Set Me Free by trinity3000
In the West
"Father this is no laughing matter. Why did you allow the council to appoint such unfit investigators to such an important task," asked the enraged heir to the west.
"I told you already, I did not have a say in their choices," Inutaisho replied while still chuckling at his enraged son.
"Obviously you think that I have not studied the council protocol. You made the motion for the investigation; therefore you had the final say on the appointments. You could have objected to their nominees," countered Sesshomaru.
"You may know the protocol, but you fail to look beyond the written laws to what such an action can cause," Inutaisho explained. "Two of the nominees are relatives of the lords. How do you expect me to say that their relatives are unfit without causing a landslide of bad feelings and potential backlash?"
"I see your point on the two females, but what about the half-breed," questioned Sesshomaru, who was not yet ready to let the issue drop.
"I could not deny his nomination without losing face to the council and that is not something that I can afford to do," replied the lord.
"Ah, so there it is," said a now very smug Sesshomaru. "You muddied our bloodline with Inuyasha and now once again I have to pay the price!"
"Stop being so dramatic," Inutaisho snapped. "And stop speaking of your brother like he was a mistake. Hanyou or not, he is my son and deserves respect. I will not let you or those assholes on the council put him down!"
"He is a filthy abomination..." Sesshomaru started to rant, but was abruptly cut off when he was picked up by his throat.
"I suggest you stop there before you say something that cannot be easily forgiven or forgotten," Inutaisho snarled. "I have had it with the disrespect that you give to me by your refusal to accept your brother. He is of my seed just like you and is therefore deserving of respect. He maybe hanyou, but he will be the strongest hanyou of this generation, mark my words!"
Inutaisho flung Sesshomaru away from himself. He wanted his son to stumble and fall so he would be forced to recognize his father's strength and dominance, but no such luck. The graceful younger lord easily spun through the air and landed on his feet. He turned around to face his furious father.
"As you wish father, I will not speak ill of the half-breed in your presence," Sesshomaru stated and left the room.
Inutaisho groaned and rubbed his temples. How could he teach his son to show respect to hanyous, humans, and females? This was an ongoing problem in their household. He was praying that this Naraku was as brilliant as Lady Touran proclaimed. Maybe he could prove to Sesshomaru that hanyous were worthy of respect.
Sesshomaru headed for his chambers to prepare for his departure. He was angry with his father, but that was nothing new. He had been angry with him for years. Everyone thought that it was because of his hanyou brother and that was partially true, but not the whole story.
Sesshomaru had always admired his father for being able to put up with his mate, Sesshomaru's mother. He knew that his mother had been evil and cold. He had learned that she had once played the part of the charming submissive bitch in order to secure a powerful mate, but her demeanor had changed soon after her station was secure. She gave her lord one heir as was expected. After the birth of Sesshomaru, she had moved into her own quarters and refused to share a bed with her mate. Sesshomaru had been young, but very attentive. He saw all that went on and heard their yelling and arguing.
He had suspected that she had taken a lover. One day he had the misfortune to glimpse them together with his own eyes. Unfortunately for the pair, so had the elder lord. Inutaisho captured the young male and tortured and killed him in front of his mate. It was his right by law. No one took liberties with the mate of a lord, even if the female was willing. Sesshomaru's mother went crazy in her rage and grief and tried to kill her mate that night. She attacked him in his quarters. She had worn a cloak which hid her face. Inutaisho knew it was her by her scent, but the guards did not take the time to identify the intruder and the lord did not identify her for them. When the guards heard a scuffle in the lord's room, they rushed in and took immediate action. They killed her swiftly.
Sesshomaru was not sad for her loss. She had never acted like a mother towards him. He became extremely close with his father through those years and the years after. Inutaisho trained Sesshomaru in all the things he needed to know to run his lands. They were as close as a father and son could be.
Then his father met a woman, a human woman. At first Sesshomaru was shocked, but when he met her for himself, he realized that she worshipped the ground that his father walked on. He had never seen a woman so attentive or loving. He was happy for his father. It didn't take long for Izayoi to become pregnant. Sesshomaru was not thrilled with the idea of a hanyou brother, but he tried to keep an open mind.
When Inuyasha was born, Inutaisho was extremely happy, but with all of the prejudice against hanyous he became over protective of the pup. He looked at everyone as a potential threat, even Sesshomaru.
Over the next few years, Sesshomaru watched his father pull away from him and make a family with his human "wife" and hanyou son. Soon, Sesshomaru felt like an outsider around the family. He decided that he did not want to lose his father, so he would try to make an effort to build a relationship with his younger brother. Not being an overly emotional or fun loving kind of demon, he thought his best option was to offer to train his brother. This way he could help to ensure his brothers safety while getting to know him and making a good impression on his father. Sesshomaru was a harsh sensei, but he had Inuyasha's best interests at heart (at first).
It didn't take long for the hanyou to suffer his first injury. It was during sword play and it was truly an accident. Inuyasha had charged Sesshomaru and had actually impaled himself on his brother's sword. Sesshomaru had immediately tended to him and called the healers. It was an extremely close call for Inuyasha. If Sesshomaru had done anything slightly different in tending to his brother, he probably would not have made it.
Sesshomaru was relieved at his brother's recovery and actually felt that they would be able to use it as a valuable learning experience in his training. That was until his father returned from his patrols. Inutaisho did not bother to listen to the whole story about how his son was injured. All he heard was Sesshomaru had stabbed Inuyasha through the stomach and Inuyasha had almost died. He went into a full demonic blood rage. He almost killed Sesshomaru that day. He beat him, poisoned him, whipped him, and humiliated him in front of all of the troops and staff. He wanted to make an example to anyone who thought to harm his hanyou son. It took Sesshomaru months to recover from his injuries.
Inuyasha on the other hand recovered in about a week. Imagine Inutaisho's surprise when Inuyasha told him about his classic battle mistake and how wonderful his sensei/brother had been in seeing that he received the best care. Inutaisho almost whimpered out loud when Inuyasha declared that he had the best brother in the whole world. He wasn't sure why Sesshomaru had not visited over the past week while he recovered, but he was sure that his brother was just really busy.
When Inutaisho told Inuyasha that Sesshomaru had been injured on the same day as he had, Inuyasha insisted on visiting his brother. Inuyasha didn't know that his brother had been injured in his name or even that his own father had been the one to inure him. He visited his brother everyday trying to be cheerful and talking about all of their upcoming training. He thought that he was helping, but in Sesshomaru's injured state he thought that Inuyasha was mocking him. He thought that Inuyasha and Izayoi had been the ones who sent Inutaisho to beat him and now his brother was coming to gloat while Sesshomaru tried to recover. Inutaisho had poisoned him so badly that he was recovering slower then a human would. Everyday his body had to try to heal while using most of its energy to push a small amount of the poison out.
This misunderstanding could have been easily resolved by Inutaisho, but the proud demon could not bring himself to admit his error to anyone other then himself.
By the time Sesshomaru had recovered from his injuries, he was very different. He had always been emotionally guarded, but now he refused to show any emotion at all. Over the next year, he continued to "train" his brother, but he no longer wanted to build a relationship. Quite the opposite, he wanted to break his brother down as much as possible. He humiliated his brother on an almost daily basis by showing him things that were way beyond his skill level and then scolded and mocked him when he couldn't perform the maneuvers. Inuyasha's failures were leaked to the troops and the staff and he became the laughing stock of the House of the West.
After a year of this, Sesshomaru knew that the damage had been done and he told his brother that he was too worthless to continue to be his student. Inuyasha was still very young and ran to his room crying. When Izayoi found out what had happened she tried to talk to Sesshomaru, but he refused to see her. She finally barged in on him one morning while he trained. She demanded to know why he had started treating Inuyasha so badly.
He told her that Inuyasha was weak and pathetic. He said that he had tried his best to help him, but could not. He insisted that he was not to blame for Inuyasha's failures and that she should blame her inferior blood for that.
Izayoi walked up to Sesshomaru and slapped him across the face. He laughed at her as the guards seized her. Inutaisho had never officially mated her, so she did not have the same rights as the rest of the royal family. Striking someone in the family was a punishable offence. This had been Sesshomaru's plan. He had wanted Inuyasha and his mother to suffer like he had. He already had his revenge on his brother and now it was time for his revenge on his father's whore.
Had she been a demon, she would have been sentenced to 20 lashes, but being a human female her sentence was 5 lashes. Inutaisho showed up right before the punishment was administered. Izayoi begged him to stop the sentence but he told her he could not and to be brave. He had told the guard doing the whipping to go as quickly as possible so she could be taken to the healer before all of the pain set in.
Izayoi was a kind and loving woman with many good traits, but strength and bravery were never her strong suit. She begged and screamed as she was drug to the post to be chained in the courtyard. Punishments were a public affair in the West to help dissuade others from committing crimes. Once she was chained to the post she lost control of her bladder before the whipping even started. She then passed out after the first lash. Normally, they would have revived a prisoner before the lashes continued, but the guard knew that his lord wanted this over as fast as possible, so he delivered the rest of the lashes with demonic speed before anyone could stop him. Izayoi was unchained and taken to the healer, but the damage to her body was minor compared to the damage to her reputation. Sesshomaru and all of the other demons present had been appalled by her display of weakness and soon tales of the weak human woman that the lord intended to mate had spread to all of the lands.
Inutaisho had been waiting to mate Izayoi until he felt Inuyasha could defend himself. There were always threats to the lords and ladies of a royal family. Since Izayoi was not an official member of the family, it provided her a layer of protection that she would lose after the mating. Inutaisho knew he would have to diligently protect her after the mating and he was already very busy protecting his hanyou son. There had never been any doubt in his mind that he would mate her one day, but now that could never happen. Mating someone so weak would make him look weak, and he knew he would eventually be stripped of his lands and title by the other lords or Sesshomaru.
When Inutaisho told Izayoi that they could never be mated, she changed quite a bit. She knew that this was as good as a death sentence for her. Without being bonded to the demon lord, she would continue to age as a human and would eventually die. It put a permanent strain on their relationship.
Izayoi hated Sesshomaru from that day forward. She blamed everything on him. She could not see that even though he put her in the position to be punished it was her behavior while being whipped that sealed her own fate. She eventually died 5 years later from an unknown illness. She had spent everyday of those 5 years trying to poison Inutaisho against Sesshomaru, but it didn't work. As Inutaisho grew older he had started to see things differently. He could see both the good and the bad in people. He was no longer rash and arrogant like he had been in his youth. He loved Izayoi and accepted that part of her heart had become tainted when he told her they could never officially mate. He knew that she blamed Sesshomaru so he never listened to her insults about his son.
Inutaisho had started to see a lot of things, but he still had not made the connection that his unjustified beating of his son had been the catalyst for all of the negative changes in his household. He had also failed to see that Sesshomaru's hate now included all humans and hanyous. He would not realize these things for many, many years and by that time, there was no easy way to change things.
As Sesshomaru prepared for his trip, he tried to calm himself. He was the heir to the West and he knew that he had to act accordingly. He would make the best of this situation. If the other investigators were even remotely competent, he was confident that they would be able to find whoever was responsible for the recent kidnappings and killings. He would use this opportunity to prove himself once again to the other lords and ladies and it would put him one step closer to taking over the lands in the West.
A/N: This is the new chapter that I promised when I started uploading this story. Now I will start uploading the other story that I used to have on A Single Spark. As soon as I finish a new chapter for that one, I will work on a new chapter for this one. I will try to alternate between my stories to prevent big gaps in updating them.
So this chapter introduced Sesshomaru. Hope you liked his back story. Thanks for reading!!