Title Dem Bones
Author landofthekwt
Rating K
Prompt "I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph." - Shirley Temple
Word Count 704
Warning mention of character death
Summary Sesshoumaru arrives in his father's tomb
When the entry way opened, he stood dazzled for a moment. He had known that he would find Tessaiga in his father's tomb. Intellectually, he knew the place he was now standing was that very tomb. Knowing something intellectually and actually being inside the tomb were two different things.
The last time he saw his father alive, he had already been mortally wounded. Blood had been dripping from open sores. Yet his father had ignored his advice and his demands for his swords and gone to his doom at the hands of a mere mortal. All for the sake of a mortal woman and her unborn child. Such a fool.
As he looked around, he saw nothing but the skeleton of his father. He was still dazzled by his father's size. Even his own true form was like a bug compared to his father's. In life his father had always towered over him physically, emotionally and powerwise. He still remembered when he shook in his father's presence afraid of punishment for some imagined wrong.
When he last saw his father, he saw a different man. A beaten man, barely alive. Knowing that death was stalking him. A man who had given up the quest for power for which Sesshoumaru had idealized him. Sesshoumaru had never thought the day would come when he could defeat his father. Yet on the day he last saw him, both he and his father knew that if they fought his father would die.
Was it pity that stayed his hand that day or was it that somewhere deep inside of him he could not bring himself to kill his own father, the man he had always feared and loved? He was not sure. All he knew that he had spurned his father's advice. His father had spurned his advice. He let his father proceed to his doom and this was the result.
If he had taken Tessaiga that day he would not have wasted two hundred years chasing the sword and his dream of supreme conquest. Until now both had seemed illusions. A riddle unsolved until they discovered the tomb in Inuyasha's eye. He spat. Inuyasha. The hanyou for whom his father had died had been used by his father to hide the sword from him.
He owed nothing to his father. .Everything that he had achieved he had achieved by his own hand.
The source of the power in his hands was his hands. With his hands he had kept the West and the Dogs together after Father died. All the suffering that he ever suffered was due to his father. All Father had left him was the sword that could not cut.
He should be happy with what he had done and achieved with his own hands, but he wanted more. Tessaiga represented his father's power. His father's titles. His father's love. Everything that should have been given to him on his father's death was denied to him. This knowledge had spurred him to take the actions he had done for the past two hundred years.
He spied Tessaiga on a golden pedestal. It's power. Father's power was almost within his grasp. The victory left a bittersweet taste in his mouth. Father should be here to appreciate this tell that he was the best. That he deserved everything for which he had worked so hard. That he loved him.
Instead, the victory rang hollow as the tomb..Father was nothing but a skeleton. .A pile of bones. No appreciation for what he had done. No respect. No love. Nothing that he had expected anything. Somehow he had hoped that he would receive something other than Tessaiga for all his efforts.
Sighing he decided to finish his quest. With or without Father's approval he would take Tessaiga. and become the daiyoukai that he always dreamed of being Father would no longer hold sway over him. He would have everything and his father would be condemned to the dust heap. As he reached for the sword in his mind, he was screaming "IN YOUR FACE, OLD MAN"