Absolution's Pursuit: A Sealing of Fates

Absolution’s Pursuit

A Sealing of Fates
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Sesshoumaru was true to his word; the final promise he would make to DaiGin, his great and terrible father. As soon as Inuyasha’s wounds had healed enough to allow it, Sesshoumaru began training the boy to fight and together they began to learn of the pup’s inherent abilities. Aside from the obvious attributes of his teeth and claws, they also discovered that he could create blades of wind from the very air around him and that even his blood could be used to revisit injury against the very one who had sought to harm him.

Though the training was intense for the child’s young age, it was necessary for Sesshoumaru to hold back in his counterattacks lest he make good on his promise earlier than he intended.

Though he never explained why he was training the boy, Inuyasha never questioned him on it, and was more than eager to learn all he could from the elder inu. It had been surprising to learn how much the pup’s presumably fragile body was able to endure. His fighting spirit, had been more surprising still.

Never once had Inuyasha backed away from the challenge and even though he was clearly outmatched, he never shrank away in fear. Though he was unaware of how much time the boy had spent on his own, it was clear that the time had hardened the boy. Finding acceptance neither among human or youkai, the hanyou was forced to resort to theft for his meals, maintain his meager possessions by force, and fight for his life on a daily basis.

The boy stayed with Sesshoumaru for years, training and gleaning any and everything he could from his elder sibling. In spite of the fact that Sesshoumaru showed him little regard outside of their training, Inuyasha eventually came to idolize the young daiyoukai. The boy looked upon him with love and admiration, his expressive golden eyes hiding nothing from the very sibling who had promised to take his life. The little hanyou became as his shadow, and because he did not abhor the child’s presence nearly as much as he believed he would have, Sesshoumaru allowed it.

The only times Sesshoumaru felt truly alone, was when he retired to his chamber for the evening. Often he would lay awake at night considering the promise he’d made to his father, the conflicted feelings he was beginning to have for the boy and his now irresolute will to follow through on those obstinate words he had spoken in anger.

More than anything, it was Inuyasha’s unfaltering courage and his willingness to stand up for himself, even against impossible odds that earned a begrudging level of respect from the elder inu. He began to consider the fact that the circumstances under which he was born were completely beyond the hanyou’s control and that it was very likely unfair that he, Sesshoumaru should visit upon his sibling the wrath he could not impose upon his father, the one who truly deserved the blame.

Eventually, the daiyoukai came to a crossroads within himself. No longer willing to allow his mind to be muddled with indecision, he concluded that it was time to decide the hanyou’s fate one way or another. Would he go through with the promise he had made to his father, or would he renege and raise the pup as his heir until such time as he took a mate and produced his first son?

It was a question he mulled over for a matter of days, yet before he could come to a decision, Inuyasha went missing.

Sesshoumaru all but turned the castle upside down in search of the boy and when his efforts did not produce the child he called an audience, commanding that every servant, vassal and sentry attend. In a manner which had spoke clearly of his displeasure, Sesshoumaru demanded any information as to his siblings whereabouts.

Initially there was only silence, but when the heated waves of his raging youki billowed from his person to surround every creature in attendance, an old female, a dragon youkai he remembered from his childhood moved forward. She immediately fell to her knees bowing so deeply her forehead was pressed to the ground at his feet.

“It was Ryoto!” she cried almost desperately, “He let it slip that you intended to kill the boy! I… I believe that he must have run away!”

Ryoto, the sentry of whom she spoke did not deny her words and instead appeared to completely speechless, his eyes rounded with fear.

As it turned out, Ryoto’s loose lips would change more fates than just his own. For his error, the sentry lost his life and most of the other residents of the castle lost their home.

In his anger, Sesshoumaru sent his father’s vassals, sentries and servants away informing them that they would no longer reside inside the castle. Only a faithful few servants would remain to keep up the daily maintenance of his home. The most loyal of his sentries departed with heavy hearts, yet they left him with the promise that they would continue to patrol his boarders, extinguish any threats and readily return to his side if called upon.

The young daiyoukai gave his disinterested agreement before setting off to find the boy.

For his part, Inuyasha had been overwhelmed with emotion when he discovered his brother’s plan. He couldn’t decide whether he was heartbroken or enraged over his siblings betrayal, so he decided he would be neither. He would attempt to shield himself, at least on this matter, with the same armor of ice in which his brother always seemed to encase himself.

He would leave the only place he had ever called home and never return.

It had been foolish of him to think that anyone could actually care for a half-breed like him; careless to believe himself accepted to the only family he knew. No one accepted hanyou; not humans, not youkai, and not even his own brother.

If the bastard wanted to kill him, he’d have to find him first. Hopefully by the time he did, Inuyasha would be ready for him. Years ago, he had heard of a jewel that could increase the power of youkai and even change a hanyou into a full demon…

now it was time to find it.
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Separation, it seems, has a way of changing one’s stand on things…

When Inuyasha had been habitually in his company, Sesshoumaru began to experience difficulty in maintaining his resolve to end the whelp’s life. Though he never acknowledged it openly, something deep inside of him knew that as he set out to look for the child, he was not looking for him for the purpose of keeping his promise to his father.

He was hoping to retrieve his heir.

But as the time and space unfurled and sprawled out between the brothers, Sesshoumaru began to find it progressively less difficult to harden his heart against the younger inu. He began to resent the fact that the boy had taken Ryoto’s word so easily and had not come to him to discover the truth for himself. The respect he had come to hold for the pup’s relentless courage became tarnished as he came to view his decision to run away and act of cowardice.

In reality, the daiyoukai had simply been worried, concerned for the welfare of his sibling; his heir, but such a thing was difficult to admit, even to himself and so Sesshoumaru found more hardhearted and scornful expressions to interpret his feelings of negativity concerning his brother.

Against all odds, Inuyasha managed to elude him for many cycles of the moon and by the time he set eyes on him again, the pup had been sealed to a tree.

When he had heard the tales of a silver-haired hanyou who lost his heart to a mortal woman and was pinned to a tree with a sacred arrow, he was reluctant to believe that it could be his brother. To his great displeasure however, his assumptions had been incorrect. Determined to set the rumors straight, if only in his own mind, Sesshoumaru had deciphered what he could from the various tales and narrowed down the probable places the hanyou could be.

Finally, he located a stretch of forest that bore his brother’s name where he located the boy’s unconscious body staked to an ancient tree.

Seeing the pup’s lifeless body posted there for all to see had awakened something in Sesshoumaru he thought buried along with the remains of his former lord. He recalled all of the gripping emotions that had come with his father’s betrayal of his mother, his willingness to let her go in exchange for a mortal, his selfishness in throwing his life away to save that same human female, even with the knowledge that she would only die in a few decades anyway.

Now his brother, the last living creature who shared his blood had done the exact same thing! The boy had abandoned him, run off without regard to the one he would leave behind and allowed his heart, along with his body, to fall because of a mortal.

What spell was it that these creatures were casting upon those of his line? Why was he the only one to be immune? Foolishly, he had believed his brother better than to lower himself in such a way, but just like his father before him, the great daiyoukai he had never even met, the boy had fallen prey to a mortal female and essentially lost his life for it.

In that moment, Sesshoumaru hated Inuyasha more than he ever had. He hated him for exhibiting such weakness for all to see, he hated him for not trusting him and running away, he hated him for allowing the mortal wench to shed his noble blood, but most of all, he hated him because Inuyasha had robbed him of his heir.

Besides, it was easy to hate. He’d had a lot of practice after all.

It was easier to hate Inuyasha than it was to attempt to understand the circumstances that had led him to this place. Things could have been so different, there was still so much to teach, so much more the boy could have learned, but now such things could never be.

He stared down on his brother and allowed the seeds of hatred to take root deep within his heart. He quashed the dwindling remnants of familial bonds reminding himself again and again that every person he had deemed family had abandoned him in one way or another.

He could have killed the whelp then and there.

It would have been a simple task.

Sesshoumaru knew that the boy was not dead. He realized that Inuyasha had simply fallen into a sleep from which he could not wake and it would have hardly required any effort to extend a claw, slash his throat and watch the life fade from his body.

But he would not do it.

There was no honor in killing someone who was unable to defend himself and so the young daiyoukai instead turned away. He left his brother and the forest behind and returned to his home in the west… alone.
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It was a little over fifty years later when he found out that the hanyou was no longer staked to the tree. When he finally saw him again, the young inu was like a completely different person. It was as if he had forgotten the time they’d spent together, erased the teachings of his elder sibling from his mind and remade himself into a person Sesshoumaru scarcely recognized. He did not think the time they had spent apart would have affected the boy so but apparently he had been mistaken once again.

To make matters even worse, he quickly discovered that the boy was in the company of a human female yet again. A part of the daiyoukai was greatly disappointed to discover that particular bit of information. Apparently Inuyasha was more dense than he would have liked to believe and had not learned his lesson.

Hardening his resolve once more, Sesshoumaru decided that it was of no consequence. Now that the boy was no longer sealed, his aspirations to kill him and blot the spot of his existence from his family was again in play.

Still it was not something that would be done in haste.

There was no way the hanyou would accept training from him now, so the daiyoukai would have to find another way.

Sesshoumaru was not as ill-informed as he led others to believe. He knew of the swords forged by his father and he knew that the Tetsuaiga was meant to belong to the younger inu. Though he did not realize until later the function of his own sword Tensega, he knew that Tetsuaiga was the fang of great power and destruction. If left to his own devices, Inuyasha would never have discovered the sword and so Sesshoumaru, under the guise of retrieving the blade for himself, orchestrated the events that lead to the hanyou’s claiming of the weapon.

Once the whelp had taken possession of the fang, Sesshoumaru put him to the test. He had not anticipated that the boy would sever his arm, but really, he could never fault him for it. It had been a rare miscalculation on his part, a moment of carelessness which had allowed it to occur. And even though he could never admit it to any living soul, a part of him held a strange sort of pride that the boy had been able to accomplish such a feat.

This preliminary examination would be followed by many more. He would test Inuyasha again and again at times of his choosing to see how his skills have improved and whether or not the pup was ready for their final fight.

Though he often managed to injured the hanyou, sometimes severely, Sesshoumaru never unleashed his full power on the boy. For reasons he dared not name, the daiyoukai often held back, even to the point of taking on grievous injury to himself.

In his own way, Sesshoumaru watched as the young inu mastered one technique after another. On the occasions that he did not test his brother directly, he watched as Inuyasha engaged in battle with others; sometimes in plain sight, and other times hidden.

Still the boy was not yet ready, and in keeping with his original promise, Sesshoumaru would not slay him until he was.
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Naraku was dead, and Inuyasha had mastered Tetsuaiga’s final technique over three years ago… there was no need to put this off any longer the daiyoukai reminded himself.

His young charge, the little girl he had allowed to follow him for so long now resided among her own kind in a human settlement just inside the boarders of his territory, so even she could not be used as an excuse. Not that the child was able to influence his decisions, but he held no particular desire to frighten her with his impending actions.

Sesshoumaru was on the cusp of expanding the boundaries of his territory and forcing the lords of the other regions to recognize that he was truly a force to be reckoned with. He would soon take a mate and sire an heir, but before he could do so, the stain that blotted his family’s honor needed to be erased.

It was time to fulfill his promise. He would challenge Inuyasha to this final duel and this time he would not hold back. If the boy managed to hold his own against him, Sesshoumaru would consider the honor of his family cleansed through Inuyasha’s display of fortitude and any blood he managed to spill. He would then reclaim the boy as his heir and together they would return to the west.

If not, Sesshoumaru would not spare Inuyasha, not this time; this time… he would kill him.

Though he was solid in his decision, if not the outcome, the daiyoukai could not help but notice the heaviness in his heart and the weighted pace of his stride as he made his way to the small village the hanyou frequented. He would not turn back from the course he had chosen. He would not break the final promise he had made to his father unless there was just cause to do so. He needed to get this over with, he had put it off long enough.

The inu lord crested a small hill and as he cleared the forest and broached the borders of the village, he was forced to ignore the fowl smells of the many humans who resided there and press ever forward. When at last he came to the small hut in which the old miko resided, he saw Inuyasha perched upon its roof.

The strange little priestess, the one that had always been by his side was nowhere to be seen, but the huntress now heavily pregnant and the no longer cursed monk were nearby and stared at him openly, clearly wondering why he was here and what he planned to do. As for Inuyasha, the hanyou immediately stiffened when his eyes locked with those of his brother. They stared at one another for a long tense moment before Sesshoumaru finally murmured the words that would decide the hanyou’s fate.

“It is time.”
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