A/N: I've had a moderately life changing week…something happened, something good, but then it got complicated. AHH! And that exacerbated my writer's block horribly. I'd already decided what I wanted to do with this story, how I want to finish it, but with everything that's been going on at midterm and over the weekend…I basically haven't written a stitch at all. Soon I'll be out of practice! AHH! BTW! I have been honored by a fanart image by Teela-akimako-cz which can be found here: http:// teela-akimako-cz. Runaway-illustration-69002361 just remove the spaces I've shoved in there and hopefully that will work. It is an EXCELLENT illustration and I believe it captures Ginrei perfectly. I am honored by it and very impressed! Thank you Teela!
Disclaimer: I own Saya, Ginrei, and Hanone. Everyone else is not mine. Ah, oh I forgot, Shimofuri is mine though.
Last chapter: Rin and Ginrei started, hesitantly to bond. Shippo appeared briefly and Rin told him to thank IY and Kagome, though I'm sure you all know what IY would say to that. Something like she could stick it where the sun don't shine. Rin and Sesshomaru fought. Sess is unable to wrestle out the words, "I love you."
Gone With Leaves
Life was imperfect and, even in moments of peace and happiness, even when life brought virtually nothing but beauty and kindness, one could still feel as if disaster lurked in the corners, peeking from the shadows. Even while happy, one could still find things to be dissatisfied about, to mull over them, exploring them and amplifying them, just as one's tongue can probe too often on a tender tooth and create a real wound where before there was none. Shimofuri felt this way acutely after Sesshomaru disappeared back into the Western Lands—or perhaps the Isei again—leaving peace treaties in his wake.
The discussions between Sasugainu, Sesshomaru, and Shimofuri had lasted two days, and every moment had been torture for Shimofuri. He faced Sesshomaru, who, slowly but surely, he'd grown to hate with a fierceness he normally reserved for battle and for the inferior, unthinking youkai that terrorized human villages. And at Sesshomaru's side, awkwardly, was his uncle Sasugainu, the coward.
The provinces of the Middle Lands opened up their borders again, trading restarted. Humans celebrated as Sesshomaru's army disbursed and faded away. But between the three inuyoukai leaders there was nothing but tension and the lingering bitterness of betrayal.
Though Shimofuri had, in a way, stolen Rin from Sesshomaru, he didn't view it as any kind of victory over the lord of the Western Lands. Sesshomaru had turned Sasugainu against Shimofuri with fear, and the coward's disgraceful betrayal weighed on Shimofuri heavily.
One of the provinces, the eastern Itou, was leaderless. Sesshomaru had killed Arasoizuki and destroyed his castle. A few members of his family had survived, his wife and one of his sons. It was sloppy of Sesshomaru to have left them alive. They were a loose end. Arasoizuki's wife's family in the north had taken in the survivors, and they were calling for punishment and for Arasoizuki's land to be turned over to their family. Shimofuri hadn't answered them yet, in fact he'd ignored their messengers and letters, he was too focused on the threat of war and on Sasugainu's betrayal.
The negotiations brought all of this forward, however. Shimofuri read off the charges against Sesshomaru. The family demanded that blood be paid with blood, but everyone knew that such a payment would never be exacted. There wasn't anyone powerful enough to enforce the edict against Sesshomaru. He would walk away with Arasoizuki's blood on his hands and with no true debt to pay.
Shimofuri tried very hard to change that. He was young and his audacity had frightened Sasugainu, and it threatened Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru tried to punish him using Tsukiyume, as he always did—and Shimofuri demanded a hostage in return. Rin and her child were nonessentials to Sesshomaru: a mortal woman could never rule anything and a hanyou daughter was just about as useless. Logically Sesshomaru would still have the upper hand, holding Tsukiyume against the unwed and heirless Shimofuri while he stayed contentedly with a wife and a full-blooded child, a potential heir.
Sesshomaru balked at the idea of releasing Rin and his hanyou daughter to Shimofuri. The idea of hostages was dropped immediately. The plan to appease Arasoizuki's family in the far north changed dramatically when Sasugainu suggested that Shimofuri could negotiate a marriage with Arasoizuki's widow and then raise the fatherless son to take over the Itou when he was old enough. Shimofuri fought the idea at first, but in the end it was decided that the idea would at least be proposed to Arasoizuki's family and decided with certainty at a later date.
Sesshomaru escaped the negotiations without losing anything, promising merely to cease hostilities and diffuse his army. Shimofuri and Sasugainu appeared, on the surface, to have mended their separation, but beneath it all, as they'd signed the treaties in ink, Shimofuri broiled with insult.
Sesshomaru was untouchable, but Shimofuri vowed that he would find a way to punish him, no matter how long it took…
Early in the morning, Sesshomaru called Rin out of her deep, dreamless sleep in a rough, harsh voice. "Rin."
She opened her eyes slowly, blinking up at him like a fawn. Saya was nestled up against her side, warm like a space heater partly below the blankets and furs. Looking out from the covers, Rin saw her mate standing above her, looming like a mountain clad from summit to base in snow.
"We are leaving today." Sesshomaru told her, coldly.
Confused and dazed with the remnants of sleep, Rin started to sit up, clutching the covers around her as the cold air of the room tried to reach hungrily for her skin. "Where…"
"You will spend the winter at Jouka."
Sleep was fast receding from Rin's mind, leaving her sharp and hot with a burst of anger. "Where will Lord Sesshomaru spend the winter?"
He threw her a withering glare through his narrowed golden eyes. "There is much to be done. I will be traveling…"
"You'll leave me at Jouka alone." Rin finished for him, snarling. She focused on her hands, pale and skeletal. The months before, during, and after her pregnancy had been hard on her in every way imaginable. Fatigue lingered in her bones, deep in the marrow, making her limbs feel like lead. She closed her eyes, letting out a wavering breath.
"There is no other choice." Sesshomaru replied, stiffly. When Rin didn't move for a time and the silence began to stretch yawningly, he expanded on his words. "You leave me no other choice."
"I didn't do anything." Rin muttered bitterly, "Lord Sesshomaru made those choices for himself. No one controls Lord Sesshomaru, no one has ever touched his heart or understood it."
Though Rin didn't see it, Sesshomaru flinched, his face scrunching up briefly and twisting into a frown before it partially relaxed again, back under his control. The inuyoukai lord, for all of his massive power and stature, was rendered speechless. Ideas raced through his head, but none of them were plausible. An irrational side of him wanted to shout at her, to beg her to forgive him—but he could never do that and likely never would. Speaking the three little words that humans put so much merit into—I love you—might pull a few of Rin's heartstrings. She would see things from his side. He had made mistakes, he had erred, but he couldn't change it. If changing it meant killing Ginrei and Hanone…he doubted Rin would ever want that, even deep in her innermost, secret thoughts.
They had tiny, beautiful Saya. That was the most concrete thing they shared now. And Sesshomaru was already using their daughter to control Rin, to force her to stay where he wanted her. Her words flitted back to him, trapped. She was trapped with him, held against her will. When she was a child, Sesshomaru had always allowed her the choice, sometimes even hoped that she would leave him and rejoin humanity. Yet, even so long ago, he'd known that she would have trouble existing there. She had trouble with human men; they unnerved her because she had been exposed to their carnage when bandits murdered her family. How could she survive as some housewife when she feared her husband? She had never truly feared him, though perhaps she should've…
He gazed at her slouched, exhausted form, at the cascade of long black hair. He longed to touch it, to feel her smooth skin against his own. To see her warm, earthy brown eyes meet his own hazy with love.
Cautiously, he reached out toward her with his clawed, pale-skinned hands. Rin sensed the movement and her eyes snapped open, but they didn't roll toward him to watch. Sesshomaru touched the strands of her hair, messy from sleep, moving them over his fingertips to feel the roughness. Her hair was thicker than his own, and yet the roughness had always appealed to him, strong like fiber, strong as only Rin could be.
Rin lifted one hand and pushed his touch away. She breathed shakily and spoke with trembling lips. "I…I want to stay here."
Sesshomaru froze, his hand and hers still touching, hovering in mid air. "What?"
"I want to stay here with Ginrei." Rin announced, more firmly now. "You are going away—are you not?"
Anger rippled through Sesshomaru and he spoke swiftly to answer her, too fast for him to control the tone of his voice. "You leave me no other choice…" could time wrench Rin's heart into forgiving him? It was time that had made her desperate enough to at last profess her love, to beg him not to marry her to some samurai lord. If he was away, in the cold of the wilderness for a year or a season, would it be enough to bring her back to him? "What else would you have me do?"
"Lord Sesshomaru must do as Lord Sesshomaru has always done. It would be wrong to expect him to act in any other way." Rin pulled her hand back and clasped it with the other in her lap. She stared ahead at the wall, her jaw squared firmly.
"Why do you wish to stay here?" he demanded, perplexed.
"Ginrei is here." Rin answered, anger tainting her voice. "It would be best to keep both Lord Sesshomaru's wife and his mate together."
"You will run to Shimofuri when I am gone." Sesshomaru spat at her, forcefully. His lips quivered, his golden eyes narrowed as he searched her face with growing rage. The Isei was close to the Middle Lands, much closer than Jouka was. It made sense that Rin would try to ruin him again and position herself closer to the only major threat he saw to himself or his power.
"I have already told Lord Sesshomaru that I would not leave." She met his angry gaze at last, matching his rage with her own.
"You will be watched." Sesshomaru bit out at her, growling.
"Like a prisoner." Rin retorted under her breath.
Sesshomaru was silent then, but the muscles in his face continued to quiver with his outrage. His nostrils flared. Rin looked away from him, reaching back into the covers to check on Saya. Her face softened as she uncovered the sleeping baby, her lips relaxed, on the verge of a small, weak smile.
A dark, bitter thought spread over Sesshomaru's mind as he watched Rin's expression change. He could take Saya with him, leaving Rin alone and miserable. Would Rin still run away to Shimofuri if Sesshomaru held their daughter against her?
But one cold hard fact prevented him from doing this. It was true, Sesshomaru could raise their daughter, but he could not nurse her. It was one thing they shared—humans and inuyoukai—the need to nurse their young. A snake youkai was free, like all reptiles, to turn its children loose on the world without raising them at all because there was no need for milk. Inuyoukai represented the dog, a mammal. Saya and Hanone both were bound to their mothers because of their need for milk.
"Swear to me, Rin," Sesshomaru began, thickly, "That you will not leave with Shimofuri. Swear that you are mine…"
Rin had scooped up Saya and cradled the baby in her arms. She stroked the baby's feathery white hair and ran her fingers lovingly over the crescent moon in the center of the baby's forehead. The baby opened her small, round eyes sleepily and gurgled. Her eyes were bright just beyond her eyelids, golden like the sunrise.
Something heavy filled Sesshomaru's chest at the sight, reaching up into his throat with fingers that burned like fire and froze like ice at once. He swallowed, fighting the old, halfway forgotten desire to cry. The emotions flowing within were withheld and restrained, barely showing on his face and in his posture. "Swear to me, Rin. Swear you will stay here, with Ginrei." I could not stand to lose you…
But as she lifted her face to him and he saw the stoniness of it, Sesshomaru felt the heaviness inside him swell all over again. I have already lost her…
The burning rose from his throat and touched the back of his eyes. Sesshomaru dropped his head immediately, alarmed and desperate to hide his reaction. The tears were few, but it was likely that Rin would be able to see them, and he could never expose such weakness—not even to her now. She was gone, almost as good as already at Shimofuri's side, almost as good as dead. But their daughter, who looked so much like him, she was still his. There was still hope for her.
"Sesshomaru?" Rin asked, her voice oddly quiet, distant. She had failed to add his title. The small irritation that that tiny mistake offered allowed Sesshomaru stifle the inner war raging inside him and look back up at her with as much coldness as he could muster.
"You will swear not to leave this palace. You must stay here with Saya—she is mine."
Rin blinked at him, her eyes clouded with tears. "How many times do I have to tell you, I won't leave you!"
"I will leave Jaken with you…" he paused, searching for another name, a trusted messenger, one of Daken's relatives… "Oushi will stay with you as well."
He began to rise to his feet and turn his back on her, but Rin called out to him, her voice high and plaintive. "You will write? You will come back…?"
A small niggling hope made Sesshomaru pause, analyzing her voice, contemplating the bleakness of the present and weighing it with what could be an open, possibly optimistic future. "I will return."
He moved toward the balcony door and slid it open, letting the cold air flow in. Behind him, Rin abruptly made a sound like a cough that was actually a sob. Sesshomaru paused, turning his head slightly to watch as she rushed toward him, still holding their daughter in her arms. She pressed her body as closely to his as she could while holding Saya.
"Please," she sobbed, shaking her head, "don't be gone…very long…" she lifted her head just enough to look up at him, the fresh tears swimming in her tired eyes. "I…love you." Yet, as she spoke the words, her face was twisted with undeniable anger; it wasn't hard to decode it. She loved him, but it was a helpless love that she didn't want to feel, it was exactly what trapped her…she loved him, but she couldn't forgive him.
And he couldn't trust her. She had gone to his enemy, pregnant with his child. Now he was leaving her, feeling that there was nothing else that he could do but give the situation time and distance, and he was going mad inwardly wondering…would she still be his when he returned?
He placed his hand on her shoulders and then on her hair, parting the strands to touch her neck. Her skin was warm and dry and smooth. He felt over the curve of her neck, the gracefulness of it as her skin quivered beneath his touch. Was he really going to leave her…?
Rin's sobbing had quieted, though Sesshomaru hadn't noticed. Abruptly, she pulled back, clutching Saya close to her. She stared at the floor, at his feet, and remained silent except for the occasional sniffle and shake of her shoulders as she restrained any further outbursts. She was waiting for him to leave. Sesshomaru remembered her words from moments ago: "…don't be gone…very long." She accepted his leaving; perhaps it was even what she wanted…
"Go." She whispered, hoarsely, as if deliberately confirming his thoughts.
Stiffly, Sesshomaru turned from her and stepped out of the room onto the balcony, refusing to turn back or shut the door behind him. His acute hearing heard Rin collapse behind him, sobbing all over again. The same heaviness rose inside him again, but Sesshomaru pushed it away, smothering it.
He leapt easily from the balcony and onto the frosted, cold earth of the lake's shore some twenty feet away. The gardens were wreathed in mist. It hovered like smoke over the koi pond and over the lake, shrouding Naishougoto, the secret palace, in fog and mystery. Sesshomaru paused, listening to the sounds of nature, the deathly stillness of the morning, and felt the first breath of winter whispering through his white hair.
There was one last thing he had to do before he left Naishougoto, before he retreated from the Isei, the land that had cost him Rin…
He crossed the bridge back to the palace on silent feet. The guards at the door were alert and stony as he passed by them, more like statues than men or inuyoukai. Sesshomaru slipped into the palace silently and moved up the stairs again.
Rin was still crying—he could hear her clearly from the room with its balcony at the other end of the hall. The door was closed. He prayed her human ears would miss the sound of his voice one last time. He moved to the small room where Ginrei slept now after the bloodshed in her first bedroom where Hanone had been born.
He slid the door open and stepped through into the dark warmth of the room. Like Rin, Ginrei kept her tiny daughter close to her at all times, tucked against her for warmth against the coming winter. Sesshomaru crossed the distance and knelt at her bedside. Tentatively he reached out and touched Ginrei's forehead, waking her gently.
His wife blinked her silvered eyes, coming awake swiftly and with shock. Sesshomaru hadn't visited her at all during the night. As far as Ginrei was concerned, Sesshomaru had only just returned.
"My lord…" Ginrei started to sit up but Sesshomaru made a curt motion, signaling her to stop. She hesitated, reading the faint signs of distress in him at last. "What's wrong?" her voice was low and sleepy.
"I am leaving for a time." He murmured, quietly, letting his gaze wander away from her and toward the opposite wall. "Rin is staying with you."
Ginrei nodded, though her confusion remained apparent. "I will be honored by Lady Rin's presence."
Sesshomaru paused, searching over his wife's face for a long moment as he thought hurriedly. Finally he asked, "Let me see Hanone."
There was a small note of caution in Ginrei's expression as she stared back at him. "Why, my lord?" there was a gleam of something that might've been suspicion in her eyes.
"Let me see Hanone." Sesshomaru insisted again, his voice a little firmer than before.
Ginrei changed her position and pulled back the covers and furs slightly as she reached into them, searching for her baby. She offered Hanone to him slowly, with noticeable reluctance. Her watchful gaze didn't move from Sesshomaru or her daughter.
Awkwardly, Sesshomaru cradled Hanone in his single hand and arm, examining Hanone's sleepy, mildly irritable expression. The baby was annoyed at having been woken so unceremoniously. Her clothes were simple at the moment, a blue robe though she hardly needed it when she was tucked so closely against her mother's skin. Sesshomaru turned her one way and then the other, scrutinizing her as if she were a work of art that he might find imperfect and, unsatisfied, break it down for spare parts to start over.
The baby was well formed. The longer she was held away from her mother, the more Hanone began to squirm and whimper disapprovingly. Her clawed hands were chubby but strong. She snatched a strand of Sesshomaru's hair and tugged viciously. Sesshomaru allowed it, failing to react at all to it in fact. Lowering Hanone onto his knee, Sesshomaru freed his hand to touch her white hair—as silky as his own. The baby peered up at him, still holding some of his hair in her closed fist; her silver eyes were like Ginrei's, bright and shining with intelligence. She could already focus on him; her eyes followed every one of his motions alertly.
When Sesshomaru began to pull gently on Hanone's tiny sleeping robe, Ginrei's patience at last gave out. "Lord Sesshomaru—" she started, stammering a little too loudly for his liking.
"Please, silence." Sesshomaru told her, growling slightly.
"But what are you doing to…"
Sesshomaru had exposed the baby's chest. He lowered his face to her bare skin and breathed, taking in her scent, fighting to analyze it. She smelled healthy and richly of Ginrei's milk. He tried to feel and sense deeper, to detect the child's aura and discover if it held any secrets to the baby's future. Was she powerful? Was she worthy? She was female and therefore inherently weak but…
"Please!" Ginrei reached out and touched one hand to Hanone, the other onto Sesshomaru's knee. "What are you…"
Sesshomaru sat up and pulled the child's tiny robe closed. "Take her."
Ginrei snatched her baby away from him and tucked the child close. The baby was unharmed of course and at once began to pull on her mother's hair now.
Sesshomaru watched the tiny baby's motions, avidly. "I have decided she is worthy. Hanone will be my heir."
Ginrei whipped her eyes up to stare at him, flabbergasted. "No!" her eyes were wide; her mouth worked the air uselessly for a moment as Sesshomaru watched her, surprised by her odd reaction. "Lord Sesshomaru…" she stammered, blinking rapidly. "Lord Sesshomaru must have a son!"
He searched her anew, almost suspiciously, but didn't speak. He had planned to accept Hanone as his heir, and from there he would consider annulling their marriage and setting Ginrei free—though he hated the idea of doing it and hoped more so that the act would inspire Rin to forgive him and with time she might allow him to try for a proper male heir perhaps—but Ginrei's reaction was unexpected.
"Lord Sesshomaru must have a son." Ginrei repeated, fervently. "Please…"
She would beg him to force her through another pregnancy and, if that was another girl, yet another pregnancy…? Why? It was what Sesshomaru wanted, to continue trying until a proper, strong son was born from his union with Ginrei, but he had no idea why it would abruptly be in Ginrei's interests.
"You believe Hanone would not be fit as my successor?" Sesshomaru asked, blandly.
Ginrei paused, glancing between her husband and the child yawning innocently in her arms. "No, I don't know my lord…" she avoided his searching gaze and focused on her daughter instead. "We agreed that Hanone would be my daughter…"
Sesshomaru sat back on his heels slightly, understanding her reaction at last. Hanone was as much his heir as she was Ginrei's heir. It was true, they had decided that he would not claim Hanone, she would be raised at Ginrei's discretion.
"Very well then." Sesshomaru nodded, coldly. "She is yours, as you wish."
Ginrei tried to bow, but Hanone in her arms made it difficult. "Thank you, my lord. Thank you."
Sesshomaru rose to his feet and began to leave the room, still moving on his silent feet. "You will look after Rin for me?" he asked her quietly when he'd reached the door.
Ginrei nodded. "Yes, my lord. Until you return."
Sesshomaru slipped from her room, closing the door behind him. The hallway was silent now, Rin's sobbing no longer echoed faintly from the walls. Cautiously, Sesshomaru moved down the stairs and passed out of the palace, barely making a sound. No one tried to halt him. Rin didn't burst from her room at the last moment and fall to her knees at his feet, sobbing and begging him to stay. The guards stared after him as he passed into the mists wreathing the gardens and the forest in the distance, like a ghost—be it devil or angel—and vanished, fading into the whiteness as dawn slowly but surely lit the world with its brightness.
In the late morning, Ginrei rose and dressed as she normally did. Her robes were light blue, detailing a scene of the ocean with a white-blue sky, and the deep gray waters of the sea, with white-capped waves pushed by some invisible wind. She carried Hanone with her and ate a rich breakfast of stewed, unseasoned meat. Her appetite was hearty since she'd given birth to Hanone. She craved meats for protein and fat. Hanone would grow swiftly while nursing from her mother, probably outgrowing Saya even though Saya was several weeks older.
"I dreamed that I heard Lord Sesshomaru last night!" Jaken exclaimed when he hobbled into the tearoom and plopped down on one of the cushioned seats. His round, huge reptilian eyes peeked over the table at Ginrei and Hanone and at the tea and meat in the center of the table—out of his feeble reach. "Oh drat!"
Ginrei watched Jaken grunt and try to haul himself onto the table to reach the food. She waited until the toad was most of the way up before she reached into the middle of the table and scooted the food closer to him. He stopped and fell clumsily back to his cushion. "Thank you, my lady!"
"You did hear Lord Sesshomaru last night, Jaken." Ginrei told him at last.
He stopped mid-reach and gaped at her. "What? I did?"
"Lord Sesshomaru was here early this morning." Ginrei explained, slowly. "He left. It sounded as if it would be for some time."
Jaken made an indignant sound, a huffing noise. His feelings had been hurt. "And he didn't stop by even to say hello? Hmpf!"
"He told me to take care of Lady Rin." Ginrei murmured, dropping her voice and frowning in confusion.
"He didn't take her with him?" Jaken asked, gasping. "I thought for sure…that means she's still here! Where is that girl…?"
"I'll go and see her." Ginrei shifted awkwardly and set Hanone on the cushion she had been sitting on and got to her feet. Jaken watched her go, making small sounds that might've been whimpers.
Ginrei moved much as Sesshomaru had a few scant ours previously, soundlessly. She ascended the stairs and moved through the hallway to the large bedroom in the back with its attached balcony. The door was shut but Ginrei could hear and smell the human woman and the hanyou child just beyond the flimsy barrier.
"Lady Rin?" she called.
There was a sound as the floorboards shifted and blankets moved, and then: "Yes?" the voice was sturdy, calm.
"May I come in?"
"Yes."
Ginrei slid open the door and stared inside for a moment in confusion. Rin was sitting at the edge of her futon. It was made up neatly, but not stored away. Sesshomaru's futon had long since been hidden away, taken out of the room altogether. There was a small desk directly in front of Rin, an inkwell had been set up, the ink had been ground and mixed. Rin was well dressed, wearing a black kimono that had clouds in dark blue and white. Saya was sleeping soundly at the head of the futon.
As Ginrei stepped slowly into the room, Rin set aside the brush she'd been holding and shuffled the paper that lied on the desk in front of her. It was of poor quality, a gray-brown color, but it would hold the ink nonetheless. Ginrei spotted a few ink stains on Rin's fingertips, as well as a few globs of it that were starting to show through the other layers of the paper.
"Lady Rin." Ginrei sat on the floor across from Rin and made a small bowing motion, showing her respect, trying very hard not to upset the other woman in case there was, as she suspected, something large and profound troubling Rin. Something about Sesshomaru's actions that early morning when he'd left so silently, had convinced Ginrei that something was amiss. "Are you coming down to eat breakfast?"
Rin didn't meet her probing gaze. She shook her head. "No, I'm not hungry."
Ginrei dropped lower, trying to find Rin's eyes, trying to read her face playfully. "Are you sure? It's good meat today."
Rin gave her one short, curt nod. "I'm not coming down, Ginrei."
With the darkness to her tone, Ginrei saw that Rin's mood had at last broken down somewhat. She could press forward without seeming to bring the subject up with no provocation. "You're upset, my lady."
"I don't know what you're talking about. Go away." Rin muttered, irritably flicking one fingernail through the stack of paper. The fingertip was stained with the rich black ink.
"Lord Sesshomaru visited you last night before he left." Ginrei announced and couldn't withhold the smile from her lips when Rin immediately lifted her head, her earthy brown eyes flashing with alarm. "He visited me too. He was acting very strange."
"What is the matter with you?" Rin snarled suddenly. Her face made a sneering motion, exposing her teeth like an animal while her eyes at once clouded with tears. She blinked them away ferociously.
"Lord Sesshomaru tried to tell me that he would make Hanone his heir."
Rin stared at her blankly, taken aback. "What? H-Hanone?"
Ginrei nodded. "I couldn't see any reason why he would do it. He has always made his desire to have a son as his heir clear to me. He looked down on the female ruler Lady Taikokajin. It would make no sense for him to go back on his word to me, unless something even more precious to him was at stake." Ginrei paused, pinning Rin with her silvered eyes. "Something like his mate."
"Hanone is his heir?" Rin asked, whispering the words.
Ginrei's smile fell before she could stop it. Cautiously she shook her head. "No, I…I told him that he must have a son." She faltered when she saw Rin's face twist with anger briefly, and then Ginrei continued in a higher, plaintive voice, as if about to start begging. "Please understand Lady Rin. Hanone was to be my child. Lord Sesshomaru and I had always agreed on that. If she had been a boy…I never would hold her the moment she could eat solid food. Lord Sesshomaru would take the child from me so that he could raise it—with you…"
Rin had allowed her attention to drift away from Ginrei as if she weren't listening at all, but when Ginrei finished her sentence, making her point, Rin jerked her head back to her, narrowing her eyes as the realization dawned. Ginrei's decision made perfect sense and it was hard to fault her for it. Rin could imagine Sesshomaru behaving in such a way, so selfishly. He would take over raising his heir, uncaring of what Ginrei wanted. Hanone was a child that would stay with Ginrei all her life because Sesshomaru made no huge claim on her.
Slowly, Rin sighed. "I understand." She pursed her lips and looked away. "And Hanone would never really satisfy him anyway."
"No, his request made no sense to me either, my lady."
Rin was silent for a time, staring off into nothingness. After a few moments Saya stirred, stretching and squeaking hungrily. Rin moved over to her daughter and scooped the baby up, cuddling her close, smelling her skin. Ginrei watched her, seeing clearly that the tenderness of the moment had a dual meaning. Not just the natural love between mother and child, but also a sort of mourning, a dim acceptance…as she nuzzled Saya she was thinking, I will always have you…
Ginrei bowed. "I would be honored, Lady Rin, if you would join Jaken and I for breakfast or lunch if you should feel like it, but I will leave you now. Hanone is alone—with Jaken."
Rin lifted her head and offered a small but genuine smile to the other woman. Her eyes glistened a little too much, but she was fast blinking them away. "Yes, you'd better get down there!"
Smiling, Ginrei rose to her feet and slipped soundlessly from the room, leaving Rin alone with her cooing, gurgling baby. Rin waited for the sound of the sliding door on its track, clattering shut, and then she scooted back toward the desk with its gray-brown paper and the ink brush, drying steadily in its inkwell. She opened her robes and adjusted Saya, letting the baby take one nipple in her mouth to nurse. The baby did so eagerly, trying to knead her mother's sides with her tiny clawed hands. She was barely two months old—if that—and she could support herself against her mother's body while she nursed. Rin stroked her child's hair wonderingly for a moment and then, slowly, turned her attention back to the bad paper and the ink.
She shifted the papers, bringing up the letter she had started to write. The characters had smeared, making the letter mostly unreadable. The characters at the top of the page, written first, were still discernible, they read: Sesshomaru…
Rin glanced over the rest of the page and then, making a face, she crumpled it and dropped it in its wadded ball onto the floor beside the little desk and her futon. She lifted her eyes and stared at the door to the balcony, listening as the autumn wind outside rattled it. "I will return."
"When?" Rin asked the wind at the door, closing her eyes and letting her body sag forward tiredly. It would be good to sleep when the nighttime came. Good to slip into the unknowingness and forgetfulness of unconsciousness. But then the prickle of her daughters claws on her breast made Rin look back down. Saya was watching her with her golden eyes wide and keen, but innocent as well.
Lovingly, Rin combed back Saya's little tuft of white hair, exposing her daughter's human ears. "Sesshomaru thinks you're his," Rin whispered, pressing her lips to her daughter's forehead, "but you'll always be mine, won't you? You'd never leave me like he did…"
Saya gurgled and cooed softly, squeezing her eyes shut as she languished in her mother's affection and loving touch. She was as good as Sesshomaru's lookalike, but the future was still open for her, wide open, as blank as the pages sitting before Rin on the desk, waiting for ink to be spread out, to tell a story.
Miles away, as the sun rose high, reaching its peak a little sooner than midday—the days were growing increasingly shorter as winter approached—the sunlight failed to pierce through the darkest spots in the forest. A surprising spot of whiteness stood out beneath the trees in this ancient mountain forest. It was a white inuyoukai lord, leaning his long, slender body wrapped in its luxurious robes, against the long, broad stretch of a tree trunk.
A sound came through the silent woods, a short, stiff grunting sound. Sesshomaru moved slightly, turning his head imperceptibly to investigate it. A mangy, gray dog appeared in the distance. If it stopped moving, slinking through the trees, it would fall invisible. Sesshomaru knew at once that it was not a dog, it was an inuyoukai. It was too big to be a normal dog or wolf anyway. It was the size of a horse, ducking below the lowest tree branches, crushing some of the smaller saplings below its massive paws.
Sesshomaru shifted, moving away from the tree he was leaning on. He faced the other creature directly now, his face stony.
The dog halted some distance away and its tongue lolled out. Its teeth were old, stained, and chipped. The look on its face and in its eyes was one of a hard, joyless smirk.
"Daken." Sesshomaru addressed the dog in a deep, distant voice.
The animal lowered its head, its ears flattened. It dropped its head to the ground but left its back end and tail high. It was bowing very clumsily, making a fool of itself, showing off. When it spoke, its voice was the thick, growling voice of an animal. "Sesshomaru."
The dog rose to its proper stance once more and closed its eyes concentrating. In a moment the creature was smaller, the size of a real dog. It wagged its tail and shifted its weight on its front paws. "Where to, my lord?"
"North." Sesshomaru answered. He turned and began to walk in that direction, passing silently through the forest, like a white ghost. Ferns and small saplings seemed to tip out of his way, or perhaps Sesshomaru passed clear through them. He was ghostly, ethereal…
The dog trotted after him, charging ahead. Unlike Sesshomaru, it smashed into saplings and ferns, knocking them violently out of the way. He ran with a doggy smile plastered over his face, and his pink tongue lolling.
The pine trees, looming, dark, and aromatic, were ringed by ancient layers of shed pine needles. They were bright orange and brown, making up the dense layer of decaying underbrush. A few of the deciduous trees in between were splashed with color, astoundingly bright after the darkness of the unchanging, immortal pines. Dead leaves crunched beneath Daken's feet, and barely whispered under Sesshomaru's.
The seasons would change, coming and going, but the pine trees refused to show it. Stoically, they carried snow on their branches, like shrouds of white, or clouds that they had captured and brought down to earth. Yet the loneliness and barrenness of winter was never fully revealed on them. Sesshomaru walked over the earth as one of those pines, unchanging, unaffected. But inwardly, he was vibrantly colored, splashed and painted with enraged reds, melancholy yellows, and hopeless, lost browns.
The landscape changed and withered as if in a dream, as if Sesshomaru could control and speed the passage of time. The leaves fell, knocked to the ground by vicious, chilly windstorms that brought icy rain. The first snows fell, tentative and painfully beautiful. Daken lapped at them with irritation, though in his true form he never stopped wearing a smile. When they came upon a stream or tiny brook in the mountains, Daken broke it apart with his nose, leaving marks of buffed whiteness like scars on the edge of his snout. They didn't leave the forest unless absolutely forced to do so. The mountains rose and fell around them.
At night, Sesshomaru lagged behind, listless, drawn into looking up at the stars. Except for their turning, they were unchanging. Like the ancient pine trees. Like himself. They were cold and beautiful, unfathomable even to an inuyoukai as powerful as he. They offered little comfort.
A bird cooed one wintry morning and Sesshomaru spotted it inside the dark branches of a pine tree. The bird shook and cheeped merrily. It was almost spring, the bird was looking forward to mating season, to the warmth of a mate and a nest and the eggs that the parents would shelter into the world. The bird was so lively, active, warm and alive…so different from the pine tree that it roosted on. It was even different from Daken, walking steadily ahead of Sesshomaru. It would live but a few turns of the seasons, it would live fast and hard while the pine tree continued on, slumbering through life and outlasting the tiny bird.
But the bird could take wing and flee, it could change, it could fight for its tiny speck of life, the scrap of time it was allowed on this world. The pine tree was firm and unyielding. One day time would win against it, and if time did not take it then humans or a destructive youkai could pass through this section of the woods and tear the pine tree to splinters. The pine tree, for all of its long life, could not get up and leave, it could not fight for its life…
As the bird called out again and then, unnerved at Sesshomaru's intense gaze, took flight, fluttering out of sight into the snowy forest, Sesshomaru found his thoughts turning vividly to Rin and Saya..
Daken made a small noise ahead, a doglike noise. "My lord?"
Wordlessly, Sesshomaru turned away from the pine and forced the thoughts of his mate and child from his mind. He began walking again, slowly but surely, into the oblivion of winter.
A/N: That was it!! It's over!! There will be an epilogue and probably another story too: Return. More info as I come up with it!!