Mephitic Dreams - A Sesshomaru Romance
"I wanted out, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think and most importantly I was without Sesshomaru. He had no way of finding me. This, Lore, sister, chimera whatever she was, had my face, my body, but I was damned if I would let her have my love."
"Sweet-nothings… does he whisper those into your ear? Will I hear those when I take you place in life?" Rem shifted the sore and pin riddle form that was her body. Every thing hurt, both inside and out. "Does he hold you tightly at night when no one can see? I wonder what his kiss tastes like?" She coughed the thick phlegm that clogged her thought out and hefted limbs heavy with fatigue.
"I dare you to try…. Try and find out." She wouldn't dare, this girl who had her face… She dared her to try and fake what she would never be; Rem.
"I'll take you up on that challenge. I wonder… do you sleep together, holding each other at night… or do you do worse when the owl takes flight?" Rem pulled her arms under herself to get off of the ground; it was cold and stank of things long dead.
"I wonder… wouldn't you like to know?" She scrapped her elbows along the ground and forced herself to stand up.
"How touching…" Rem watched the blood drip from her body to the ground. It was from her mouth and she wiped it away at her feet.
"Poison doesn't work so well on me. I have a rather good tasting for it…" Rem's mirage smiled back at her.
"I noticed… I find it amusing that you and I both have an affinity for poison. But we came to them for different reasons. I am a learner… I strive in this… life… to know that is to be known. I know about you, Rem. I have heard your inner thoughts since long before. Before Sesshomaru, before the Lord of the South, before you learned how to work the grapes into fine wine, But always after me… always after you stole them from me." Rem watched as Lore walked around the room with ease, like stone and rock was no hindrance in this cave of sorts.
"Who are you? For real…" Rem leaned on the cave walls for support, never letting Lore leave her still wavering sight.
"Me? Who am I? I wondered if they told you… How like them. Mother and Father were never the loving kind…" Rem spat the blood which kept accumulating in her mouth. The toxin she took in earlier must have made holes in her lungs.
"Stop the rhymes and tell me straight forward." Lore stopped and glared. She did not seem to like having the conversation taken away from her. Rem knew that face more intimately then any one. She used it often herself.
"Have I not told you already or do you not hear as well as you have lived? Sister… I don't call you that for nothing. We were twins… well I suppose you can say we still are; One and the same and different in all ways, you living and I dead.
The world shifted on its axis.
"What…" Again, Rem's mind refused to work, the gears didn't turn and thoughts made no sense.
"I am your younger half. Two parts of one whole, you of the living world and I of Out World; a Breathless One. I need not breathe, eat to exist. I envision things beyond average sight, I hear the wind before it hits the leaves and I smell death before they die. I am the darker half left for dead at birth when we came from mother's tiresome stomach, the wise where you are dim and eternal while you are only fleeting. My Chimera, Ying to Yang, Heaven to Hell and Death and destruction to creation and rebirth. My sister, Named Rem or Amaterasu after the goddess in Heaven, sweet, kind and light-baring where I was named Lorelei, goddess of Destruction, dark, knowledgeable and unforgiving. Even after our name resembles what was forgotten.
"He knew…"
"A new name. Then… how about…. Amaterasu….?"
He knew then, Ichiou somehow had known her name. Even though it was old and forgotten, he gave her the same name as mother had. Fate is so twisted and intertwining…
"Was if fate that mother gave us those names and we became the women we are or was if fate that cursed us to be named such. Where did fate infect us with these lives." Lore stalked over to Rem, again the same as she did when she was angry. Father had often mocked me for it when she was younger about it...
"Get away from me." Rem stepped away, but Lore did not listen.
"I wonder, was it the mother or the father who started all this, was it the seed or the earth which bore us that we are what we are?" She refused to cough what little blood had to be remaining in her veins. "Or was it all just ill luck that you were born first. Would you be me if born minutes later? Would you be standing here revenging on the lucky sister for being allowed to live?" Her hand outstretched to cup Rem's cheek but she moved her face away. "So cold." Her hand returned to her side.
"Revenge? For what? Not being tortured and being withdrawn by force from the whole world, because I am different? Because you were born still?" Lore laughed darkly.
"Still? You think I was a stillborn child? Wrong! I lived once; in the light… you were born the ill one. It was mother that gave you life from my own! The cursed woman made blood pact with the devil for the life you so enjoy…" She took a chair and kicked over another in offering.
"Sit." Rem had no choice but to listen. Her legs would no longer hold her. "Born to die was what you were. Mother asked me… just once, if I loved you as my sister. Of course I answered yes. Later, so long ago, she brought back a man with her and she gave herself up, begging for mercy.
"Save her. Let her live. Don't let her die away. Save my baby. Let her live, please I beg you. Anything you ask, I will give."
"The man told mother that her price would be ours as well; a cursed half-life. Both mother and I gave half of what we were to allow you to continue; Whole. Blood drawn of love and love would grow. If hatred, then hate and so forth. You lived without restriction while mother and I continued half people. Our price to let you live was just that. Half a life; Fate would not change and as it was fate had cruel plans for all of us."
"You died…" The words felt like dust in her mouth and even so the admission pained her.
"Yes. I died. A year later when a mass disease took over; Typhus, killed many, I being one of its targets fell after days of failed treatments from doctors and blessings of priestesses. But as part of being the cursed being I had become, I was unable to die, because half of what I was lived unharmed. In you..." Lore placed both her hands on the table and interlaced fine fingers with long nails. "Mother was not so fortunate it seems. It is said after birthing a child all that a mother is, is given to the child. It seems that is true, because she is no longer here." Rem willed the tears that burned to come forward to stay at bay. She would not shed a tear for this fraud.
"I want what is mine back Rem. I want the part of me that you have. I want it back!"
Her hands slammed down on the table and the ground shock. "I will take back what I gave you when I knew not what I was doing. But know I do. Everything in this world I know. Being of Out World has had its good things. Powers I will be remiss in losing. I can read minds, speak over long distance, and consume knowledge by touch and others. I have assimilated the worlds everything, save one. Life." Lore stood from her seat, clearly finished talking. Rem sucked in a breath and pulled herself up and away.
I have only this one thing... This gambit with my life on the line...
"You can't take what I no longer half." Lore stopped her advancement in interest. A grin pasted on her face.
"Then I will take yours. The life only you have, I will take. Is that not fair?" Gods save me.
"Why take it? If all you say is true then I pity you. I pity what mother took and what I no longer have to give. I will give what you covet and I will not interfere, but you have to fulfill a task for me, if you wish so much to take my place."
"An interesting task… and what per say do you require to give your life away so simply as that?" Rem sat back down in the chair and rested her head in my hands for a moment. Then staring at her own blood covered hands she indicated the chair opposite of her.
"Sit."