Warning: Youkai!Inu is dark and bloodthirsty.
Author's Note: Originally written for Challenge Destiny, the LJ contest comm arm of Eternal Destiny. For Inugrrrl.
Red Coals
Control differs from the illusion of control. Significantly. And true sovereignty is of still another order. The rash dog lunges, knows damned well she will allow or disallow his power on whim. She will bark her bitch's bark and he will go down, flailing and yowling from the mouth we must share. I will watch everything from behind his eyes, as I do, golden eyes that shine like the sun but do not burn like the red coals that are mine. Let the glow rise. We are one and yet two, for I know the tamed dog and he does not know me. I endure the dependence that he forces upon both of us, poor weak mutt. He is hanyou, vulnerable to the needs of mortals, heir to the needs of youkai, unable to reconcile them. When he can no longer maintain the balance? I come forth.
I burn, bright and hot and as long as I can maintain control, the illusion of control. I hear the bitch, but I am aflame. Words and beads cannot slow me, cannot stop me, mortal child. And if I feel compassion? Only the tame one can plead with me to halt, can manage somehow to force domestication down my throat until I stifle, my blaze smothered for the moment. If I knew how he did it? Truly knew? There would be no more false command, no more reliance on anyone or anything other than my own dazzling inferno.
Some moments, when I am near the surface yet unable to break forth, I think about my enemies, about who my enemies are. Pathetic, filthy Naraku, yes; arrogant, pure-bred Sesshoumaru, yes as well. The wolf? Laughable. Kouga is the hanyou's adversary, and only for the bitch's attention. The bitch. Now there is a nemesis. Her commands, her frailties, her need. It is she who holds me back, who keeps me at bay. The longer she controls the gold-eyed gaze, the more my red fire is contained. If I am someday fully incorporated into the tamed one, it will be she—not Naraku or Sesshoumaru or some other more worthy opponent—who is to blame.
I resolve myself to a decision that has been burning within me since those months ago when I awoke, behind the hanyou's eyes, pinned to that damned tree by the bitch's predecessor. I will not let this one live under the illusion the last bitch did, as she made the golden one subsist. When next I emerge, I will claim the bitch as only a true inuyoukai can. I vow it.
