Features Yume, Kiyoami, Konnosuke, and the head of the Shima family from the incident 500 years ago. This is pieced together through an over-analysis of the books along side of a busy imagination. ;D I don't own anything.

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500 Years Ago

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It had started to show, nine months ago.

She sat in the centre of the room with a hand resting on the large bump of her stomach. Tomorrow was the day, the dreams that she had been having were a countdown and she was one short of zero.

She caressed their child, her children, an eternal cycle that was breeding within herself.

And she could feel their twin heartbeats beneath her fingertips, it was a soft thud, thud, thud that pumped intertwined bloodlines of two (too many) races. Her eyes waned, blue crescent moons framed in gold.

She knew, too well, of what she had done.

Yet, the curve to her faint smile had never wavered because she was a witch at heart, only in this lifetime (and the next, and the very very next) she was bound to drape beneath a façade of human flesh.

She went by the name of Shima Yume and she had fully intended that her death would ignite an eternity of irreversible damage. But right now, she was too in love to care.

She gave a soft sigh and let her gaze drift to the opened window.

It had started to rain.

000

To Kiyoami, enemies were for killing, friends were meant for drinking, women were for sex and life was as simple as this.

He had made himself a reputation and owned the world like the king he had been born into.

The twin horns that protruded from his head along with the deep red hair that smelled of blood and peonies had created a living legend. He had Kiritsubo in his arms and Konnosuke by his side; he was content as he was because he didn't know what else he had been missing.

It wasn't until he saw her that he contemplated fate and the person on the other end of that red thread.

Her eyes were gleaming blue.

The layers and layers of kimono laid spread out as he pushed her down on to the ground. He was Akki, the one and only. Yet, he couldn't smell a hint of fear on her. Staring down, her full lips had already curved into the faintest trace of a smile.

It was fate that he was in love with a human woman.

And instead of pulling away, her arms reached out, fingers stretching as she pulled him close.

That had been nine months ago.

Drops after drops of rain had glided across his skin, tracing cool touches against heated flesh. Akki caught the waft of death and the woman of his dreams before the scent of revenge flooded into his senses as another man stepped closer and closer.

He spoke up.

"Yume, my wife, she is dead."

Kiyoami looked up at the man with Shima for a name and drew his sword.

The rain did not stop.

000

Shima-toushu was in love with his Frankenstein bride.

Her blonde hair, her blue eyes, and that butterfly in her hair.

He should have been her one and only but the children she gave birth to had tainted the Shima bloodline, there was no one to blame but the Oni with that blood red hair and those poisonous silver eyes.

His grip tightened around Kiyohime, knuckles washed white with sheer strength.

He looked away from the woman lying flat against the ground, turned a blind eye to the sheet of white that was draped over her. Walking away from the room, he turned a deaf ear to the twin cries of children that echoed an eternity of irreversible damage that one dead woman had ignited.

"Shima-toushu, what would you like us to do with…?"

The children, his child and that Oni's seed that was born from the same womb.

"Leave them."

His voice was calm and low because the fury had long since dissipated into the hands that would kill and tear until everything was washed a satisfying red. The Oni's child would be destroyed by him, he would not accept anything less. This was not only a blow to his pride as the current head of the Shima family, it was also a blow to his pride as a man. There was no way that he could live this down.

It was raining when he stepped out from his home, across the courtyard and out the double doors.

He was walking towards the source of all his known evil.

The man with the pure Oni blood, the man with the long red hair, the one with his sword raised at the exact same angle.

Shima-toushu firmly believed in the life that he was bred into and this life would not be complete until he slay the Oni with those wretch steel eyes.

He announced her death and felt the rain glide down the hilt of Kiyohime to cool the warmth of his human grip.

Their swords never clashed because metal only ever met flesh.

The rain never stopped.

000

Silver glinted.

The final blow of metal against heated skin.

Two bodies crumbled to the ground as two heads fell.

And instead of silence, the aftermath was consumed by the sound of falling rain.

Konnosuke was left standing as he watched the strands of red and gold follow into the puddles of diluted pink.

He hated the rain that clung to his skin almost as much as he hated the moisture in the air that choked the breath from within his chest. He lived over a thousand years but nothing prepared him to see what he had seen.

The scent of death lay draped out and he stood in what remained of a foolish blood bath, a battle for a woman that was already dead.

He brushed away the branches and made his way to the mess.

Konnosuke came to stand and there at his feet was that man's head.

Blue eyes wavered as the pale layers of his kimono soaked into a murky grey, the rain had dwindled down to a faint drizzle. Bending down, he grasped a fist full of red hair and raised the Oni's head to his gaze.

Almost like a dare, almost like a threat.

Because he was in love.

(And love, they all knew, made people do crazy things.)

"This isn't for your sakes."

He hoped his words weren't lost to the dead, he had too many promises left unsaid.

The faint smile remained frozen in time as the man's head sat cradled in his hands, strands of red was cascading from between his fingers. Konnosuke promised to wait for as long as he needed to because he was sure, five hundred years later, he would still be here.

"But I will raise that woman's child until you rise from Hell once more."

The lukewarm drops of water that was gliding down his cheek couldn't be coming from the clouds.

The rain had already stopped.

XXX Kuro

These four make one hell of a love-rectangle.