Noble House

Sango stared up he che ceiling of the cozy room that was now hers. Kagome had pretty much told her to stay with them as long as she would like, and that this room would always be welcome for her. The raven-haired miko had laughed and said that Inu Yasha overestimated the number of children they were likely to produce, and had built a way to large home for all of them. Kagome had confided that two was enough for her tastes for now after making Sango promise not to tell Inu Yasha. It had been good to see her friends smiling face, but she couldn’t help but be saddened and worried after what transpired between herself and the demon lord the previous day. What if she ended up with child? ‘No, that’s unlikely’ she told herself, ‘ conception of a hanyou is exceedingly rare, despite the common tales of humans and youkai mating in some way or another.’ Sango had asked Kagome how she had found out that she was with child, hoping the answer had been either Shippou’s or Inu Yasha’s sensitive nose. Kagome had smiled sadly, reading her friends’ thoughts. She had said that she hadn’t known until her monthly came late, and even then she had to take some kind of test from her time to be sure. Kagome had promised her that she would go through the well later the next day and bring back a few of these tests for her.

Sango sat up stiffly on her futon, her blankets pooling around her waist. She stiffened as she heard the shoji slide open, but relaxed as soon as she saw Inu Yasha standing at the door with a bowl of water and some fresh bandages. She smiled at him, but the gesture didn’t make it to her eyes. He frowned and entered the room, sliding the shoji shut behind him. He sat down beside her, and reached out to carefully slice off her bandages. He frowned some more when he saw that the wounds were read and inflamed, he had noticed there was a lot of dirt in the wounds as he carried her back to the house. He could tell that even with the careful ministrations of his wife, the wounds would become infected. He gently cleansed her wounds, carefully watching Sango for any evident discomfort.

The wounds burned with each pass of the cloth and water, but she would not give in to her weaker impulses and cry out. ‘I’m stronger than that’ she kept telling herself. She gave in to the need to cry out when she felt Inu Yasha’s gentle fingers smearing something onto her wounds, causing a burning sensation. His hand retracted for a moment, before his fingers returned, gentler than before. “I’m not pressing too hard, am I?” he said, his voice lacking its usual edge. Sango was visibly embarrassed, she was a warrior! Why should she show discomfort over a tender touch and the sting of medicine? She turned her face away from his, so that he couldn’t see her expression. ‘Chikuso, I don’t need his pity!’ she thought.

Inu Yasha sighed, and finished rubbing the disinfectant solution from Kagome’s medicine chest into her wounds. “Hold your hair up Sango” he ordered, still sounding remarkably patient for him, but his words were still tinged with a hint of annoyance. She deftly twisted her hair into a bun on the top of her head, allowing Inu Yasha to re-bandage her neck without the hair getting caught. That job finished, he gathered up the pile of bloodied bandages and the bowl of water, before silently leaving the room. Sango was taken aback for a moment, surely that one sentence wasn’t all he was going to say to her! She knew he had left the previous night to go after his brother, she wanted, no, needed to know what happened. She tried to get up from the futon to go find the hanyou, her shaky and sore legs wobbling under her weight. She had taken all of three steps when he came back into the room, carrying a bowl of the stew Kagome had prepared and some onigiri she and Shippou had made before she left to her own time.

He wasn’t all that surprised to see her moving around, she was after all an accomplished warrior and a damn stubborn onna to boot. He knew though, that her body needed more rest. She had probably never lay with a man prior to her violation, and inu youkai tended to run pretty large. Not to mention Sessoumaru wasn’t known for his gentle nature. Hell, Kagome had been confined to bed for several days after their wedding night, and their first joining had been very gentle. Sango turned towards him, and the fresh scent of blood caught his nose. ‘Baka wench went and reopened something...’ He frowned again, moving to put her food beside the futon. “You should rest some more. You’re still injured.” The taijia glared at him, her anger rising again, and some part of her subconscious found that any male target was acceptable to vent her rage at as the true cause of her predicament wasn’t present.

“I’ll rest when I damn well WANT to rest! You can’t tell me what to do, damnit! What, you think because I’m a weak human that I need to be told what to do?!” Sango’s voice again reached louder than comfortable levels for his ears, and he pressed them firmly against his scalp to dampen the noise, but not before her heard Shippou run out of the house altogether. ‘Smart boy’ he thought, looking up at the ranting taijia. She was fuming, and slowly moving towards his crouched form, looking very much like she was going to try to beat the daylights out of him once she was close enough. Sango took another step closer to the hanyou, intent on giving him another piece of her mind, when her foot connected with the twisted blanket on the floor. She quickly shifted her weight to the other leg so she wouldn’t fall, but the sudden motion caused a deep tearing sensation in her abused passage... she had reopened one of her wounds. Her legs lave out beneath her, and she braced herself for the impact with the floor. It never came. Instead, she was caught in the warm, strong arms of her friend, his fast reflexes allowing him to effortlessly catch and support her. He wrapped his arms around her in an embrace and held her tightly against his body in an effort to comfort her.

“It’s ok Sango.... there’s nothing to prove... I know you’re strong” He rubbed her back between her shoulder blades, and held her tighter when he felt her own arms snake around his body to embrace him back. Her face was again buried in his haori, and for the second tiem in as many days, she cried herself to sleep in his arms.