The same face is haunting her behind closed eyes again. The dark golden eyes burrowing into her very soul, making her feel both safe and naked and judged under the thick gaze. His face is beautiful, like a woman's, with a very subtle undertone of heavy strength only capable of being exuded by a secure man. His gaze is powerful, protective, and an underlying sense of harshness always chokes her out of the dark blanket of her sleep, leaving her panting and gasping for air in the determined silence of her bedroom. It is always the same thing, night after insufferable night. The unnamed man, with a face she feels frustrated at not being able to name an unnerving sense of 'tip of the tongue' syndrome so thick it mentally nauseates her, staring at her… furious and hurt all in one whitewashed and raw sensation.
The alarm is a harsh sound that beats against her senses as it rings out in the darkness somewhere to the right of her bedside. Numbly, still desperate for her mind and stomach to settle from the dreams she has long grown accustomed to defining as nightmares, she drops her right hand onto the 'off' button at the top of her digital alarm clock and it silences as if having fallen to its death under her paws. The sensation, and mental image, sends strange shivers down her spine, and with a single shudder she finally pushes herself completely into wakefulness as her eyes refocus themselves in the dark.
With a quick and delicate swiftness she finds herself flipping the light switch next to her door and can almost feel the sudden bathe of florescent light chase the darkness from her room completely. With a few struggled blinks and wiping of her eyes she finds herself standing in front of her dresser, staring blankly into the mirror nailed unceremoniously into the wall above the helpful piece of furniture. She blinks once, then twice, watching emotionlessly at the face that repeats her movements back towards her as a small smile pushes onto her lips. Her hair is shoulder length, messy from sleep this early in the morning. She wears a dark orange linen night gown with peach colored squares crisscrossing the body in a checkered pattern. With a struggled and slow movement she rubs her right hand down her face and yawns, shaking away the final thoughts of the nightmare as she begins to dress for the day's affairs.
The apartment she lives in is roused suddenly as she flips the television on, the default channel blinking to life with the bright image of a young man standing in front of a map of the United States covered in temperatures and colors. She watches for a moment as the weatherman stops over her location, announces a 12 percent chance of precipitation, and then turns back towards the kitchen as she pours herself a bowl of cereal. Casually, while splitting her attention between the television and her plans for the day, she eats her all-too-sweet children's cereal dry. She never had enjoyed milk, made the cereal too soggy for her liking.
She glances at the analog clock hanging on the wall above where the kitchen bar connects as she turns to the sink to wash away her finished breakfast before leaving the single dish in the drying rack on the counter next to the sink. Her kitchen, like the rest of her small one bedroom apartment, is immaculately clean to an almost unnatural standard. Her three person black leather couch facing the television that is easily seen from the kitchen bar, a kitchen bar with only a single high-seated wooden chair. The kitchen sink itself lies in the marble counter top next along the wall perpendicular to the bar, a large window covered with pale cream curtains situated in the wall just above the sink so that one can gaze out into the apartment complex's rather large courtyard while they do dishes. A hobby she can honestly say she enjoys, and may contribute to the obsessive cleanliness of the home. It isn't that she refuses to let it get dirty, she just can't imagine having so much to clean that it wouldn't be possible to keep up with.
She sighs softly to herself as she turns to look around the rest of her apartment, the entire bottom floor visible from her place next to the sink in the kitchen. After all, she was entirely alone here… just her, and as far as she was concerned she was quiet happy with that. For a brief moment, as she takes it the wordless humming of the television set, she remembers the male's face in her dream and something deep within her, something foreign and incomprehensible, aches, but only for a moment. Without allowing herself to spare another moment's thought towards that dream she leaves the kitchen and heads up the stairs which lead to her bedroom and bathroom. She will quickly brush her teeth before heading out for the day, and hopefully if things go as planned she won't be back here until it's long past time to sleep. Again, the thought of the man from her dream crosses the subconscious awareness of her mind, and once again she ignores it to the best of her ability
Everyone is dead now. He doesn't know how it happened, nor does he care to figure it out well enough to understand. He refuses to understand, understanding would only make the numb emotion he feels now explode over into something dangerous. They came in waves, wielding objects that exploded into fire that blistered their bodies and left holes seared through flesh that refused to bleed. They smelled like humans, humans caked in blood, feces, sweet, and ash. They fought while screaming words no one could comprehend, and he had felt fear as he watched his kind dropping around him to the exploding fire he had never witnessed before. He hadn't known at the time that what he felt was fear, but he had seen his face reflected in her eyes… and upon his face he had seen the same expression caked on many he himself had killed. The thought of her assaults him again, piercing through the otherwise hellish existence of his eternal slumber. Hellish not for any actual suffering on his part, but for the ceaseless silence that has mindlessly bled centuries together, leaving nothing for him to experience except for those final hours. They arrived by boats and spilled out like cursed seed upon his lands. He watched his land burn, his armies fall, his… he couldn't allow his mind to form Her name. The pain of it even flirting with his subconscious caused him to want to scream out, an action his body was no longer capable of making, wherever his body was.
Slowly he drifts back into completely silence, letting the nothingness of his pitiful existence swallow him entirely. Oh how badly he wished to have been granted a death along with the rest of them, but no, that would never be granted him. They had called him a 'devil', he had incorporated that word into his mental vocabulary as they swarmed him and forced him to his knees. A monster, a 'devil', a 'demon'. They had torn at his proud youkai flesh, drawn blood just to confirm to themselves that he could indeed be killed, and had forced him into a position where he could no longer fight as they surrounded him and screamed hectic madness towards him. He had clung to Her, his mind screams at him, and they had parted as an older man in strange black robes with a high white collar had stepped towards him with a book in one hand and a strange fashioned decorative stick in the other. He was chanting, eyes closed, refusing to give him the last pleasure of seeing his murderer's eyes, and the world spun around him before going black. He had been in blackness since, and now he drifts off into the void once again.
"Why 're we doin' this again?" The dark skinned boy drawls on, obviously aggravated as he struggles to convince the mule to walk on along the dirt path.
"Because boss told us ta." An older dark skinned male walks next to him, holding various all-too-heavy looking bags filled to burst. "B'sides, whuts it matter to ya?"
The young boy just huffs grumpily, freedom was just as shitty as slavery as long as the white men kept pushing them around like this… not that he'd ever have the actual knowledge to compare the two, seeing as how he was never actually enslaved like his older traveling companion who had to be pushing fifty at this point in his life and yet was still able to stand as tall and proud as the twenty-something's they kept coming across. He also knew better than to complain about the current situation in life in front of this old man, he'd wait until he was safely tucked away in a sweet woman who would ohh and aww at his ability to overcome his struggles for fifteen bucks.
"I just dun understand why we can't ride the damn things'all." The younger male finally drawls on, using his words carefully.
Suddenly, and without warning the older male stops in his tracks and turns on the young male who unconsciously crawls into himself until he stands a good foot shorter than the older male. The older male stares at him, hard, but not unfriendly… his body exuding the kind of wisdom and knowledge only a man of his age can hold.
"Boy, do ya know whats in them wagon?" He speaks deeply, his words filled with the severity of the question.
"Nah sir…" The young boy whispers out, carefully.
"That large box there holds a 'relic'." He says the word carefully, as if worried he may mispronounce it and unleash some horrific evil into the world.
"A 'relix' sir?"
"Mmhmm. From them crusades in them orient lands." He draws on slowly, once again struggling with every fiber of his being to convey every bit of seriousness and reverence the topic deserves.
Hesitatingly the boy takes a look towards the large covered wagon which he has only been told contains a large golden box, easily a man and a half in height and as broad as four men standing shoulder to shoulder. He had disbelieved all the others, but hearing this old man, this man who refused to be involved in gossip of any kind, telling him the same… He swallowed hard and jumped his eyes back towards the old man who had begun to walk once again. Quickly he rushes to catch up in pace to him, and they make the rest of the journey to the city in silence.
AN: And there you go everyone, the first chapter of my first official fan fiction. I will let readers be warned now though, this will eventually be a future Rin/Sesshoumaru fic and I do plan to take it to mature levels of delicious lemon fun. Not sure how quickly I'll get to writing the lemon though, because as you can see our Rin and Sesshoumaru haven't even come in contact again yet. Hope you enjoy the build up to the story!
I'd love to hear back from everyone who reads this as well. 3