WARNING: This contains non-con and sensitive material. Please read the tags and if any of those are a trigger for you or are not something you want to read, don't proceed.


She's dreamt of a 'them', of course she had.

It wasn't a difficult thing to conjure up daydreams of a 'them'.

Her fantasies came without prompt, in fact, and a lot of her days during the middle of her adolescent years were spent staring at nothing in particular while she went around the village doing her chores, mind half-immersed in a vision of being held tightly in her Lord's strong arms.

Rin couldn't help it, especially since she had grown up surrounded by such resilient and happy - albeit a little unorthodox, at times - marriages like the ones Inuyasha and Kagome or Miroku and Sango had.

Of course, she's dreamt of a 'them'. How could she not?

Shameful as Rin felt for thinking of her Lord in such a manner, there was no denying the fact that she hadspent countless hours envisioning a different reality in her mind - one where the two of them would be resting under the canopy of the forest trees beneath the stars, his forehead resting on hers and the warmth of his body merging with her own. She had dreamed of the two of them wrapped in each other's arms, had imagined how a private 'I love you' could be exchanged between their breaths – softly whispered from her lips, she imagined, and unspoken from his but still evidently clear in his golden eyes.

In Rin's old pipedreams, everything would be quiet and perfect and beautiful.

'Stop daydreaming so much, kiddo,' Inuyasha had scolded her once with a light flick to her ear. 'You'll get so lost inside your head you might actually end up falling down a cliff.'

At the time, it had been a harmless muse on her end.

Dreaming was a very different thing from hoping, Rin thought. Never once did she dare to hope.

She'd always known her Lord Sesshomaru couldn't hold her that way.

In the lonely silence between his visits and in the sadness in his presence was where Rin came to realise that choosing a final 'goodbye' had been an inevitable thing for the two of them all along.

It was during a sunset a few moons after her seventeenth birthday, she remembers, when a glimpse of the ground-shattering heartache accompanying her still-unspoken choice had knocked her breath away for the first time.

The setting sun had hung low on the horizon, the blue of the sky morphing into the beautiful colours of twilight and her Lord had been waiting for her in an open field not too far from the village.

His back had been turned to her, the perfect picture of ethereality and Rin had stopped several feet away. She had watched, entranced as silver strands blew with the gentle breeze, the bright smile on her lips suddenly wavering at the mesmerising sight of him under the setting sun.

He had been beautiful -always was, always will be- and though he must have heard her running towards him from a mile away, he did not turn, not until she had called out to him. Amber eyes had regarded her with something as close to warmth as Sesshomaru's eyes could ever reflect and her heart had soared and thumped, shamefully so, with all the love she had to give to him only to falter and stutter in the same beat when he did not make a move to come closer, the ever-present distance between them -always an arms-length away. Always- serving to remind her of the love that he couldn't return.

They could never be, Rin had always known that.

But finally choosing to permanently part ways with him?

Back then, seventeen springs old and standing in that open field under the setting sun, that had still been a completely new, utterly petrifying thought.

It had punched the breath right out of her chest.

'Any child of his will definitely look like him, Kagome-chan,' she remembers telling Kagome in one of their casual chats around the small fire in Kaede's hut the evening before that particular visit. 'Pale skin, golden eyes and silver hair. Maybe with his markings too – both the moon and the stripes, I think. They'd be so beautiful.'

Kagome had nudged her shoulders with a sly grin. 'Plus, some cute doggy ears at the top of their cute little heads because of their human Mama?'

'…Of course not, Kagome-chan,' Rin had replied after a tick of silence, a sad, wistful smile on her lips. 'They'd have pointed ears like a true inuyokai,' she said, knowing from the sudden confusion in Kagome's face that it was time to voice out what had been truly tormenting her heart. 'Their Hahaue couldn't possibly be anything less than their Chichiue.'

No more illusions of sleeping under the stars with the warmth of her Lord's mokomoko protecting her from the evening breeze, Rin had told herself. No more fantasies of his soft lips on her forehead or the light scrapes of gentle claws on her skin, she had promised to the heavens, and certainly no more daydreams of beautiful Hanyou children with his eyes and her smile.

Seventeen springs old and Rin vowed with a heavy heart that she would learn to let him go.

She is almost nineteen springs old now.

Almost nineteen and instead, she finds herself on the soft, white fur of her Lord's mokomoko.

His claws are indeed gentle where they rest on her skin and his lips truly do feel soft and warm as they press against the centre of her forehead in a kiss that is meant to sooth her tremors away.

They are back inside her chambers now, no longer laying on the grass and no longer exposed to the cold outdoors. The chill of the evening is absent inside her room and Rin isn't cold, not anymore - quite the opposite in fact.

The heat emitting from their bodies is more than enough to provide ample warmth and the fur she rests on ensures she is wholly protected from any cold which could creep into the corners of her chambers.

No, Rin isn't cold by any means.

Still, she couldn't stop shaking.

The side of her neck is still throbbing, the tear tracks on her cheeks still in the midst of drying.

There is an overflow of liquid warmth between her inner thighs, uncomfortable and so foreign, and Sesshomaru is still inside her. He is moving once more, the slow drag of his length inside her making her tremble harder than she already had been.

They've already spent the majority of the evening in this position but the overwhelming sensation of being so intimately joined with him still makes her want to cry all over again.

"I love you with all my heart, Sesshomaru-sama."

Rin wants to curl into a ball and hide away, to simply disappear as the memories of her long-buried daydreams resurfaces with everything he is doing.

Sesshomaru presses their lips together, holds her close -So close. Too close. He's never been this close-like it was something he had always done and Rin finds herself clinging to him despite it all, not knowing what else there is to hold onto in this world in the midst of what she is enduring - what he is putting her through.

Sesshomaru pulls back just enough to stare at her face and the sight of him makes her heart jolt, makes her chest constrict painfully when she sees the dark possessiveness and animalistic hunger prowling in the same golden eyes -usually so impassive and cold. Only ever warm just for her- she had spent too much time getting lost in.

Are those the only things that he, as a Daiyokai, could feel for her?

Rin clings to her Lord harder, pressing her face against his shoulder so she doesn't have to look at the answer in his eyes.

She pleads desperately to whatever Gods are up in the heavens for this to end, for all of this to be a horrendous nightmare, begging with all her might for someone to wake her so she can return to a safer reality where the only thing she had ever needed was his presence to make all the fear and all the pain go away.

"I love you with all my heart, Sesshomaru-sama."

There is that tell-tale rumbling from Sesshomaru's chest again-this is no nightmare- too real and too terrifying –this is their reality now- and Rin bites her lip so hard it bleeds at the growl resonating in the dark, failing to contain her broken gasps when the pace of his thrusts -too much, too much. No more- begins to increase once more.

There is no whispered 'I love you' under the canopy of the forest trees beneath the stars. Nothing is quiet or perfect or beautiful and the only thing reflecting from her beloved Lord's golden eyes are the dark needs of a Daiyokai reaping the promises she had made.

"I love you with all my heart, Sesshomaru-sama."

So simple and so naïve, her old, faded daydreams were.


I'm a lot more active over at AO3 with the comments and I do apologise for not replying here but I do thank those who take the time to read and review :) very much appreciated!

EDIT: to my anonymous Guest reviewer who I can't reply to, AO3 (archive of our own) is just another platform for posting fanfiction stories :) I'm keeping the status of the story as complete for now as there's no guarantee I'll be adding any more but this might change in the future. Thank you very much for reading