There stands the inu daiyoukai, in the middle of Kaede’s village, wearing the sourest pokerfaced expression of patience.

WOOF, this is SUCH a major complex thing to answer that I think it would almost be better to just say take a look at  Inuyasha’s tag and the meta tag. LOL. 

This is to me the most interesting relationship in the series.  Sesshomaru has to balance the desire to please his father and to satisfy his own need for absolute autonomy, when it comes to Inuyasha.

  On the surface he treats Inuyasha as a “halfbreed” of lower caste who doesn’t deserve the heirloom their father gives him, but in reality, Sesshomaru is mourning his lifelong emotional disconnection with his idol and hero (the father they share), who never knew his younger half-brother, but still seemed to favor Inuyasha.  Bloodline is only his excuse for treating Inuyasha as “unworthy” of their father’s inheritance.   

Sesshomaru blinks, rapidly, as though someone has lit a whole field of sandalwood and it has just flooded his sensitive nostrils.  

He sits on the nearest tree stump, hands at his sides, the seam of his restored arm aching, as it always does when he is with his little brother.  

Diving into a meidou after Inuyasha.  Entering Naraku’s exploded cancer of a body, choosing to aid in saving Kagome, choosing to spare a berserker Inuyasha.  Safeguarding Inuyasha all through the hanyou’s childhood, from the shadows.  Despite moments when he was certain he wanted to annihilate his little brother, for existing to prove the wedge between Sesshomaru and his legendary father . . . . 

     “. . . . you know my answer,” he murmurs, staring at the treeline.  Yet he does not leave, nor shy away in shame.  It is only that speaking the words is not his way. 

------

The winds shift. 

Something deep within Tenseiga’s wielder does, as well.  It’s a peculiar absence in his body core, a deficit.  Tenseiga pulses, while Bakusaiga remains still. 

Sesshomaru has come to learn that just as the two fangs of their father are connected, so is some substance innate to the daiyoukai connected to his mongrel little brother. 

His expression sours visibly.

   “Annoying,” he rumbles, and takes abrupt flight, leaving even his flailing green imp of a servant behind. 

Precise, quiet footfalls land on a grassy terrain where Inuyasha’s usual compatriots stand in their (also usual) inefficiently emotional, stupefied, gawking way. Sesshomaru suppresses a sigh.

   “Where?” he demands, sharp and curt, scenting the subsiding energies of a meidou zangetsuha, burning his nostrils. Along with it, something faintly floral.  

Eclipsing both, however, the pungency of that impudent fair-haired scum who attacked both brothers only recently.  

Keen eyes catch a small snowy speck fading, fading, into the Meidou. 

There. There is Inuyasha. 

Sesshomaru wheels around toward Kazama.

   “You will be dealt with,” he declares, as only Sesshomaru can declare, with a terrifyingly even, frigid factuality.  

And then he pitches himself into the Meidou after his brother. 

-------

He lands down on his haunches. 

Night time. A reek of something sweet and strong and synthetic, coming from the bodies of plentiful iron wagons.  A distant thrum, like mechanical thunder. Lights without fire, everywhere. This is the land--the time--Inuyasha’s miko often spoke of, with candid affection and longing.  A time far in the future. 

Sesshomaru hears a scream; Inuyasha’s voice, unmistakably.  

He grunts, eyes widening, and gives hot pursuit.

He comes to a halt, Bakusaiga drawn, behind his sibling.  

The daiyoukai stares at his baby brother with the flat expressionlessness of a vast plateau. 

     “Hey,” he retorts, tongue rolling with centuries of aristocratic refinement, “get it yourself.”  

Sesshomaru pivots on the narrow axis of his two feet.  

He whips out his Poison Claw, and lashes that hapless tree trunk, ridding his brother of the support on which he leans. 

    “Inuyasha, your addled breeding appears to have finally caused you to lose your mind.” 

He glides over to the hanyou.     

    “To what ‘talking’ do you refer?” 

Sesshomaru turns slowly, with almost comedic suspiciousness, toward his kid brother.  That the pair can sit next to each other in amicable silence, without the faintest urge to do each other genuine harm, speaks of years of hard-earned growth.  

He turns away again, and permits himself a fleeting smile. Rin sent you to comfort me. Of course she did.

He emits a “huh” of laughter at the commentary on the unshared, living maternal branch of their family, and nods once in acknowledgment. 

Then he rises bonelessly to his feet, like silver icewater conjured vertically from a January stream.  

    “Yes.” 

He swats his brother, hard, on the back of the head, as he strolls toward a clearing.  The gesture, veiled by robustness though it is, is affectionate.