White Rooms by thetroll

Chapter 1

They're back at the hospital again.

Kagome can hardly breathe. It would be so easy to bear if it is her there in the bed, but it's not. It's Ichika, their only child. It had taken years to conceive her, so many years, so many hardships. They had lost so many along the way.

And now they may lose Ichika as well. And she's so young. She's only ten. She has so much to live for, so much to do.

Why couldn't it have been Kagome in the bed?

Sesshomaru's hand wraps around her shoulders as they stand beside the bed, watching their daughter breathe through the long tube. Without it, Ichika wouldn't be here at all. 

"She shouldn't be here," Kagome manages, her voice breaking as she blinks back the tears. "She was doing better. She was doing better, Sesshomaru."

Sesshomaru wordlessly pulls her closer, but the pain in his eyes echoes the burning, searing agony in her heart. Surely a blade would hurt less, she thinks.

A blade. Her eyes widen as she suddenly grips the lapels of her mate's shirt. "Tenseiga," she says urgently, nearly shaking him. "We need to get it, Sesshomaru. It could save her if—"

"It would restore her as she is now." His voice cracks at his refusal, so unlike him. He has refused her and Ichika nearly nothing in all their years together. "We cannot, Kagome. Not unless..."

Not unless the doctors can find and remove the clot that had formed almost overnight after her last procedure. She knows it, and so does he, but Kagome needs something. She needs some hope, some promise, some guarantee things will be okay.

If she doesn't have that, she will break. 

"Your mother's stone," she says, thinking quickly, desperately. "The meido stone—"

"Has a similar power to Tenseiga, mate." His eyes water, but the tears remain unshed. "We must not."

"There has to be something." She shakes him, all but wailing as tears stream down her face unchecked. "That's my baby, Sesshomaru. That's my baby!"

He can say nothing as he pulls her closer to him, rocking her gently in his arms as she dissolves into tears. It is all out of their hands now.

Only the doctors have any chance at all of saving their baby girl.