Chapter Text
Sesshoumaru had never considered himself to be a tolerant creature. Such things were beneath one so esteemed as he.
So why, then, did he find himself tolerating not just his mutt half-brother’s presence, but her chatter and their incessant bickering? For the fourth time in an hour, his hand flexed into claws before he forced it to relax. Were it not for the miko’s connection to the Shikon jewel and her ability to reduce the number of corrupted fragments floating about presenting possible danger to his ward, he would have abandoned the group long ago.
No, not abandoned.
He would have cut the mutt down to spare himself the indignity of ever tolerating his presence again, and then ripped the throat out of the woman just to ensure he would never have to hear her strident, incessant voice rising in volume yet again. Even with quite a bit of distance between them, the annoyances far below his cloud of youki, her voice cut through the air with the high pitch in her indignant retorts. Why she resorted to such volume when she was literally on the whelp’s back for faster transport was beyond him. And the whelp’s tolerance. He truly had no idea how the hanyou wasn’t deaf from it.
“I told you that it wasn’t a good idea, Inuyasha!”
“Keh! You just said that because Kikyou was involved. We needed her help and you know it.”
“I said it because—”
Sesshoumaru forcefully tuned it out and rose higher in the sky after a gesture to Ah-Un to maintain its position at the middling altitude with Rin and Shippou, his senses scanning for threats ahead. Hardly anything could pose a threat to him, but tearing into something with his claws might calm some of the irritation bubbling up within him. Better to tear into enemies than into the nuisances useful to him, no matter how vexing they were.
As if in answer to his bloodlust, a cacophony of screeching crow youkai burst out of the trees ahead of them. One corner of his mouth curved up in the slightest degree.
“Hn.”
Desires answered, Sesshoumaru surged forward on his cloud to meet the horde of birds. The feathered youkai were only slightly larger than ordinary birds, but their claws curved viciously and sharp teeth peeked out as they screamed. His composure never flickered, expression never changed, but each slash of his claws brought a satisfying slice of death to the cloud of small bird youkai. Tearing through the flesh of enemies did indeed sate some of his irritation.
“Keh! What a pain.” With his half-brother’s curse, the bickering finally ceased.
Sesshoumaru’s attention never wavered from the flock of monstrous birds pressing in on him. Tiring of the direct physical blows—it did get boring after a time—he flexed his claws and drew out the acid whips with a thought. The birds screamed and their flesh hissed in a satisfying symphony beneath his blows, but no matter how many of the monstrous birds he destroyed, the number didn’t seem to falter. Strange.
His cold killing focus shattered at a scream.
Rin.
His golden eyes snapped to the girl where Ah-Un had landed in retreat, overwhelmed by the flapping and snapping youkai. And there, so small on his back with her soft, chubby arms raised in pitiful defense against the birds, cried Rin.
Annoyance forgotten, Sesshoumaru surged down towards his wailing ward, his silver hair streaming behind him. The crow youkai seemed to sense his distraction and packed so densely in front of him that he lost sight of Rin for a moment he would forever deny as terrifying. The cold precision of his strikes became a wide streak of death to clear the way, and when the air cleared, the worry for his ward eased. Kagome now stood in front of the children to shield them with her own body. She had pulled them from Ah-Un’s back to huddle them against his flank, and he could see small hands pulling the thick blanket kept on the dragon youkai’s back for Rin in the cold air over their heads.
The crow youkai screamed their rage at Kagome, diving and clawing and biting at both Ah-Un and her. The dragon youkai’s scales deflected their attacks, but a myriad of wounds striped the miko’s skin. The iron scent of her blood reached his sensitive nose, touched by the strange bright scent that accompanied the use of her powers. The miko swung her bow like a club, a pink tinge to the air surrounding it. Every crow it brushed upon and even those merely in proximity disintegrated into ash. The air around her began to clear of the monstrous birds.
Having gained the seconds she fought for, the miko reached up with one hand and smeared the blood dripping from her brow with a clear patch of her forearm, her movement seamlessly continuing over her shoulder to snatch an arrow from her quiver.
The corrupted youkai seemed to multiply around Sesshoumaru again to slow his descent and close the line of sight to the ground. He was certain now that a fragment had to be involved in the unnatural onslaught—without a fragment, the birds would have fallen quickly to his strength and that of the mutt. Whirling in the air to drag death behind his claws and win space to move, Sesshoumaru startled as a streak of bright pink light brushed past him close enough to leave a tingling path across his skin. Only ashes remained where the crow youkai had been an instant before. The arrow, shining blindingly bright, found its mark with impressive accuracy—Kagome had buried it in what seemed to be a very specific bird, that to him looked exactly like all the others—and the bird screeched with echoing rage before fading into ashes.
Only a shining fragment hung suspended in the space it had flown in.
Sesshoumaru snatched it from the air before any of the lesser youkai could pursue it, the sudden silence around them almost deafening. The flutter of feathers and thump of lifeless bodies followed in a morbid rain, until only the heaving breaths of Inuyasha and the human miko could be heard. Jaken shuddered where he huddled under a blanket next to Ah-Un. Sesshoumaru, of course, had not broken a sweat during the battle, nor sustained any wounds.
Kagome’s knees gave out underneath her as he descended to step lightly onto the ground, silver hair gleaming spotlessly without a hint of gore or dirt. In a voice so low that only she could hear his words, he offered begrudging praise as he came even with her. “You did well protecting Rin, miko.”
The child poked her head out from behind Kagome, tears welling up in her eyes despite her best efforts to hold them back. “Lord Sesshoumaru.” Guilt wasn’t a familiar emotion for the Western lord, but her whimper reached directly into his chest, wrapped chubby little fingers around his highly guarded heart, and pulled. One of her small hands clutched at Kagome’s sleeve while she reached the other to bury her fingers in mokomoko’s soft strands. “Rin was so scared.”
He knelt, paying no mind to the miko for the moment, and reached out one hand to brush the back of his fingers across Rin’s unmarred cheek. “You are safe now, Rin. Worry no more. This one will not allow harm to come to you.”
The fox kit slipped out from behind the miko, his green eyes spilling tears down his face as he wailed. “Kagome!” Rin seemed to take his tears as permission to let her own tears fall and voice rise.
Suddenly, Sesshoumaru had two crying children in front of him. His usual window of tolerance distinctly excluded wailing children, but while it had been a simple battle for him, the two small ones had been helpless. He could not empathize, never having been so weak himself, but he could understand nonetheless. He stared blankly down at the noisy children.
“Oi, pipe down, you pipsqueaks! It’s all over.” Inuyasha stalked past them with a grumble but turned course abruptly at Sesshoumaru’s cold glare. Something at the edge of the field seemed conveniently interesting to him and he rapidly moved away from that danger.
Kagome glanced up at Sesshoumaru’s blank face staring down at the crying children, and he was certain he saw a flicker of amusement in her eyes and the twitch of her mouth. Still, she saved him from having to make any attempts to soothe or quiet them himself. She gently gathered them both into her arms and crooned words of comfort into their ears, heedless of her own wounds. “It’s over now. We’re all okay. That was so frightening, wasn’t it?” The intensity of Rin’s tears and Shippou’s wailing gradually began to lessen under her comfort.
Behind Ah-Un, Jaken rose from his hiding place. The instant Sesshoumaru heard the toad take a breath to complain, he turned a glare so cold and fierce on the minion that the words died in his throat. Satisfied, the inuyoukai turned back to the bleeding miko and crying children. None of her wounds looked particularly deep, but blood smeared across her skin from several open cuts. He catalogued the damage to her brow, the curve of her cheek, her shoulders, her limbs both upper and lower, and the torn edges and spreading splash of red on her garments suggested that at least one had successfully wounded her abdomen. In one smooth motion, Sesshoumaru lifted the miko, children still in her arms, onto Ah-Un’s back. “We will find a place to rest. Come.”
Inuyasha made himself useful for once and found a clearing next to a running stream for the party to settle in. That was the extent of his help, however, as the hanyou retreated to a high limb overlooking their space with a “you good? Might wanna clean up a little” thrown over his shoulder in Kagome’s direction. The hanyou paid little attention to them after that, intent on treating the few shallow wounds he had sustained. The mutt seemed to be holding a grudge over the earlier argument.
Sesshoumaru relegated the children to Jaken’s care with a withering glare that promised punishment should the toad undo the miko’s progress with calming them. He turned back to find that the miko had slipped past him to kneel by the stream, dipping a length of cloth she had produced from her backpack into the water. She wrung the cloth with a wince and a hiss of breath through her teeth and proceeded to gently dab and clean at her wounds. The wound on her wrist that had made the movements painful came first, and she had no difficulty with the other wounds to her forearms. Sesshoumaru stepped forward at her next wince and took the cloth from her hands without a word.
The miko stared up at him in surprise. He had never paid heed to the color before now, how her eyes held the sky within, but even with the pain clouding her face, they demanded to be seen now. “You’re—you’re helping me?”
Sesshoumaru began to wipe the blood from the wounds on her arm with systematic precision, golden eyes evaluating each wound as it became clearer. He kept his eyes on the work of his hands as he answered. “You bear these wounds in Rin’s stead. I do not let her wounds fester.”
Kagome’s hands rose in protest to grab the cloth back from him. “You really don’t have to—” His steady golden gaze stilled her, free hand guiding her hands back down. “I’m used to treating myself,” she said, her voice softening. “It’s just how it is these days.”
“Hn. Not today.” He brushed the edges of her sleeve up to expose the source of the bleeding through the torn fabric. Two wounds intersected in a cross, the flesh at the edges of one ragged where a crow had torn its teeth into her. She stiffened and inhaled sharply, but didn’t fight as he cleaned it. She said no more, only gritted her teeth and moved as he prompted her with insistent hands and short commands, one hand pressed against the wound on her abdomen.
Sesshoumaru rinsed the cloth once more as he finished cleaning the easily accessed wounds on her arms and shoulders. “Close your eyes.” His ministrations moved to her face. Some of these would scar, he was certain, the one on her brow and the ragged one on her cheek especially. Her fingers clenched into her skirt but no complaints fell from her lips. Finally, the only wounds left were those obscured by her clothing. The bloodstains suggested a shallow few across her shoulder blades, and one more severe on her abdomen. “Miko. Move your garment so I may complete the task.”
She tried to snatch it back from him with a squeak. “I can take care of it now!”
He only stared and waited her out, golden eyes gleaming with threat of force if she failed to cooperate. Slowly, her hands lowered to the edge of her shirt, and she resolutely turned her face away as she lifted it enough to expose the wound. Raw, tender flesh glistened in the gash, a trail of blood still seeping down her pale skin. It didn’t appear to have been deep enough to damage muscle. While he hadn’t been rough with any of the wounds, he carefully cleaned around this one with a gentle pressure before folding the damp cloth and pressing it against the wound. He said nothing as he continued to apply the pressure, but his sharp eyes evaluated the sheen of sweat on her skin, the scent of pain layered in the miko’s summery scent, the evenness of her pulse.
Nothing life-threatening.
After several minutes, he checked the wound again, and the bleeding had slowed enough to allow him to wash away the blood around it. The miko leaned and reached into her bag. It took her a moment to successfully pull out the neat roll of bandages. Sesshoumaru took it from her without a word and bound the worst of her wounds to the best of his abilities—which turned out to be passable but not particularly impressive. He rarely sustained wounds, after all, so he had little experience treating them.
Kagome took back her roll of bandages, gaze flickering up to his for an instant before she turned her face down towards her backpack and spoke in a quiet voice. “Thank you.”
“Hn.” Perhaps one member of his mutt half-brother’s group was tolerable after all.