Chapter Twenty-Six: Eyes that Know Me
A/N: First allow me to apologize for the month and a half delay. I started a new job and the mental/physical fatigue didn't allow me to be creative for a while. Then, when I had recovered, the save file for the progress for this chapter was corrupted. I lost the entire story and had to recreate it from what I'd uploaded on FF already – I lost my self-notes and continuity checks. Ah well. I should be able to keep most things in line anyway J This chapter is best read to "Delires" by Tim Story.
Also, as a side note, during the story I will refer to the written and spoken word as 'Chinese.' There are over twelve different dialects and languages native to China (such as Mandarin, Wu, and Yue), but it simplifies things if I keep it as 'Chinese'. In addition, a group of tigers is called a 'streak' or 'ambush.' Also also, as fun trivia in case you didn't pick up on it before, the haiku are what Lixue writes in little scraps of paper along with battle plans. Okay, enjoy the chapter!
Lixue grunted, rolling onto her stomach and limbs haphazardly arranged on her bed. She found herself staring into the familiar darkness of the corners of her quarters, forcing herself to close her eyes again. Her restlessness had been growing steadily over the last several days, manifesting itself in solitary meanderings during the day and inability to sleep at night. Rin soon had to begin sleeping in her own room, the tigress' movement making it difficult for the girl to get any rest.
The day after she had sent Adisa away, she sent him a letter with last-minute instructions on caring for her home while she was in Japan. She hoped, oh how she hoped, that when spring began to break she'd come home to find it amphibian-free.
Lixue realized her eyes were open again and shut them, concentrating on not concentrating. Forcing her tensing muscles to slack again, she flipped herself onto her side and breathed out steadily. Finally, she began to feel the trancelike state of pseudo-sleep claim her.
Lixue's heart began to beat more quickly, and she opened her eyes, forcing her dreaming and drifting mind to focus. She lay in a lazy carpet of swirling miasma, thick and barely disturbed by her exhales, her right eye submerged in blackness. Her thoughts drifted to a semblance of panic, her mind and body paralyzed by the miasma breathed in by her sleeping body; the tigress strained to move her muscles, her face, unable to speak, unable even to whimper.
She stared at the clouds of poison, her faded brain beginning to fully wake even as her body could not, and she remembered why the miasma scared her so. A shadow filled her window, casting the darkness of her room into an even darker shade, the thin light of the crescent moon snuffed out.
Lixue could only stare ahead, dread and anger and fear pooling into her gut.
The miasma playfully danced away from its master's footsteps, silent as she remembered them to be. His navy cloth paused before her face, and he knelt before her. His cold fingers gently cradled her chin. She tried to flinch away, but her mutinous body remained relaxed, and he lifted her face to better see his own. She focused her eyes, fever heat behind them, the odd sensation of a head filled with water only intensified by motion. Her breathing was labored, a thick yellow froth forming in her nostrils from the poison and reminiscent of bubbles surfacing through tar.
He smiled at her, a soft expression, his genuine love made lie by the hard stare of his eyes.
"My dear princess, how I've missed you," Naraku whispered, caressing her cheek with the back of his free hand. "But you've been a bad girl." His voice turned chiding, a father scolding an errant child. "I'm afraid I must punish you for your disobedience."
He withdrew his hand from her skin, her distrust growing exponentially as he dipped his hand into the front of his clothing, drawing out a vial, its contents faintly reflecting the moonlight in a pallor hue. He drew her head forward, placing it softly on his lap, pushing her onto her back by her shoulder. He looked down at her, pleased, as he uncorked the vial. She feared it, that unknown thing, and what it would do. Tigers aren't meant to know fear.
He held it beneath her nose, waving it gently back and forth for its scent to reach her. It was an unnecessary gesture, as she had picked up the metallic twinge of human blood immediately – it puzzled her. Is this supposed to scare me? He continued to wave it beneath her nose, patiently waiting for something, watching her eyes.
The overpowering smell of human blood abated as she grew used to it, its undertones coming forth, the signature of its owner that of an innocent girl named Rin.
He grinned in excitement when her pupils thinned to slits. "You were sending a message to the world – that it is possible to defy me and live a life untouched. It is your own fault, then, that I have to send this message to you. I had warned you that should you disobey, the girl's life would be forfeit."
Rin?...
"It's a shame she died so quickly… I had expected to get at least a day out of her, since she's been under your tutelage. She gave up rather swiftly though, I'm afraid." He sighed wistfully, corking the vial and slipping it back into the folds of his hakama. "Now, my dear princess, there's the question of what to do with you."
She could only stare hatefully at his hands as he cradled her head, lifting it gently and placing it back on her pillow, arranging himself next to her. He untied the simple knot of her sleeping gown, peeling the silk away from her skin and revealing her naked form to him. He splayed a hand on her stomach, his skin clammy and cold against her perpetual heat. She wanted to curl away, avoid that cruelly familiar touch.
He ran his palms up along her ribcage, expression dropping as he brought his other hand forward to touch the unexpected softness, the calefaction, the soft glow, of her skin. His fingers found and caressed the long strains of scars, working his way toward his ultimate goal. She could not see him, facing and staring at the ceiling above her, but she instinctively knew when his touches became many that he had begun to use hand and tentacle alike.
Naraku's hands wrapped around her hips, his tentacles winding around her ankles and spreading her pliant body before him, a succulent offering. He rearranged himself between her legs, smelling her fear, her hate, even though her flesh remained soft, relaxed.
Lixue stirred herself into a near madness, screaming soundlessly at herself to break out of it, to free her body of his miasma's paralysis and snap his neck like a twig; internal fire blazing, burning away the poison from her blood, she pushed harder and harder still. Her forehead began to bead with sweat, her assailant far too engrossed in her body to notice, the fruits of her internal struggle slowly inching down her skin as her thin thread of time began to unspool.
His breath warmed her thighs.
The tigress slashed her claws toward Naraku with a strangled, feral snarl, only for her fingers to swipe fruitlessly through the air. She sat up, lip lifted in a low snarl, looking about her empty room with growing confusion and disorientation. The stink of miasma had ceased burning her nose and lungs. She breathed freely, her clothing a little crooked but intact. The thick clouds had vanished from the floor, and she smelled no trace of Naraku.
It can't have just been a dream. He was here. …Wasn't he?
She shook her head vigorously to clear the foggy remnants of the night terror from her mind. It didn't work.
Grunting with irritation and more shaken than she cared to admit, Lixue lifted herself from her abused bedding and readjusted her robe. She stepped cautiously into the polished wood of the hallway, ears piqued for any bump in the night, padding toward Rin's room. She paused before the thin rice paper of her doorway, the measured breathing and slight whistle on the exhale assuring the tigress that the girl rested soundly within.
Comforted somewhat, Lixue returned to her quarters, softly closing the door behind her and lying down again. She closed her eyes, but found them snapping open again at any creak as the castle settled, the slight coughing of a guard outside, the skittering of rodent feet on the eaves, and always, and always the imagined crush of fabric against the stone sills.
Deciding that the comfort of the streak was needed, despite the noted lack of tigers in this entire portion of the country, Lixue once again abandoned her quarters. Still before the girl's doorway once more, the tigress hesitated, the tips of her claws resting against the frail paper. A boldness overcame her and she withdrew her hand, turning instead to walk the forty steps to the doorway beyond her own, the den of the dog.
The tigress stole through the surprising weight of the bedchamber door, easing some of her weight into it to help it along. It shut behind her with a barely audible click, the wood tapping against the metal fittings of the entrance.
The near-pitch darkness only hindered her slightly, her ears filling with the even intake and exhale of the taiyoukai. Her entrance had not been unnoticed it seemed, as his breathing was beginning to hasten; Sesshomaru was beginning to wake, and any semblance of the bold cat from only moments before was ghosting away.
So she stood stupidly, halfway between the taiyoukai and the door, unable to think of a passable excuse as to why she was sneaking into his chambers in the middle of the night beyond the laughable 'I had a bad dream.' She stared into the darkness where she knew he lie, the cat's vision picking up the luxurious billows of his mokomoko spread across his bed.
Sesshomaru's nose had picked up her scent before he had even fully awoken, breathing in the familiarity of her, dark burnt notes of clove and cinnamon, charred vanilla beans, roasted tea leaves, overtures on the thin green spades of the beautiful and poisonous oleander. Fire and forest and foreign spice. Instinctively aware that he was in no danger, he woke smoothly, opening his eyes but not lifting his head as he awaited her reason for barging into his bedchamber.
The tigress did not speak, and his patience quickly gave way to irritation.
"Lixue." Her spine prickled at his tone. I knew this was a mistake.
She turned on her toes to leave before changing her mind yet again and ending up spinning in place with no clear goal, painfully aware of how this must seem to Sesshomaru but tongue in a state of simply gone.
"I don't…" her voice was cracked and muffled, and she swallowed, only to make herself cough on a bit of air. She tried again, descending into murmuring almost immediately. "I don't want to be alone right now."
Silence.
Then, the smooth rustling of silk as he adjusted himself, an unspoken invitation to share his bed. She carefully picked her way, listening to his breathing and finding his form in the dark. She gingerly placed her hands before adding more of her body in the warm and unfamiliar landscape of Sesshomaru's bedding, pleasantly surprised by the stoic youkai's apparent fondness for soft bedding and fine silk. His scent, his warmth, permeated every atom of it.
The bed was enormous, but it was apparently designed to mimic a nest, as she found herself releasing her tension and sliding toward the middle of the bed. Her back pressed up against Sesshomaru's bare skin, and she forced her sudden panic to subside. She just hoped that come morning, she wouldn't find that he liked to sleep in the nude, or she'd have to leave for China that very moment. She didn't pause to wonder why his nudity would matter so when just a few weeks prior she had slept in a giant pile of naked, drunken demons during the dance of the Harvest Moon, including the man in question. It just did.
His breathing began to slow, and she relaxed somewhat again. She sighed, and felt a tickle on her nose. She opened her eyes to see Sesshomaru's mokomoko curling possessively around her. She smiled, rubbing her face in its softness. This she remembered. Every other part, the wandering in, the indecision, the explanations and the anxiety, it all was so foreign to her, to them, but this part was thankfully unchanged. She clutched it to her chest, resting her cheek in its familiarity and breathing in the comfort of lilies and sun-warmed fur.
She drifted off finally, thankfully, to the comfort of a spiderless sleep.
Who loves for the weed? Its stem carries not beauty, and smells of sickness.
oOxXxOo
The pre-dawn screeches of a distant bird poked at the sleeping tigress' sensitive ears, well before the darkness of the night would be painted over by the sunlight. She groaned and buried her face in the waves of silk, clutching the familiar fur to her chest and clenching her eyes shut for just a few hours more of sleep. Her foggy mind prodded her with the feeling that something was going to happen and maybe she should be awake for it, but she pushed it away, preferring the allure of dozing in the hour or two remaining before morning. It would have none of that. It continued to niggle at her, that vague warning, so she gave up, stretching and twisting her body in the bed.
Or she would have, if it weren't for the arm wrapped firmly about her waist.
She tried to gently dislodge Sesshomaru's arm from its iron grip, but he simply pulled her closer up against his chest and growled in his sleep, his breath warm on the top of her head. Lixue experimentally tried to wiggle her fingers between the cloth of her robe and his stomach, finding very little room, and even less when he adjusted his hips to press up against her own. She sighed internally, this situation not at all unfamiliar – she had often had to wait for him to awaken before his incessant and intense cuddling would abate, and it seemed that it was one of the things he had not grown out of.
He growled again, softer, and rubbed his nose against her neck.
She made herself as comfortable as she could and attempted to doze, waiting for the dawn light to wake him.
Beguiling sunlight, when at last you awaken, taint not my dreamscape.
oOxXxOo
Lixue opened her eyes, aware that she was somehow waking up without having known that she had fallen asleep. She sat up, realizing that she was alone in Sesshomaru's bed. She rubbed her eyes and scanned the room for him, finding it unnervingly empty. It almost seemed unnatural for it to exist without him inside of it.
It did not take long for her to vacate it, ignoring the suspicious and curious eyes of the maiden sweeping the hallway as she left the lord's chambers.
Oh, what fresh rumors will circle the servants' quarters about me now…
After changing into fresh clothing, she embarked through the castle. Testing the air while she walked, peeking about corners before passing them by, she explored, all the while wondering where Sesshomaru had gone. That is, until she realized that she was. She immediately stopped and headed toward the dining hall, nose in the air instead of smelling it. Sesshomaru could find her if he wanted to, but she wasn't going to go crawling into his bed because of a bad dream and then follow him around like a lost cub in the space of a single day.
She ate her breakfast in silence, finding no trace of him in the dining hall either. By the scent, he hadn't yet come to eat, and he was a fastidious creature – if he could, he stuck to a schedule. Most days, he would get up, eat, bathe, and then spend the day doing boring lord-type things. She would spar or go digging around in his library or frolic (in a stern, tigerly fashion) with Rin. She put it out of her head. Sesshomaru is a big boy. He can take care of himself.
But still.
The weak argument put forth by her subconscious nonetheless prodded her to get up and seek him out. Deciding that shoes were for chumps, she trudged outside barefoot, dragging the hem of her no-doubt expensive hanfu through the dirt and loving every second of it. Take that, society!
Forgoing asking anyone where he would be or, heaven forbid, waiting for him where she knew he would eventually have to pass by, she meandered aimlessly from the gardens to the training field, then back again. She paused on the overgrown path that led to their childhood fort, the faintest impression of Sesshomaru lingering on the crushed grass. She approached the boulder protecting the entrance, a handprint marring the dust on the rough surface giving him away. She placed her hand in its place, taking a moment before pushing it aside to appreciate the size difference between his hand and her own. Why a thing like that was important now, she didn't know.
Tracking him into the stagnation of the tunnel, Lixue was careful to close the boulder behind her, not bothering to be quiet. He would know she was nearby. She only stood a chance of surprising him if she had been waiting with wind or rain preventing that uncanny nose from finding her. Or if he was too absorbed in thought to pay heed to the world around him – which was more of an afterthought than an actual occurrence. Following the scent and the promise of light, the tigress crouched through the fort's entryway and hobbled along until she reached the inner chamber. Sesshomaru was leaning against the wall, holding something in his hand and staring up at the flowers he had made for her.
She approached freely, instinctively aware that in here, things were different. They weren't estranged best friends, a lord of a mighty general and a self-made empress, a stoic dog and a contrary cat, but just… Sesshomaru and Lixue. The thought comforted her for some reason, and she found herself caressing the edges of the silver lily's petals. She placed it back inside of her hanfu.
"Hey." She offered lamely, flumping down roughly beside him. He tilted his head, looking sidelong at her.
"…Hey."
The word seemed strange from his lips, and he seemed to think so as well, the faintest twitch of his eyebrows giving him away. She smiled weakly.
"I guess you want to know why I snuck into your room last night and took up the space on your bed." She looked at her lap, twisting her fingers into the cloth of her hanfu's belt.
"No. I know what happened."
She looked up at him in shock. "You do? How?"
"You talk in your sleep." He itched his jaw with careful scrapes of his claws, offering nothing more in the way of explanation.
"What did… what did I say?" She edged closer, leaning forward and hugging her legs to her chest.
"You spoke of Naraku." His voice grew darker, the muscles in his jaw jumping slightly as he clenched it. "Begged him to leave you alone."
"Why didn't you wake me?"
Sesshomaru turned his head away from her searching gaze. "When you would cry out, you would call for me… wouldn't let me go. You quieted if I held you."
So that's why he was holding onto me this morning.
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "It was rude of me to keep you awake."
"Hnn." He seemed dissatisfied, as if the apology wasn't what he had wanted to hear.
She took a stab in the dark. "Thank you for staying with me, Sesshomaru."
He looked at her for the first time that morning. "…You're welcome."
They sat in a semi-tense silence.
Lixue placed her hands on the ground, lifting herself in little hops to close the distance between them. He watched her, no suspicion clouding his face. She settled down next to the taiyoukai, no space between their bodies, and rested her face on his unarmored shoulder. She closed her eyes, feeling his cheek press against her head.
The anxious flutter in her soul came to rest.
Let me live sweetly, that I may do him no harm; flowers among thorns.
A/N: Aww, I was going to do more, but I have to go bed noooow. Ugggh.