Throwing a few more shirts onto the laundry pile, Kagome hefted up the heaping basket and shouldered her way through the noren curtain. Outside, the biting air of early morning struck her full in the face. If she hadn’t been wide awake before, she certainly was now. As she picked her way down the porch steps, Inuyasha dogged her encumbered path.

“You sure you don’t want me to go with you?” he asked her for the third time that day. “Let me carry that stupid basket at least—it’s too heavy for you.”

As he started to reach for it, Kagome veered from him with a little too much vehemence. Her hip smacked the porch rail. Her heart leapt into her throat as her foot nearly missed the last step. Completing it, she rounded upon him.

“I told you, I can manage,” she snapped, more out of lingering panic than real irritation. Although, she thought, he was being objectively irritating. “Go on—Miroku-san and the others are waiting for you.”

Inuyasha’s frown deepened. Realizing she’d been too harsh with him, Kagome retraced her last step and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“Go on,” she said again, softer this time. “I’ll be fine.”

Mollified, her husband sprang down to the grass. “All right—I won’t be gone long.”

Smiling tightly, Kagome nodded. Inuyasha took off. Toward the edge of the village she could just make out the flames of Kirara’s hovering form. In a matter of minutes he disappeared with her and the others over the dark northern horizon. Letting out a short sigh, Kagome continued her trek on to the stream.

Normally, she and Sango did their washing together to help while away the time. But one of Sango’s twin girls—and more than likely, soon to be the rest of the bunch—was down with a cold. A laundry day without company was a prospect so dreary Kagome would have found it worth putting off for a little longer, clothes reaching critical mass or not.

Fortunately, she knew, she was never really alone.

Stripped bare by the changing seasons, the woods lay thin and bleak ahead. Only a scattering of sentinel pines stood stout and evergreen amidst the grey. As she approached the treeline, she saw him—his pale, ageless figure reclining on a lone branch high above. The long train of his snow-white fur spilled toward the ground, curling slightly a few feet above it and glittering like his armor in the post-dawn glare.

“Sesshoumaru,” Kagome greeted as she paused near the base of the tree. Craning back her neck, she grinned up at him, shifting her ponderous basket from hand to hand. “You stick out like a sore thumb, you know.”

Golden eyes met hers steadily. “I’ve no wish to be concealed.”

Kagome’s smile faltered. Slipping down from the branch, Sesshoumaru landed lightly beside her. Before she could even think to protest, he took the heavy basket from her and set off for the stream just inside the forest’s edge.

“Hey—” Kagome began. As Sesshoumaru paused to glance back at her, she flushed and dropped her eyes. “Never mind,” she murmured, massaging her aching wrists. “…Thank you.”

As her brother-in-law resumed his course, Kagome hurried to catch up with him. Her breath puffed out before her in a little bursts of cloud. The first bitterness of winter was in the air, on the ground. Beneath the soles of her sandals, frosted grass and underbrush crunched and split, brittle as old bones. But Sesshoumaru’s footfalls were silent as usual.

“Where is your friend, the slayer?” he asked her, as the stream came into sight.

“At home today,” Kagome replied. “One of her kids is sick. I offered to help her out, but she and Kaede-baa-chan wouldn’t hear it, since I’ve got my own so-called ‘condition’ to contend with.” She shook her head. “It’s so frustrating. They’re all just trying to be considerate, I get that, but it’s too much. Even when there are helpless people out there who need saving, I practically have to scream at Inuyasha to get him off my back.”

Setting the basket of laundry down on a stretch of banked stone, Sesshoumaru turned toward her. “He worries for you.”

“I know,” Kagome said guiltily. “It’s just that…” Biting her lip, she looked away. “The truth is, I hate being pregnant.”

Her bitter sigh escaped her like a gust of bottled smoke. Mingled shame and relief flooded through her at this raw confession. Never in a hundred years would she have breathed a word of it to Inuyasha—to anyone else—but Sesshoumaru had seen her at her absolute worst and never judged her. She prayed he wouldn’t judge her now as she lifted her eyes to meet his inscrutable gaze.

“What you hate is your loss of self,” he said. “Your body is no longer yours alone. Even your thoughts are no longer for yourself, but for the well-being of the child who depends upon you.”

Shoulders dipping, Kagome looked up at him. “Yes,” she said with quaver, “that’s exactly how I feel.” Briefly, her lashes descended. “You understand—of course you do.” When she opened her eyes again, he was looking at her still. “Sometimes I think you’re the only one in the world who does.”

This second confession had tumbled out of her unbidden. Unsettled by it and, even more, by the thought of how he might reply, Kagome ducked her head and skirted past him toward the basket. Digging out the box of detergent and scrubbing brush, she knelt down by the stream. A crust of rime clung to the edges of it, where the water was shallower and mostly still. Heedless of the stabbing cold, Kagome busied herself with the washing as she babbled on ahead of him.

“It’s not like I live some life of adventure or anything,” she said ruefully, pushing her rolled sleeves up another inch. “But I guess I’m starting to appreciate how much more freedom I had before. Being pregnant just hasn’t turned out like I thought it would, and now I’m afraid—” But here Kagome cut herself off, unwilling to give shape to the formless fear in her heart. Quietly, she added instead, “I’m just a little afraid, that’s all.”

As though perceiving she wished to speak no more about it, Sesshoumaru remained silent on the subject. So silent in fact, that despite the subtle radiance of his aura, Kagome turned halfway through the rather shoddy washing job she was doing just to make sure he was really still there.

Yet there he was. Perched on the stump of a tree that had been felled so long ago it now resembled weathered stone, he extended his hand as a golden oak leaf fluttered down toward him. Stem first, the leaf landed on the tip of his outstretched claw, where it remained upright in a dizzying display of perfect balance. As though magnetized, the leaf rolled edge-first with the slightest tilt of his finger, before he transferred it flawlessly to another clawtip.

Mesmerized, Kagome stared. Almost translucent in the piercing light, his claws glowed like white jade as he continued to weave the standing leaf nimbly between them. In vivid memory she felt herself suddenly suspended—fine points denting the soft flesh of her breasts and thighs, her mouth held captive, her body stretched and straining as she ran her tongue along that slick, buried edge…

Kagome’s face flamed. Her eyes snapped to his. At the shimmer of heat reflected in them, she bent down and began to scrub again in a fury. The fact that it was her underwear she was now washing certainly didn’t help matters. Nor did the cold hard fact that he had seen it all before.

As she felt her cheeks on the verge of combusting, Sesshoumaru asked with disarming neutrality, “How was your egg today?”

The tension spilled out of her like water through a sieve. “Good,” she replied, the corners of her lips ticking up. As it turned out, Taiyoutori’s eggs were very much a mixed bag—some tasted fantastic, like dumplings or cotton candy. Others tasted like cough syrup, or the foul herbal teas her grandpa brewed to ward off flu. But they kept her sleeping through the night at least. “Today’s was pocky-flavored.”

“Pocky,” Sesshoumaru repeated, clearly unfamiliar with the term. “Another one of your grandmother’s specialties?”

“No,” Kagome laughed, as she began to layer the washed clothes and linens back into the basket. “It’s a type of candy. Shippou-kun and Rin-chan loved to eat it when they were kids, although I was never really a big fan myself. Come to think of it, I can’t even remember the last time I had it…must have been when my dad was still around.”

“Your father prepared it for you, then?”

“Ah, well,” Kagome said, glancing off toward the stream’s distant end. “It’s more like something that’s pre-prepared, by a special sort of vendor. We were out shopping once, I remember, and I was in a bad mood about something—who knows what now, but you know how kids can be. He bought some pocky for me to cheer me up. It made me feel better, though I didn’t show it.” Kagome’s expression was wistful. “I was such a brat to him. If only I’d known he’d be gone in a year, I’d have acted differently—or apologized, at least.”

“Your father is still alive.”

“That’s true,” Kagome said, feeling contrite for her self-pity when his own father had been dead for centuries. “There must be things you wish you could make right with your dad.”

“I have made my peace with him,” the daiyoukai replied in his cool, even way.

“Oh.” Frowning, Kagome hauled up the basket along with herself. “I suppose you aren’t really the type of person to have regrets.”

She was beginning to turn away when she saw Sesshoumaru step down from the calcified tree. Pinning her gaze with his, he strode toward her.

“I have my regrets,” he said, peering down at her as he drew to a stop, “of which you are the first among them.”

Kagome’s lips parted, yet no sound came out. Thickly, she swallowed, her stomach sinking like a stone. When she finally spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper.

“I know you never wanted this. I…” Her shoulders hunched, her head bowed as though trapped beneath some vast, invisible weight. “Sesshoumaru, I…”

When exactly he’d circled behind her, Kagome couldn’t say. She jumped in surprise as his arms went around her. The basket lurched in her white-knuckled hold.

“You misunderstand me,” he said against her burning cheek. His palms glided down her arms, leaving a trail of fading warmth behind. “Willfully, I believe.”

Kagome’s heart thudded as her face tilted toward his. “Sesshoumaru…”

His fingers slid past hers over the basket’s edge. Taking it, he turned from her in a swift, decisive break. Without so much as another word, he struck out for the village with her burden in hand. This time, Kagome didn’t say a word about him taking it from her. Instead, she clasped her shaking hands together and followed him along the twisting path that lay ahead.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 12/7/22

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