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Sesshomaru had never been at a loss before, least of all over a victory.
And yet it was strange, almost dissatisfying this time, while in all his years beforehand victory had only ever been a forgone conclusion - the only possible outcome. The only defeat he'd ever suffered had been at his brother's hands and, not to give the boy too much credit, had merely been the result of his own hubris - a miscalculation that he was loathe to admit and did not repeat. Sesshomaru was many things, but a fool was not one of them.
It should have been the same this time. A creature like Naraku, cobbled together by the bodies of lesser demons and the perverse spirit born of a corrupt human heart, could never have hoped to measure up against a true demon. He was an abomination far beyond the mixed blood Inuyasha carried and in the end, even the damnable Shikon Jewel -a bauble far more trouble than it was worth- could not spare him that fate.
And yet, he could not refute the humans when they described this victory as hollow.
For all that Jaken boasted of following him on a path of conquest, such ambitions held little appeal now. Though when the imp questioned it, he'd almost considered the idea simply for something to do - lost without something to work towards. He could not recall the last time he had been without a goal.
Once, it had been to surpass his sire - the chance to properly do so lost to the grave along with him.
Then, it had been to claim Tessaiga, slighted by being passed over for a bastard child the man would never even know - their father's machinations on that matter long since accepted.
Even Tenseiga, the only inheritance his father had seen fit to bequeath to him, was gone. He'd accepted that loss more graciously, though it left a bitter taste in his mouth that he opted not to speak of.
There was no enemy to hunt - shared or otherwise. Naraku was gone and now few were brazen enough to provoke any of them in his stead, especially without the influence of that accursed jewel.
There were no shards to create such enemies now - the little priestess that followed his brother around had vanished in the wake of their final clash with Naraku, together with a completed Shikon. Inuyasha had accepted this loss less gracefully. A fact he knew solely as a result of keeping tabs on Rin's environment.
Rin. Once, he might have cursed the girl for her effect on him.
The child had come to him on a whim, a simple curiosity that grew to be a matter of pride and on to something beyond that, of which he would refuse to name. The girl had been almost bothersome in her doting, but her useless attempts to assist him had still been just that. For as little consideration as he'd held for humans, Sesshomaru was still a lord. Unlike his fool of a brother, he understood the concept of decorum and there was a certain respect to be had for loyalty.
It was, after all, what kept Jaken's head in tact. Usually.
Inuyasha was at least competent enough to keep his territory secure, despite his sulking.
For the first several months since Kagome's disappearance, the boy would scarcely leave the old wooden well in the forest. It was only when the leader of a floundering wolf tribe had shown up to knock some sense into the boy -and quite literally- that he'd finally stopped his moping. Or so the slayer woman had informed him on one of his periodic visits to the village.
For some time it was her who came to greet him and report Rin's well-being, or the elderly priestess - Kaede. For taking Rin into her care and under her tutelage, he supposed he'd owed the woman at least the respect of learning her name. Whether or not it was ever utilized was irrelevant.
As the months rolled by, it steadily became Kaede to greet him more often than not.
Then one day, once a full year had nearly passed, he did not scent the slayer at all. While he had no reason to question it, Kaede dutifully informed him that the siblings had departed to their own village with promises to visit. Yet the woman's scent had only faded more each time he'd visited afterwards, the monk's growing less common along with it. This was unsurprising, if his understanding that they were to wed had been correct.
Humans were flighty creatures, prone to motivations steeped in emotion, after all.
It was only the boy he saw on the following visit, and the next. Kaede need not have provided any information on this particular development - his ward had been keen on the young slayer for some time and excitedly regaled him with chatter about Kohaku's visits and the gifts the boy had been bringing her without prompting.
The boy's courtship was obvious enough to him, if not to the two actually involved.
Rin could have made far worse choices. Granting her the ability to truly make such choices had been the reason for entrusting her to them in the first place. The slayer boy at least boasted some talent and a marked resilience. The boy had survived an enemy even he had required effort to defeat. The boy had evaded death several times over, and broken free of a grasp on his mind that would certainly have broken most other humans. Her friendship with him was acceptable.
On his most recent visit, however, Rin was not there. This was less acceptable.
Least of all because of Inuyasha's abrasive greeting upon his appearance.
"What the hell are you doing here again?" the boy had demanded.
"Return to your sulking at the well, Inuyasha," he'd ordered dismissively in turn. "My business does not involve you."
"At least my visits to the well have a purpose," Inuyasha had challenged, visibly bristling. "What do you think we need you here for? The kid's doing fine without you playing mother hen."
Had it not been for the old priestess interrupting to greet him, that village might have seen its first battle since Naraku's defeat.
"You must have come to see Rin, aye?" she'd asked, though it was not really a question. "She's gone up to visit the slayer village with Kohaku."
Sesshomaru did not linger long enough to see if Inuyasha would make another attempt at provoking a pointless fight—the outcome of it yet another forgone conclusion.
He would have won, of course.
Reaching the slayer village took little time. While he'd never seen reason to visit himself, the slayers had never been an enemy to the West. To an extent, they could almost have been considered allies - at least on friendly terms with his father's vassals, most notably Myoga, cowardly pest that he was.
Their destruction was yet another insult from Naraku.
"What a pitifully empty place," Jaken muttered upon their arrival.
Once a bustling village, the land was almost desolate as he walked through the front gates - the wood of which was fresh, indicating it had been newly erected. The ground itself was even, freshly tilled, though he could still pick up the lingering scent of blood within the soil. It would take many more rainy seasons to wash away the remnants of the massacre that scarred this land.
Jaken wandered in ahead, still muttering to himself. "Now, where is that girl…"
A gravesite stood near the entrance, the burials small and bare, but clearly tended. Fresh flowers sat atop the mounds announcing as much. A nearby dip in the ground, where the soil was packed a bit more tightly, marked a pathway - unfinished, but likely prepped for paving later on.
The nearby sounds of an active forge was the most immediate sign of life. More distantly, Sesshomaru could hear the excited chatter of his wayward ward. Jaken seemed to have found her a moment later, given his loud chastisement of the girl, which was promptly followed by a squeal of his name and an offended squawk.
But that was it. Only the slayers and Rin were there to fill this place. With the boy on the road so frequently and Rin only a recent addition, it was almost a marvel that even this much progress had been made in the reconstruction. Something was missing, though he could not pinpoint just what felt so out of place when it was already so empty. There was little that they weren't lacking.
"Lord Sesshomaru?" a voice questioned from behind. The slayer woman - Sango.
Sesshomaru's gaze slanted towards the woman as she exited the adjacent building to greet him. She did not wear the armor he'd seen her in on their last meeting, but the same casual style of kimono she had when their travels had intersected. If the patchwork and threadbare state of the fabric were any indication, it was likely the same garb exactly.
Briefly, he wondered what drove him to recall that much.
A bandana kept her hair from her face and her sleeves were rolled up, tucked beneath her elbows in a way that suggested she'd been working the forge she had just exited. The flush of her skin and the soot that stained her clothing confirmed as much.
"Slayer," Sesshomaru acknowledged.
Sango inclined her head. "Are you here for Rin?"
"She was not at my brother's village," he said simply.
"Ah, yes. She's been spending time here recently," she admitted, then furrowed her brow a few seconds later. "I thought you knew."
She remained undaunted as he regarded her. "I was not made aware."
"Well, I'm sorry for that," she apologized, looking irked for a moment before offering him a smile. The expression wasn't bright and bursting with energy like Rin's often were, instead softer - subdued and polite. "But she's certainly welcome. I must say, she's a quick study, and very talented with herbs."
That came as no surprise. Right from the beginning the girl had freely wandered the forests, despite Jaken's quite vocal ire, already keenly aware of how to survive and sustain herself. It hadn't occurred to him until quite some time later just how young she'd been for a human to already have such skill. At the beginning, it had simply been part of why he allowed her to stay. She was self-sufficient, unburdonsome, and that lack of inconvenience was all that had mattered at the time.
The glint of a reflection caught his eye, disrupting his musings. A glance through the window found a stand with a glass top - a display boasting a variety of baubles, rings, bracelets, amulets, all made of the same steel and demon bone as the weaponry that had been set aside to cool.
"This is not common ware for slayers," he intoned and Sango turned to see where his attention had gone.
"We need resources to rebuild," she replied, "and funds are harder to come by with only the two of us. Some of the material is too small for weapons or armor, but we can't afford to waste anything right now."
Sesshomaru considered this. It was a very mortal predicament.
"Luckily, nobles will pay the same coin for trinkets to flaunt as they do weaponry for their soldiers. Sometimes more." A grin curled the corners of her lips - a look of mischief that he thought she might have picked up from the companion he'd last heard she was to wed.
He suddenly realized why the arrangement seemed so strange.
"The monk did not join you," he observed.
"Oh, that-" she paused, an array of emotion flickering through her eyes - thinly concealed, if at all. She heaved a breath a moment later and gave a short shake of her head. "Well, things didn't quite work out the way we thought they might."
Sesshomaru inclined his head just slightly. The slayer was sharp enough to recognize the gesture for the minimal interest that it was.
"It's easy to make plans for a future you don't truly expect to have," she offered, inviting him in with a wave of her hand.
Not for the first time -nor any number in the top five if he were honest- Sesshomaru found himself indulging a whim of curiosity and followed the woman. The inside of the forge boasted even more than the displays beyond the door, dotted with what looked like clutter to an untrained eye. Were the village not otherwise empty, it might have almost appeared to boast a bustling commerce.
"We always had a common goal before, with Naraku and the jewel," she continued, kneeling to stoke the flames of the hearth. "But now mine is to rebuild."
"The monk's was not," he extrapolated.
"Miroku wanted a family. To rebuild in a different way, I suppose." She paused to set the bellows aside. "I wanted that too, but there were other things I wanted to do first."
He wasn't certain why this was a problem. "This made you incompatible?"
This time, her smile held a touch of sadness to it. "I couldn't continue my work as a slayer and give him children at the same time."
It was a simple enough conclusion. "He did not desire to wait."
"No, and I don't blame him for it," Sango admitted, wiping the sweat from her brow. "The circumstances were unfortunate, but I realized once it was over that I never felt as alive as I did while we were traveling."
And yet here she was, locked away in the shell of a village and toiling over a forge. This woman was somehow simultaneously in her element and wasted in this place.
As if hearing his thoughts, she heaved a sigh. "When I thought about it later, it occurred to me that even before everything, I only ever felt that way when I was out on the road, taking jobs. I miss it."
He was struck by the urge to question why she confined herself to her village in that case - another whim. One he quelled, for the answer was obvious.
"Perhaps you'll think it silly human sentiment," she added, though he had not asked, "but it gave me a sense of purpose."
Purpose. There was that word again. Perhaps it was one of the few traits he could -however begrudgingly-acknowledge in humans. However nonsensical, they were also quite goal-oriented creatures. Of course, their goals were frequently shortsighted and foolish. Their methods to achieve them often more so given how fragile their kind was.
This woman was no different, he realized. She had, after all, already proved herself prone to foolish bouts of self sacrifice. "You stay here for the boy."
She gave a noncommittal hum. "Being bound here would hurt Kohaku more. Being on the road, taking work as a choice is good for him."
"It is not your desire," he stated simply.
"No," she confirmed. "But he's my brother."
She looked at him expectantly. Sesshomaru stared. A moment later, she appeared to realize just whom she was addressing.
"Oh," she said with a blink, "I suppose you don't share that particular sentiment."
Sesshomaru opted not to reply and the slayer did not push, instead leaving him to his quiet assessment of her craftsmanship.
"They make a good pair, those two," Sango said suddenly, drawing his attention to follow her gaze outside. Across the grounds, Rin watched with rapt attention as Kohaku demonstrated how to use an herbal repellent while Jaken stood to the side, looking thoroughly put out by the entire affair.
"Humans are prone to emotion," Sesshomaru noted. Several seasons ago, it might have been an insult.
"Perhaps we are," Sango conceded, "but if Kagome taught me anything, it's that that's not always a weakness."
Rin gave an excited wave of her freshly lit smudge stick and Jaken toppled with a squawk. The mask that the girl had been provided did nothing to muffle the laughter that burst from her at the sight of the imp's misfortune. The slayer boy recovered first. While Rin was still doubled over, Kohaku stomped out the still smoking stick and waved another herb under the imp's nose to rouse him.
The slayer only gave a quiet chuckle as the sounds of commotion continued. "Rin will likely never be a warrior, but you still value her."
Sesshomaru considered her a bit more closely.
"It's no different than any of this." She turned from the window and gestured around the room. "Jewelry, weapons, armor- even the tools that we use to make them. They're all different in power and purpose, but still valuable."
He supposed she wasn't much different - the only one of her comrades who held no power to fall back on, neither spiritual nor demonic, and yet this woman boasted a ferocity even he had grudgingly come to respect.
She inclined her head towards the display that stood to his other side. "Those rings might end up an enchanted tool for a monk or a wizard, or they might simply remain mundane trinkets with no power beyond making their keeper happy."
His gaze drifted back out the window, landing once more on Rin.
Sango came to watch the pair alongside him. "They're no less forged by fire."