue to the Kannon representing prosperity, the harvest; good fortune…Rin would've liked the temple. Sesshomaru stared at the statue in its position of serenity. One hand was in its lap, the other lifted in some gesture that Sesshomaru didn't care to interpret. Its face interested him most. A small, openhearted smile graced its face. Its robes flowed gracefully and naturally.
Sesshomaru tried to imagine Rin kneeling before the statue, tried to imagine her thoughts, her wishes. He knew they were almost certainly about her lost children. Aishou, she had named one of them, Sorrow. It summed up his feeling about every one of those lost children. But there were other words that could be added to them: Loss, failure, humiliation. Ironically, those words also described his feeling about Rin's running away.
He left the temple without a word to any of the monks or to the priests in the Shinto shrine. In the same hour he left Nejiro, unable to spend even a night inside the cursed castle.
The next place he chose was small, but well fortified: Insen. It was built along the ridge of a mountainside in the middle of the highest mountains that crossed the Western Lands. Sesshomaru retreated to those mountains, roving them alone. He neither ate nor slept. Neither was required for him to survive, at least not right away.
In the stillness of the mountains, in the lushness of the summertime forests, Sesshomaru could bury the fury and the pain that lived inside him, for a time. Stubbornness and pride had brought an end to his rampage, and helplessness had stopped him from sending out every human and youkai under his command to go looking for Rin. He waited in the Insen for word from Daken and from Naishougoto if it should come. In the back of his mind the idea of killing Ginrei still lurked, but for now grief and loss had transformed him, forcing him into inactivity.
Most painful of all was the thought that Rin was still carrying a child, or at least she had been when she'd left. It was only a daughter, and a hanyou at that, unable to take the Western Lands as an heir, and barely recognizable as royalty—but apart of him. Miscarriage after miscarriage had made Sesshomaru jaded and wary of his own offspring, from either Rin or Ginrei.
But the thought of Rin away with a stranger, carrying his pup, it sickened him on a deep, primordial level. The inuyoukai in him wanted to guard her, to watch over her and the child. He wanted to take in her scent, rich with the life inside her, to smell and see it developing. Most of all, he wanted to see Rin's happiness as she at last became a mother. He wanted to see his daughter's face, to search for a reflection of Rin's features and his own inside her tiny newborn face.
What was Rin thinking, taking his daughter away from him? What was she thinking, risking her health and the child's? The power an enemy, like Shimofuri, would have over Sesshomaru if they threatened Rin or the child…
Spring mists rolled in over the Insen castle, created by the contrast between the moist heat of the lower altitudes below, and the cooler, drier air of the mountains. Sesshomaru met with Daken's messenger Oushi and learned of the kitsune that had provided the herbs to poison Rin, and of the cook Fumou that had committed the deed. There was only one missing piece of the puzzle, the employer. The being responsible for the passage of money that started the entire process. The kitsune and Fumou were just pawns in some larger criminal's mind, but Sesshomaru would make sure all of them died for their crimes.
Aishou would be avenged.
The atmosphere inside Inuyasha and Kagome's home changed dramatically after the arrival of Kohimu, Tisoki, and Kasai with the news that Sango had suffered a miscarriage. The demon slayer had been pregnant with her fifth child, another boy by Inuyasha's reckoning, and she'd been far enough along that the miscarriage was dire. Her body rejected the child growing within her, making Sango enter an early labor that was painful on multiple levels.
Tsukiyume was pushed out of the children's room, as was Shippo, to leave room for Kohimu, Tisoki, and Kasai. Now she and Shippo stayed in the same room with Rin. Kagome disappeared for a time and reappeared with more bedding from "her era." The three children slept in the same bed, squished together but seemingly happy enough.
With Shippo and Tsukiyume with her now, Rin began to hear more stories from the kit. She was grateful for it, they distracted her from the lingering fear she had that soon she would miscarry as well. It was as if she had a curse on her head. As silly as it was, Rin felt an impulse to bow before this demon slayer that she'd never met before—at least not that she could recall—and beg her forgiveness.
Inuyasha was, for a time, distracted enough that he forgot about Rin's unwelcome presence in the house. Kagome, meanwhile, had her hands full with comforting the children—her own as well as Sango's—and with her usual chores. Tsukiyume and Shippo offered themselves up to help her, and gradually they could be seen hauling water, scrubbing floors, or slicing food just as much as Kagome.
Rin, meanwhile, longed to join them, but she knew next to nothing about ordinary housework. She saw Shippo, Kagome, Tsukiyume, Inuyasha, and even some of the children going about the mundane chores of everyday life, and found herself dizzied, helpless and pathetic. She had been taught needlework, but never how to scrub. She could read and write more than Inuyasha could she suspected, but she couldn't for the life of her know how to sharpen a sword or even a simple kitchen knife. Even the children's cries confounded her. Akisame in particular she was drawn to, but if she were to reach out to the child or attempt to speak to her, Akisame fled, or one of her parents was there to scoop her up and take her away from Rin protectively.
For a few days she was bored and embarrassed at her lack of activity. She made up the bedspreads inside the room that she, Tsukiyume, and Shippo shared, but when she moved to do the same inside the children's room Inuyasha found her and forced her back into her confinement.
A storm moved in, the daylight outside was sullen and gray. Rainfall woke Rin. Tsukiyume and Shippo were already up, murmuring quietly to one another. The hanyou girl and the kitsune boy had bonded, becoming fast friends. Tsukiyume was also more accepted by the household, she was freer. She was genetically related to Inuyasha, and though both of them would've denied it, that relation did play a role in their interactions. Rin knew it to be true of inuyoukai, over and over again.
It had been over two weeks since Rin had recovered from her illness and she felt nothing but frustration at her confinement, at her uselessness to the household. Rin wasn't lazy, but she had been spoiled. Now, in the dull light of the morning as the rain padded down on the eaves outside, Rin could hear Shippo murmuring in a low, careful voice, gossiping. She strained her ears, feeling her heart pick up painfully when she caught Sesshomaru's name mentioned.
"…he says everyone is talking about it in the Western Lands. And the refuges from the Middle Lands confirm it. Sesshomaru went on this wild attack, killing people left and right in the Middle Lands. The refugees don't know why, they only guess who it is until they hear the story that's floating around."
Tsukiyume shifted on her bed, glancing back to where Rin was sleeping in her futon, her back turned toward them. "What story?"
"In the Western Lands everyone knows that Sesshomaru is heartbroken, and that Shimofuri is responsible. He kidnapped Rin." Shippo whispered this but somehow managed to deliver it dramatically.
"Shishi-sama would never do that!" Tsukiyume hissed with anger.
"People don't know the truth." Shippo agreed with her calmly, "They like to think of lost loves and all that junk."
"Not betrayal and revenge." Tsukiyume added, sighing quietly. "I don't know how any of this will end." Her voice had become higher, near almost to tears. "I'm afraid for my brother…"
Rin tried to control her heart, fearing that Tsukiyume or Shippo would hear it. Her face was hot; her body broke out in a sweat. Her fight with Sesshomaru had become public? The thought of people whispering her name in some false fairytale lie sickened her. At the same time she feared others knowing the truth that she hadn't been taken, but had left willingly. Her name would never recover if that bit was known and not why she'd done it. She wondered what would become of Shimofuri as well, and Inuyasha's family too. Her presence endangered anyone that kept her with them.
Was there really nowhere for her to go, nowhere that she could escape and be free from Sesshomaru's clutches? Everything she had was Sesshomaru's. She even owed him her life multiple times over.
And yet, because she had come to rely on him so much, his betrayal hurt that much more, and it left her helpless without him. Was her only choice to return to him? What would Sesshomaru do if she did abruptly return to him?
She closed her eyes, trying to drown out all of those thoughts. She imagined the bathwater again, imagined being mostly immersed in the water, hearing nothing but her own body's sounds. Sleep stole over her again, letting her doze through the rest of Tsukiyume and Shippo's whispers.
A/N: for next time…
"What?" Tisoki demanded indignantly. "That's what Uncle Inuyasha calls him!"
Kohimu nodded, backing his younger brother up. "He's right. Koinu, your dad thinks your uncle is an asshole."