Adult-FanFiction.org : Inuyasha / Yashahime

Regenerist
By : botticelliangel
Category: InuYasha > General
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Disclaimer: I do not own or make profit from Inuyasha or related media.
Chapter List
- 8
- 9
- 10
Thanks everyone for reading! I would love some reviews please.
Just a note: I don't have a beta, so I spend a lot of time pulling my hair out over trying to catch everything. Within the next few days I am going to go through all the chapters and do a little reformatting. There won't be any content change (I think), but I am trying to reorganize my thoughts on the story.
For reorganization I am mostly going to separate chapters into sections based on events: The whole story takes place over several years and centers on a chain of interconnecting events. I am also probably going to start writing chapter specific codes (should have done that from the beginning), at the start of each chapter.
May I please have some reviews? I'd like to know what people think, what I could do better, ect.

Chapter 9
*Warnings: Rape, torture, bestiality, violence, character death, abuse of children, drugs*

April 23, 1991
Yuma, Arizona

He was standing in the yard of a house that he had only seen in pictures. It had lush green grass maintained by an underground sprinkler system. Along the front wall of the house there was a well kept garden of zinnia flowers that were blooming into their full glory. The kaleidoscope of red, orange, and yellow flowers looked like pompoms in a dense green forest of stems and leaves. The house was a one story ranch painted a creamy color with highlights of a sandy brown for the front door and window frames. The driveway was made from white and grey pebbles that crunched under the weight of a car or walking feet. A tall solid wood fence framed the back yard.
It was already dry and hot outside.
Everything had been set into motion, and now he had no reason not to be down here with Kagura.
Sesshomaru scowled thinking of his reluctant journey to this place. Kouga and Ayame Fukuyama, the leaders of the wolf demon tribe, convinced him to follow after Kagura only after a few tense hours together. Sesshomaru hated that Ayame softly berated him by saying Rin wouldn’t be the same as he remembered. Ayame sadly asked him if Sesshomaru was willing to leave behind everything that he had with Kagura for the sake of a memory reborn?
Sesshomaru hated that Kouga huffed and jabbed at his pride. Like a little knife seeking the stretched skin of a balloon Kouga’s words jumped into deadly action. Even if she was the same Rin that Sesshomaru had loved so many years ago, how could Sesshomaru ever hope to face her and ask any sort of commitment from her when he hadn’t even shown loyalty to his own blood?
Then the macho leader of the wolves wouldn’t shut up about Sesshomaru somehow being like Inuyasha. That annoyed him, even though his brother was so many years gone from the world, and Sesshomaru truly did not find the memory of the brat to be as – unbearable – as he thought it might have been; he still did not like being compared to his brother at all.
The comparison was confusing.
Sesshomaru knew, only vaguely, personal details about his younger brother. He only knew that generally Kouga was referring to Inuyasha’s silly little relationship troubles. From what Sesshomaru understood, Inuyasha had once entertained the idea of trying to hold a relationship with two women at once. Sesshomaru had never really tried to find out too much about it, because he didn’t need useless information.
He didn’t think the comparison really fit.
The regenerist was a child, and although Sesshomaru felt compelled to protect her it wasn’t as if he was courting her.
And Kagura made it repeatedly clear that she was only available for friendship, albeit friends with benefits, but just friends. That left Sesshomaru theoretically free of the entrapments of a relationship, if only his instincts would allow him such fickle luxury.
His wild untamed side, his youki, the things that made him the kind of demon he was, had their teeth and claws dug into Kagura’s skin like a life line. They had been together for a very long time. She was exclusive to him, and he was to her. It felt like they were mates, even if the world of logic and solidity said that they weren’t.
The Syndicate treated them like they were legally a married couple. Over a hundred years ago, when surnames became popular in Japan Sesshomaru and Kagura had decided, in a moment of openness and heavy sake drinking, that they would take the name Uno, together. It seemed like a good idea at the time. She was part of his life, part of his pack. And she had giggled and agreed to it even though she was drunk. That led to a lot of misconception about their marital status, among friends and enemies alike. Though both said openly that they weren’t bound by marriage; Sesshomaru kept becoming confused, because Kagura didn’t seek to break the legal tie to him.
Once he asked her why she didn’t, and she had avoided the question by lying. He knew she was lying, because she had a tendency to put her hand in front of her mouth when she was going to fib. It was as if she could hide the words further.
Kagura claimed it was easier to pay his bills, and for every year that they had paid taxes (which they were only required to do to the Syndicate) she filed them as if they were married and living in the same house.
And now there was Rin. The only female inuyoukai in the world, even though she wasn’t quite youkai yet, he already felt tied up by her. Sesshomaru was already happily tangling himself further by willfully comparing her to her previous life, to the sick human woman who he loved so completely that he lost a part of himself when she died.
What was going to happen when she grew up?
Sesshomaru already felt inexorably attached to Rin, but he was also hopelessly entangled with Kagura.
Therefore, Sesshomaru wasn’t in the same boat as that half-breed brother of his had ever been in. No, because Sesshomaru’s boat made for holding relationships was further out to sea and capsizing quickly.
And now he was confused in the hot desert air.
It was Ayame’s words that pushed him to buy a plane ticket and travel here.
“Kagura’s hurt because she loves you.”
Those words rang in his ears the entire time he suffered through the stench of being confined in the airplane on the way here. Those words rang in his ears when he stood in the airport bathroom and sliced off the itchy hot cast that was keeping his healing leg from moving too much. He removed it so that he could rent a car and drive to this little ranch style house on the desert edge of the city.
This house was the only place in the whole damn state, probably this entire side of the country that Sesshomaru was intimately familiar with. Familiar because of ties and bonds that he hadn’t even had a say in making.
This little modular home that was built in the 1950’s, to look like every other home built on this street, was inauspicious and well taken care of. The neighborhood was well separated from the rest of the city on a dead end dirt road that would have lead off into the barren desert. He knew at the end of the road, past the line of gray boulders that served as a fence to stop cars from driving off into the dusty dry world beyond was a deep trench that bordered this side of the city for a few miles. It was dug so that when it rained the water would have a place to reservoir. The desert dirt didn’t know how to drink from the skies.
Sesshomaru looked to the front door of the house again eyes trained on the brassy doorknob and the dim orange red light of the doorbell button.
He tried to take in the dry scent and imagine what it would have been like coming here as if it was his home, as if he hadn’t messed up in some way that made his life the way it was today, as if Kagura embraced him and they had a real relationship, as if the twins were still alive.
This was the house where everything happened.
Jill and Hailey were born here, and died here. They spent their brief little lives in the comfort of this neighborhood, and had never traveled very far; juxtaposed to Sesshomaru’s childhood in which he had lived in two countries by the time he was 6.
He really didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to think about the past. He just wanted to get on with the future.
He wanted to go back home and watch over Rin. She was also the past, and the now.
Sesshomaru let his mind slip away into the numb space between remembering and being. In the emptiness of that space he imagined turning around and making the journey back to Maine. In the crowded emptiness of his mind he imagined not caring what happened to this plot of Kagura’s.
In the loudness of his mind, Sesshomaru remembered all the death. Rin’s death of blood and sickness, and he couldn’t stop it. The death of the twins’ silent until it was too late for him to act.
Sesshomaru closed his eyes. There was no more emptiness in him; maybe there never was.
And he felt the longing for blood. He felt the longing to drag his claws into flesh, and separate muscle from bone. His skin itched for the soothing feeling of warm thick blood to cover him.
Rin died and was back. The twins died, and were soundless remains. And yet Sesshomaru could hear them all. He wanted to go back to Rin, he wanted to avenge the deaths of his daughters, no matter how unworthy of that venture he was.
He tried to imagine them in front of him, but his mind refused to cooperate. All he could see was Kagura. All he could see was her sad tears and her pale fingers reaching out to clench him closer to her.
Today was the absolute worse day to be here. It was the twin’s birthday, and that made the pain so much worse. Sesshomaru kept himself distant. He kept reminding himself that he had never really known them. He kept thinking that he shouldn’t be grieving their loss because he had been absent in their lives, not even able to protect them. It felt like he failed, and somewhere along the line he must have. If he didn’t Kagura would have never left him. If he didn’t fail she would have seen him fit to be a father.
The thought choked him and he tried to concentrate on the painful feeling of standing on his feet for too long. It wasn’t enough so he leaned on his injured leg just a little so that the pain spiked sharply and dulled everything else.
Against the backdrop of needing things as abstract as love and revenge, Sesshomaru rang the doorbell.
It took a moment. The quaint mass manufactured door to the house opened easily letting the cooler air from inside the house escape with a breeze into the desert.
“Welcome home, Mr. Uno.” A pretty middle aged woman with red hair and tanned skin greeted him brightly even though they had never met before in his life. Confused Sesshomaru looked at the woman who spoke strange words, and acted as if she knew him. Who was she? Why was she inside this house?
Wrinkling his nose Sesshomaru stood in slight confusion as he looked at the woman and was bombarded by scent; plant material he couldn’t identify, lemon floor cleaner, bleach, dust, pizza, and spiders. The woman before him was easily some variation of spider demon and Sesshomaru had no idea why she would be in this house. She had dark eyes lined by overwhelming amounts of eye shadow and mascara. She used the brightest red for lipstick, and wore a baggy black t-shirt with a pair of tight acid washed jeans.
The woman with wildfire hair smiled at his confusion.
“My name is Kaya, I’m the nurse hired to care for Mrs. Istu and Mrs. Uno’s father.”
The confusion that danced in front of Sesshomaru dissipated like fog being hit in the sunlight. Mrs. Kanna Istu and Mrs. Kagura Uno, (even though she wasn’t really a Mrs.); their father was only one being. Taking a more carefully sniff of his surroundings Sesshomaru noted that he was most definitely here.
Stepping past the woman in the door Sesshomaru let his nose guide him. It was down a short hallway leading into a room with three skylights, overgrown plants, and two sturdy wooden looms that had half finished red and yellow blankets hanging tightly from the frames. The wall that buffered the room from the hallway was lined with an oversized brown couch that had lopsided, worn, pillows on it.
Sesshomaru told himself that he would have sat down regardless of the quick seizing of his muscles warning him that he was going to be seriously incapacitated if he didn’t. His body knew only itself and was under no delusion of its limitations, although he apparently was.
Sinking into the comfortably soft cushions Sesshomaru crossed his arms and glanced to the man who was watching the little television across from them. The man was sitting on the couch with one leg on its side tucked up under the bent knee of his other leg. He curled his clean, bare toes into the couch cushions.
“It’s good to see you again, old friend.” The man’s voice was mostly unchanged, just a little tired. But weren’t they all now?
Sesshomaru snorted.
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you we weren’t friends.”
The man turned to him and looked confused. Sesshomaru barely glanced his direction but internally noted that there was more grey in his dark hair than the last time they saw each other. His face still looked young, with a few wrinkles around his eyes and at the corners of his lips.
But he was very old, even though he was much younger than Sesshomaru was. Human and demon blood made aging so unpredictable in the hanyou population. It was worse for him since he wasn’t a typical hanyou. He smiled and turned back to the television, and Sesshomaru let his thoughts run like the reel of a movie.
A long time ago there was an evil hanyou who spent his days slicing the hearts of everyone he met to long ribbons to weave with. He liked the color of strong volatile emotions. He liked death, and pain, and suffering.
A long time ago this evil hanyou raped his daughters and fed his sons to the mouths of enemies.
A long time ago he sat with obsession, and made a wish upon a jewel more twisted than he was.
If Naraku hadn’t had a heart maybe he would have survived.
Sesshomaru was glad that he didn’t survive. Sesshomaru was glad that his little human heart filled with the malice of scum and dark demon blood existed, but it was still pathetic and sobering to see what did happen to him. Not surviving didn’t mean that he died.
“This is my favorite program.” Naraku said in his voice of clear youth and grabbed the remote control next to him increasing the volume. The skin on his hands was pale and loose, like someone on the cusp of becoming elderly.
The tune of M*A*S*H filtered into Sesshomaru’s mind from the television, and the man next to him watched comfortable and unconcerned that Sesshomaru was there.
Sesshomaru looked up through the skylights and remembered the last battle.
It stank. Sesshomaru had been fighting inside the bloated corpse of Naraku’s body. He believed it was more dead than alive at that point. And the grime of poison, body parts and excrement painted his clothing and skin. Sesshomaru was shivering in disgust and trying not to let the tacky feeling of half dried blood slow his movements. Trying to bring an end to the monster was a path worth taking. Trying to accomplish the previous and dodge diversions and deceptions at the same time served to make Sesshomaru angry.
He felt the sting of annoyance, and the welting of irritation because this hanyou dared to take Rin from him. Although she was still just a child at the time, Sesshomaru had been irreversibly attached. Nothing, nothing was ever going to pry Rin from his grasp. He wouldn’t let it, because somewhere somehow he had enough willpower, enough strength, to overcome any obstacle and measure to keep her by his side. Now he wanted Naraku’s blood and brains smeared on his new sword: Bakusaiga.
It hadn’t worked out entirely the way he planned.
They – he, his little brother and his companions – were fairing rather terribly. The task seemed never ending. Every time he destroyed a piece of flesh another would take its place. Adding to his annoyance was the fact that his own brother was easily manipulated by the damn monster they knew as Naraku.
Inuyasha was also a hanyou, though his blood and birthright were far different and superior then Naraku’s. And despite superiority his senseless demonic side was able to be coaxed to the surface to make their task slightly more annoying.
The only thing Sesshomaru had to respect him for was that Inuyasha tried his damndest to control it, and marginally succeeded. His little brother controlled himself enough not to make the stupid mistake of slicing Rin’s skin, tearing at her flesh, and bathing in the warmth of her blood.
Still it was annoying to Sesshomaru to have the task of throwing Inuyasha back into his hanyou state and destroying Naraku at the same time.
Then it happened.
The miko who was supposed to guard the Shikon no Tama against the very evil that had taken over it posed the delicate assumption that the evil artifact was no longer doing Naraku’s will. And maybe it had only tricked the hanyou into believing that his will was being done all along. She didn’t use weapons of the world to slice him down. She merely came to a conclusion.
Naraku had looked then so pitiful and broken, and destroyable. Sesshomaru himself had already done more than enough damage to ensure that he would soon be bereft of life… and so it seemed. The evil hanyou was strung up and dying, tired and willful to do as much damage as he could in the little time he had left. He proclaimed that none of it mattered. The jewel would live on without him, as if he believed that his sole existence had been for the jewel and not for his own whims.
Sesshomaru wondered at what point his wants became memories of the past, and the jewel took over.
He crumbled, fell apart, and died wasting away and trying to reach a destination of baffling proportions. A splintery old well that had no heart and no emotions to manipulate was the last thing Sesshomaru would have expected a dying Naraku to desperately want destroyed. It seemed so out of place, bizarre. It seemed that they had destroyed him, not necessarily as an army but as a thousand individual pebbles emulsifying the soil in an earth quake.
Sesshomaru was relieved that Rin was safe, and that he had proved himself strong enough to protect her (which was a surprisingly difficult task considering she was such a small human).
Then Sesshomaru watched as the aura of Naraku disappeared in the wind. He watched surprised and confused as the little miko and protector of the Shikon no Tama disappeared into a magical portal to the world of the dead. He was surprised that this strange well that seemed to be the last focal point of obsession for Naraku disappeared with the girl. Its existence must have something to do with her life, Sesshomaru had reasoned. But the exact connections were never revealed to him.
Then Sesshomaru was not surprised, and not at all amused, that his little brother followed her by using Tetsusaiga to cut open a path to the world of the dead.
Sesshomaru didn’t understand then that loosing someone to death was a powerful incentive to follow. He didn’t understand and was confused. He made up a million little reasons to stay in the village until three days later the well… which seemed to have some significance that no one would explain to him… reappeared. At the bottom was Tetsusaiga, as if Inuyasha was leaving a note behind to say ‘Take it. I don’t need it where I am’.
Rin became Tetsusaiga’s caretaker, because even with his brother’s absence Sesshomaru could not touch nor wield the sword.
Many years later, after Rin died, Sesshomaru would lay awake at night and replay the last moments of his brother’s existence. After many more years Sesshomaru decided he would have done the same thing. Sometimes he still dreamed of being in Inuyasha’s shoes, and woke up feeling like they were never so different from each other.
He regretted that he hadn’t grown up before that day. Then he happily thought to himself that Inuyasha still would have been annoying, still would have deserved the insults.
All those things faded into the background of stiff memories like linens hung out to dry in a summer breeze.
So in 1645 when Kagura’s younger brother Byakuya requested an audience with them and threw down some very strange demands Sesshomaru was extremely suspicious. Only three of Naraku’s children lived: Kanna, Kagura, and Byakuya.
Kagura had never met her younger brother because he was born after she was freed. It was strange that he would request an audience with them. Sesshomaru thought that he had died in the final battle.
Byakuya was dressed in strange clothes from a land far to the west, and bowed before them in the borrowed home of one of Sesshomaru’s allies. There was no better place to reunite, because Sesshomaru unbound himself from a formal dwelling. Sesshomaru had given his own home to humans after Rin died, unable to stay in its walls anymore. The relaxed youkai first expressed his gratitude for being seen, formally called Kagura his sister, and explained that he had gone to them first because Kanna frightened him.
Then he told him.
Naraku never died.
But he wasn’t the same. Byakuya said that after the battle, he had spirited his father away to the continent. They went north to Siberia and Naraku recovered from the physical wounds of battle, and then went west again to live peacefully in what was the eastern Ottoman Empire. Byakuya said that Naraku was changed from the battle. He suspected it was from the absence of the Shikon no Tama which had twisted his soul and personality to begin with.
Naraku’s memories were incorrect.
And with those incorrect memories, and the inability to really cogitate much of anything that had complexity, Naraku was as invalid as an old man with a failing memory. He was wiped clean, but not a blank slate. He was able to retain things, but disabled enough to not put things back together.
Byakuya had requested that they see him. Apparently Naraku cried about the loss of his daughters, whom he couldn’t remember ever having done any wrong to. He knew their names, and their faces, and assumed that he must have loved them like any dotting father would love a child. Naraku only remembered the faces of his children he had made to look human, and surprisingly seemed to have a good grasp of who was still alive, because he never once asked to see Hakudoshi.
Sesshomaru distinctly remembered feeling annoyed that the evil hanyou survived despite his weak blood, and Inuyasha threw himself to death over a crush.
It took two years before Kagura reluctantly agreed to see her father, and Kanna had gone with her. Sesshomaru knew that secretly Kagura had only gone to kill her father that time. He was surprised she didn’t follow through with it, until she explained that he truly didn’t remember. She laughed and said that the being she visited was Naraku, but it wasn’t. He didn’t look at her the same, he didn’t act the same. She didn’t feel right murdering him, when he couldn’t even tell the difference between a friend and an enemy. He had no sense of danger, and all of the immense power he had held because of the jewel was gone. Naraku barely made use of his youki, barely seemed aware of it anymore.
He remembered that Kagura liked lilies. He kept a garden of them just for her, and had sent her back with a bouquet. It was strange only for the fact that he had to have remembered that when he was who he used to be, back when he didn’t care.
Kagura spent years bitterly going back and trying to force Naraku to remember his wrongdoings so that she didn’t feel bad about wanting to kill him.
Naraku never remembered much with clarity, and the few wrongs he remembered he shut down over. The once fearsome hanyou admitted once that he remembered chaining Kagura to a wall and leaving her in darkness. Then he’d tiredly say he didn’t know why he did it, just that he had been sick.
In a lot of his twisted, half-formed memories he claimed to feel sick. Sesshomaru wondered if it was because of the jewel. Sesshomaru listened to Kagura contemplate with her siblings that maybe the human crucible for Naraku had been a bad man, but only enough for the influence of the jewel to grab a hold of him and try to find a way out. After all, the jewel had eventually taken a piece of Naraku’s body as its own. It didn’t seem unreasonable to think that the evil hanyou was merely a toy to the jewel. And now that the jewel was gone they had this man, a broken mirror of a man whose angles were all wrong.
They created a family with all the loose visits. They were a very dysfunctional family that pulled the world all about them. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of Sesshomaru’s traveling out of Japan was to accompany Kagura when she went to visit her strange little family. She stopped visiting them in 1909 when Byakuya and Kanna joined the Syndicate. The rift in political ideals put Kagura in a different place than her siblings.
The rift in their family seemed to be irreversible when Sesshomaru took up arms with the old lords of Japan, and Kagura joined the fight. Sesshomaru fought against the Syndicate because he didn’t believe in being forced to suppress who he was, and oppress others into doing the same. Kagura stayed because her free will was paramount to everything else in the world. Kagura stayed with Sesshomaru until the painful end.
Byakuya was still bitter about the war. Out of the siblings he had been the most attached to their little family. He was also the one who supported the Syndicate the most. Last Sesshomaru heard, he was still refusing to speak with Kagura. Kanna knew her sister well and did not hold grudges. Kanna, who was once made to be an empty thing capable of heinous things, opened her arms to Kagura and to Sesshomaru after the war. She took up a mantle of responsibility as the oldest sibling. She made sure that Kagura wasn’t destitute, and Kagura never asked a lot from her. Freedom meant depending on herself, Kagura had never been the type to indulge in gifts from others.
Sesshomaru loved her independence, but sometimes wished she would allow others to take care of her more. Because sometimes, sometimes, her independence lead to her not eating and becoming as emaciated as she looked the last time he saw her.
Kanna’s attitude was why, when Kagura ran away from Sesshomaru, pregnant with the twins, she went to her sister. At least she had the instincts of a mother and put aside her pride to give her children all that she could.
And Kanna sent her here.
This little house in Arizona had been Naraku’s home for almost ten years before the twins were born. Kanna bought it for him because he could not tolerate the Alaska winters, where Kanna lived with her husband the seal youkai named Sendai.
It must have been clear to Kanna, and Byakuya, that Kagura didn’t want Sesshomaru around, because not once during the twins’ brief lives did they try to contact him about his daughters.
The one time Sesshomaru had seen Kanna in the space between when Kagura left him and came back broken, was at a hospital in Tokyo where Sesshomaru had been summoned to undergo a series of tests. He had only vaguely been told that the tests were being done only on inuyoukai, and that it had something to do with the disease that nearly wiped his kind into extinction. He hadn’t said a word to Kanna, and she ignored that he was there.
Their parting was mutually silent.
And now Sesshomaru wished that he had asked how Kagura was, or something.
Naraku didn’t understand Sesshomaru’s absence in that time though.
“Oh, right, Sesshomaru. We are family now. When are my granddaughters coming home? I miss them.” He had asked two years ago when he briefly visited Japan to watch the cherry blossom festival with Kanna. The once evil hanyou, who understood how to destroy the heart, couldn’t accept the death of his granddaughters. He had loved them, played with them, they grew up calling him “Papa-san”, while Sesshomaru never held them.
Naraku had been visiting Byakuya when the twins were killed. Even though he was told of their death’s he seemed unable to conceptualize them. Instead he held onto a delusion that they had gone to live with Sesshomaru.
Kagura blamed it on him watching too much television.
Sesshomaru cringed and crawled into himself with the memory. Hopefully Naraku wouldn’t ask that again.
“Where’s Kagura?” Sesshomaru asked over the sound of the television. Naraku turned to Sesshomaru and fumbled to shut the television off.
“She’s with Chaz.”

****************

Wiggling her toes, Kagura spread them out as much as she could over the vent for the pickup truck’s air conditioner. She liked the feeling of air being forced between her toes. Slouching in her seat she opened a bottle of cherry red nail polish, and began painting vibrant globs of it onto her toenails.
It was silent in the pickup truck. Well, as silent as it could be considering the engine was lurching as if it was on its deathbed. Kagura suspected that the catalytic converter was going, and she knew that the beat up ride hadn’t had an oil change in ages. She was the one who got down in the grime to do that almost a year ago.
But it wasn’t her vehicle, and she had warned him about taking care of things that were his.
Finishing with the pinky-toe of her right foot, Kagura glanced over to the young man who was barely tall enough to see over the steering column. He still had many more years before he reached his full height. His face was perpetually scowled, and smudged with gun grease and desert clay.
“Are you sure you want to go back now?” He asked. His voice was still a little high, but he kept trying hard to make himself sound more grown up. The end result was only that he squeaked a little more when he spoke. She wondered how long it would take his voice to even out and become like a man. “You could always spend the night at my apartment.”
Kagura laughed a little.
“No thank you,” She giggled dipping the nail polish brush back into the little jar, “You can be a big boy and clean your own apartment.” At least when she went to her father’s she didn’t have to pick through trashy porno magazines and old boxes of pizza. She definitely didn’t want to find this kid’s stash of marijuana. She was trying to pretend that she couldn’t smell it on him, even though she was sure that anyone could.
She just wanted to curl up in her bed, and enjoy the solitude of sleep.
“You clean up after him.” The young man who was really just a child said accusingly. There was no doubt to who he was referring to.
Kagura felt her heart twist in that painful space of love gone wrong. That feeling nested inside her gut. She tried to ignore the accusing tone, because the boy didn’t understand. Chaz would never understand her relationship with Sesshomaru, and his childish dreams were all for naught.
Sighing Kagura went back to painting her nails.
“Just drive, Chaz.” She mumbled. She didn’t want to deal with the little crush he was developing. She wanted to head that off at the pass, because it could only end badly. She only kept in contact with him because he was just as hurt as she was. She kept in contact with him because he had once been friends with her daughters. She remembered catching him kissing Hailey in the bathroom.
He wasn’t best friends with the twins, but so many years after their death’s he was the only one who couldn’t look back to their lives. The life was destroyed with dark visions of their deaths.
Chaz was a Prairie Dog demon. It was his father, and uncles who were responsible for the spilled blood. He had been brought along to learn how to kill, and instead learned how to regret, how to hate, and how to crave revenge.
Kagura kept in contact with him, because he knew how to get to his family. He was still in contact with them out of a perverse instinct for pack, while wanting them all dead. Without him, she might search the desert forever trying to find revenge. She didn’t think she could ever persuade Sesshomaru into action. But he hadn’t seen it. Sesshomaru hadn’t been there.
Chaz was there.
Chaz knew the memory. He relived it in the privacy of his inner thoughts too.
Those memories were suffocating, and Kagura felt herself sinking into them as if she stepped into a particularly determined pool of quicksand.
Arrested in the dark recalling of the past, Kagura relived for a moment the cajoling voices of Chaz’s older relatives goading him to finish the kill. She had already lost her sense of reality, shut down, and reverted to the disassociation that equaled survival. This was the same boy who played tag with her daughters. They all belonged to the same group of twenty children who spent their days shuffled from house to house in the youkai neighborhood being homeschooled.
She reminded herself that just yesterday Jill boasted that she could recite her times tables faster than Chaz. Hailey complained that she had to make a science project with him. She couldn’t imagine him with blood on his hands.
Frozen forever were the moments of fear. Kagura remembered struggling, stomach roiling, as one of the older demons pried Jill’s mouth open. She was crying.
“Mommy!” she sobbed over and over even though their destroyers told her to shut up.
She bit down hard enough to draw blood from the brutal hand. They shoved the barrel of a gun in her mouth and she gagged. Chaz was forced to pull the trigger, his father’s own hand guiding him to the act. His father calmly explained that he needed to brace for the recoil, because in a real battle he couldn’t afford to be toppled backwards.
Kagura had wanted to scream.
This wasn’t a real battle.
This was disgusting, making a child kill another child.
The world was paper thin to Kagura and she remembered. The back of Jill’s head exploded out, chunks of her brain and spinal cord stewed in with her blood. Strands of her silky hair slid down the wall of Kagura’s bedroom.
Kagura remembered trying to tell herself that it was nothing. She had seen blood and brains before. Once, long ago she was responsible for the pudding like projection of many brains enemies and innocents alike.
The memory wouldn’t let go of Kagura. A drop of nail polish fell onto the top of her foot, and she suddenly hated the color. It was like blood. The familiar numbness tingled though her limbs, as she reassured herself that Jill went quickly, mercifully compared to her sister.
Hailey transformed, because she was so close to death, and so much like her father. Kagura remembered screaming against her restraints trying to tell Hailey to run.
She might have a chance.
But Hailey stayed, and whined, nuzzling her dead sister. Kagura choked on her heart when they tied her up, burnt the bottom of her paws until the flesh blistered and broke. She would have gladly laid down her life for her daughter’s. She begged them to do just that, frantically imagining a better end for her remaining daughter.
She remembered their attacker’s words and cruel guidance to Chaz.
“This is what you do to bitches.” One of them said as they cropped her ears, and cut off her tail. They tied a belt around her muzzle. Then they mounted her, some of them transformed, others donning their human form. Some of them turned to Kagura drunk with power, and told her that she should know sorrow.
She deserved it because she took away something precious to them.
When it was Chaz’ turn he vomited all over himself. The older Prairie Dog demons teased him. He was just a boy, who not two days ago, was playing like a child should. Now he wore a face of desperation. Kagura knew, because she had seen too much in her life, that the look of desperation was only worn by someone who just wanted everything to end.
Never again did she want to see someone broken like that.
With untrained nerves Chaz turned the gun that killed Jill to Hailey and pulled the trigger until there was nothing left to shoot. Kagura could remember watching him shake and frantically jam his finger against the trigger even when there was no more ammunition to catch.
She remembered the older demons slapping the gun from his hand, pouring baby oil all over Hailey’s bloodstained fur and flicking their cigarettes in. They let her smell the burning fur and flesh before covering her mouth and nose with duck tape, leaving just enough clearance for her to breath desperately.
Then they dragged her out of the house even though she wanted to die.
“Fuck you bitch.” One of them growled and slashed her face with a knife. “We want you to suffer, you Syndicate whore.”
They rolled her tied up body out of their car right in front of the hospital.
The pick up truck jolted, and Kagura almost fell out of her seat.
“Oops,” Chaz said cutting into the memory. She gulped for air in the dry desert night. She was jostled in her seat again, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you spill the nail polish.” He said nonchalantly, “There are tissues in the glove compartment.”
Kagura nodded to get the feeling of sickness out of her. She didn’t think it would ever get easier to remember, but she knew how to distract now. She knew how to shake the memory away.
“I hope you don’t mind that I am doing this.” She mumbled as she wiped up the errant drop of paint from her skin with a McDonalds napkin.
“Nope.” Was his short reply.
She was glad that he didn’t complain about her painting her nails in the car.
Sesshomaru would have.
It probably wasn’t any better to be thinking about him right now, but that was where her mind wandered.
The chemical smell of the beautifying paint was so strong it settled in her throat, and she could almost hear Sesshomaru complaining in the back of her mind. She let herself imagine him for a moment, looking at her with mild disgust and lamenting that the stench was unbearable. He would, as always, act as if she should bow to everything that he said, and demand that she remove it. She would argue with him. Tell him that once it dried he wouldn’t even be able to smell the chemicals in the polish, and then remind him that the acetone used to remove it was much worse.
They would bicker. He would complain about her will to destroy his delicate senses, and she would balk at his words. Who was it that once walked through a trench filled with mustard gas without blinking? Who but the one and only Lord Sesshomaru would brag about it later? Certainly his nose could handle her petty little indulgences.
Rounding the bend onto the quiet little street that Kagura had so many memories for, both fond and traumatizing, she glanced up to notice a white car parked in the driveway next to the nurse Kaya’s jeep. The jeep was distinctive because she had stripped it down to the primer and then spray painted it with a geometric yellow and blue design. Quickly she finished her nails and examined the strange car as Chaz pulled into the driveway. The engine spurted to a stop, shuddering like a cat that couldn’t stop purring.
“I wonder if Byakuya came to visit.” Chaz said excitedly, “he said he’d show me more of his animations when he did.” He dragged his hands through his thick black hair.
Kagura shrugged. She hadn’t heard anything from her brother about visiting. She didn’t hear much from him at all though. The last time he had been in the United States for any length of time was when he did an internship at Walt Disney, because he adored the art style. But they still weren’t getting along.
Carefully she slid her green flip-flops back on, hoping that the nail polish would dry quickly. She had little patience to re-do her prettying efforts. Propping the door to the pickup truck open, Kagura stepped out carefully trying to keep her nails beautiful. It made walking feel funny. The tops of her feet felt strained with the effort to keep her toes parted.
“Thanks for the ride home, Chaz.” Kagura mumbled, “You should come inside. I’ll make you some dinner before you leave. My father is probably still awake. He likes it when you visit.”
Chaz smiled innocently.
“Papa-san is totally awesome! He’s got the coolest stories.”
“All of which he got from watching too much television.” Kagura retorted. She was fibbing a little. Naraku had a tendency to tell stories about himself. It was interesting if only for the fact that he had little concept that the stories of evil were about him. Sometimes Naraku’s stories revealed things that would have otherwise been hidden away forever.
The unwittingly revealing stories were how Kagura knew that Naraku really did have a heart as fragile and breakable as hers. It was through those stories that she discovered that Naraku had loved and lost.
“Whatever,” Chaz said dismissively, “So what are you going to make for dinner? Bagel pizza?”
“No,” Kagura sighed, “I’m sick of pizza. I swear that’s all you would eat if I didn’t watch out for you.”
“But Papa-san likes pizza too…” Chaz said sounding once again like a begging child, instead of a boy on the cusp of becoming a man.
“Oh, stop it.” Kagura chided fumbling with her keys as she came to the front door. “If he’s asleep you aren’t waking him up.” She wondered what time it was. The clock in Chaz’ pick up truck didn’t work, but it had been dark for a long time now.
It turned out that she didn’t have to worry about whether or not Naraku was awake, because when she opened the front door and walked into the dining room he was right there. The overhead light was on, set to a cozy level. The low electrical hum of an air conditioner tickled her ears.
“Welcome home, Kagura.” Naraku said not once looking up from the plastic game board spread out on the dining room table. “Kaya let me stay up late.” He had his concentration face on. Carefully he placed the little tiled letters down on the board.
“That’s not how you spell ‘library’, Naraku.” Kaya said gently while handing him a dictionary. “You don’t have the right letters.”
“I hate this language.” Naraku groused as he accepted the book.
But Kagura wasn’t paying attention to any of that. Her focus narrowed, and she felt a lump form in her throat.
She didn’t expect him to be here.
How could he just sit there? There should be something more to this. He was here!
Sesshomaru looked tense. She could see him holding his shoulders stiff through the black t-shirt he wore. The tightness of the muscles in his throat betrayed him. He hadn’t really looked at her yet, but Kagura could see his nose twitch as if he was looking with scent first.
Scent wasn’t going to help her this time. She probably smelled like pizza, pot, and dirty laundry from a teenage boy. And nail polish, she added as an afterthought.
“Sesshomaru,” She said his name even though her throat hurt with the effort. Silently she pleaded that he would look at her. Why was he here? He had been so against it just a few days ago.
His hands paused stopping over the tiles that he held in his cue for the game. The world got silent. His face tilted towards hers. For a moment it was just his usual blank indifference that graced his face.
And then things moved too fast for her to process.
Rather, she processed it, and sighed in exasperation at the stupidity of men.
“Oh, so that’s the son of a bitch that hurt you.” Chaz barked and stepped in front of Kagura as if he was going to protect her. That was laughable. “What are you doing here, dog?”
“Kagura, who is that?” Sesshomaru growled eyes narrowing aggressively as he glared at Chaz.
“I’m someone who isn’t going to hurt her,” Chaz boasted stupidly, “You should just crawl back to where you came from with your tail between your legs.”
If Kagura hadn’t already had enough of overbearing, chauvinist, protective men for her whole life, she might have thought his declaration to be adorable. Not wanted, but charming.
Sesshomaru snarled, and his youki exploded in the air. The wave of it engulfed Kagura, and her blood prickled at the feeling. He was so familiar, so entwined with her that her heart leapt at the feeling of him.
Her heart and her mind were in two different spots. The second Sesshomaru grabbed onto her the excitement of him being here faded in the swell of her annoyance.
No longer having a purchase on the ground, Kagura let herself go limp in his possessive embrace. There really was nothing for it. This kind of thing had happened, rarely in the past, there weren’t too many people bold enough, or stupid enough to try to encroach on anything Sesshomaru considered his.
She tried to console herself that he really tried not to think of her as property. The consoling didn’t work though. It was clear in his actions that he thought exactly that way, she was his. It hurt. Not because she didn't want or need him, but because he would not be hers in return.
“Sesshomaru,” Kagura whispered, “he’s just a kid. Start acting like the adult.” For a moment the words were only met with further growling. She could feel Sesshomaru straining against his youki, but she knew better than to think he might have actually listened to her.
“I know what I am talking about, Kagura.” Chaz bristled, “I’m not a kid anymore. You came over crying about how he doesn’t love you, and I made you feel better.”
Of all the stupid ass things he could have said…
“Oh god." Her disbelieving words were barely audible to her own ears, because Sesshomaru couldn’t handle those words. His claws shredded the sides of her blue pepsi t-shirt, which was annoying because she didn’t have many clothes. The least he could do was try not to ruin them! Especially since his assumptions were so far out of the water that if he was using his brain at all he would know that Chaz hadn’t meant the words the way they came out. “Damnit, Sesshomaru. Use your nose! We ate ice cream and watched teenage mutant ninja turtles!”
Behind her Sesshomaru stopped growling and started sniffing.
“You smell strange.” He finally said into her hair. “That brat has the same smell on him.”
“Probably pot.” Kagura bemoaned. She didn’t think Sesshomaru knew what it was. He wasn’t the kind who paid attention to intoxicants. He only knew what opium was because of mass addictions and political unrest that they caused in China during the last century. “Are you alright now?” She asked after a moment of pure quiet.
“Who cares if he’s alright!” Chaz exclaimed grumpily, “Are you alright, Kagura? This jerk had no right coming here and getting you upset.”
“Chaz! Stop it!” Kagura yelled and then tried to pry herself free from Sesshomaru’s grasp. She forgot how strong he could be, and fucking determined.
He was definitely not appreciating her attempts to free herself. This time when he growled it was at her. She could feel the rumbling in his chest, and tried to relax when she felt his mouth on her neck.
If she had more than a moment’s warning she would have tried to relax. It hurt more when she was stiff, but Sesshomaru didn’t give her the time to take a breath.
His fangs twisted into her skin, her blood bubbled up and spilled around the wound.
“Ooh!” Kagura hissed trying to force herself to relax instead of drawing her shoulders up to try to release herself from the grip. Her knees felt wobbly. Her breath drew out. The pain wasn’t enough to keep her from feeling hot over the action. Sesshomaru only bit her like this when they were having really good rough sex. She thought dimly that she was probably classically conditioned into liking it so much, but hell classical conditioning worked!
Kagura blushed over the aroused feelings it brought to her, and felt mildly angry that he would do this in front of others.
Chaz just stared in disbelief quickly turning into disgust.
“He just marked you like cattle.”
“Your kind mate with cattle?” Sesshomaru snapped back releasing her. The blood was still running slowly down the front of her shirt. Her voice didn’t work. Words got trapped inside. Kagura pressed her palm against the bite that was healing so very slow because of her spells, and waited for the next insult to fly. She waited for the warm ache to settle inside of her.
Nothing happened.
Chaz just looked mortified, and Sesshomaru was practically radiating with self assured dominance behind her. No small part of that self assured attitude was due to him being able to smell the effect he had on her, and Kagura silently cursed him and his nose. She didn’t know whether to bend over for him or kneecap him.
“Well,” Kaya said loudly from the kitchen, “I think that’s enough excitement for the night. Naraku, let’s get you to bed.”
“I still haven’t figured out how to spell ‘library’.” Naraku protested feebly.
The sound of the scrabble pieces being gathered up galvanized Kagura. She turned around to look at the one man in the world who could get away with the kind of bullshit she just endured. His eyes like an amber sunset slid to her, and he absently brought his hand up to wipe away a streak of blood. She stood entranced as he swiped the blood with his fingers and then brought them to his mouth.
Damn why did he have to be so sexy? And frustrating, confusing…infuriating!
“We need to talk.” Kagura said shivering where she stood. The air conditioner kicked on again.
“I can stick around and beat him up if he says anything you don’t like.” Chaz offered behind her. He sounded less feisty this time.
“The vermin leaves.” Sesshomaru demanded, “I don’t like his stench.”
“Chaz, go home. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Kagura replied instantaneously. She didn’t turn around to see the look on the young demon’s face. She knew he was probably crushed that she didn’t want his protection. That was alright, she thought.
Right now she had one very bad dog demon to deal with.

Papa-san is a name for a grandfather. (my mother-in-law and all her siblings refer to their grandfather as papa-san)
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Regenerist	By : botticelliangel Category: InuYasha > General Views: 2940 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own or make profit from Inuyasha or related media.

Regenerist