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And You, My Brother	By : Arianawray Category: InuYasha > Yaoi - Male/Male > InuYasha/Sessh?maru > InuYasha/Sessh?maru Views: 15027 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
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Chapter IV: One may smile, and smile, and be a demon
Two days after the night of the new moon, Sesshomaru smiled to himself three times in the course of the afternoon, for no obvious reason that Jaken could discern.
It made Jaken very, very nervous. Lord Sesshomaru did not smile for nothing. Usually, his smiles preceded death. A sinister stretching of those grim lips, then splat, squish and sizzle, and some unfortunate creature's existence would be terminated, often with nothing remaining of it but a puddle of mush.
As Lord Sesshomaru did not appear to be headed in any particular direction that Jaken was able to work out, but seemed merely to be wandering along meandering forest paths, the kappa began to fear that those smiles were a herald of his own demise.
After all, no one else was around but himself and Ah-Un, and Lord Sesshomaru surely held nothing against the dragon… so… so it must be that he, Jaken, had done something horribly wrong, unawares… and Lord Sesshomaru was smiling because he was relishing the thought of how he would torture Jaken until he was no more than… a puddle of mush.
Jaken's wrinkled little knees began to knock together as he walked beside Ah-Un, and he had to use every ounce of what limited self-control he possessed not to collapse into a heap from the fear that overwhelmed him. By the time he was obliged to use the staff of two heads as a walking stick in order to hold himself upright, he could no longer endure the misery.
He broke down. The little kappa flung himself to the ground at Sesshomaru's feet and wailed into the dirt: "Spare me, Sesshomaru-sama! I don't know what I have done but please don't kill me for it! Plee-ease!"
The boots stopped before his face, and Jaken heard Sesshomaru say in a stern voice, after a horribly long silence: "What are you raving about, Jaken? What have you done that I ought to kill you for?"
The kappa raised his head and could have sworn that Lord Sesshomaru's countenance bore traces of an astonished expression, shaded by the annoyance of having had his private thoughts interrupted. But the impression was fleeting, and the emotionless screen came down over that arrogant face again before Jaken could be certain that he had seen anything different on it.
"Th-that w-was what I was hoping you would tell me, my lord…?" Jaken's voice trailed off into a squeak.
This time, he did see a change in Sesshomaru's face. The taiyoukai was looking at him as if he, Jaken, had gone mad, mad beyond redemption.
Then… then it wasn't about him…? But… if he hadn't done anything wrong, what was Lord Sesshomaru smiling about? Jaken felt a strangled cry rising in his crepey throat as he wondered if it was worth all this – all this stress, all this grief – to be Lord Sesshomaru's follower. Surely tripping all around the country after this impossible taiyoukai was shortening his life by a few hundred years?
He finally collected himself, however, and determined that quitting now would do him little good. He thought: No, I've come this far. I can go on.
So he opened his mouth to thank his lord Sesshomaru for sparing him for whatever he did not know he might have done, only to find that the taiyoukai and Ah-Un were already far up the path, about to turn out of sight as the trail curved to the left.
Jaken panicked, picked himself up and tripped after them, crying out in his high-pitched, quavering voice: "W-wait for me, Sesshomaru-sama!"
** *** **
Sesshomaru had not been conscious of the fact that he had been smiling to himself. It only occurred to him that he must have done so after Jaken's extraordinary outburst snapped him back to the present from the recent past.
Well, Jaken could rest easy for now – Sesshomaru's thoughts had not been on the kappa. Far from it.
His first smile had been prompted by the memory from two days ago, of Inuyasha scampering after him, pulling on his clothes as he leaped and ran, catching up to him and demanding to know where the devil they were, all swirling silver hair and flashing golden eyes which widened in shock as Sesshomaru seized him round the waist and bore him high into the air. Cue a slew of loud curses and empty threats; cue fuzzy ears twitching into overdrive and amber-flecked peepers darting frantically between Sesshomaru's face above him and the ground much, much too far below; cue a pair of strong hands gripping Sesshomaru's breastplate for dear life over long miles of forested country. Then the descent and the palpable relief as he was deposited in a spot he knew very well – by the Go-shinboku tree – stunned speechless as his brother disappeared without another word to him.
His second smile grew from the recollection of events on that same day, when he had gone to the slayers' village to visit Rin after leaving Inuyasha. The old miko Kaede had taken the girl there to visit the newlywed monk and female slayer, and Rin was certainly not expecting him to make an appearance. Her cry of delight, "Sesshomaru-sama!"; the rapturous yet respectful greeting typical of her character; the smile that was pure sunshine lighting up her little face; her pleasure at his gift to her of a rare plant he had spotted on the way to the village – these scenes replaying in his mind brought a sensation of warmth to his heart, the heart that had been so cold until this child came into his life. Her momentary sadness when it was time for him to go had been quickly succeeded by another cheerful smile when he gave her his word that he would see her again soon, and he left her safe and well in the company of his brother's pack, with whom he exchanged formal nods before departing. Relations between them and himself were still far from warm, but were at least a vast improvement from the days when they would all seize their weapons at sight of him, and he did not care if they lived or died.
The third thing that raised a smile was the picture Inuyasha's face had made in the night when he had panicked at his approach to de-bug his hair – startled violet-grey eyes as round as soup bowls, lips parted in alarm, colour draining from his cheeks. Priceless.
** *** **
Now as Sesshomaru wandered, lost in those thoughts, with Jaken puffing and panting after him, the smiles were followed by a growing soberness as he dragged to the surface for better examination the impulse he had felt when his fingers touched Inuyasha's hair that night.
Odd, but he had wanted to let his hand linger, to let his fingers hug the curve of his scalp and for his palm to cup his cheekbone, to say without words: "You have nothing to fear from me now."
Except, of course, that Inuyasha might well fear affection from Sesshomaru as much as he might have feared the threat to his life he had once posed. After all, it had been mere months since that reanimated corpse of a miko had died – hopefully for good this time – and the other miko, the perpetually half-naked one, had vanished – apparently never to return.
He knew that losing both girls had wounded Inuyasha profoundly, although he hid it better as time passed. And he understood that his brother's emotional turmoil hardly required further stirring from him, Sesshomaru, of all beings. But there it was nonetheless – that compelling instinct he had had to fight that night, which indeed he was still fighting.
He concluded that he had grown soft, and softening brought all sorts of trouble.
His old heartlessness had cracked under one stealing moment after another: his well-disguised panic each time Rin had been kidnapped (he hadn't been a very effective guardian, had he?); his compassion for Kagura, which had led him to be there for her as she died and to attack Moryomaru with such wrath that Tokijin had snapped in two when the monster had mocked the wind-demoness' sacrifice; his unconcealed distress when Rin had died that second time (he really hadn't been an effective protector!) and Tenseiga had been unable to re-revive her, necessitating his mother's help; the burden of his father's shadow lifting from his soul when he learnt that what he had within himself was greater than what he would have had if he'd hankered on after the Inu no Taisho's legacy – and that his father would have been proud to see him learn that lesson at last.
And now Inuyasha, with his brash personality shielding raw anguish, was starting to get to him too, in ways he was not yet ready to name to himself.
Yes, he was definitely getting soft. And yet, he would not now trade this new strength of heart for any amount of his former heartlessness. Kagura had taught him that much in those final moments of her life: it was far more honourable to die, wholehearted and vulnerable, for doing the right thing, than to exist meaninglessly – heartlessly.
Sesshomaru stopped at a fork in the road, realising that he had been walking all afternoon with no objective other than to think, and that he did not know where to go next. That, he decided, was the chief drawback of killing off all of one's major enemies – one had so little of great import left to do.
As he stood there, Jaken came puffing full-tilt into the back of his left boot, and he heard the kappa gulp as he realised what he had done. Sesshomaru set his features back into their usual expressionless lines and glared coldly down at Jaken just so that he could see the kappa back away in horror at his faux pas.
Some things were worth keeping as they were, for their sheer entertainment value.
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And You, My Brother