When the children had been ushered off to their rooms and the courtiers dismissed, when the bodies had been taken away and the grounds cleansed of all visible marks of the attack, Tōga watched his mate as she sank down before her vanity and began to remove the paints and jewels from her person.
"Where were you?" he asked, the words a quiet rumble from his position by the door.
She paused, but did not dare look at his reflection in the mirror she faced. If her hands shook as she removed her rings, it was quickly hidden as she debated how to answer.
Frustration dug into every crevice of his joints, a dull ache begging for release. When she did not answer, he sighed and strode forward, yanking at the ties to his armor. "Help me to understand, Fuiasu. Help me to understand why you deemed it appropriate to leave our lands, the pups, with no protections. Help me to understand what you could have possibly been thinking to leave because as far as I can tell, you left at your fancy to do Kami knows what. If you had arrived even one minute later than you did…"
"You do not need to tell me the consequences of my choices, mate!" she bit out, and slammed the bracelet she'd just removed onto the vanity table. "I am very, very aware of the consequences some females face when in danger." Her claws dug into the soft wood and the scent of her poison permeated the room like a blanket. "I understand what could have happened and nothing you say can make the guilt I feel any more pervasive than it already is."
He paused, gold eyes narrowing as he looked up at her. She looked so small there at that table, so…helpless, though he knew it was a word she might rip his throat out for using to describe her—but the sight of the back of her exposed neck purged any attempt to comfort he might have been tempted to offer. "Then where-"
"I was mourning your death!" she barked, and with a hiss swiped her arm across the vanity and toppled all her paints and perfumes on the floor before she stood and spun to face him. "I was curled up in Bokusenou's roots like a pup sobbing over your death, so broken inside that I needed a moment, more than a moment, to collect myself! And do you know the worst part, great dog general? The worst, worst part that I cannot even hate you for, is that you died protecting a pup. Your bastard pup, but still a pup. You die defending a pup you have off Izayoi. That is what I saw, that is what made me flee the home we built together and abandon all reason."
Her chest was a heaving, quivering thing as she tried to catch her breath and failed. Screaming out her frustration, she yanked up the stool to her vanity and threw it across the room to tear through the shoji screens and tumble out into their private gardens as he stood there staring at her.
Tōga could do nothing but stare at her, his mind spinning with all she'd said. Of course he hadn't slept with the girl child, had no plans to, and he was still very much alive—so she had to be talking about a vision but she'd never, ever shared one that had to do with him. He had only seen Fuiasu exhibit such rage towards him when they had first met and been betrothed, when their parents had sold them off like chattel. Another crash drew his attention back to her and he looked up in time to see the fragments of the mirror shatter on the floor between them.
"Six times I have seen your death before now," she rasped, her marks jagged lines across her cheeks as red bled into her eyes. "Six times I have avoided that fate for you with schemes and trickery and sacrifice—plans that have dirtied my hands time and time again so I could keep you by my side. And this time…this time I can see no path clear of your death." Panting, she sank down to her knees on the shards of broken mirror. "There was only one thing I could do to prevent it and that was to kill Kagome. I needed a moment, Tōga, so I fled. And when I learned there was an attack, that the girls were alone, Kami help me I hesitated because there is a part of me that would let that child die if it meant you might live."
When he had first learned that she had visions, before they were even mated, she had told him that she could never tell him of anything that directly affected him. There were too many variables, too many things that could alter the course of their lives, the lives of others, and there was always the possibility that the if he knew what was going to happen to him, he could be driven mad and so he'd held his peace and never asked about himself or her visions, only offering insight when asked for his thoughts.
So he was going to die, unless Kagome died. There was a very, very base part of the beast inside of him that railed at his own death, that considered even if only for a moment, letting the girl die.
He swallowed and then stepped across the broken glass to kneel in front of her. "If the roles had been reversed," he said finally, "I would have hesitated too."
A hiccup and then she was leaning into him, her tears soaking into his haori as he ran his fingers through the short locks that just barely touched the nape of her neck. He sank down into the glass and pulled her fully into his lap, then whispered a promise into her ear. "We will do better from now on."
o.O.o
Word Count - 1022