It is Written; By Fate, and In Blood by sapphira_DoG

Prelude

Hi everyone! My name is Sapphy, and this is my first REAL attempt at a full chapter story. 

This may take a while, and you'll have to have some patience, but I promise that I'll try my best to impress or at least amuse. 

This may not look like a Sesshomaru/Kagome fiction at first, but I promise, I wouldn't post it here otherwise. It's a mix of Cannon and maybe Alternative being as it is set after the events of the Manga/TV series.

This is not for children. It is for mature adults due to sensitive issues, violence, dark subject matter, and mature situation. 

Enough with my rambling. Enjoy the opening number.

Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha.

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It is Written; By Fate, and In Blood

Prelude

The dripping of water echoed around the stone cell, the slight plip and plop of the drops forming a small trickling stream between the groves in the floor that slid along to fall through a hole to where an unseen current washed them away.

A saddened pair of blue eyes stared unseeing at the corner of her prison, hand idly stroking the tangled silver mass of hair on her lap as she observed the water that made its escape. The sound of the rain outside of the stone walls did nothing to drown out the drone of the dripping leak in the ceiling, and instead enhanced the sound to a level of unavoidable annoyance. The water also helped to enhance the rank scent in the prison, and she found herself happier to deal with the sound of plipping and plopping, rather than having to focus on not breathing through her nose. Plip-plop was a most desirable distraction.

Grubby thin fingers curled softly around chilled triangular dog ears in an attempt to warm the velvety appendages, but to no avail. Not even a twitch or a tweak of awareness. Their owner was dead-still across the floor, body barely showing signs of life. If it wasn’t for the slight rise and fall of his chest, flushed from a fever that was slowly eating away at his body; she would have thought him dead.

Kagome mumbled under her breath and brushed a hand across Inuyasha’s clammy forehead, sweeping thick bangs away from his eyes. A soft, crackly moan left his throat but his eyes didn’t open. She glanced down at his pale face, letting her knuckles brush the side of his cheek and then down to cup his chin. The girl’s unwashed hair fell over them both when she bent to give her husband a chaste kiss to his dry lips, a single digit lingering on the rapid pulse at his neck to assure herself he was indeed still alive.

Lifting her head, she leaned back against the dingy wall with a sigh. Her kimono was ruined; torn and covered with goodness only knows what, so she didn’t care what else happened to it at this point. Looking down at the messy fabric, she came to the conclusion that in order to clean it, she’d have to burn it.

‘Otherwise, its rank fumes will poison the village…and so will the lice attached,’ she mused with little humour, trying to avoid itching her scalp. It’d be of no loss to her though, having a few others in storage. She’d made it herself years before, and it wasn’t the greatest thing in the world, but it lasted and did its job to keep her warm during the chilly fall weather.

Tired eyes drifted back over the walls, taking in the cell’s grimey appearance, with fungus thick on the stone surface where little spores of mushrooms dared to grow. It’d probably been a century since it was last cleaned.

Stale air filled her lungs with every breath, closely followed by the unwashed odour wafting from the chamber pot in the corner that was trying (and succeeding ever so slowly) to burn the sensitive tissues of her sinuses. When had they last replaced the bucket? Probably not in a century either. The rot along the base of the wooden pail told her all she needed to know, though. It was likely never.

A scream rattled the walls around her, cutting through the sound of falling water. She cringed, heart clenching from the sympathy she felt for the tortured soul, and from fear. Kagome had watched the guards come, fearing they’d come for her, before they had opened the door across from her own to drag out a cowering form. The badger demon was limp in their hold, eyes barely open and unfocused. He knew what was to come and had no strength left to fight.

A gurgled yell from above made her shoulders shake as a sob caught in her dry throat. No more sound came from the yard above them, and she knew he’d met his end at last by fire.

Youkai rule stated that the accused, if found guilty, be quartered and then burned. All the badger had done was steal a bag of dried meats from the royal caravan to the palace; a simple, petty crime that in the end meant his death.

The torch in the hall was starting to dim for the day, the oil burning down to mere fumes. Night was approaching, and soon they’d be enveloped in complete darkness until, or if at all, a guard would replace the lamp. In the nights they’d been there (by her count four now), the night watch had only replaced the lantern at night once. He hadn’t a care enough to keep up the routine it seemed. She supposed that with his night vision, a trait common to the cats of the south; he didn’t need it. Kagome, however, much preferred a dim light to the stifling darkness that threatened to swallow her whole every night, leaving her to not but her own sorrow.

Inuyasha gave a small shudder beside her, body chilled to the bone from not being able to regulate his own body temperature. The old straw underneath them did nothing to keep either of them warm, neither did the demon blood that ran through his veins. Infection had started to consume him and because of where they were, there was nothing she could do to help. She’d ran out of herbs from the pouch she carried in her robes for emergencies; the chewed marigold petals doing nothing to help the blood poisoning she knew was starting to wreck havoc on his side.

With a grunt, Kagome gently shifted his weight off her legs and onto the musty straw. The movement jarred her broken wrist, the makeshift splint around it barely doing its job as she fumbled with the sash of her outfit.

“I’m not going to leave you, Inuyasha,” she whispered. Removing the sash and shedding her outer kimono, she managed to shift her husband over before removing his fire rat robe with the tug of a few ties. Kagome wondered if he could even hear her anymore. The best she could do now was to try and keep him warm. Slipping her kimono over him, leaving herself in nothing but a thin yukata, she took the blood stained fire rat robe and slipped against his uninjured side, covering them both with its mass.

Burrowing into his side, she hid her face against his neck, quietly whispering the names of people that needed the both of them to survive and get out of there.

The only sound as the lights blew out was their combined breathing, and the sound of the rain beating against the stone of the prison walls.

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