The meeting by Aya

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Disclaimer: I did the fic Close for a Dokuga contest, and someone asked me to do the scene I mentioned in it, so here it is, in detail. I do not own, or profit from InuYasha, the characters belong to the wonderful Rumiko Takashi-sensei!

Kagome sat under one of the trees that inhabited InuYasha’s forest. It had been five weeks since Sesshoumaru had joined the Inutaichi, and so far he’d been a pretty good protector, he’d made sure they had enough food, enough water, and as he didn’t need sleep he would lay awake at night to watch for demons or anything else that would harm them.

But something HAD changed in the group after his arrival.

Kagome had stopped lying to herself.

She loved Sesshoumaru no Taisho, all of him, even his surly and ‘cold’ attitude.

In the weeks that had followed him joining their group, he had taken more and more talking with her, spending some of his sleepless nights, and her own waking hours, with her. He never spoke a word, of course, not unless it was a question, and even then it was asked in the simplest and shortest way possible.

Tonight was no exception, she realized, as she looked at the Lord of the West who sat beside her, waiting for the answer to his question.

“I don’t understand your question Sesshoumaru-sama.”

And really, she didn’t, he had shown up, sat down, and practically demanded to know about something she’d said to InuYasha earlier.

“I will not repeat myself Miko.” He stared at her as he spoke, riled even though he wouldn’t show it.

He’d overheard Kagome saying that he and InuYasha were alike, that the fool hanyou was just as stubborn as he was when it came to their father.

“Well, you’re going to have to otherwise I can’t answer your question.” Her voice was a bit too curt for his liking, and he could feel his hackles rising as his beast clamored inside of him to put her in her place. But he ignored it as he thought on how to better word his question so he would not have to repeat it.

“You told the hanyou we are alike in regards to Chichiu…why do you think this?”

With his question rephrased, Kagome now knew what he meant and could answer him better.

“You both are childish when it comes to him, you needle each other, but when one brings him up suddenly you’re both vicious and cruel…you’re jealous your father gave him the Tetsaiga, and also that he went to save him and his mother, risking his very life, and leaving you and your mother to bear the burden of his affair with Izayoai-san.”

“I do not know what you mean.” His voice was a bit harsher and more curt then he had meant, but the emotions were there clear as day as his eyes narrowed on her slightly.

“Yes you do.” She placed her hand on his arm, something she had no dared to do before, as she looked into his golden eyes, so much like InuYasha’s.

“Where I live, I have a friend who went through the same thing as you. His father married his mother, it was a marriage of status and convenience, or at least, that’s what they told each other…but they loved each other, but neither knew how to tell the other.  Eventually, the father met his mistress, and second wife, at a party. It took them a while before they realized they were in love, but by then, the mother had found out about the affair. She demanded he break it off, or she would leave and take their son with her…the fight didn’t end well. She left, but told her son she’d come back for him, but she never did. Eventually, he began to hate and blame his father for his mother leaving him behind, what he didn’t know, was that his mother hadn’t wanted him, she hadn’t wanted a child at the time she became pregnant with him, all she wanted was to spend time with his father to try and be with him as she longed for. His anger for his father grew, when he remarried to his mistress, the woman who’d torn their family apart, and then had a second child with her. He was very, very cruel to the child, to the point where he tried to hurt him a few times, to get rid of him, but he grew out of that and instead turned to just making him miserable…” Kagome fell silent as she took her hand away and looked at her lap now, quiet, not noticing the golden orbs trained on her.

“Continue your foolish story, Miko.” Sesshoumaru demanded, almost eagerly. He wished to know how this boy got rid of the interloper.

Kagome was quiet a moment longer before she spoke again. “Where I come from, there is medicine that, when taken too much of, can be deadly to humans…the little brother was only 10, and he found his father’s medicine, and took so much he went into a coma, and nearly died….a coma is when the body stops working, the lungs wont breathe on their own, the heart still beats, but the body can’t move, and the brain is still alive and aware…the boy is now fifteen, and he just woke-up again. My friend wasn’t happy that it happened like that and when he demanded to know why his little brother did it, the boy told him he did it because of him, because he was always so cruel to him, when all he really wanted was to get along with him and make his older brother happy again like his father always told him about.” Kagome still remembered her friend telling her this story and she even felt the tears pricking at her eyes and sliding down, but she looked up at the demon Lord as he wiped them away.

While he held his cold, unfeeling mask in place, she could see the confusion in his eyes, he didn’t understand why she was crying.

“My friend realized that he was taking his anger out on his father on the wrong person, that this little boy didn’t deserve what happened to him, he was innocent in the whole thing…he went home to his father, and told him everything, that he drove his little brother to this, that he had come to hate the boy, and his realization that he was wrong to hate him, that he realized he really hated his father for driving his mother away. His father realized that he had been wrong in hiding something important from his son, but decided it was time he knew the truth…where I come from, in the future, there is something called abortion, it’s when a mother goes to this doctor, and he kills the baby growing inside of her. She went to a doctor to have him killed, but the father got there in time and stopped her and brought her home. That was why they didn’t work out, because he couldn’t forgive her for wanting to harm something that was so precious to him…I know that your father is no longer here for you to talk to him about any of this, but you seem to only see it from your perspective, and not your fathers, or InuYasha’s…you are his family, and instead of taking him and his mother in, you left them to fend for themselves, for him to grow up and fight for his own life, and for what, because your father made a mistake…?” She watched the dog demon stiffen with her words, and she realized tonight would be the night, tonight she would know…everything. She wished she could have known now what she knew in the future, how much this would change things for them.

“You know not what you speak of Miko, demons do not hold the same emotions as humans, we hold very little, if any, there is no such thing as love and trust in mattings, only necessity, mattings for power, status….very, very few demons mate for ‘love’. My parents were not one of them, they mated for the political and status it would give them both, my mother was the one with the purest blood, and my father chose her to bear him a strong heir, as I will do when it is time for me to have an heir of my own. I am not foolish enough to believe I can have the one I desire, she will probably use me as my mother used my father. There is no such thing as love Miko; you would do well to remember that.” He fell silent after that and looked forward, his mind going over the story she had told him, and how very similar to his own tale it was, the only difference being that he knew his brother would not harm himself. Maybe before he would have, but now he had his own pack, ones who could rely on him, and whom he relied on as well…