Sesshomaru x Kagome

Chapter 29: Confusion

The night sky was dark and cold, the stars were dim to his golden eyes instead of a blaze of brilliance as they had always been. Sesshomaru stared at the sky in the garden, Mizuki long asleep in his arms, secure and warm as he held her against his chest.

Sesshomaru held her all the tighter as he felt the uncertainty of tomorrow close in all them. Turning his gaze downward, Sesshomaru found his eldest child superior to any night sky he had ever seen in his thousand years of life. How had he created something so beautiful? He felt unworthy of her, her siblings and their mother. He was unworthy of them all, even though they were the greatest treasures he had ever been given.

Yet, he was not held as the same by Kagome and that hurt more than he ever thought it would. He knew that she was hurt by his past deeds and words, but he had hoped that their truce had allowed her to develop something towards him.

But no, his brother was still all she wanted even if she wasn't willing to admit it to him.

It burned in him that the one he loved still love his brother...his weak and useless brother. How he longed to tell Kagome that he had broken the one she loved and that his brother was now useless.

Or that would be the case if Kagome was a demon. But she was a human and wouldn't abandon Inuyasha as easily as that for another protector. No, knowing Kagome as he knew her; she would stand beside Inuyasha and instead being protect by his brother would become his brother's protector.

Sitting down on the grass, Sesshomaru stared at his little moonlight and wondered if Kagome longed for their daughter to be his brother's instead of his. A sharp pain pierced his chest again at the thought. He knew that another open wound had been sliced across his heart at the thought, but he could not help but imagine Kagome in a loving relationship with his brother with Mizuki as his brother's child.

It was so painful to know that his brother would have gained what he had longed for. Sesshomaru realized how much of a fool he had been in the past. He should have courted her all those wasted years ago, he should have made her long for him and his touch but he had been a fool; afraid of becoming his father, he had his mother arrange a mating that had been nothing but a misery to him.

He noticed water suddenly dropping on Mizuki's face and looked up in confusion to why there would be rain when there was not a cloud in the night sky.

It was only more fell upon his daughter's face, awaking her from her sound sleep to look up him. When she touched his face, he realized what the water was and was shocked by it.

Tears.

He was shedding tears, something that he had not done since he had been an infant in his mother's arms. Disgust lurched in his gut for the weakness that he found in his tears. When Rin had died a second time, he had cried because he had been blinded by the desire to have power and it had cost someone he cared for deeply because he had been so blind. He had been such a child chasing after a firefly, a dream that wasn't real.

But Sesshomaru wasn't going to be a child anymore and he wasn't going to cry about this anymore. He was just going to have to change everything.

oOo

Hotaka stared at Sesshomaru, unsure of what to the boy in front of him. For that was what Sesshomaru is to him, a boy that was thrust into a role that he had not been ready for at too young an age. It was not an uncommon thing in their world of blood and violence for a child to be forced to take on a role that they were not ready for. It was something that he had always disliked about their and the humans' society.

"My brothers-within-the-law will give you aid if I agree, to which I have but you know that we will not be enough against the great lords."

"I know, my army is not what it was during my father's time." Sesshomaru informed.