Chapter 10 – Number 23
Cradle
Hey guys! Happy late Thanksgiving and early holidays! :)
Soundtrack: "Time"- Hans Zimmer- from "Inception"- but mostly "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay"- Otis Redding. I didn't actually realize the similarity between "Dock of the Bay" and this story until I had started writing and it popped up on shuffle in my iTunes library. I think it really fits this ficlet like a glove.
Rating: T for naughty words ;P
Setting: Modern day AU, USA; youkai exist
Rin: Late twenties
Sesshoumaru: ?
Dedicated to irishSparrow67, who reviewed the majority of the ficlets herein in one day. Thanks for your wonderful kindness and encouragement. :)
"I can't do what ten people tell me to do, so I guess I'll remain the same… just sittin' here resting my bones, and this loneliness won't leave me alone. It's ten thousand miles I've roamed, just to make this dock my home, now I'm just sittin' at the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away, sittin' on the dock of the bay, wasting time… "
Cradle
The wind was strong up in the hills that day and it smelled of yesterday's sweet rain and the coming of Summer. Rin sat on a picnic table bench at the Hanako scenic lookout, named for an old woman who would come eat her lunch there, day in day out, for forty-three years, until her death. Rin thought it was fitting that this was one of her most cherished places on the planet, owing in particular to the fact that on this specific day she felt dry and brittle and ready to root herself to the bench and never leave, never facing her life again.
She let the wind toss her hair back and forth as though it were a badminton birdie in a heated game between two gusts and watched knots twist themselves into being as the strands struggled to stay flat against her back. She was content to stay there; a little cold, a little warm; until her hair had worked itself into a massive rat's nest, and even until it became a tightly wound dreadlock. But she would not get the chance.
She heard the car idling behind her and recognized the sound of his engine. She supposed he, like her, was debating whether or not to stay in place; root himself to the spot and thus avoid moving forward. But the engine clicked off and the opening and closing of a car door could be heard, so Rin knew he had decided to move, at least for the time being.
He took a moment to look at the ugly brown cradle, decrepit and aging, in the hatch of her car and to examine the nasty checkered-yellow mattress that was clearly made decades earlier. Then he moved towards her, and every step seemed to take him an hour. She lowered her head and watched his black leather shoes loop around the feet of the picnic table in a wide, quiet arc before coming to rest tentatively in front of her, a sort of tenseness hanging about the heels, as though at any minute they would leap back and make a run for it.
"Rin."
She refused to meet his eyes. He remained silent for a moment. His silver hair attacked his face, and he spit strands out of his mouth distractedly before addressing her again.
"Why have you not returned this Sesshoumaru's calls?"
She gave no response to his question and instead asked one of her own. "Who told you?" It was quiet, placid, and small. He waited a while to answer her.
"Inuyasha," He said softly, before biting out: "because no one else had the gall to tell me what you would not."
She was playing with a loose string in her tweed skirt, eyes in her lap, so as to continue to avoid looking at him. He dropped to a squat quickly and stared through the curtain of her hair and into her wet brown eyes, his own eyes shining with a brilliant gleam so profoundly painful, lost, and determined that Rin wanted to cry out and embrace him, but she resisted the urge and trembled slightly instead.
"Rin." He said again, more forcefully this time around.
At last she lifted her head and her hair flew back about her shoulders along with crystalline teardrops that landed, glistening, on several stray loops of hair. Her eyes were mournful and he could tell that these tears, though fresh, were not the first to have visited her. Her face was red with crying, her nose glistened from the affection of several thoughtful tissues, and her freckles seemed like stains of remorse dotting her cheeks with anxiety. She gave him a glare that was both hard and soft, hot tears pouring from her eyes even as she released her voice in a scathingly quiet tone.
"What was I supposed to do, Sesshoumaru? Come round to your apartment with a fucking fruit basket, ring your doorbell and say 'Hey, Sesshoumaru! I'm pregnant, and you're the father! Want a pear?'"
She buried her face in her hands and wrapped her fingers in her hair. Sesshoumaru hesitantly reached out to touch her back as she shook, but she recovered and sat bolt upright, gingerly prodding her nose with the back of her hand in an effort to keep it from running. It was no good, so she pulled a pack of tissues from her pocket, removed one, and blew her nose.
"You could have called…" said Sesshoumaru quietly.
Rin wiped her nose and folded the tissue, then placed the clean side back against her nose again, avoiding eye contact. "I heard you were back with Kagura," she said, "…and I don't really know what I would've done if she'd picked up the phone."
Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed. "Who told you that?"
Rin didn't answer.
"Who told you that?" he repeated sternly, staring at her intently with eyes like firelight.
"Is it true?" asked Rin.
"No," said Sesshoumaru, "who told you?"
Rin didn't want to feel so relieved, but she felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. "Ayame did," she said, "before she knew I was pregnant." She stumbled on the word "pregnant" every time she said it.
Sesshoumaru tossed his head back and made a face that was as close to a roll of the eyes as he would ever get. "Ayame is a fool and nothing that leaves her mouth should ever be taken seriously."
Rin gave a small chuckle and nodded weakly. The tears had made her head throb something awful.
"This Sesshoumaru saw Kagura in passing and agreed to have coffee with her. Ayame was in the shop and naturally jumped to the wrong conclusion."
They were both silent for a moment.
"Rin," said Sesshoumaru as he stood, "Inuyasha was the one to inform me. Inuyasha. Can you not fathom how horrible that is? To leave me to find out from my goddamn half-brother that you-!"
"I couldn't do it, okay! I just couldn't!" She shook her head, which only made her headache much more aggravated, and stared at him with shining eyes.
Sesshoumaru was quiet for a moment, watching her.
Slowly he asked, "…Is it because of this Sesshoumaru's… history… with hanyous?"
Rin shook her head and laughed. "No! I know that's all an act."
Sesshoumaru felt as though he'd been smacked in the face. Not even he knew until that very moment that it was all an act.
"… I just…" Rin stopped for a moment, gathered her thoughts, and sputtered: "I couldn't just talk to you again, just like that- I mean we only went out those four times! I was afraid to talk to you because I didn't want to deal with missing you anymore than I already…"
She paused and looked at him shakily. He was perfectly still.
She sighed, huffed, and shrugged with a weary smile. "I do. Heh, I do. And I didn't want you to know, in case you don't want joint custody or something, and I would have to just get used to being around you and acting like I don't care about you at all."
She became enthused, and seemed to sit up straighter, a fiery burst of honesty giving her wings. "But I do, you know, "she said, blinking rapidly as she looked at him, "I do. I think I love you. Which sucks, but I just have to deal with it, and you're gonna have to deal with it too, and that's just how it is. So get used to it, because we definitely have bigger fish to fry here, so…."
She trailed off and inhaled slowly. Sesshoumaru blinked back at her. They both sat still, tense with anticipation.
"Say something," said Rin.
Sesshoumaru said nothing. Instead, he crouched back down again and took Rin's face in his hands, planting a gentle kiss on her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. They stayed there for a while, barely moving, before Sesshoumaru leaned back, brushing Rin's bangs from her face. She smiled at him, relieved, comforted: feeling utterly safe.
"So," Sesshoumaru said at length, "are we really going to do this?"
"I'm game if you are," said Rin with a smile. Sesshoumaru nodded and rubbed her jaw line gently with his thumb. She put her hand over his and held it warmly. Sesshoumaru withdrew and looked at her intensely.
"I have one condition." He said.
Rin tensed. "What?" she asked fearfully.
He looked in the direction of her car.
"You take that thing back to where it came from. What is it?" He said, nodding towards the brown-and-yellow mass in Rin's car. She laughed, relieved.
"It's a cradle, what's it look like?"
"An abomination. No child of this Sesshoumaru's is going to be sleeping in a cradle that appears to have been made out of stolen table legs and heinous curtains."
Rin laughed loud and long and Sesshoumaru stood, giving her the closest thing to a smile he had ever mustered. Rin returned it happily and wiped the last of the tears from her eyes.
"I can't take it back," she said, "I picked it up at a yard sale today."
"How much did you pay for it?"
"40 bucks," said Rin proudly.
"Woman, are you insane? For that piece of trash?"
Rin laughed again, full and heartwarming.
"We will go back to where you found it and demand your money be refunded."
"No!" Cried Rin, still laughing, "Why don't we just wait around the corner 'til the woman goes in the house, then leave it and drive off?"
Sesshoumaru considered this.
"Acceptable," he said, and held out his hand to Rin. She took it with a broad smile.
"I drive my car, you follow?" Asked Rin. Sesshoumaru nodded, pulling her off the bench and back towards the cars, Rin laughing excitedly all the way.
Herp derp done! Also: I think that might be the first time I've ever mentioned Kagura in one of these one-shots. Lol.
Anyway, hope you liked it! Please review!