Work Text:
When Kagome was 13, she got breast cancer. It sucked. Big hairy orangutan balls
sucked
. The doctors prescribed surgery and some light chemo. 5 months later, Kagome was cancer free and was missing a boob.
Oh well
, she shrugged,
that’s how the cookie crumbles
.
She learned to sew and got some padding to even out her bras, and soon it was as mundane as brushing her teeth and wiping her ass to stuff her bra in the morning. Sometimes the scar hurt a bit, but otherwise, life went on rather uneventfully. Well, until a topless centipede lady yanked her down a time portal 500 years into the past, that is.
If anything, faux-boob was convenient. It was free storage on her chest! She could put sewing pins, small knives, hair pins, arrow heads, or just about anything else with a mild point into the padding. By the time she had helped defeat Naraku, made a 3 year round trip in time, and married Sesshomaru she had all but forgotten that wasn’t normal for most people.
Which made the events that unfolded after her widely gossiped about, scandalous marriage to said Lord of the West, the most powerful youkai in the region, all the more interesting.
It all started with some disgruntled ex-suitor of Sesshomaru’s following Kagome down a wooded path, and ended with a dainty dagger planted firmly in Kagome’s breast. The inuyoukai’s self-satisfied sneer was short-lived as Kagome looked down with only mild bewilderment instead of cries of agony. Much to the youkai’s horror, Kagome pulled the dagger out of a bloodless wound and threw her hands up in annoyance.
“What the fuck, dude?” Kagome posited, using the knife as a pointer finger. “Really? I thought those laughs at my jokes at dinner last night were genuine.” Kagome scoffed as she examined her breast, tsking. The youkai woman was too busy trembling in disbelief to listen to Kagome’s grumbling about how she would have to sew not only the padding, but the kimono as well.
“How is this possible?” The inuyoukai choked out, barely above a whisper, her eyes as wide as saucers.
Kagome didn’t even listen as she put the dagger back in her boob for safekeeping as her royal garb didn’t allow for pockets. The youkai slumped to the ground, beginning to feel faint. “I suggest you take your shit and flee the grounds, because I’m going to tell Sesshomaru what just happened, like, right now .”
The woman scrambled up off the ground on shaky legs and was out of sight before Kagome even turned around and started back to the castle.
Whispers of the assasination attempt gone awry on the Lord’s strange miko bride spread through the youkai court like wildfire. Sesshomaru, though beyond furious at the insipid little bitch for even attempting to take Kagome’s life, saw opportunity in the odd rumors infecting his court. He subtly started a few rumors of his own (with the help of Jaken and Rin), fanning the flames and stirring up discord. Youkai at all levels would linger around corners, murmuring in hushed tones about the bizarre bloodless wound and the almost supernaturally flippant way the miko had handled the attempt on her life.
Some skeptics speculated that perhaps the miko had simply been wearing an armored plate, or that the reports of the wound puncturing the miko’s chest were exaggerated, that the assassin simply had been too weak to do the deed. With no shortage of slighted hopeful suitors of the great Lord Sesshomaru, a second attempt was quickly set in motion.
Conspiring to catch the Lady of the West off guard, a visiting youkai followed Kagome back to her chambers, where she surely wouldn’t be wearing any armor. She was given safe passage through the corridors behind the lady, biding her time. She was determined to go straight for the heart.
“I have a kimono I think would just look stunning with your eyes, Lady Yuki, here, let me see if I can find it —” A turn, a swish of fabric, and another dagger was lodged into the miko’s chest.
Kagome groaned angrily, “Seriously? Again ?” With a reiki fueled shove, Yuki found herself slammed against the wall. She watched in abject horror as Kagome yanked out the dagger with nary a wince or a drop of blood, and threw it deftly at the youkai’s shoulder. As the Shikon miko, Kagome’s aim was legendary, so she didn’t even glance up to make sure the dagger had dug itself through the woman’s kimono and into the wall, pinning her in place. Yuki went limp, slipping into a state of shock as she realized with growing dismay that the rumors were true.
“Guards! Can someone come fetch Lady Yuki? Yeah, no I’m fine— she did try to stab me though.” She fondled her pierced breast in annoyance, and even, to Yuki’s revulsion, pressed her finger into the wound to feel how deep it went. Lady Yuki was as limp as a ragdoll by the time the guards dragged her out of the chamber.
Instead of beheading both assassins, as was Sesshomaru’s first wish, he decided that perhaps the smarter move was to let them live to spin their tall tales. And right he was.
The rumors of the Lord’s unkillable miko wife spread to all corners of youkai society and even filtering into stories humans told each other around the fire on dark and stormy nights. They trembled at the thought of the dark magic she must employ to achieve such immunity, as she often spoke in tongues unknown to even the most well learned scholars.
“I heard she’s the direct descendent of Lady Midoriko, and her reiki is so powerful it replaced her blood.” “Well I heard she consorted with great ancestral spirits to learn such a strange tongue!” “I heard if you stare her in the eye for too long she can drain your youki and absorb it as her own power.” “I heard that she controls the lord with her strange magic and he will do anything she commands.”
The last one was admittedly not far from the truth.
Sesshomaru smirked as he lounged in their bedchamber, recalling these tall tales while he saw his wife stab her fingertip accidentally with a needle while sewing her bra pad. “Shit!” she spat and put her finger in her mouth to stymie the blood. He chuckled dotingly and wrapped her finger with a cloth.
She threw him a dirty look, placing a needle in the disembodied breast in her lap she was using as a pin cushion to unspool more thread. “If you didn’t have so many pissy exes I wouldn’t have to keep patching this thing up. I only have so much thread, Sesshomaru! I can’t keep sending Inuyasha through the well to get me some more.”
He sprawled beside her, twirling a lock of her hair between his claws, “They are hardly ‘exes’ as you say, my dear; merely petty girls who feel robbed of a title they never had a chance of obtaining.”
She hid a grin as she continued to sew, “What sucks is both times I thought we were becoming friends. They were listening to me and paying attention! I thought they were cool!”
Sesshomaru nodded and smiled against her neck, “You are correct. Such betrayals were entirely not ‘cool’ of them indeed.”
She turned to him as he gazed up from where he nuzzled her neck. “You’re really starting to get the hang of modern slang. It’s pretty cute.” She kissed his nose.
Golden eyes widened, then quickly narrowed, and Sesshomaru sat up with a dastardly smirk. “Teach this one the language in your books yonder.”
Kagome’s brows furrowed. “English? I’m not an expert or anything. Why? It’s not like the dialect I know is going to be useful to you for another 400 years or so.”
“This one has an idea.”
Some months later, the visiting northern lord almost broke his neck twisting it when he heard Lord Sesshomaru speaking in the strange language with his bizarre miko as they passed by. The Lady of the West was only beginning to show in her pregnancy, but her Lord refused to leave her side, the prolonged proximity apparently granting the Lord the power to speak in her wicked otherworldly tongue.
Kagome spoke in a low whisper, more slowly than she would have in her native tongue, “‘
Should we give him a scare
?’”
Sesshomaru nodded, face void of expression, belieing nothing, “‘ Always, dear one .’”
Lord Ryuusei hadn’t believed the rumor of the supernaturally powerful miko bewitching Lord Sesshomaru, but he was beginning to wonder if they spoke true. Every time the Lord and Lady conspired, it was in this inscrutable code no court scholars could understand. Scholars had scrambled to their scrolls, desperate for some clue to decoding the mystery: an ancient dialect perhaps? But to no avail.
Court members and scholars panted in desperation to know the powerful secrets so confidential they must be exchanged in such a code.
Kagome smiled to her husband while walking past a group of reposing diplomats in the garden, “‘ How are you today ?’”
“ I am greatly .’”
“‘ It’s just ‘great’ not ‘greatly. ’”
“‘ Ah, ‘great’ then .’”
The nearby diplomats’ conversation sank like a stone in a pond. No one picked it back up.
One particularly enterprising scholar claimed it sounded similar to the ‘English’ language from the lands beyond the mainland, but they did not sound similar enough to put stock in his claim. He was likely lying anyway, as no one else had heard of such a language.
Ryuusei feared that truly nothing could be done to separate Lord Sesshomaru from the influence of this miko. As he watched them, the lady tripped lightly and her lord caught her about her waist before she even had a chance to gasp. Ryuusei saw him chastise her, but her returning smile reflected no real weight behind his admonishments. Ryuusei shook his head and decided that such things were beyond his understanding, and it was best to leave it be. Even he could admit he feared her wrath.
The rumor mill reignited with vigor when Kagome gave birth to the Lord’s first son, and the servants saw her topless for the first time. To the servants’ relief, she had reverted to their mother tongue for the birth.
“Sesshomaru, can you please stop hovering and bring me some blankets for Souta? He’s spitting up a lot.” The soiled blanket fell away, revealing the scar where her breast should have been. In her lap, sat a peculiar padding embedded with a small dagger and two arrowheads. Sesshomaru didn’t notice the servants’ bald-faced stare at first as he made a motion with his hand, dismissing them to go find the necessary items.
The servant froze for just a moment before heeding their lord’s commands. Sesshomaru’s eyes lazily narrowed, thinking briefly before coming to a conclusion. As he stroked Kagome’s hair, he mused in a quiet voice, “This Sesshomaru does not think the servants were aware of your missing breast.”
Kagome stopped fussing with Souta for a moment before replying with disbelief, “There’s no way they didn’t know. I’ve never tried to hide it!”
He chuckled quietly, before reaching down to stroke his son’s cheek. “I think the rumors about you safely quashed any efforts to understand the ‘how’ of your continued imperviousness to stab wounds.”
Kagome slumped a bit against the pillows. “Fuck. If this gets around then they might take another stab at killing me again. How am I gonna nurse a baby and throw these daggers you insist I keep?”
Sesshomaru merely smiled and nuzzled her neck. “Don’t worry my mate. I think we can use this to our advantage.”
Kagome cocked an eyebrow. “Is this another one of your brilliant ideas? Like how you decided to learn English to freak out your court members? I think marrying me freaked them out enough...though, I can’t say it hasn’t been fun messing with them.”
Sesshomaru’s smile widened into a cunning smirk. “It is something like that.”
By the time that Kagome’s bedrest was over and she came back to court, the rumors had exploded. All court members ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. Sesshomaru privately basked in the mayhem.
The servants whispered in back corners; nobles conversed with trembling voices in corridors; commoners outside the palace exchanged stories in horrified undertones. None could walk the Western Castle’s grounds without warily looking over their shoulder, lest they accidentally miss the Lady’s presence and forget to bow in respect.
“I heard she cut it off ceremoniously to make her a better archer and offered it up to Midoriko!” “No, no, my cousin who works in the kitchens said she cut it off one day during archery practice simply because it got in her way!” “To be in the path of her fury must be a grievous place to be indeed!”
As Souta grew older, the rumors only grew in outlandishness, soaring to frankly ridiculous heights. She was a veritable goddess, or one of hell’s minions, depending on who you asked. She once sent food back to the castle’s kitchen for being a little overcooked and she later encountered the chef in absolute hysterics, begging for her forgiveness. It had taken her almost half an hour to talk him off the ledge.
One day, Kagome stormed into Sesshomaru’s study, Souta in her arms. “Sesshomaru, this is getting out of hand. You want to know what I heard a servant say today? Apparently , she overheard me speaking incantations over Souta to make him impervious to attacks! I was only muttering to him in English to practice the new vocab we’re learning!”
Sesshomaru barely looked up, but she could see his satisfied smile, “Mate, this is not a bad thing. It will keep pests away from our son.”
Kagome threw up her unoccupied hand in exasperation, “I don’t like it! It’s not like I’m a kami!”
“But my dear, you are in fact a goddess. I worship at your feet every night.”
Kagome huffed for a moment, annoyingly deflated. After a second she gave him a lopsided smirk, “I’m a goddess only for you, my love.”
Neither of them noticed the terrified servant who came to bring her lord his tea turn tail and run for the kitchen, a fresh new piece of gossip on her lips.
Epilogue: 1860
Lord Ryuusei burst through the doors of the lord’s study, effectively startling Sesshomaru and Kagome. “My lady! I have some very serious questions for you. I have just heard the American delegation speak for the first time, and it sounds peculiarly like that infernal language that you and Lord Sesshomaru have always spoken! How is it possible you speak the same tongue as these invaders?”
Kagome cut a sharp glance to Sesshomaru, setting down the embroidery she had been practicing in her lap and poking her needle into the padding on her chest. Ryuusei has long since stopped wincing when she did that, knowing it was a false breast, but he still found it unnerving that the Lady could do it so casually.
“ Should I tell him? He is your right hand. Surely telling him the truth won’t hurt anything at this point .” Sesshomaru shrugged and replied in Japanese, “Go ahead, mate. Perhaps it will finally put him at ease with you.” Ryuusei sincerely doubted that , but he was eager for the answer.
Kagome pulled in a deep breath, then stated calmly, “Ryuusei, I’m actually from 500 years in the future—ah, well, now I suppose only about 130 years?” She tapped her chin with her finger contemplatively.
Sesshomaru shrugged, still perusing a document on his desk, “Give or take.”
Kagome shrugged back at her husband before continuing, “I was born before the turn of the 21st century — by the way, buy stock in Apple in about a hundred years or so—” What the fuck? Ryuusei nearly said aloud. He too had picked up some of Kagome’s odd phrases, especially the swears. “—and I traveled back in time, reunited and banished the Shikon jewel, then married Sesshomaru. The rest you know.” She waved her hand, satisfied, and picked her embroidery back up to continue working.
Ryuusei blinked before launching into a barrage of five centuries worth of questions. Kagome answered them all patiently, and eventually, Ryuusei seemed to run out of steam. He had sat down in a chair half an hour prior, and he was bent over, his elbows on his knees. His eyes flicked to the pins in his lady’s chest, and he took a deep breath, before coming to a decision.
“My lady, if I may ask, how did you come to lose your breast? Was it in this time or before?”
Kagome laughed, bright and loud. “I was wondering if you were going to get up the courage to ask me about that.”
Her face turned a bit pensive, as she mused, “It’s from a childhood illness. The breast was sick with disease, so my doctor gave me something called chemotherapy. It’s like a kind of poison that I took in hopes that it would snuff out of the disease before it did me. Then to make sure that the rest of my body did not become sick, we agreed to remove it. I was thirteen years old when it happened, barely a girl really.”
The longer Kagome talked, the more horrified Ryuusei looked. He jumped up out of his chair, exclaiming “You took poison willingly?! To rid your body of disease?!”
Kagome just smiled faintly, replying gently, “It’s a fairly common practice in my time. You’ll see.”
Ryuusei physically paled, and his mouth gaped like a fish for a few seconds. Finally, he composed himself, though still visibly shaken. “My lady, I mean this with the utmost respect. You truly are a monster to have survived such an ordeal. You have given me a great deal to think about, and I will take my leave.”
Kagome looked gobsmacked while Sesshomaru chuckled lightly. “Well, my dear, while that did not go as planned, he has the answers he was looking for.”
Rather crestfallen, Kagome sighed piteously. “I was hoping to get on better terms with him!”
In his haste to leave, and ignore his Lord and Lady’s ensuing conversation, Ryuusei did not see Young Lord Souta come around the corner, searching for his parents to talk about the upcoming trade agreements.
Souta watched Lord Ryuusei with wary eyes as the man wandered out of his father’s study muttering to himself. When Ryuusei noticed Souta, he started badly, then quickly bowed before continuing to sputter about gods and monsters who live among us. Souta shook his head and continued into the study, initial topic of conversation forgotten.
“Mother, what did you say to Lord Ryuusei now?” Kagome threw down her embroidery and raised her hands defensively as if to say ‘ I didn’t do anything! ’ but Souta didn’t pause. “You know the rumors about you are only going to get worse. It’s ridiculous what they say about you. Obviously, none of it is true. He was muttering just now about you being a god or a monster. I mean, for kami’s-sake, how can you be a goddess? You walked into the same wall twice last week!”
Wheeling on his sire, he narrowed his eyes and huffed. “And you Father, you should do something to stop these falsehoods! They are outrageous and surely after over 200 years of this bullshit you’d think they’d have petered off by now!”
Sesshomaru blinked at his son before throwing his head back and roaring with laughter. He continued to laugh until he had to clutch his sides and put his head down on his desk. Kagome just rolled her eyes and ignored her mate, picking back up her embroidery and plucking out her needle before beginning to sew again.
“Ignore your father, little one— and the rumors; they have their uses. We stoke the flames of some rumors occasionally, but mostly they circulate on their own. And you know your father Souta: he enjoys the chaos. It is what it is.”
Souta’s mouth gaped briefly before a familiar mischievous gleam lit up his eyes. “So if I encourage rumors about myself and my own mate, it’ll help keep any future children of ours safer?”
Sesshomaru’s guffawing grew even louder as Kagome heaved a sigh and let her embroidery rest again in her lap. “Please don’t make it any worse than it is. The court and servants already spread too many damn rumors about you, too.”
Souta merely smiled, a broad, fangy grin, and breezed out of the room. “But the more we try to quell the rumors, won’t we look even guiltier? After all, we are the gods of legend, right Mother?”
“And your mother spoke the moon into existence, do not forget that one, son.” Sesshomaru helpfully offered.
Kagome stood to follow her son, smacking the back of her husband’s head as she got up. Sesshomaru’s laughter only grew in volume, as Kagome shouted after her son, “Do not go around saying that. You don’t know who might hear you!”
Just around the corner, the former Eastern Lord and Lady and their 3 attendants exchanged glances in mild horror and morbid fascination. They had been headed to the lord’s study to discuss how the changing laws of Japan’s opening would affect regional trade agreements, but it seems that they instead overheard something far more interesting.
When they turned the corner, Kagome saw the knowing look in their eyes and internally cursed. She turned to her husband and pointed at him imperiously. “ You had better be prepared for the next 150 years of this shit, Sesshomaru .”
Sesshomaru sat up, took a big gulp of air, and wiped his eyes before reaching for his mate’s hand. “ There is no one else I’d rather weather the storm with, my love .”