One Night, This Night

Hands.

Hers were not like other women's. They were not flawlessly smooth, nor were they pale as the moon he so despised. They didn't have the same carefully manicured look that he always thought all women had.

Her hands were calloused, rough with work and wear. There were scars across her knuckles, and hairline marks from some animal or branch. There was a burn scar on the inside of one of her fingers, the skin raised and shiny. Her nails were bitten down and the beds they rested in were covered in grime, often bloody. Her hands told him stories, every trace of his finger across her skin revealing something that he did not know. A fall from a tree, the scar a tooth made when she punched a rapist in the mouth, the heat of the cooking fires, and the burning of a rope whipping through her palms.

Hands of a wanderer. A survivor.

And yet they were so delicate. The bone structure feminine and petite, long fingers stretching out wide to receive him. Elegant. The plucking of a few worn strings, the best that the shoddy whore-house could do where she worked, rang in his ears like a nightingale and his eyes always watched as her hands brought forth the sweetest of creations. He loved her hands in all their roughness; exalted in their imperfections. They made her real, made him appreciate the hardships of the world around them through the view of another person.

But for all their roughness, they were still like the softest of silks in his own. He held them, pulled them, guided her through the shadows in silent haste. He wanted those hands. He wanted them to know nothing else but him. No one else but him.

Hair.

He'd never felt something so soft. The strands were thick and heavy, pooling around her head like a mass of satin when she slept. He loved it when the ends trailed over his chest, the dark curtain creating their own little paradise. She let him play with it a lot, so he did whenever he could. Not much time was afforded to the customers, even if he paid double someone would be pounding on that door and demand that The Raven return to her duties. It sickened him, knowing that other men would pull at this hair, yank it, kiss it, smother their dirty faces into its depths and breath.

But he never voiced these thoughts. He just swallowed them and tried to forget about it because it wasn't them who was with her at that moment, it was him. And she liked him playing with her hair, so he would. He'd run his dangerous claws through it and part the inky river as many times as she would like, watching as few pinpoints of sunlight would filter through the cracks in the wall and burn the strands blue.

Even Kikyo, his past love, hadn't had hair like this. And as they turned a corner, the moon shone off those strands and filtered through them, a banner of shiny ink as they fled her past with all the excitement and desperation of freed slaves.

Eyes.

Her eyes were rare. Every human that he'd ever seen in his entire life had brown eyes. The shades varied, from light chestnut to near black, but always brown eyes. Dark eyes. Human eyes.

But hers were blue. Cold, fierce, fiery blue. They reminded him of the sea on a stormy day, crashing against the cliffs in a display of nature's fury. Those eyes could drag you in the undertow, drown you, pull you so deep that they were the only things you'd know. The color was so solid, so endless, that sometimes he wondered how. How could a human have those eyes? How could a human possibly have eyes that screamed at you like a siren on the shore? Eyes that lit up like a starry night sky when they were happy, sparkling like gems, and that hardened into glass when she was angry.

Even now, cloaked in shadow and quiet as a mouse those eyes stared at him, near black in the darkness but he could still see the blue. That endless, dangerous blue that was sparkling with excitement. And nervousness.

The whore-house didn't want to let go of those exotic, foreign eyes. But he would take them anyway.

Skin.

His first memory of her skin was that it was bruised. A state that he would soon come to see as regular. Drunks were never careful in their handlings, and her flesh was patterned with the shadows of men he marked for dead. Fingerprints on her arms, her thighs, and her hips. Half-moon scars were dug into her ass sometimes, and claw marks streaked down her back in lines of red that disappeared within a day.

He kissed them as if they would disappear faster if he did. Always, he was gentle. Always he was careful. She wasn't glass—no, she was too strong for that—but that didn't mean that he couldn't treat her like his most prized possession. The first time he made love to her, she had cried, tearfully admitting that no one had loved her like this before.

He was sure no one had. The shitty place she was prisoner to was more of a slave house than an actual brothel, and only the seediest of drunks and gamblers stumbled, half dead, into this hell. And he was also sure that she hadn't known, then, that he actually did love her. But he was screaming it to her with every careful touch and every hot kiss to her skin. Telling her in the only way that he knew how he felt, because he never was good with words.

It took her a long time to finally understand what was behind those soft, desperate touches, and it took him even longer to understand what her own touches and grasping, impassioned fingers meant. So many years without having to use words made her bad with them too, in the end.

And as he hoisted her onto his waiting horse, his hands smoothing across the dip of her waist with all the strength and gentleness he could muster, her hands moved from his shoulders and slid up to his face. He loved the way her fingers seemed to speak for her, whispering love and tattooing her heart across his skin.

Smile.

Smiles were wonderful things. He'd decided this long ago, but when he saw hers, his belief was only strengthened.

As a half-demon, he wasn't gifted with too many, and he'd retreated so far within his shell that it was a miracle if someone saw him without a scowl on his face. The prejudice he faced on a daily, hourly, basis had painted his thoughts black with hate and contempt. He drank himself stupid every night, wandering on the road and finding shelter as it came. He had money to gamble away so gamble he did, and whenever he needed more he'd sell his skills and kill someone for cash. It was destructive. It was abusive. And it was him.

He wasn't really in his right state of mind when he'd stumbled into the cheap brothel, or when he flung some coin at the owner, and he basically knocked down her door coming into her room. But when she came to him, touched him, started to undress him and he was clear in the head enough to pull back from ravaging her with his mouth to look at her face…

…he sobered.

She looked so tired. So sad and world-weary and simply done. She looked like she was only alive because of the instinct to stay alive. She was beautiful, even as his vision was blurring, he could see that, and he had felt like the shit of pigs that he was even here. And still she undressed him, coaxed him with dead, vapid eyes and a seducing smile. She got his top off before he came to his senses and grabbed her hands and she finally looked at him.

She looked shattered. Broken. But still something in those eyes said that she was gluing the pieces back together. She wasn't giving up. She wasn't, even though everything about her said that she was. There were shadows under her eyes that said she hadn't slept properly, her skin was hollowed and pale from malnutrition, and she still smiled that tempting smile and asked him what was wrong.

Something about alcohol was magical. It made you forget about…everything. You could only feel when you so drunk you were about to puke it all up. And something about that night, something about her, made him feel like crying.

He'd experienced hate and misery for a majority of his life, never fitting in either world, sitting on the fence against his will. And here, in front of him, was a creature suffering from a different kind of misery. He'd only dared asked a prostitute what her true thoughts were once, her real feelings, and the look she'd give him haunts him to this day.

It…it was acid. Acid and hurt and pain and utter misery but she smiled at him, a cracked, bitter smile that left her eyes dead and stretched her skin like it was never supposed to belong there. "Flowers in salt." She'd said to him. All she'd said to him. But it was enough to rob him of words because he understood all the sudden and he hated the visual she'd given him because it was just so…so sad. Because they were the flowers, all of them, and this place was their coffin of salt. Shriveling them, strangling them, sucking out all the life as they withered and crinkled in on themselves as the leech of greed robbed them of all vitality and youth.

He didn't want to be the salt. Not for this flower.

So he'd taken his discarded shirt, wrapped it around her bare shoulders, and scooped her into his arms. She was as light as a skeleton, and her eyes widened with an understanding and fearful respect of his inhuman strength. He'd cradled her close to his chest, tucking her head into his neck and wrapping her up in as many blankets that she had in her room, like they could protect her from anything. And then he'd put his arms around her and slurred out the words that he hoped would make it all better.

"Go t'sleep," he'd said. "I'll protect you."

And so for one blissful hour, they slept. They slept until one of the servants had banged on the door and demanded that he leave. He'd put her down and gotten to his feet, the alcohol burned completely out of his system, and watched the man behind the servant rake his eyes over the woman hungrily. He'd felt disgusted. At the man, at himself, at the servant, and the whole damn place. Disgusted and angry.

But as he walked out the door, cussing and throwing on his bright red top, he'd turned back and looked at her. He was always angry at people, always mistrusting them, and whenever people tried to reach out, he lashed out. He'd never bothered to show anyone kindness because no one showed him any. But last night…he wanted to see if he'd done anything.

He hadn't expected to find anything. He hadn't expected to actually make a difference to someone. But he had. Oh, he had. The smile she gave him was brief, barely a tilt to the corner of her lips, but her eyes were glowing. Sparkling like all the stars in the galaxy and shining with pure happiness. Thank you, they said. Thank you.

And then the door had slammed closed on their little moment and he was left with a pushy servant, a kimono half tucked in, and a delicious warmth blooming in his chest.

Walking out of that seedy little place, he resolved to return. And he'd keep returning until he really saw her smile because he'd never been this happy since his mother died.

Now, nearly a three seasons later, he lifted himself up on the horse with her, feeling her arms snake around his waist as he urged the horse into action. And when he looked down at her, the smirk of a satisfied cat painting his lips, he saw the grin that was splitting her face nearly in two.

One Night…

Those had been the words that they'd always whispered to each other in those precious moments before someone would come knocking at her door, cocooned in each other's arms in a mountain of blankets and pillows. They'd tell each other all the things that they wanted to do, first just by themselves, childish wants that they'd simply wanted to do no matter how impossible. He'd wanted to break the moon, and she'd wanted find a lake that looked like glass and dance on its surface. She'd wanted to ride a horse that was as black as shadow and as fast as the wind, and he'd wanted to break into the emperor's castle. And then very slowly, the wishes began to change.

She'd wanted to kiss him on the night of the new moon. He'd wanted to take her to the very top of a mountain and tell her it was hers. He'd wanted to see her in all the wealth his birthright gave him, swathed in luxury beyond her imagination. She'd wanted to show him her childhood home, a shrine where she learned to control her priestess powers and an old, old well that pumped magic into the air.

One night, they'd say, like all these things were of some distant, impossible future that they could see but couldn't experience. One night, they'd say, like they were nothing but fantasies to play out from the confines of her prison cell. One night, they'd say, as if it were the beginning line to a fairy tale.

And then, one night, he held her in his arms and promised her that someday, somehow, one night would become this night. He'd swore it to her with ever fiber of his being, every thread of his soul, and woven it all into that oath, just for her. Only for her. Because she was all he'd ever truly wanted.

This Night…

And he'd done it. One Night, had become This Night.

This Night, her calloused elegant hands were splayed across his back, clutching at the fabric of his shirt with blunt, bitten nails. This Night, her hair was dancing in the wind, flying into his face with every gallop of his sable horse, tickling his lashes with their silky ends and waving like a victory banner for all to see. This Night, blue eyes looked at him and dazzled. This Night, her skin was warm against his own where they met, feverish with adrenaline and life, flushed with health after he'd smuggled her a feast each and every visit. This Night, he could feel her smile, a grin that stretched from ear to ear and poured out of her body and made her laugh in glee, against his throat.

This Night, he stole her from a sleazy whore-house where a greedy little man collected dolls from the streets and broke them into pieces. This Night, he'd set his caged bird free after years of imprisonment and poverty and pain that came before her chains. This Night, he'd ridden off under the watchful eye of the moon, far off into the forest, and made love to her among the grasses and the trees and flowers with not a grain of salt anywhere in sight.

And This Night, he'd scooped her into his arms like he always did, her weight still nothing to his strength like it never was, wrapped her in his shirt like every other time, and said, "Got to sleep, Kagome. I'll protect you."

And she'd reached up and tugged at one of his ears, his half-demon ears, ears that she loved, and said. "I know, Inuyasha." And she'd snuggled into his embrace and they'd both drifted off to sleep. In the morning, they'd watched the sunrise together, the first sunrise she'd seen in over two years, and then they'd set that horse scampering back into the woods. Inuyasha would carry her the rest of the way, all the way to the top of some distant mountain in the West that he'd claimed for himself, and once they reached the summit he'd waved is arm across the landscape and said, "It's yours, Kagome."

And Kagome, the freed bird, would take his hand, lace her calloused fingers with his calloused fingers, and smile. "No, Inuyasha. It's ours."