Challenges, Drabbles, & Oneshots...(part 2) by r0o by sugar0o who lurks

Was it Worth it? - Drama/Slightly Dark/Family

An: for SKYE's weekly Challenge: Regrets, YUS that fast!

Rating: T, Summery:  *mentioned rape*, Character death, Kagome wonders if 'it's worth it.' before finding her answer.

Was it Worth it?

Music thumped wildly like a living heart beat in her ears, smoke and lights all around, her eyes were on anything but those who watched her every move. Deep down she wanted to cry, she wanted to rip their eyes out for daring to look at her. But she instead she undulated a little more, shook her breasts a little harder, allowed a little more of herself to slowly die inside.

Was it worth it?

The question was what her mother had asked as she kicked her out of the house, only seventeen and pregnant with Inuyasha’s child. Her journey to the past was over, and her mother, loving and forgiving as she had been refused to believe that she had not actually wanted the treatment she had been given. The actuality of it, was that she had been raped.

Yes, things had started out consensually, but soon it had gone from pleasure to the most painful thing she had ever felt, and was it enough that her blood had been split in the process, was he sated? No. She had nearly died in the because of the act, found by Sango the next morning and kept there to heal while her lover and rapist had gone off into the woods ashamed of what he had done. He had in the end gone to hell with the clay thing in shame.

None of them had known it was Inuyasha, and all she had ended up with was a beat up sword that did not work for her, a lost virginity, and as she was soon to find out a stolen future. Wasn’t it enough that she would have no hopes of a getting into a good college because of the shard hunt, but this too? She had not thought that fate could be so cruel, and then she remembered Karma.

Finally figuring that this was the penances’ she was paying for all of Kikyo’s sins, with the jewel, with Inuyasha, with all of the countless souls that would never be reborn. Sometimes Kagome wondered how much Kikyo’s fake existence had unbalanced the hall of souls. Either way, she was paying for her incarnates crimes, and the only way she could make a living as a damn near high school drop out, a young unmarried mother, was to be a stripper.

Was it worth it? Her mother had asked her that just as she had slammed the door in her face. Not believing that she had actually been raped. Where were the bruises, the cuts? All the things that should have been there. She had never gotten a chance to tell her that it had happened three weeks before and that none of the remaining tachi would let her come home until she was healed up.

Her body moved on it’s own accord her mind lost in thought, the former miko did not notice the youkai in the crowd, the golden eyes boring into her scantily clad almost nude but still glorious body. She was in her own little world, safe from the leering eyes, safe from the taunting calls, a world that existed before the jewel, without Inuyasha, without the pain and heartache, when she was just a little girl and all she was, was her father’s princess and the apple of her mother's eye.

Over the stale scent of alcohol, sweat, and arousal, Sesshoamru could scent out the un-fallen tears, held at bay with practiced ease and he wondered how many times she had forced herself not to cry. Her fate was one that she had not deserved. He had found out not more then a moon cycle after she had gone never to return all that had happened, all that his brother had done to her, because her tachi had known, how he had left her, how he had broken her. He hadn’t known the year in which she would have come out of the well, and so he had watched and waited.

Getting caught up in business and life he had missed her coming back, he has missed saving her from her own mother. And when he had found out he had not been pleased.

The bitch, had told him that the girl had asked for it. He had heard many times in the past how wonderful the women was, but it seemed that she had perhaps pinned her hopes on either a fairytale, or something else, not perhaps a pregnant daughter coming back. She had regretted it, and yet she could not bring her pride down enough to save her daughter. She was a stranger that the well had spit out instead of the sweet innocent girl that it had taken in.

Sesshomaru had rebuked her for her idiocy, telling her the exact details as they had been told to him, and he had relished in her unease and knowledge that she had finally betrayed the girl. She was his pack, and his only family at this point. There were so few who knew of youkai now, even fewer that knew him, and yet she had known him then, would know him again by the end of the night.

He had hunted her down, finding the medical records, of a birth of a son, born at home and brought in, there was no doubt in his mind that he offspring had youkai features. He watched curiously as the miko’s body ground against a pole as she displayed herself for all the hungry eyes around them, watching as money was thrown up around her, watching as she more fully retreated into herself. He regretted that he had been late, that he had not been able to spear her something like this.

He had already paid her contract out. She was no longer and employee here but they had not had time to stop this performance. It was all well and good, that she didn’t know, he could scent his nephew was somewhere in the back and sooner rather then later in a lethargic mindset the miko collected her wages from the dance floor and sashayed her way off stage. The large dai not far behind her. He made his way back into the changing rooms, the bouncers already knowing he was coming to collect the favorite, the tragic one, the miko.

He caught the scent of tears having finally fallen, and the soft sound of a young hanyou saying, “It’s okay mommy, everything will be okay. I promise.” as he opened the door. Large gray haunted eyes looked at him, while large innocent golden eyes did too. His breath nearly caught at the sight of the child, three years old nearly to the date. He looked more like his own father, the former Taishou then Inuyasha. Looking at the woman he had been searching for since she vanished half a millennia ago, he didn't know what to say.

Grey and gold locked in a battle of wills as she instinctively pulled her son closer to her, the twenty-one year old looking at the male that had at one time hated his own halfbrother’s life so much he would end it at any moment over a sword. Had she known what he would do to her, she might have let him, and yet, at the same time, she would be without her own son. Her eyes slid close, breaking contact and submitting first. She was tired of fighting, tired of paying for crimes she did not commit. When she looked back up at him,  he could see she looked more broken then he had ever seen her before.

Deciding he did not like such a look the daiyoukai brought his eyes to the child. A small conversation with the boy, and his mother left her looking at him differently, as though he were a god. He had not had eyes feast upon him in such a way in so long it was almost forgotten. The look in her eyes of relief, and it was worth it. Bringing the two non-mortals into his care they left that place never to return, to write a new story, a better one then the one they had been forced to live.

Her story, paying for the sins of a former life, and his, finally learning that there was no honor in being alone.

In the end maybe it was worth it.

End AN: i'm tired @_@ i just wrote this too.... in the last 45 mins...