The Transience of Winter by emeralddarkness
In which we make our beginning
Sesshoumaru was not accustomed to showing weakness, and so he did not.
He wasn’t sure when it started anymore; he hadn’t even realized at first what was happening to him, beyond his thoughts somehow cycling back to the miko with far greater frequency than they should have. He’d have liked to say that she was like any other girl (life would be so much easier if she had been like any other girl) but that had never been the case.
The truth was that he had dismissed her initially – just another human, a worthless girl who’d somehow leashed his worthless half brother – and she had immediately shown him the error in this way of thinking by first surviving his poison, and directly continuing from that to take a not immaterial role in the loss of one of his arms. He should have hated her for that, but the astonishment at what she had done and not done in his presence had been strong enough to prevent the most natural reaction. She was a surprise.
This was where she stood in his mind at their second encounter, where he had dained to avoid targeting her directly until she had attacked him, shooting clumsily with shining arrows that made his skin prickle in their passing, which made his armor crack and crumble like pottery, which so purged the power of his father’s fang that it had been minutes before it was able to transform again. She’d been annoying, dangerous, but also something fresh and unpredictable, and fearless as she’d been before. That, perhaps, was why Inuyasha had been so enamored with her. He told himself that was pathetic; and again, that should have been the end of it. He’d forced himself to dismiss the thought of her and focus on the business of getting a worthy sword until he came to find Toutousai and found Inuyasha. She’d been standing next to the mutt still, eyes blue-grey as a winter morning and clad only in the little scrap of nothing she apparently considered proper attire, staring up at him in shock, perhaps dread, but without being afraid of him. It was distracting. It was frustrating. He wondered what all these gathered here would think, if they’d known he wondered if this little nothing of a girl was the most dangerous of their number, simply by virtue of the fact that nothing seemed able to make her stop. Something about her made it hard to focus, harder to find perfect control. It was partially the frustration of that which on the next encounter had baited him into beginning to unveil his power, and that in turn had made it easier for Inuyasha to scent out the hidden pathways of the wind, which led to the closest he’d ever come to death.
Her eyes, alarmed but unfrightened, were the last thing he saw before he’d been caught in what felt like a hurricane of swords and thrown to a forest so soaked in the scent of his own blood that he’d been unable to smell anything else of his surroundings.
Sesshoumaru was more a creature of action than of thought – there was something about the hunt that was soothing: the scent of blood in the air, the constant assurance of a purpose and steady movement – but after a brush with Tetsusaiga’s power he’d been left with nothing but his thoughts for company as muscle and bone slowly knitted back together. It was hard not to think of her as he lay there helpless; it became harder when the second human who was wholly unafraid of him found him and dumped water on him, then tried to give him fish and lizards and mushrooms and mice. Sesshoumaru wondered how the miko would have acted if she’d found him like this. He was an enemy, he’d proven that to her several times over, and so if she was wise she would kill him, but he couldn’t picture her doing so. It was easy to imagine her instead in the trees, hesitant when she saw him, then approaching slowly, maybe acting as the little peasant girl had and doing her best to take care of him when she’d found he couldn’t move. His fingers twitched slightly at the thought, annoyed, because he did not and never had required a nursemaid, but… he did not think that snarling or snapping would chase her away any more than it had the girl who had found him.
Then again, she’d not shown any particularly soft tendencies in the few times he’d seen her so far, other than perhaps her penchant for throwing herself in front of him to try and protect another of her party. Judging by those interactions he would have assumed her favorite thing was to place herself in the path of death… and yet somehow she survived, even thrived. She never even seemed injured. Inuyasha wasn’t responsible for all that by himself, he couldn’t be. His half brother was barely able to defend himself; he’d have a difficult time doing that as well as protecting some girl with a death wish.
Her aura had grown brighter every time he’d seen her, from the faint sparks of power that any midwife or herb woman might have to a flame, bright and shining at her heart.
She was dangerous.
This was stupid.
He was wasting his time.
He deliberately ignored the fact that, at the moment, he had nothing but time to waste.
After the first half day or so healing he was able to shift a little without excruciating pain, and had done so several times to arrange himself slightly more comfortably over the course of the next few days. Something in his chest tickled as these thoughts ran again through his head so he shifted again, grimacing slightly. He’d thought he was beyond coughing blood, as he had in the first few hours, but maybe not yet. He suppressed the urge as long as he could, but every breath made it worse until he gave in and coughed again. No blood, but the urge to cough remained until he finally spat out a flower petal that must have fallen into his mouth.
It took a moment for him to realize and accept that this little thing was what had been making him cough, and he was almost surprised at how much the realization annoyed him. Something about the idea that the very flowers were managing to attack him like this when he was already so weak seemed unacceptably offensive. Sesshoumaru glared down at the little white petal that lay limp and wet on his palm before curling his claws inwards and calling on their poison. It dissolved in a rush, and he flicked the remnants off his skin before glaring up at the trees.
The sooner he was well enough to leave this place the better he’d be pleased.
-
Jaken finally found him just as Sesshoumaru was finally feeling well enough to move again, perhaps fight a little at need, which meant consideration of if he felt well enough to travel any distance became irrelevant. Ah-un would be close behind, with supplies and a saddle that could if necessary carry him away; the little imp dancing nervously at his feet and begging him not to strain himself could mean nothing else.
Sesshoumaru stood carefully and took stock of himself, ignoring Jaken’s squawking. Something uncomfortable remained deep in his lungs and he was still painfully, alarmingly weak, but he dismissed both sensations - he knew better than to think he’d so soon be in the same condition he’d been in before this mess. He would continue to improve. More immediately he was filthy and covered in blood, wearing clothing that was in even worse condition than the rest of him and the last few remnants of his shattered armor, and deeply unhappy about all of it. That, at least, could be changed. First to the dragon and his supplies, and from there to bathe and begin repairs on his armor. It was nice to be able to act again.
With a path once again set for himself and, finally, the ability to act on any plans, Sesshoumaru lifted his head to scent the way to Ah-un and instead found a surprise. The powdery scent of the dragon was there, maybe five or ten minutes away at a walk, but the first thing he smelled was the sharp iron tang of fresh human blood. Beneath the blood, and almost overpowered by it, was the musk of wolves. An attack on a human village, perhaps? Turning to find the source he saw the bushes that the girl, the peasant, had always disappeared beyond. An attack on her village, perhaps. He found himself strangely disquieted by the idea.
Without thinking, Sesshoumaru turned and followed the girl’s scent, and the scent of blood, and wolves, out from the forest and onto a little dirt road. As he approached the scent of blood and humanity he began hearing the pack sounds - yipping and whimpering and growling among themselves to meanings he didn’t care to try and decipher. Soon after he saw them. There were maybe five or six wolves on the road ahead of him, clustered together and snarling, and as he stepped closer he could see that they were surrounding a little corpse, and were arguing over who had the rights to eat it.
It was her.
He acted before considering that it was useless; his eyes narrowed into a glare as he loosed a touch of his youki. As one the wolves cringed back, then turned and fled before the flash of power and danger, which meant they were of no further interest to him. Instead he looked again at the little body, and thought of a miko with storm colored eyes, and the way that neither she nor this girl had ever seemed to be afraid of him. It was a pity, because that fearlessness deserved better than lying bloodsoaked and dead on a packed dirt road, unknown and unremembered. The child had done her best to take care of him, poor as those efforts had been. He remembered her smile when he’d asked her how she’d been injured. He’d never known her either. It was a pity. She had deserved better.
From behind him Jaken asked if he wanted something with the girl. He quietly dismissed the question, but when he’d turned from her to leave he found he wasn’t able to make himself walk away. Her smile, and the way he’d been unable to make her run from him, and another girl climbing from a mess of poison and melted bone and yelling at him, and his father, and his mother, and the sword at his hip - a thousand things were running through his mind. As he stood, unable to act and unable to leave, he wondered when he had started doubting himself. For him it wasn’t really too late, unless he wished it to be.
Tenseiga seemed to pulse at his hip as he turned back and drew it, and by its power saw the pallbearers of the dead. Interesting, he thought, finding as he saw them how a sword that did not cut might be able to raise the dead. He swept the sword through them to test this new theory, and as they crumbled into wind he heard the girl’s heart begin to beat, and her first shuddering breath. Very interesting, he decided, and knelt down next to the girl as her body readjusted to the processes of living and healed itself. Gently he lifted her off the road.
It was very odd, to find such satisfaction in a sword that had nothing to do with killing, an heirloom that he’d always assumed to be his father somehow mocking him, after having spent so much of his formative years teaching him how to kill. Perhaps there was something of value there after all. He was used to inspiring fear, but as the peasant girl looked up at him with confusion and wonder but no fear in her brown-black eyes he wondered for the first time if he truly was missing something, to live that way. Deliberately, again, he shoved down thoughts of the other girl, with her arrows and her fearlessness, and decided he might as well take this one with him, just to see. He was not in the habit of doubting himself, and he refused to start now.
-
The timeline is gonna be a little more stretched out than it is in canon, and Kagome is gonna be a little older. I'd love to hear from any readers in a review!