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The Tale of the Demon Lord	By : Arianawray Category: InuYasha > Yaoi - Male/Male > InuYasha/Sessh?maru > InuYasha/Sessh?maru Views: 56279 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 36
- 37
- 38
XXXVII: A Little Hope
Many hours later, Inuyasha stirred in Sesshomaru's bed. No stabbing pains troubled him, but he felt weak and very cold, even though woollen blankets covered him from chin to toe. He shivered, and gentle hands immediately placed another blanket layer over him.
Without opening his eyes, he knew that Sesshomaru was the one beside him, tending to him. The scent and sounds of the room had changed. The stimulating herbs were no longer on the burner, and far fewer people surrounded the bed. The two swords were quieter now, Tetsusaiga humming gently beside him, and Tenseiga singing softly from the side table.
He peeled his eyelids open and saw that the window shutters at the far end were closed and barred. Only Sesshomaru, Satoshi and Natsumi were in the room with him – and someone else… Totosai was here at last.
"Water…" he whispered.
Totosai rose from the floor in the far corner of his room and walked over to the bed to peer at him while Natsumi lifted a cup and porcelain spoon off the side table, and began to spoon the wonderfully refreshing liquid past his lips. After a few spoonfuls, he tried to sit up and grasp the cup, but his belly and chest hurt so badly when he moved that he gasped and fell back onto the pillows.
"Don't do that," Sesshomaru said softly beside him. "You are far from ready to move at all."
"I've always healed fast."
"Not after being ripped apart from inside," Totosai murmured. "You'll not be healing so soon this time."
"Where have you been?" Inuyasha asked the fire demon in a whisper.
"I took a long detour to alert Sesshomaru's mother once I heard the swords keening. I knew something had gone very wrong, and from their song, I judged that it would take powerful magic to repair the harm. My poor old cow, of course, can't fly anywhere near as fast as the lady in her dog form, tearing through the skies like lightning… and then she needed to stop and pee – I mean my cow, of course, not the lady."
"Your mother…" Inuyasha turned to Sesshomaru.
"She is setting up magical defences around the castle as we speak, using the amulet to shield this place specifically against the mirror demon we encountered. Even if it tries to fly in as the tiniest shard of glass, the barriers will prevent its entry, and alert us to its presence."
"Will it come for you?"
"If it does, I will destroy it."
"You weren't so good at doing that first time round," Inuyasha remarked wryly.
"I can tell from such a remark that you're feeling better," Sesshomaru commented optimistically.
But he wasn't, as they discovered when the hours passed and he grew worse. He shivered uncontrollably, turned clammy all over, and became slightly delirious. He was in no condition to attempt swallowing food, and Sesshomaru worried that without nourishment, he would take even longer to heal. He was also concerned about the time they had left till the new moon – only six days remained before Inuyasha would turn human, and his human form could never survive such devastating injuries. He would have to heal completely before then.
If wishes had half the power their senders longed to imbue them with, Inuyasha would be up and about and rosy with health by now, for every minister who had sat in yesterday's meeting with him had sent urgent and heartfelt messages of concern for the courageous prince with all their hopes that he would quickly be well again. The children of the castle, too, wished with all their hearts and sent handwritten notes bearing their good hopes for the kind prince.
But wishes can only do so much, and despite the prayers of all the ministers and the entire castle, as well as everyone beyond it who had heard of the prince's bravery, Inuyasha remained very ill.
"I suspect an infection," Satoshi said to Sesshomaru, examining the half-conscious prince with grim concern. "A half-demon with His Highness' strength would not usually suffer infections of any kind, but those shards inside him must have been tainted heavily with magic, and the gods only know what else. We must help his body to overcome this – we cannot reach inside him to heal the wounds, but we can help him from outside, and by means of medication that he can swallow."
"The Lady Shirakumo's magic can seal the wounds inside him to some extent, but that may work against him in the long term, because wounds sealed over in that way do not always heal neatly – there may eventually be scarring and tightening of the flesh," Totosai said, looking thoughtfully at the prince.
"Leave it," Inuyasha mumbled fiercely, opening his eyes a crack. Those words pertaining to his future well-being had reached him through his fevered mind, and he was determined not to recover in any way other than how his body had always healed itself.
He allowed Satoshi to keep him warm with thicker blankets, and to offer him a nourishing medicinal broth which he was able to swallow a little of, with Sesshomaru supporting him in a half-sitting posture. When he could take no more of it, the others withdrew, leaving the brothers alone.
Sesshomaru did his best to feed him the rest of the broth, but he could not drink any more of it, wanting only to close his eyes and rest. The demon lord was subdued, and angry with himself for failing to protect his intended mate. He sat beside Inuyasha on the bed, watching over him as he slept and attentively responding to every half-conscious movement, but his bitterness lay deep inside like a coiled snake waiting to lash out at the first worthy target. His troubled aura disturbed Inuyasha and roused him from his restless sleep.
"Are you in much pain?" Sesshomaru asked at once, when those golden eyes opened and reflected hurt from their depths.
"Everything aches."
"I'll call the healers back."
"Don't," Inuyasha whispered. "Everything's been aching for hours. Nothing new. Don't fuss. Just stay here with me."
"If you feel worse, I must send for the healers. I don't want to lose you, Inuyasha. Not like this, not this…"
"It doesn't matter," Inuyasha said softly. "I don't matter, not in the long term. I can't give you heirs, and in the grand scheme of things, I'm nobody, really."
The coil of tension inside Sesshomaru snapped as he registered Inuyasha's words. He would not lash out at his brother, but he struck at himself, as he saw what a disappointment he had been as an elder brother, lord and mate-to-be.
"I've failed you," he murmured bitterly. "I've failed you by not showing you or telling you how much you mean to me. To hear you say what you have just said – to think that you might have such thoughts – tells me how badly I have failed."
A strange gleam shone in Sesshomaru's golden eyes, and Inuyasha was stunned to see that they glittered with the hint of tears – a sight he had never thought he would see.
"Don't you dare cry," he growled softly. "Demon lords never cry."
"They do when the one they love with all that is within them tells them that he thinks he is nothing and nobody. I never want you to imagine that such an idea could be true. You can never again be nothing and nobody to me, not even three thousand years from now when we are old and dying. You are the one I care for – the one I love – the only one. I shall take no other mate but you, not now, not ever."
"You will need children – you said so yourself," Inuyasha said, to distract himself from the lump springing up in his throat as he heard Sesshomaru declare his love. He had known it from his actions, of course. But no one in his life had ever told him that they loved him, except his mother, who had always said: I love you so much, my little puppy. Even Kikyo and Kaede, constrained by the proper behaviour expected of priestesses, had never said that they loved him, only showing in it everything they did for him.
"We will find other ways to get children," the demon lord said in response to his brother's comment.
"Will we?"
"Yes. I promise you that."
"Without magic, please – you have seen how Naraku's brood turned out."
That drew a tiny smile from Sesshomaru at last. "Yes, without magic. We will think of something. But there will be no 'we' if you are not by my side. You must live and be well again."
"I'll do my darnedest."
"You do that, or I'll –"
"Yeah, sure, you'll spank me till I can't sit down for a month."
"Don't think I won't."
"Ooh, I wouldn't dare. How is the guard, by the way, the one who took a blade in his throat?"
"Alive, and very fortunate that the blade passed clean through the soft tissues of his neck without severing anything vital. He might well have lived even then, but it would not have been certain."
"You sure keep a bunch of tough folk around you."
"Indeed I do. You're my prize specimen."
"Ha ha."
The brave banter belied Inuyasha's pain, but it helped take his mind off his misery, and it did strengthen him a little so that he could drink more of the broth. There were no needling sensations now, but he seemed to be on fire inside and out, and every breath he took was an agonising reminder of how sore and battered his body was.
Later, when Inuyasha was asleep again and his fever went up slightly, Sesshomaru swallowed his resentment against his mother and asked her to take another look at him. The dog demoness went to his room at once, looked over the boy, and explained that the shards had left many wounds inside. He would feel worse before he felt better.
"The bleeding has stopped," she told Sesshomaru. "But because those shards were not designed for him, they avoided piercing his vital organs when they first began to scatter inside him. So they pierced everything else – muscles, cartilage, even bones – before gradually inching towards the organs they had initially steered away from. Therefore, it will all hurt for some time until he heals completely. The good news, Sesshomaru, is that I think he has a chance of pulling through after all, and being as well as before once he heals. His blood seems to be replenishing itself, helped along by the young healer's medicine, and the fever is not too bad. You have chosen a strong mate, and a brave one who cares enough about you to be ready to die for you. But he will give you no children unless other methods repellent to our tribe are used."
"We will use none of the kind of magic that could impregnate either himself or me," Sesshomaru said. "Inuyasha and I are both firm on that point. There are always other ways. Concubines… females paid to bear our young… we will devise a plan when he recovers."
"A child born of a concubine or a hired dam may not have the backing of the people as such females are unlikely to hail from noble stock – although if the offspring's father is powerful enough, and the child itself turns out well enough, in some cases it does not seem to matter who or what its mother is."
Here, she looked meaningfully at Inuyasha, who was still sleeping fitfully. "I hear good reports of this child," she added.
"He has turned out very well," Sesshomaru agreed. "Better than I have."
"Is that my fault, Sesshomaru?" Lady Shirakumo asked.
"You are not without blame."
"Perhaps not. You were born naturally cold like me, but the way I brought you up, showing you no other way but to be powerful and arrogant, did not help. I was very, very much younger than your father when we became mates, so when I bore you, I was far from mature in character and mind. I have learnt much since going home and growing up. I thought fifty years ago that it was too late for me to change you, but it seems that someone else has done it for me."
"Why did you leave me?" Sesshomaru asked, not without a trace of bitterness. "Inuyasha's mother never left him until death tore her from him, after she had held on for as long as a mortal could."
"I left you because your father was important to you, and because I knew that if I stayed by your side any longer, you and he would never have the space or opportunity to understand each other."
"With or without you, we never did understand each other."
"Oh, you'd be surprised," she remarked. "He loved you, Sesshomaru, and he understood you well enough to want only the best for you. He wanted you to become not only as strong as he was, but to surpass him. Did you know that? And did you know that when our anger against each other cooled, he often wrote to me, telling me about you? Did you know that he hesitated to grow closer to you because he believed that it would estrange you from me? His plans failed, of course. It appears that you became estranged from us both. But he loved you so much, and he was so proud of you."
"If he thought so much of me, why did he bar me from using his most powerful sword?" Sesshomaru wondered. "Why did he leave it to Inuyasha? I no longer begrudge the boy that inheritance, but I have to wonder if Father thought so little of me as to believe me unworthy of his strongest weapon."
"First, your brother needs the sword more than you do – as you know well by now. Also, your father did not want you to use a sword so powerful as a crutch. You must find your own way. I cannot tell you how to do that, because it will be no good if it is not your way."
Sesshomaru looked keenly at his mother. He had never heard her talk like this, sensibly and seriously, without sarcasm or iciness or flippant remarks that were provocatively tangential to whatever important matter was at hand. She was a different demon now from the one who had swept elegantly into the room this morning and spoken so carelessly as Inuyasha lay dying. Totosai had said before that she had mellowed and changed, but this was the first Sesshomaru was experiencing of it with his own senses.
He wished she had always been such a mother to him. She had not been like this for most of his life, and he wondered if it was too late to repair the damage between them.
But Inuyasha was stirring again, and as he moved to attend to him, Lady Shirakumo slipped away without another word.
This time, the prince did feel better. He was more alert, and in less pain, although his muscles still ached. He could breathe without too much soreness. As the evening turned into night, he strengthened with each hour. By midnight, when Natsumi offered him some porridge with eggs beaten into it, he was able to eat a few mouthfuls.
Sesshomaru's heart lifted. He spent the whole of the next day with Inuyasha, and was pleased to see the boy sitting up completely unaided by nightfall and tucking into the tenderest, most lightly seared slivers of beef and the best healing broths.
Now that he knew his brother and mate-to-be would live, it was time to turn his attention to the matter of how painfully he would make Naraku pay for hurting Inuyasha so badly.
But before that, there was an important matter to sort out with Inuyasha.
Sitting up across from him in the big bed, Sesshomaru took his left hand in both of his own and ran his thumbs over the gold cuff and ring. "Inuyasha, it was presumptuous of me to give you this without asking you if you wanted them. I never asked you formally if you would be willing to be my mate – I went from one thing to another and assumed that you wanted what I wanted."
"But I do," the half-demon replied artlessly.
"Still, I should have asked. So I will ask you now: will you be happy as my mate? Are you willing to be my mate and not just my brother?"
"If I were just your brother, you'd still treat me as well as you do now?" Inuyasha asked.
"In every way."
"So tell me, Sesshomaru, why I would want to be your mate."
Sesshomaru was taken aback, until he saw the playful twinkle in Inuyasha's eyes. He gave it some thought before saying: "Because I want the very best for you, and I want to be able to declare to the world that you deserve only the very best."
"Some ego you have – you're implying that you're the best, aren't you?"
"It is a fact."
"Arrogant demon. Now tell me why you want me to be your mate."
It was the other side of the first question. A different angle, yet so much the same. And Sesshomaru gave the only answer that was in his head and his heart: "This arrogant demon very much wants you to be his mate because he wants only the best for himself, and you are the best. Also, he loves you very much."
"That's a good answer."
"So is your answer a yes?"
"Yes."
Very carefully, to not provoke his healing wounds, Sesshomaru leaned forward and kissed Inuyasha on the mouth.
"I won't break, you know," the half-demon remarked.
"Oh, I don't know about that," Sesshomaru murmured.
"Just because I had some stupid shards of glass inside me doesn't mean I'm made of glass," Inuyasha snapped.
The fear rose up in Sesshomaru again to think that there was still that one piece inside him which only awaited Naraku's command to flare up and pierce him. But Naraku had obviously not wished to hurt him, so perhaps it would be left alone…
But Inuyasha suddenly looked stricken with panic, and Sesshomaru's heart jumped into his mouth as he thought for a moment that the shard had grown sharp again.
"What is it?" he asked urgently. "Is it hurting you?"
"No, it's not moving – but what if it does?" the prince asked, backing away from Sesshomaru and putting his hands over his chest. "Sesshomaru – what if it senses you so nearby and shoots out of me and into you? Why didn't I think of that before? You have to keep away from me!"
"Never, Inuyasha. I will not keep away from you even if there is a chance that it will sense me and enter me. As it was not designed to hurt you, I can only hope that if it does leave your body, it will leave it in a way that will avoid all your vital organs and your spine, before it lodges in its rightful target."
"No – I don't want you hurt – Sesshomaru, no!" Inuyasha cried frantically, scrambling onto his knees and trying to push him away.
"It would only be right," Sesshomaru said grimly, moving in on Inuyasha and holding him as carefully as he could while he struggled, then slowly, ever so slowly, drew him closer and closer till they were chest to chest, Inuyasha terrified and Sesshomaru refusing to let go.
They remained like that until Inuyasha's panic diminished when he felt no movement from the glass inside him despite Sesshomaru's proximity. In contrast, Sesshomaru's disappointment grew to realise that he could not save his brother from the threat of the shard by sacrificing himself.
"Stop worrying for me," Inuyasha whispered at last as he began to sense Sesshomaru's sadness that the shard was not seeking its rightful target. "It will be fine, you'll see." He spoke from the relief of discovering that Sesshomaru would not be hurt by the thing inside him, even though he himself carried the burden of knowing what rested uneasily within, feeling the niggling concern about it in his mind the way a cold pebble in a boot makes itself known from time to time as one walks.
It was Sesshomaru's turn to sense his brother's worries for them both. He wished that the boy might have no burdens, so he pressed his lips to his again and lay over him as if to shield him from the world, careful to take all his weight on his arms so as not to put any pressure on his healing body.
All the time he made his silent wish to the gods: Save him, and take me. No king ever asks that – every king believes he should live for the sake of his kingdom and his people – but I am asking you to save him and take me in his place.
But the gods too were silent, perhaps holding back their answer until the time was right to give it.
~ - ~
Because it seemed that the gods would not permit him to be harmed in his brother's place, Sesshomaru believed, in his anger against the spider lord, that the next best thing he could do was to turn the might of his armies against Naraku's kingdom.
He first sought the counsel of his ministers, who had all returned to the castle grounds and remained there upon hearing that the prince had sustained terrible injuries while protecting Lord Sesshomaru from an assassin.
"My lord," said Minister Atsushi, the first to step forward with his commiserations when Sesshomaru entered the meeting hall. "We are relieved beyond words to learn that His Highness is recovering. But I advise against waging war on Naraku's kingdom. It is exactly what he will expect you to do."
"Naraku sent an assassin to kill me, and ended up almost killing my brother and mate-to-be," Sesshomaru growled. "He should expect war! He has escaped it many times for numerous provocations, but this time he has gone too far."
"My lord," Minister Atsushi said respectfully but firmly. "The fact that a shard of glass which is under Naraku's command remains within His Highness means that you must not under any circumstances ready your armies to attack Naraku's lands."
"Yes, my lord," Minister Ryota agreed. "I beg your pardon for speaking so bluntly, but the glass shard inside His Highness holds you hostage. If you send out your armies, and Naraku then threatens to activate the shard and kill His Highness, you would be in a difficult position, and all your soldiers and resources would be under threat."
"Naraku may not act further once he realises that he has struck the wrong target," Minister Atsushi said. "We understand that he did not wish to hurt His Highness, possibly because he had hopes of taking him as a consort. So it is unlikely that he will do anything more to provoke the situation as it stands. However, if his safety and life are threatened, he will hold nothing sacred, and I believe he will not hesitate to sacrifice the prince in order to save himself."
"But why did Naraku attempt to assassinate Lord Sesshomaru while taking precautions to protect His Highness?" Minister Mitsuharu asked from his seat on the other side of the room. "We know that the spider lord has long hoped to mate himself or one of his children to Lord Sesshomaru, to gain power in these lands and, in the future, put one of his descendants on the throne. It surely works against his purposes to kill Lord Sesshomaru. He could more easily have targeted His Highness instead of His Majesty, then used the prince's life to threaten Lord Sesshomaru."
Sesshomaru's mother, who had entered the meeting hall and taken a seat while her son was still speaking informally to the ministers and acknowledging their concern for Inuyasha, now stood and spoke: "Naraku knew that Sesshomaru would not welcome a mate from his family. I think he knew that even if he forced a mating alliance, there would be no guarantee that Sesshomaru would allow such a mate to bear him children. Sesshomaru could easily take another consort and have his heirs from there. And if my son refused to have any children with a spider demon, none of Naraku's descendants would have half a hope of claiming the throne. So he must have decided to get rid of the main obstacle in order to work his influence on a younger member of the royal family, one he may have believed was more pliable than his elder – although I rather doubt that, having seen him for myself."
"My lady, do you mean…?" Minister Mitsuharu asked.
"Yes, I mean that if my son dies without children, his brother will be his heir. Inuyasha is every bit his father's son, so in the absence of his older brother, he would inherit the throne. Naraku must have thought himself very clever – upon discovering that such a prince existed, Sesshomaru was no longer his only option. He thought to do away with the incumbent to make way for the younger, who, bereft of king, elder brother and mate-to-be all at once, might be amenable to advances from another lord. But as I hinted before, I rather doubt that Naraku had all his facts right – the child is quite as obstinate as his sibling."
"At this moment, I do not care who my heir is," Sesshomaru stated angrily. "I only care to know if the only reaction I am expected to have to Naraku's provocative actions is precisely nothing?"
"My lord," said Minister Atsushi frankly. "War with Naraku is probably inevitable, but this is not the time for it. May I suggest that for now, we should focus on the most important thing? That is, ridding His Highness of the threat that leaves him and yourself at Naraku's mercy. Once we can find a way to remove the shard of glass without harming him, Naraku will have no hold on you and yours."
"Minister Atsushi speaks wisely," Lady Shirakumo said.
"And how do we go about removing the shard from Inuyasha when even my mother's powerful magic cannot do it?" Sesshomaru asked in frustration.
"Shards such as the one in the prince are cruel and insidious, filled with dark spider and mirror magic," Lady Shirakumo remarked. "There is a chance that human monks or priestesses, with their holy magic, will be able to purify it better than demon practitioners of magic can. Although the purification will last only for a time, and they will be no more able to remove the shard than I can without killing or paralysing him."
"Still, if they can purify it, perhaps we will have a better chance of shifting it to a less vulnerable location in his body before cutting it out," Sesshomaru said, hope filling his voice for the first time in many hours.
"Are you on good terms with any powerful monks or priestesses, Sesshomaru?" Lady Shirakumo asked.
"I am not on particularly good terms with any humans. But my brother is. He is a close friend to two incomparable priestesses who would give their lives for him."
"Then there is hope."
~ - ~
In the land of the spider demons, however, it seemed for many hours that there would be no hope for rest or peace. Naraku had raged like an insane beast for more than a day, wrecking walls and furnishings and slaughtering slaves indiscriminately, when Kanna's mirror gave its report that the shard it had left behind had fired a lethal fragment which had not only failed to kill Sesshomaru, but had badly wounded Inuyasha instead. It had even lost the shard of the nulling stone in its attempt to kill Kagura.
When the mirror demon made its way back to the spiders' castle, Naraku shattered it into pieces in a terrible fury. So great was his anger with the mirror assassin that the splintered glass scattered everywhere like raindrops, and slashed the flesh of the spider children and attendants, drawing beads of blood from everyone. But because the mirror demon was a thing with no heart, it could not be destroyed in such a fashion, not even by Naraku, so the scattered pieces writhed and inched swiftly along the ground towards one another, and began to reform.
Only when Kanna raised her mirror and pointed it outwards did the tiny pieces of glass quieten and flow together into a single shard, which then melted back seamlessly into the notch that had marred the appearance of her weapon ever since it had been dropped on purpose on the floor of Sesshomaru's art gallery. One tiny scratch remained, almost invisible to the demon eye, to represent the dangerous shard which lurked inside Inuyasha, and its fellow splinters which had now merged into one piece in the iron box.
As the mirror began to report how it sensed that the shard inside the prince was now inert and rounded under the influence of the golden amulet's protective magic, Naraku gradually began to calm down. The mirror reported vaguely that its real target was close by, but firing the shard out of the prince and into the king would immediately end the prince's life too, and Naraku refused to take that option while there was still a chance that Inuyasha lived. He could not lose both brothers in one strike and cut off both his routes to greater power.
Indeed, the spider lord was only too ready to free Inuyasha from the shard, except that over such great distances, careful threading of the glass out of the prince's body without damaging him further was literally beyond Kanna's and his ability.
Naraku gradually quietened further when no news came of the prince's death. The spider lord slumped into the deep seat of his ornate throne to alternately smile and grimace to himself, like a creature gone half mad.
He dismissed his children and attendants with a wave of a pale hand, then grinned and grimaced to himself for some time more. Alone now, he chewed on the back of his left hand, nervously, until his knuckles were raw enough to require more than a few seconds to heal.
Finally, his assumed serenity grew into genuine calmness, as it sank in that Inuyasha was safe for now, and there would still be time to plot against Sesshomaru. From somewhere inside his compound body, one of his tentacles extracted a crumpled, torn sheet of paper which he stared at intently, reading the words written in Inuyasha's hand:
To Kikyo and Kaede.
It is so good to be able to write to you, and to hear from you. It is not the same as seeing you every day, but I will take what I can get!
Everything is fine here for now. Things are going better. While I don't think I'm really accustomed to life in the castle yet, I suppose I could get used to it…
The half-written letter that Naraku had inadvertently seized at the time he attacked Natsumi was looking very ragged after having been crushed between his tentacle and the racoon girl's body, but Naraku treasured it as if it were something most precious. For it was the physical evidence of fate, a trigger of the epiphany he had experienced while standing in the field before Sesshomaru's royal wing, sensing the words written on the letter he had touched, and also while running his hands over the beautiful marble statue of the young priestess.
It was unmistakably the prince's handwriting, for Naraku had the sample from Inuyasha's polite note in response to receiving the gold necklace and amulet to compare it with.
Inuyasha's handwriting… Inuyasha… Kikyo… the beautiful priestess from the village of the sacred tree. The girl he had attempted to take fifty-one years ago, until the tree had assailed him with its spiritual thorns. She must be old now, but the memory of her perfect, youthful beauty burned bright in Naraku's mind.
Inuyasha and Kikyo.
So the prince he desired was a friend of the exquisite priestess – another sign that the boy was destined to be his. He could not have the priestess now, old and dying as she must be, but he could take her friend, the prince.
He had to have the prince.
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The Tale of the Demon Lord