Chapter Text
Inuyasha had clearly gotten knocked in the head by some random dead thing and was currently bleeding out on the side of the road. That was the only explanation for what he was currently facing.
“Glad you could finally join us, Inuyasha.” It was good to know that Sesshōmaru had not lost the ability to sound both bored and contemptuous at the same damn time.
“W—w—what…” Great. Inuyasha was having trouble forming words, too.
Brain damage could be a bitch.
“I presume by your stuttering nonsense that you had not expected to find my Kingdom as you have…” Sesshōmaru actually rolled his fucking eyes when he spoke.
“I don’t think anyone who walks into the ‘Dead Kingdom’ expects what they see, dearest.” The small wind demoness said as she placed her hand affectionately on Sesshōmaru’s shoulder.
When the fuck had Sesshōmaru realized that affection was a real thing that he was capable of actually experiencing?
This was why Inuyasha would just wait to wake up from this coma nightmare he was clearly suffering from.
Because… residents of the Dead Kingdom were supposed to either be in thrall to their cruel lord to work or part of the bloodthirsty militia that kept visitors out. Not…
“Wow, it has been quite some time since we saw our last visitor, friend!” The first man had declared; he had a pushbroom mustache and bloodshot eyes. He was sitting on the stoop in front of his hut and enjoying an ample helping of sake; an ambling skeleton dragged what appeared to be a gnarled branch of a tree toward a large pile of wood. “If you’re looking for the Lord and Lady, just continue on this path!”
If it was only the one, Inuyasha would have thought he had just passed by some random warlock who had emigrated to Mt. Azusa to join in the necromancy.
It happened again.
“Ah, Sir Inuyasha, valiant brother to our great Lord!” This time it was a small woman who had tied her gray hair up in loops and wore a teal tunic tied with a wide cloth belt and white pants. Another skeleton in the background was stooped over a bucket of soapy water, sliding fabric up and down a washboard. “Lord Sesshōmaru and Lady Kagura are in their palace, atop the mountain!”
By the time Inuyasha had encountered the fifth happy villager with the skeleton pulling weeds in the garden, he started to suspect that he had come down with some sort of head trauma from falling off of Kirara.
What the fuck was going on?
Head trauma was the only explanation.
“You look stupid on most occasions, but at this moment you are outdoing yourself.” Sesshōmaru’s exasperated deadpan snapped Inuyasha back.
Right. He had marched up to his brother’s castle entirely unmolested. On the way, villagers all seemed to point him toward the mountain. Some even offered food or water to him.
And the skeletons. Every-fucking-where.
Skeletons in the fields weeding.
Skeletons mucking the stalls of stables.
Skeletons repairing carts and hauling hay.
Skeletons sewing garments and feeding chickens.
No one could deny that they were necromancers.
It was more… the manner in which they were necromancers that had never quite been communicated to the outside world.
“Be nice.” Sesshōmaru’s lady actually smacked him with the closed fan in her hands. “If calling on your brother is not what brings you to Mt. Azusa, might you tell us why you are here?”
“He’s here to fight us, Kagura love.” Sesshōmaru had just used love to describe an actual person. “Perhaps even kill us?”
“Oh. He looks too out of sorts to be scheming something like that,” the Lady Kagura replied. “I have a suspicion I know what brings you to our door, Inuyasha.” Kagura’s red eyes narrowed, and a smirk appeared on her face. “Sir Inuyasha, so it seems.”
Right. The quest. The rescue. The title.
Kidnapped Kagome.
“I’m here to free your captive, asshole.” Ohhhh it had been far too long since Inuyasha got to call Sesshōmaru that!
“Captive?” Kagura’s eyebrows raised and Sesshōmaru’s frown deepened, but they looked… puzzled. Genuinely so.
“You fucking kidnapped Princess Kagome Higurashi! I can smell her here!” Cherry blossoms in the spring were not things a dog nose easily forgot. “So… why the hell did you do it? What the fuck did she ever do to you?” Inuyasha was on a roll. “You guys make this place scary as hell so no one dares challenge you then you sneak into someone else’s kingdom, and just steal their fucking princess?”
“Inu—” Kagura started to speak. Inuyasha immediately interrupted her.
“No! Kagome is sweet and pure and kind! She would never hurt anyone, and would not even blink to find out that you two were using dead people to… to… do unnatural things!” Inuyasha probably needed to stop, but he had a really really good rant going… “Did you hear about her betrothal and decide that you could extort Prince Hōjō into paying you fucking something?!” The rant was taking on a life of its own! “Well listen here suckers! The engagement is off! Yeah! I got that deal thrown out all so I could see you dear brother and kick your ass until you returned her to me!”
“Inu—” this time Sesshōmaru tried and failed to get Inuyasha to stop.
“So let’s do it! You and me! Fuck your dead army! Fuck the fact that you always beat me up and tweaked my ears and called me a bastard! You took Kagome!” Inuyasha drew his sword, and he pointed it at Sesshōmaru. Who… did nothing. “I’ll get her back! Fight me asshole!”
“Inuyasha!”
Wait.
That voice.
It wasn’t Sesshōmaru, who looked constipated, probably from trying to express emotions.
It wasn’t Kagura either, who had opened her fan to… to shield her laughter.
Nope, that voice, that sounded like chimes in the wind, that sang with laughter and kindness, that once asked Inuyasha to marry her.
That voice was Kagome’s.
Inuyasha wheeled around to the source of the sound, and saw her. Kagome was dressed in a regal deep green dress as a guest of the crown, with flowers dancing in her hair as it cascaded elegantly down her back. At Kagome’s feet were Inuyasha’s red-haired squire Shippō, and his fire-cat mount Kirara, who had returned to the size of a housecat.
Kirara mewed pleasantly. Like the little betrayer that she was.
“Uh… sounds like… I might need to fill you in on some… things,” Kagome explained—god she had started to blush.
“That you do.” Sesshōmaru rolled his eyes. “Before my brother… ‘fights me.’”
Inuyasha did not like that everyone in that fucking room had started to chuckle. Sesshōmaru did not know how to have a sense of humor; this was not happening.
Artwork commission by clementinesgulag
“Kagome kidnapped herself!” Shippō declared, as he bounded back to Inuyasha’s side; Kagome joined Sesshōmaru and Kagura on the dais. “She told me when you were swearing at your brother and your sister-in-law.”
“Half-brother,” Inuyasha and Sesshōmaru shot back in unison, which made everything worse.
“Full sister-in-law,” Kagura interjected. “I do have a question for you Inuyasha, before… we continue?” Before Inuyasha answered, Kagura continued. “You said that you freed Kagome from her betrothal. Would you mind explaining what you mean?”
God now Inuyasha was blushing.
“Uh well… Hōjō summoned me. And he was crying and going on and on and all that…” Inuyasha was not doing well with the explanation. But his brain was using up all its reserves trying to understand what the fuck was going on all while not declaring his undying love for Kagome. He was not a thinker as-was, more a whacker, and apparently he was not going to get to whack Sesshōmaru. “I made him make me a proper knight—that’s right asshole! I’m a recognized Taisho now!—and to give me a squire and lotsa gold and stuff and… to let Kagome choose for herself who to marry.”
“Seriously?” Kagome had some combination of astoundment and hopefulness on her face. “You got him to agree to that?”
“In writing!” Shippō proudly declared, and scurried up to Kagome with the letter Hōjō had given to Inuyasha.
“Oi! Ya pickpocket!” Inuyasha growled, but the damn fox just shot him a look.
“Freed. Inuyasha you… freed me.” Kagome’s eyes were wide, and they glimmered.
“The garden is beautiful at this time of day.” Kagura nudged Kagome. “I’ll get our little helpers out of the way for you. I don’t think Inuyasha is… used to the way we do things here.”
“But I was so looking forward to having to match wit and power with… my half-brother.” Sesshōmaru being sarcastic was far far scarier than Sesshōmaru being a necromancer.
“I’ll still wipe the floor with you, asshole!” Inuyasha snapped back, but when Kagome approached him, and beckoned him to follow, he immediately stopped the posturing and fell in line behind her.
“I told you he would come,” Kagura whispered into Sesshōmaru’s ear as soon as Kagome and Inuyasha had closed the veranda doors, to be alone in the garden.
“I owe you… what was it, love?” Sesshōmaru purred, kissing his beloved’s lips. “A massage?”
“Trim your claws,” Kagura had replied.
When Lord and Lady exchanged an impish grin, Shippō and Kirara politely (and rapidly) excused themselves to “check out the castle” (spying on the garden technically counted as checking out the castle).
“You came for me,” Kagome said, sitting herself down under the wisteria arch, her glisten brown opal eyes fixed on nothing except for Inuyasha.
“You’re damn right I came for you,” Inuyasha replied. “To rescue you. So uh… so can you tell me… what the hell is going on?”
“I decided to run,” Kagome answered, as if that was any sort of fucking answer. Inuyasha might have been dense, but he had picked up on that. “When Hōjō decided to pick me, I decided to run.”
“But… you’re a princess, aren’t you supposed to marry the prince?” Inuyasha tried to keep the frown off his face; he failed.
“Right. Yeah. That is what princesses normally do, don’t they?” Kagome chuckled uncomfortably. “But I… couldn’t. Can you imagine being married to Hōjō? He talks endlessly about herbs that don’t work. And he writes the most horrendous poetry in the world and… he has not so much as swung a sword!” Kagome groaned. “How is one such as him supposed to promise to protect their wife if they can’t hold a broadsword or hit the broad side of the castle with an arrow?”
Inuyasha’s frown was definitely now a grin. He could swing a broadsword and he could hit the broad side of a castle with an arrow.
“So… one day, when I saw Hōjō in the courtyard with Eri, I just… decided to go away.” Kagome shook her head. “I wrote a letter with my left hand about kidnapping myself and headed off to Mt. Azusa. Because no one would be stupid enough to follow me into the Dead Kingdom.”
“Wait, so you just walked out of the castle?” Inuyasha gawped. “By yourself? Then walked through the woods at night toward my asshole brother’s Dead-people Kingdom?”
“My name means caged bird.” Kagome scowled. “I figured, I might as well get to choose my cage. And being held hostage by your brother seemed a good way to—“
Kagome stopped and threw her hand over her mouth.
“To what, Kagome?” Inuyasha really really hoped that this conversation would keep going where he thought it might be going.
“To… run away…” Kagome had turned the same shade of red as the roses along the wall. “... with you.”
Okay, so pulling Kagome immediately into his arms and kissing her like his life depended on it was probably not the way that he should have reacted to the declaration, because he was, after all, a knight, and a guest in his brother’s kingdom (apparently). And grabbing the other guest—a Princess—and assaulting her lips with his lips was bad form.
But he did it anyway.
Better yet? She kissed back with near as much hunger and longing as he felt!
“Jeez Inuyasha, at least wait until you find out if she had more story! Yech…!” Inuyasha was going to skewer the fox and roast him on a spit. With a single glare, Kirara and Shippō both disappeared in a blur of color and giggles (the fucking cat giggled at him).
But before Inuyasha could stand to chase after them, he was being embraced again, and kissed again.
“You came for me,” Kagome sighed after finally relinquishing Inuyasha’s lips.
“Of course I did!” Inuyasha chuckled back. “You always were a whole pile of trouble, princess.”
“So were you, sir!” Kagome shot back, and laughter became kisses became more laughter. “Knighted and titled by my clueless ex-fiancé…”
“Yeah, so… I’ll take it you’re not planning on returning to your Prince?” Inuyasha probed. He was probably failing at playing it cool. But he’d made some of the stupidest faces of his life already that day, what was one more?
“I thought I already had a fiancé,” Kagome beamed, but there was an edge of earnestness to it that focused all of Inuyasha’s attention. “I remember… when I was 11, asking a certain someone.”
“Yes!” Inuyasha was absolutely not playing it cool.
“Well then…” The worst possible voice broke the moment. God, Inuyasha wished that they had let the facade go on just a moment longer, just enough time to get to throw one punch at his brother. “It appears that we should figure out what comes next. Since apparently you can inherit from me now.”
“And don’t forget that your wife adores Kagome!” Kagura’s voice came from just beyond the door.
Was everyone spying on them?
“Yes yes… my wife adores Kagome.” Sesshōmaru scowled, but Inuyasha did not miss the micron-sized smile that his brother was trying to hide.
“I’ll do whatever Kagome wants,” Inuyasha said, unbelieving that his princess was still curled up in his arms. “But… I still wanna get to fight you, asshole.”
“That can be arranged,” Sesshōmaru said, and he turned and swept back into the castle.
Dear Prince Hōjō,
Inuyasha has kept his part of the vow. He has rescued me from his brother, as you requested. I thank you for agreeing to allow me to break our betrothal, and follow my heart. Because by the time you receive this letter, I will be a woman wed to the second prince of the House of Taisho, Sir Inuyasha. We will be remaining at Mt. Azusa, where we are taking up places in the court.
Shippō and Kirara have agreed to stay as well, having pledged lifelong service to Sir Inuyasha. They send their best wishes to you as well.
You are welcome to call upon us at any time you wish.
With Love,
Kagome
Hōjō could not tell if he should vomit or if he should rage at the letter that he was sent, but… he did neither, because it had been delivered to him by a reanimated crow. And he was worried that if he showed the crow weakness, it might attack.
Instead, it dropped completely dead when he took the letter from it.
“Necromancers…” Hōjō shivered as he returned his attention away from the literal-carrion back to the letter. “All of them, necromancers.”
He probably should declare war on the Dead Kingdom, but in all honesty, he was way too scared. It was just better to stay home and cut his losses. Kagome was a necromancer too, apparently. That was reason enough that Hōjō had made the best decision ever in agreeing to break the engagement.
Honestly! Who needed a necromancer for a wife?
“Eri.” Hōjō tested that name on his tongue.
The Duke’s prettiest daughter had visited him a lot to comfort him when Kagome was kidnapped. She seemed to like to hold his hand and hug him and once her hand brushed his thigh really really close to his groin and it felt very nice. And to Hōjō’s knowledge, Eri was not a necromancer.
Yes, he thought, Eri would make an excellent princess.