Problem by LML

Unintended

It wasn’t as though she had a choice in the matter. After all it had been just one stupid night in a dark forest. She didn’t call it rape because it really wasn’t it was… a calculated risk. They were both tired and strung out on pain meds from her med-kit. They were by all accounts too out of it to make the decision. No consent was really given by either party.  It simply happened. Neither of them remembered the act in the morning but Inuyasha could smell it and Kagome could feel it. Her miko powers had healed her arm up nicely but they refused to have anything to do with this. They both did the only thing they could think of. They cleaned up and resolved never to speak of it again.

Kagome for her part managed to almost forget or at least convince herself it was nothing. Her miko powers still worked and she didn’t feel any different so what difference was there? So she missed a few periods. It didn’t mean she was pregnant. She often missed her monthlies while traveling from stress, bad nutrition and exhaustion.  As for the sickness that overcame her before breakfast sometimes, that was just normal exhaustion and she always felt better after an energy bar and a little walking. She hadn’t gained any weight either or at least none that she noticed.

Using this line of reasoning it should have been a complete surprise when suddenly one night she started to feel pain “down there”. But instead of waking her friends to tell them she was sick or taking a few ibuprofen and turning over she proceeded quietly down to the river nearest their camp. She brought a towel and a bar of soap; allowing herself the one last self deception that she was just going down to the river to wash her face.

The labor was quick and relatively painless. She tied off the cord with the tie from her pajama pants and cut it with a sharp rock. Just like that there he was her little accident. For the briefest of moments she entertained the idea of dropping the bundle into the river and going back to camp like nothing ever happened. Just for a moment she thought it might be the best she could provide him with but the rational and some may say “better” side of her won out. She washed them both in the freezing river with the soap she had brought, walked back to camp to pick up her back pack and made out into the night.

----

When Kagome considered words she would use to describe herself she came up immediately with a short list: tough, reasonable and caring. Right now two of those qualities were fighting a war inside of her. On the one hand she loved the small creature in front of her. He was mostly bald but a few hairs poking though revealed what would soon be a full head of jet black locks. His ears were mostly human but with a motility humans normally wouldn’t have and his nose was huge for his tiny head. She assumed he would grow into it but it was funny at the moment.

On the other hand she knew that this child, her child, was one quarter demon and thus would never be accepted in any society. His would be a life of hardships and she had helped bring this fate about. She almost hated herself for it. She couldn’t bring it home as not only would she have to deal with the stigma associated with being a teenage mother in Japan she would have to deal with being the teenage mother of a demon. She was unwed, and unaccomplished. Much like her pregnancy she refused to admit to herself that she would never graduate high school with the poor grades she had accrued over the years. No amount of summer school and last minute cramming could make up for an average of ten absences per day attended.

Nor would continuing to travel with Inuyasha work. Besides the obvious threat of demon attack, Inuyasha was no more ready to be a father then to be a duck. She loved him but she saw the way he treated Shippo and that was a full demon of some decades. A newborn would never survive with him as a father.

For one crazy moment she thought of going it alone like Inuyasha’s mother had. She thought of a life being the miko for some local village but that idea was quickly quashed by a review of how well it had worked for Inuyasha’s mother. The villagers in this time would give her child no rest and no one would come for help from a miko with a demon whelp.

No, the choice she had made, the plan she had made, was the only solution. She tried to persuade herself that it was all about the child and that she would be a great mother if the situation had been different but the thoughts that had come to her by the river nagged her at the back of her head that that was a lie. She tried to reason that her motivations were all for the child but the part of her that sighed with relief when she marked another landmark closer to her destination said otherwise.

Still, she could see no other solution. So slowly but surely, travelling only undercover of night, the miko and her child headed west.

---

The pit that had slowly been forming in Kagome’s stomach for days lurched so violently now she would have sworn she was about to give birth again had the impossibility not been obvious. She could see from their present position the sun as it rose above the Western Citadel. She sat on the top of the hill holding the small one in her arms tightly and looking at the first sun she had seen in days and, it occurred to her, her child had seen ever.

Still, Kagome had known what she was doing when she headed this way and she was not surprised when a flash of white fabric appeared in front of her. Though she knew who it was, she kept her eyes focused on the ground in front of her and was silent.

“Girl” Said Sesshomaru, “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes, Lord Sesshomaru” she replied using all the willpower she could muster not to cry.

“How? No, why do you bring such a thing to this Sesshomaru?”

“A favor, Lord Sesshomaru”

“And what favor would a miko ask of me involving such a... thing”

“I wish My Lord to find him a place in My Lord’s protection.”

“He doesn’t know, does he?”

“No, My Lord”

“And you do not wish him to, how interesting.” Sesshomaru thought for a moment. “Yes, I believe this pup does have a place in my home. You do not, though I suspect you already knew that.”

“Yes, My Lord, Great thanks, My Lord”

“Once I take him, he is mine until I deem it otherwise is that understood?”

“Yes, My Lord”

“Give him to me.” Then as if in remembrance of some trivial fact, “What is his name?”

“He has none, My Lord.”

“He has no name?”

“Yes, My Lord”

“Why?”

"I did not see it as my place to give him one, My Lord."

"Yes well we will call him something appropriate to his situation. How does Inumi sound?"

"Very well, My Lord"

"Hn" Said Sesshomaru and flew into the night with his nephew in hand.