A/N: Well here's hoping I can update on time for all of you…phew…NOTICE! This chapter came out exceptionally messy. As in there is a lot of violence, a lot of blood in the end. I WARNED you now…
Disclaimer: No I don't own Inuyasha. Just my fish, but he's like my boyfriend's partly too, kinda like our son, except I'm always feeding and changing his water. Grrr…
Last Chapter: The old healer said that Ginrei was almost ready to have her daughter. Sesshomaru was summoned and an interesting confrontation of sorts took place between Sesshy and En. Sesshomaru told Rin he was leaving but she refused to be left behind. Sess gave in and took her and Saya to Naishougoto. Rin met Ginrei in a roundabout sort of way. Ginrei feels a connection with her because their daughters will be sisters. While Rin was with Jaken, ogling Saya, En entered the room and broke the toad's leg. She would've done worse to Rin and Saya, but Rin ran, right into Sesshomaru. En was nowhere to be found.
For Vengeance
Another day dawned, this one misty and likely to rain. Sesshomaru was the first up to witness it. The sunrise was orange beyond the clouds, burning fitfully at the mists that tried to shroud the forest, the gardens, and the lake. The koi in their pond were restless, their fins broke the otherwise smooth and tranquil water, rippling it.
The clouds thickened with surprising and fierce quickness. The sky was gloomy and heavy with the promise of rain. Sesshomaru didn't leave the palace—not because he was intimidated by the threat of a little rain, but because the old inuyoukai woman was still missing, seemingly vanished into the gloomy, rain-ridden air. As long as her presence threatened Rin and Saya and even Jaken, Sesshomaru wouldn't leave. And until Ginrei gave birth to his second daughter, Sesshomaru was honor-bound to stay.
Rin woke secondly, partly because Sesshomaru was moving. To keep watch on her, Sesshomaru had taken up residence in the same room with her. They didn't share a bed, actually they never truly had, even before he'd married Ginrei and created the rift between them. Sesshomaru was more a creature of distance and solitude. They slept in the same bed often, but generally only with a physical need; whether it was an innocent need for contact and closeness, or more often a sexual desire.
Rin and Sesshomaru's relationship was very different from the one that Inuyasha and Kagome shared. Just as individuals differ, so too do their interpersonal relations. Inuyasha might complain loudly about the goings-on in his bowels or any other highly personal, crude thing—and he would do it unabashedly to Kagome and without much fear of reprimand. Sesshomaru meanwhile, was not only never going to speak of something like that; he was also not human, so his body and his thoughts worked on a very different level than even his half-brother's. Rin was accustomed to Sesshomaru and, having known him all her life, found Inuyasha and Kagome's relationship to be odder than her own.
After Sesshomaru had left the room they shared, Rin had stirred and fed Saya. Maids arrived to attend her, newly awake themselves, blearily wiping the crust from their eyes and blinking away the sleep. They offered Rin a bath and offered to help care for Saya but Rin turned them down. She'd had a bath the night before after the ordeal in the tea room. She sent the maids away and dressed herself, wearing the same robes that she'd been wearing the previous day. The maids had suggested that she could burrow some of Ginrei's. Ginrei was taller than Rin by quite a lot, but with kimono that hardly mattered, height was adjusted for at the waist, making one size fit all. But Rin wasn't interested in wearing Sesshomaru's wife's clothing.
She stayed awake with Saya, sitting on the balcony where, although she could never know it, Sesshomaru had sat roughly nine months ago, tormented with animal desire on the night when his full-blooded daughter had been conceived. She also could not know that Sesshomaru and Ginrei had not consummated their physical relationship more than that one time. Her thoughts were as heavy as the rainclouds in the sky.
Saya was fussy, sleepy and yet unable to fall asleep. In the weeks since her birth she had become much more alert to her surroundings. Her golden eyes were bright and alert when she wasn't trying to sleep or wasn't crying. The discoloration in her forehead, the crescent moon, had darkened and taken on its full dimensions. There were no markings on her cheeks, in that way her hanyou nature was evident: Inuyasha lacked the same markings himself while inheriting his father's hair color and eye color.
Rin let Saya suckle on her fingertips. The baby was calmed and lulled by this. Her eyes drifted gradually closed, her arms and legs loosened.
Sesshomaru did not join her on the balcony, but instead left her to her thoughts. Respect for her might've been one argument he could've made for his distance, but the true reason was out of the memories that the balcony represented for him. Memories he wished to avoid. Naishougoto had become a place of awkwardness for him. He kept guards posted at the doors, watching for the old inuyoukai woman, and he stayed continually alert, ready to sniff out her presence if it winked into the palace itself.
Ginrei didn't wake for some time. By mid morning the maids roused, bathed, and slowly dressed her. It was nearly noon before Sesshomaru met his exhausted wife in the same battered tea room. Ginrei appeared exhausted. She was dressed lightly, in gold and cream colors, but even those light colors seemed to wash out her complexion. The mark of nobility over her cheeks, which in her case was white, had faded almost completely away. Her eyes drooped and every motion she made was slow, tired.
Miso soup was brought, as well as some rice. (A/N: I actually looked it up; traditional Japanese breakfast is miso soup and can include rice. They really do eat a lot of rice!) Sesshomaru wasn't interested in the food, and, it appeared, that Ginrei had no appetite to speak of either.
"You are not hungry?" he asked her when she barely even motioned for the soup or the rice. It was beginning to grow cold, steaming unnoticed into the air.
She shook her head faintly and swallowed thickly. "No."
"Are you unwell?" Sesshomaru asked, carefully.
Her shoulders managed to sag a little lower. "This is normal, Lord Sesshomaru."
As if he could lead by example, Sesshomaru took the chopsticks in his hand and poked curiously at the rice. It was pleasant, still warm on his tongue.
Ginrei was staring at him, her jaw moved, pressing her lips into a tight line and then releasing them again as she struggled to find the right words and the energy needed to say them. "I can't understand why En attacked Jaken."
Sesshomaru pressed the chopsticks firmly into the rice and left them there, placing his hand back into his lap sedately. "Tell me about her. Who was she?"
Ginrei gave a feeble shake of her head. "I don't know."
"Was she a member of Nishiyori's clan?" Sesshomaru watched Ginrei carefully, his golden eyes narrowed.
"I don't know." Ginrei released a long, exhausted breath. "Please, I'm exhausted…"
"You may go." Sesshomaru told her, coldly.
She bowed weakly and rose to her feet, moving slowly, unsteadily away. Her girth was greater than Rin's had been, and somehow Ginrei, an inuyoukai woman trained to be a dancer, an artist, eloquent in every way, was less graceful in her pregnancy than Rin had been. In spite of everything that had happened to her while she was carrying Saya inside her, Rin had been strong, powerful, and elegant. Ginrei didn't have the same poise. The beginning of her pregnancy had been healthy and peaceful, even beneficial. The second half was wearying, draining her of everything.
The child inside her was drawing strength, flexing her unused muscles. Perhaps she was even taking a deeper, spiritual strength from Ginrei, something that Ginrei didn't have much of. Perhaps Rin in comparison had an overabundance of that strength. Perhaps that was why Saya could be born a month or so early and still survive and thrive.
The maids came and worked skittishly, removing the uneaten food and vanishing. Sesshomaru stayed inside the room, waiting for something to change, something to break or bend…
The sound of baby cries woke Ginrei. She had lied down on her futon just after leaving Sesshomaru in the tea room, but now, some unknown amount of time later, she found herself snapped wide awake and alert. She was still fully clothed, her hair still pinned up neatly. During her sleep she had barely moved. She slept, as she had for months now, like a log. Even nightmares couldn't rouse her from whatever position she'd fallen asleep in.
Yet now she was alert, even breathing fast as if danger were waiting just outside her room. The child's crying entranced her. Ginrei hauled herself from her futon and stumbled toward the door, sliding it open. She hadn't closed it herself, but the maids must've done it while she slept.
Light spilled in faintly from a screen. Ginrei heard the pitter-patter of rain pouring down outside. It was impossible for Ginrei to tell if the light was afternoon or evening. Had she been sleeping an hour or much more than that?
The baby's crying drew her through the hallway. She laid her hands on the screen door across from her own bedroom and slid it open. The room inside was chilled, a wind passed through it. It opened to the balcony and Ginrei could see the splatter of rain outside, pouring from the eaves, trickling musically.
Crouched on one futon—there were two in this room but one had been made up and stored away back in its closet—was a woman, sleepily fumbling with her robes, trying to open them to nurse the screaming baby. It was Rin, looking a little messier than Ginrei likely did. Her hair was long and flowing, a dark, deep ebony.
When Ginrei slid open the door, she glanced up, startled. Then her gaze took in just which inuyoukai had opened the door and looked in on her and her expression hardened. She shifted, leaving her robes alone, letting the baby cry with her hunger unabated.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, the snarl in her voice barely hidden, if at all.
"Her crying…" Ginrei gestured weakly at the squalling infant. "It woke me."
"I'll feed her if you'll leave." Rin told her, bitterly.
Ginrei took a step back, but didn't let go of the door. Rin's gaze on her was hard, glimmering wetly in the dark, gloomy room. The wind blew at the balcony, driving in the rain, splattering Ginrei's face faintly. Ginrei frowned, seizing upon that to start speaking. "Shouldn't you close those doors? The draft and the rain…"
"This is my room." Rin snapped, "I'll do what I want in it."
Ginrei felt her body stiffening though she fought it. "Lord Sesshomaru has given me this palace, so this room is as much mine as it is yours, Lady Rin." She swallowed, cringing a little when Rin's face changed, darkening with menace. "I was only thinking of you and your child's health."
"I don't need you to think for me." Rin answered briskly.
"I wasn't suggesting that…" Ginrei sighed, wearily. "Please, I don't want to be your enemy. I…" she halted, cautious, uncertain, and then plunged forward, licking her lips, "If what I've been told about you is true, then you and I are very much the same."
Rin stared at her, apparently speechless, unable to form another insult or unsubtle suggestion that Ginrei beat a hasty retreat. Her baby continued to cry and, moved by frustration, Rin shifted her daughter, trying to quiet her. It did little good.
"Jaken has told me that Lord Sesshomaru rescued you as a young girl. He has told me that you have no living family." She faltered slightly, feeling a sudden surge of emotion at the memory of her own lost family. "It is the same with me."
"We're nothing alike." Rin told her, so quietly that the words barely reached Ginrei over her baby's wailing. "My family was human, yours was inuyoukai."
"Does that really matter so much?" Ginrei asked, gently.
Rin stared at her for a time with angry, narrowed eyes. Ginrei wasn't sure why, what nerve had she touched? She longed for Rin to open up to her. She was a mortal woman with an inuyoukai ruler wrapped around her pinky finger…
"You must forgive me; I have never learned your child's name." Ginrei gestured to the screaming baby and took a step closer into the room. "I'm curious, what will become of her?"
Rin sat back, blinking as if Ginrei had slapped her across the face. "That is none of your concern. Leave, now."
Another nerve struck, another offence written into Rin's book regarding Ginrei. She felt her strength leaving her again, draining away to the floor or evaporating into the air like the splatter from the rainstorm outside. "I'm sorry, Lady Rin. I was just…" she stammered and started over, "My own daughter…" she rested one hand over her swollen belly, "Sesshomaru has left her to me alone. He…hasn't claimed her. I have chosen her name; she will be my daughter, not his."
Rin wasn't meeting her eye any longer. She adjusted her baby and pushed her thumb into the infant's open, toothless mouth. The baby fell silent, suckling fruitlessly for a moment before turning her face away and resuming her howling. Now Rin ground out, "You sound like that's the way you want it."
"It is." Ginrei murmured, "I have no family left. Just her…" her hand was still placed over her belly protectively, lovingly.
Rin scowled and glanced up at her again. Her mouth opened, curled in a vicious, menacing snarl. "Get out!"
Ginrei cringed but didn't withdraw. "Please, Lady Rin…"
"I don't want to talk to you!" Rin shouted, baring her teeth fiercely. The baby in her arms kicked and screamed louder, as if backing up her mother's anger.
Ginrei breathed in once, sharply. "There is no reason why we can't try to be friends." She stared at the anger, the bitter resentment in the other woman's face and felt her own exhaustion acutely, the heaviness of her limbs and her belly, and her heart added to the weight. An ache began low in her body, a strange thing she couldn't place…unpleasant…
"I can't talk to you." Rin bit out, half choking on the words. For the first time wetness touched her eyes, cascading down her cheeks, but with one hand she wiped at it, forcing the weakness away. "Leave me. Can't you see she's hungry?"
Slowly Ginrei nodded. "Please, I've heard the maids talking of her. They say she is very beautiful. Can I see her?" the baby was held close to Rin and wrapped in swaddling and robes to keep her warm and to act as a diaper of sorts. The baby's features were hard, if not impossible to make out.
Rin hesitated and then, "No."
Ginrei's shoulders fell defeatedly. "May I at least hear her name?" she swallowed at the lump in her throat, frowned at the strange, swelling feeling in her abdomen. "She is my daughter's sister."
There was another long pause and then Rin said, "Her name is Saya."
Ginrei smiled, genuinely, and felt heat tinge her face and burning tears cloud her eyes. "A beautiful name, I'm sure as beautiful as she is."
Rin seemed to sit up a little more, as if inflating herself with strength or pride. "Lord Sesshomaru named her."
Ginrei's mouth fell open with surprise and then closed into a tight but warm smile. "He has claimed her as his own." She nodded as if passing approval, "It is only right considering she is the child of his mate, a chosen child, a favored one."
These words seemed to affect Rin, her face changed, softening, easing slightly. She turned her attention away from Ginrei and back to Saya, offering the angry baby another finger to suckle on. "Please, she's very hungry now…" she muttered.
This time Ginrei nodded and gave a small, weak, awkward bow. "Thank you, Lady Rin."
Rin didn't answer as Ginrei slid the door shut and stepped back into the hallway, breathing deeply. The sounds from inside the room changed from the continual screaming of Saya to only the rush of the wind and the pitter patter of the rain on the balcony. Human milk and hormones reached Ginrei's sensitive nosed and she stumbled back slightly, bumping into the wall of her own room. Hunger hadn't returned to her, in fact she felt a little sick. The pressure had swarmed inside her body, growing, changing…
She propped herself up with one hand as the pressure changed, abruptly transforming into knife-sharp pain, curling around her swollen belly, cutting deep into her. Ginrei gasped without actually drawing a breath—her mouth hung open, her eyes were wide, but she made no sound. Something moved inside her, not the child but a sickly warm liquid, moving like a parasite within her.
In that moment Jaken was helping himself up the stairs, grunting and whining with each hobbled step. As he reached the top, panting and rank with sweat, the toad noticed Ginrei's strange position and her panicked face. Quickly he pulled himself up and, using a crutch that one of the humans had found for him, some stick from the woods, hurried over to her.
"Lady Ginrei? Lady Ginrei! What is the matter with you?"
But he had his answer as scent wafted to him and as his eyes took her in—a clear fluid had begun to dribble onto the hard wood floor between Ginrei's legs, pooling around her ankles. He squawked and moved back from her, alarmed. "Lord Sesshomaru!" he called, helplessly. There was no place for a toad in such proceedings, and the toad knew no other course of action in such a frazzled moment.
Ginrei regained her breath and straightened. Stepping backward she saw the liquid at her feet and grimaced disgustedly. Her hands shook as she dug at the folds of her kimono, trying to spare it.
A maid came running and led her into her bedroom, kneeling to clean up the mess Ginrei had left in the hallway. When Sesshomaru arrived his keen sense of smell told him what had happened without any need to see the liquid evidence. As Jaken prostrated himself pathetically, Sesshomaru cursed the old inuyoukai En for abandoning them in this most inauspicious time. Sesshomaru wasn't able or willing to help Ginrei give birth…
The maid knelt on the floor, sopping up the evidence of Ginrei's approaching labor, drew Sesshomaru's attention. "You." He called to her. "Leave for the nearest village and bring a midwife." It would be a human midwife, a bad thing, but it couldn't be avoided now. Their inuyoukai healer had fled.
The maid scurried away and Sesshomaru followed her with Jaken limping afterwards, still jabbering in his panic and horror. But as they reached the foyer all three of them stopped, hearing a screech and a heavy splash outside. The screen door rolled open and, where a guard should've been posted, En stood, snarling in at them through her massively wrinkled face. She had tossed the guard aside without any trouble into the lake. He huffed and struggled to breathe now, swimming for shore outside.
"Old one." Sesshomaru addressed her, slipping past the startled maid. "Leave now or I will kill you."
En grunted thickly and hawked, as if she would spit, but instead swallowed the offensive gunk back down her throat with a grimace. "You won't kill me now, Inutaisho's son. Lady Ginrei's time has come, hasn't it? You need me." She grinned at him from a mask of wrinkles.
"Do not be so confident, old one." Sesshomaru told her, deeply, warningly. At his side his hand flexed, the claws lengthening dangerously. The tips of his fingers glowed greenly, revealing his poison. "Who are you?"
En made a deep grunting sound and sniffed. "What makes you believe you can intimidate me, young one?" she gave one short, mirthless laugh. "I was old before your father was born. I have nothing to fear in death. I have only one true mission to complete before I leave this world and it's waiting for me upstairs."
"Nevertheless hag, I will kill you unless you tell me who you are." Sesshomaru kept his voice level and even, but he lifted his hand up for her feeble eyes to see clearly as a threat.
"Then you will kill me and Lady Ginrei may birth you a useless daughter and die. You cannot care for her—do not dare sully her with a mortal." She cleared her throat and spat to one side, aiming for the lake. Sesshomaru's keen ears didn't fail to miss the wet plop it made as it landed in the lake.
For a moment Sesshomaru was silent, unmoving. Then Jaken spoke up, huffing, "My lord! Please! This is preposterous! She must be killed!"
En gave a cackle at his words and strode forward. She was hunched and limping and her hands moved without threat at her side. She had no fear of Sesshomaru or of Jaken or any of the maids. She might've bumped right into Sesshomaru's poison and clawed fingertips and they wouldn't have fazed her. Before she could come within touching distance of him, Sesshomaru stepped aside, giving the old hag room to pass by unmolested.
"My lord!" Jaken squealed, terrified and outraged.
"Let her pass." Sesshomaru ordered, stiffly. To the old woman he glared meaningfully. "You will be watched at all times."
En cackled again and twisted her head around, craning it until she could stare up at him. "And when I'm done you can kill me, of course." She grinned at him, leering.
Something like disgust flowed over Sesshomaru's face, but the micro-expression was overwhelmed by another feeling—bafflement, intrigue. Who was the old woman? He felt a slow, growing sense of alarm as he realized that this old woman would be waiting over his wife's bedside, she would bring his first full blooded child into the world. What would she do to her? For a moment his fist clenched, his claws called for blood…and then the old hag passed by him and the cowering maid and the shuddering, enraged Jaken. She headed, limping, for the stairs.
Jaken raced forward and prostrated himself. The little toad's body was shaking ferociously. "My lord! Please! This is a grave mistake! That old hag cannot be trusted!" he looked up with his huge, yellow eyes, frantic. "She wanted to kill Rin! And she almost did kill me!"
"Calm yourself Jaken." Sesshomaru murmured. After Ginrei's child has been born, I will kill her.
Inuyoukai labor was very different from human labor. Ginrei's body changed swiftly, giving itself over to the muscle contractions and pain of labor. As nightfall swept over the palace, and the rain continued to pour down outside, Ginrei was already nearing the impending time of birth.
Sesshomaru, as he had done with Rin, now found himself standing guard once more over the birth of his second daughter. This time his presence was not for the laboring female, it was for the midwife. En worked grouchily with the maids until most of them were dismissed completely. Then she spent a great deal of her time glaring at Sesshomaru, as if longing for him to die on the spot or perhaps just step out of the room. Sesshomaru failed to grant those desires time and time again.
At first Ginrei was alarmed to find En waiting on her. Just as Rin had been, Ginrei was alarmed at the old woman's attack on Jaken, and full of disapproval. Yet as her labor progressed so swiftly, and emptied her of her energy, Ginrei ceased to care who brought the cool strips of cloth to place on her forehead, or who offered her something to drink for her parched lips, or who sopped up the blood flowing out of her. In spite of her mysterious nature, En was a healer, she was a midwife. She was calm while Ginrei bled, and she could read the signs of the labor well.
To calm the bleeding, to even take the edge off the pain, En had herbs to offer to Ginrei. The maids brought her bowls and the old inuyoukai mashed and sliced the dried leaves with her own clawed fingertips. She cared for Ginrei tenderly, without any show of potential violence and without hesitation. In fact there was almost affection in her motions, in her rough, gravelly old voice. She yelled at the maids if they said something aloud about the blood, as if concerned that their words would alarm Ginrei. When they spoke too loudly while Ginrei as resting, she would dismiss them. If Sesshomaru had spoken she might've tried to do the same, but the inuyoukai lord remained silent as a statue made of stone.
At long last, as the moon rose outside, and Ginrei's latest contraction passed, Sesshomaru at last did speak, his own voice deep and raspy. "Old one."
The hag looked up, sneering at him through the darkness.
"You belonged to the Nishiyori clan." It was not posed as a question, but as an observation.
The old woman made a sharp growling sound and didn't answer him. Ginrei made a noise, drawing in a breath as pain raced through her body again. En leaned over her, counting and murmuring orders to the laboring woman to breathe. When Ginrei fell limp again, breathing fast, her eyes closed and her body covered in sweat, En grunted, making her characteristic noise, and looked up at Sesshomaru, meeting his amber gaze. "There is an herb I need that I don't have. I must search for it. The child is coming soon, before the hour is out."
She groaned, hefting herself onto her feet and limping toward the closed door. Sesshomaru also got up, following her without a word. The old hag would not be allowed to roam freely, without supervision.
En glared briefly at him when she saw that he was following her, but made no protest aloud. She passed into the hallway, leaving the door open. Sesshomaru closed it after he left, leaving Ginrei inside panting heavily, already preparing for another contraction. She whimpered inside the room, trying to speak their names, to call for company. She recognized, even in the thick of her labor, that her midwife and her husband, and even the maids, had all left her. Sesshomaru hesitated, feeling something that might've been pity, but then he saw that En had already reached the stairs and was hobbling down them in her hunched, unsteady way. He left the door and moved silently after her, as if gliding more than walking.
En led the way, hunched over but moving with surprising swiftness. There was a strength in her body that she worked to hide, but her speed and energy, and her steady hands as she'd worked with Ginrei, had all betrayed her to Sesshomaru's hawk-like eyes. She left him behind as she crossed the gardens, not using any trails but rather cutting across the wet grass and skirting around dripping decorative bushes.
The night was dark but mist had risen above the ground, hovering like ghosts. Sesshomaru's keen eyesight made out the ripples in the mists where En had passed and then caught sight of the long, round shapes her feet had made, pressing down the rich, wet grass. He followed her silently, intently. He spotted her a short distance away, heard her grumbling and snarling to herself, then saw her push into the thick underbrush of the forest.
Sesshomaru started after her, only to halt abruptly. The old hag's aura had changed, flickering out of existence for a moment before reappearing. Alarm made Sesshomaru's eyes widen, his heart picked up and his clawed hand flexed, readying his claws for a very necessary kill.
The old hag had stepped into the forest and disappeared. She wasn't searching for an herb in the darkness underneath the canopy; she had winked out and brought herself back into the palace in an instant…
Rin…
As Sesshomaru had followed En out of the castle, Ginrei had begun to call out, harshly, her breath ragged, her voice unclear and impossible to understand. Rin woke the sounds and blinked through the darkness. The wind and rain of earlier had calmed, though Rin had long since closed the screen door to the balcony. It trickled comfortingly outside, steady and calm.
Rin's dreams had been dark, bloody, and exhausting. She remembered well her own labor, the miko woman bustling at her side, the panic she had sometimes glimpsed in the other woman's eyes. Death had hovered close, waiting to wrap its arms around her in a cold, uncaring embrace. She had revisited those horrors in her dreams, tormented by Ginrei's cries across the hall. Part of her would've gone to help Ginrei, but she stayed with Saya instead, knowing that Sesshomaru was inside with her—though that was odd—and they'd found a midwife. Rin hadn't seen who it was, but she hadn't had much interest in it either.
Air puffed against Rin's cheek and she blinked, reminded at once of the kitsune child, Shippo that Inuyasha and Kagome had kept like a son…
Too late she saw the shadow on the wall, the snakelike strike of an arm reaching for her. She twisted her head, trying to see, opened her mouth to speak, and found a strong, dirty hand wrapped around her mouth, squashing her lips. Her eyes widened, her hands lifted and fought at once. The flesh she touched was damp and cold, as if not living at all. And it was covered in wrinkles. Even in the darkness she recalled the smell of the old hag, and, as En moved more directly into her line of vision, she saw the woman's outline, not hunched as she had been while working docilely beside the laboring Ginrei, but upright and proud and strong. A dealer of death and judgment.
Rin struggled to breathe, trying to cry out beyond the press of the old woman's hand. Then she realized that the woman's hand didn't stink as she'd thought it had—the smell was actually a pungent, rich odor of herbs. In the same instant Rin felt dizziness swarm in her mind, the darkness of the room enclosed over her vision, growing exponentially.
Saya whimpered where Rin had left her on one side of her futon and Rin fought, pawing at En's face. But her hands were weak and feeble now, weaker than Ginrei's exhausted limbs in the other room. The darkness won out, Rin couldn't stop breathing, and couldn't stop her lungs from absorbing the toxins. Her head lulled limply to one side, her arms fell uselessly.
En withdrew her hand quickly and reached for one of Rin's wrists. She pushed the claw of her forefinger into Rin's flesh, piercing it and drawing blood swiftly to the surface. She rolled her claw in the ooze of the blood, collecting a wad of the clotting stuff in the curve of her claw, then released Rin's wrist uncaringly, letting it fall to the futon.
Her attention moved to Saya. Her green eyes narrowed with disgust but she wasted no time before she'd scooped up the child and carted her off.
She flung open the sliding door and crossed the hallway where Ginrei was crying out, frantically, shouting half names that were indistinguishable. When she opened the door and entered Ginrei's room the other woman quieted, breathing harshly. Her panting stole her words away, but her look of panic was clear enough.
The contraction came on then and Ginrei huffed, whimpering. Her hands fisted in the bed sheets, blood was fast pooling between her legs though the bed sheets covered her from prying eyes. En scuttled forward to the bed and knelt near her, still holding baby Saya tightly against her. The old hag's face was set, amidst her wrinkles, in a desperate snarl. She bared her teeth at Ginrei, as if threatening the laboring woman would speed things up.
"Push, damn you! I don't have any time!" any moment now and Sesshomaru would burst through the doors and descend upon her like the wrathful father he was.
When En had left, leading Sesshomaru away on a wild goose chase, Ginrei's daughter had been crowning. It would take only a few more contractions before the child would at last be out into the world—the newest and last member of the Nishiyori clan. Unclaimed by Sesshomaru the little girl was a last, untouched chance at resurrection.
En moved to the edge of the bed and pulled aside the covers, digging through the blood, reaching between Ginrei's legs to feel for the infant's progress. Ginrei was straining, using every muscle in the core of her body to force the baby out of her. Crying filled the room and for a moment En was confused until she recalled the hanyou she was holding in her arms. Frustrated, she shifted and placed the baby on the far side of Ginrei's futon, leaving the hanyou infant to scream for her unconscious mother and her absent father.
With both hands free now she reached for the child emerging between Ginrei's legs amidst the blood and other fluids of pregnancy. Ginrei made a small noise, a gasp or a cry of pain, and then En found a slick, round surface firmly in her hands. With her gnarled fingertips she clutched the child and dug deeper, gripping the baby's shoulders, twisting them slightly to aid the passage, to speed it into the world.
Ginrei didn't have to push again; her daughter was pulled from her the rest of the way. As Ginrei panted, trying to breathe and focus through the haze of pain that had descended on her, En had already taken the child. She cleaned the new baby frantically, her wrinkled mouth set in a hard, firm line. She cleaned the infant's head of blood and amniotic fluid. The placenta was still intact, binding child and mother together as one.
As Ginrei's baby began to squall, faintly, with her first breaths, En picked Rin's clotted blood from beneath her claw and touched it over the newborn's forehead. Then she reached over the futon for the screaming hanyou infant and lifted a different finger, ready to make the tiny baby bleed.
Ginrei gasped, stirring weakly. "What are you doing? En?" her ears were ringing with both babies screams. In a way these were both her daughters, they were sisters, and this strange inuyoukai woman that had acted as her midwife was threatening them. She recognized Saya's cries, separate from her own daughter's wails. "Rin!" she choked, "Sesshomaru!" courtesies and titles were forgotten in her panic and pain. "Rin! Sesshomaru!"
En turned and glared at her, snarling viciously. "You stupid girl! Why would you call that little bitch and that demon that destroyed your family?"
Ginrei's breath was heavy, rasping, her nose filled with the stink of blood and sweat. "Who are you, En?" she started to cry, though she shouldn't have had the strength or the fluid to waste.
A sound came from the stairway, a rushing sound like the wind, but En was well aware that it wasn't nature that made this wind, it was a fatherly wrath. Gritting her teeth in a vicious smile, the hag reached again between Ginrei;s legs, grabbing up a wad of blood and other bodily fluids, some clotted, some still flowing. She shouted over her fist, "Blood of my brother!"
Sesshomaru reached the doorway. He was not a solid form, but rather a white glow. He materialized swiftly, the white flowing into masses of robes and tendrils of hair. Both doors stood open, one to where En had assaulted Rin, the other to where the babies screamed and Ginrei labored. The mixed scents assaulted Sesshomaru and for just the split second that En needed, he hesitated, torn between where Rin lied unmoving and unconscious, and where En held the babies against him.
En shouted something, incomprehensible, and threw the wad of blood and fluids at Sesshomaru and the doorway. It splattered over the entryway and some landed on Sesshomaru's legs, speckling his fine white robes with brilliant, crimson red.
A red mist leapt from the flooring, dispersing into the air, shrouding the doorway. Beyond it Sesshomaru made a sound like a scream, his deep, powerful voice booming from the walls of the palace, shaking them, rattling the screens and the sliding doors. Yet, despite this rage, he did not appear through the mist, racing in to save Saya, Ginrei, and the newborn.
Ginrei shouted, wailing, "What have you done?"
En turned her green eyes at the younger woman and her gaze leapt, glowing from within. "I have bought us time. It is a barrier he cannot cross until the blood has dried."
Ginrei sat up, desperation fueling her muscles and her exhausted body. "Give me my baby…"
The newborn was still connected by the placenta. As Ginrei sat forward the cord pulled and deep inside her she could still feel the connection. The pain made her stop, gasping as she realized that En hadn't cut the cord yet. If En were to cut the cord incorrectly Ginrei or the baby could bleed to death together, and if she stressed the unbroken connection it could rupture her uterus, again killing her by loss of blood.
En ignored her; she was focused on the newborn and the hanyou child before her. "Just as my family was torn apart, so will his be dishonored. Punishment for his crimes not from outside, but from within." Again En reached for Saya pulling the screaming baby roughly toward her and lowering her pinky finger with its corresponding claw to the baby's innocent flesh.
Saya's howling increased several times over, growing higher with sudden, wild reaction to pain, a new experience for her tiny mind to wrap itself around. The cut was over the baby's chest, the infant's own heaving chest impaled her delicate flesh into En's claw. Only a tiny amount of blood was needed, the mark wasn't large, and En seemingly had no true desire to slaughter the hanyou, though by her expression of hatred one would certainly believe that was what she wanted. She dipped her finger in the rising blood and moved it to join the second mark over the screaming newborn's forehead.
"What are you doing! Stop!" Ginrei screamed, reaching frantically for both babies, just out of reach. Her body was weak, sluggish, but she hauled herself better into a sitting position, in spite of the fresh wetness that this movement forced out of her body, in spite of the sickening tension that her motion created on the cord that was still connected to her insides.
En was still speaking down at the screaming newborn, one hand holding the baby, still partially covered in birth fluids and now with two streaks of foreign blood running over her forehead. Her other hand stayed over the baby and had begun to glow a sickly green white, as if poisonous. "You will be the ending for him—Hanone, the Fang. You are bound to the human, bound to half-breed. Where your mother is weak you will be strong…"
She was so completely absorbed in the words that she failed to notice that Ginrei had sat forward and could now reach her…
"…you will destroy the—"
Ginrei's claws raked across En's face, cutting off the old woman's words and splattering her blood. The droplets spilled onto the futon, onto the sheets, and onto both babies as well as onto Ginrei herself. The force of Ginrei's desperate blow threw En to the floor. She dropped the newborn onto the sheets.
Beyond the red mist on the doorway, Sesshomaru gave another bone-chilling sound, a cry much more animal than human. The red of the mists faded, lightening. It was losing power, falling away.
En clutched her cheek from the floor, seeing the crimson droplets dripping away. One cheek was torn open with four wide gashes. She snarled at Ginrei, baring her yellowed teeth. The motion made more blood spurt energetically from her wounds. "You fool! You have destroyed your own family now!"
Ginrei was crying, her chest heaving. Blood dribbled from the claws of one hand. She reached with her clean hand for her daughter, cuddling the infant close. As she pressed her cheek to her daughter's head the blood streaks, Rin's and Saya's, mixed and smeared onto her face. Her teary, red rimmed silver eyes gazed past her daughter, burning with rage at the old hag. "What were you doing to her?" she demanded, her breath ragged.
En gave a mirthless grin. There was blood over her teeth now, staining the yellow with red. "A prophecy, little fool. You have befriended our family's killer; I was ensuring that Hanone will not fail where you have."
Ginrei reached for Saya as well, trying to comfort both crying babies. She choked, hiccupping with horror and grief. "Who are you?"
En lifted her face and pulled her hand from her cheek, revealing the gash in all its ugliness. Her own face was twisted meanly; it was hard to imagine that she had ever been anything but the old, bitter, crazy hag, bent on vengeance. "My brother created the clan you were born to, girl. Long ago, before the humans began writing, before these islands were cut off from the mainland by the sea." She spat the blood in her mouth onto the floor and, mingling with the red drops of her blood, tears fell as well. "And now you have helped him destroy us completely. She was my last chance…"
The mists at the door dispersed, giving way. A white blur spilled into the room, howling like the wind but in a deep, masculine voice. En snarled as the whiteness moved over her in the blink of an eye. A green-glow materialized and struck her, snatching her by the neck, pushing her back against the wall. En didn't bring her hands up to fight the inevitable. The poison burned through her veins, making her body snap rigidly and convulse. Her green eyes were wide, and unseeing.
Sesshomaru released her just as quickly in a slashing motion. More blood flew wild, arterial sprays of it splashed on the wall and then on the floor as the old inuyoukai's body fell to the floor, already dying.
Sesshomaru stood over her body, whole and solid once more. His face was set in an animalistic snarl; his eyes were red like the blood strewn all over Ginrei's bedroom. His teeth were too big for his jaw, fangs poked out viciously from his parted lips. His single hand at his side was covered and dripping with blood.
On the floor En's body continued to bleed, but her life had already been snuffed out. She hadn't fought her fate; it had always been in her plans to die for her attack on Rin and Saya and for her mistreatment of Ginrei and the newborn. But her death had been planned for a cause. The newborn was unmarked, her future completely open. En had seen how Sesshomaru didn't care for Ginrei, that his interest was in a son, not a daughter. The daughter was the perfect way to punish him and to begin anew the lost clan that Sesshomaru had put an end to. A prophecy, a spell, a curse, a binding on the newborn to guide her life. She would hate Rin, she would hate her half-sister, and feel always En's spirit within her, forcing her along a predetermined path of vengeance.
But the spell had not been completed and En died vainly, lost to time and death, to join her brother and their clan, forever.
A/N: during the Stone Age Japan, as I was told a year or so ago, was connected to the mainland by a series of islands or a small strip of land. The Sea of Japan (I think) was made into a giant round lake. Don't quote me per se but I think that's true, or at least that's the gist of it. So when En says she's old, she's old. Like think Ice Age old. Her plan here was to die, but to prophesize Hanone's future as a sort of punisher. She would reject Sesshomaru and embrace her mother's ancestry and become a thorn in his side. En wrapped all that up with a final, nasty blow to Sesshomaru that would involve Hanone killing Saya and Rin, perhaps even Sesshomaru himself. Can he kill his own offspring? It's a difficult question to ask, that's why tearing the family up from the inside out would be especially vicious and terrible revenge.