[ another name ]
His right eye is blind, or very nearly; covered over in glass like Snow White in her coffin. You know this, without even wondering how you know, or whether he did it with his own fingers. Whether he recognises you as the woman for whose sake he spilled the blood of a thousand demons.
He doesn't, though he wishes he did.
Every kindness, to him, is a conscious effort, but he saves the village though it means nothing to them. It means something to you, when three years ago you burned that castle to the ground and his humanity to ashes. It means something to you to finally be sacrifice to water.
He saves you, when last time he couldn't. He comes back to you reeking of demon blood, but to him you are not a woman who knows what it is to feel your own blood around the knife in your throat, and memory after that an empty, blinding white. To him you are not the woman he still loves with another name.
You answered to that name, once.
When he leaves you let him, because you will not incite him to slaughter a second time. Because you do not think he was ever really human in the first place. Because knives may stab, and cut, and kill, but they cannot draw heart's blood.
And until heart's blood is drawn -- we never truly die.
disclaimer] gensoumaden saiyuki © Minekura Kazuya, ENIX. No profit is being made with this fic. (Although, being a starving penniless undergraduate, I should really be spending some of my time actually making money rather than writing fic. Practically speaking.)
notes] Short, cryptic, and disjointed. And utterly pretentious.
+ episode 23: Scapegoat; references to episode 11.
+ .. a woman who knows what it is to feel your own blood around the knife in your throat -- Japanese women of the samurai class committed seppuku with a knife to the throat. At least, they did according to James Clavell. *spit*
+ you do not think he was ever really human in the first place -- Gaiden.
And with "to him you are not the woman he still loves with another name", I have finally managed to intend both sides of the ambiguity. Eheheh. 'm so talented. *is smacked*
~ Laetitia Prism 2003.10.19