© Salome Wilde, 2008
Ache
I stand before you, my remaining hand firmly wrapped around the pommel of my sword. I wait for you to act, wondering whether you can possibly be as naïve as you seem. You puff out your chest and, in that outraged yip, demand to know how I always manage to show up where you are. There is no reason to respond. You want to fight someone other than me, and I abhor you for it.
Yes, I see Naraku in your eyes, brother. Does he move you more than I do because he, too, is hanyo? Because he displays his emotions brazenly while I demand you do the work of knowing your opponent yourself? Or is it that you truly are not yet mature enough to allow yourself to desire someone stronger than you?
I lazily stroke Tokijin's handle, imagining it is your cock, solid and silken smooth in my hand. Your eyes never stray there. You are such a fool, brother. But you will fight me, and I can feel you begin to burn with that need. When you lunge at me, with neither strategy nor sufficient skill to touch me, I feel your fire. And I need to feel.
As it is each time I come to fight you, my absent limb longs to touch you. Know this, brother: I never felt more alive than the moment you took it. I have been dead since, returning to you, over and over, to fight you, to feel. The look in my eyes asks the same question at every meeting, if only you would allow yourself to read it. Do you not know there is more than one way to die?
At last, you to rush at me, full of flame and fury. You think you fight me because I show you disrespect. Well, that much is true, hanyo: I do not respect you. And I do not seek your respect in return. I want to own you, little brother, in the way you already own me.
You will not give me more of yourself than this fight, and, for now, I accept it. Though you lack the power to satisfy me in battle, I still have the memory of the one time you did, and the ache of a phantom limb to prove it. It keeps me coming back. If only you would not let me control the game as I do. If only you would not permit me to abandon you, time and again, when I can stand no more of the tease, of your inability to act upon the desire with which we both burn. Grow stronger, Inuyasha, and force me to stay.
Once again, I stop short of ending your life, always finding some absurd excuse, and I leave you. You cannot possibly believe my reasons. Brother, if I truly thought you incapable of reaching me again, of giving enough of yourself to me that I could allow you to take all of me in return, I would kill you. Until that time, I will challenge you, incite you, and remind you of that blazing fire inside you that you can see reflected in my eyes. And I will embrace the ache that only you ignite.