Fuiasu could barely hear the rain through the cocoon of Bokusenou's leafy barrier. It was a soft patter against the leaves, a soothing rhythm to the storm raging inside her. "To have come this far and to have to make such a choice," she murmured, her words just audible from the ball she'd curled into at his roots, "Surely the gods are punishing This One for all the choices previously made."
The ancient tree was silent. She knew he still showed himself to her, his face a carving of rough lines in the bark, but he did not speak. "Is it so wrong to want eternity with my mate?" she whispered, and felt hated tears burn the corners of her eyes.
Tears had not crossed her lids in more than a thousand years—not since those fateful days when she still strived for her mother's love and her father's protection. Shame curled in the pit of her stomach, a wilted flower deprived of sunlight. She'd disgraced the vow she'd made all those years ago the day she'd stopped caring if her parents loved her. Gods, she'd wrecked that vow with her sobs here in the embrace of Bokusenou's roots.
But she felt lighter than she had in a thousand years too because even though it was still hard to breathe, it no longer felt like there was a booted foot pressing down against her chest to hold her down.
"Is it so wrong to be selfish?" she wondered, and spread out onto her back to stare up at the dark canopy of his barrier.
"I would say there is some inherent need for selfishness in all creatures," said the tree youkai and he shifted in his roots. "Even a flower will angle itself towards the sun for its fair share of light."
"This one is not a flower," Fuiasu muttered, and finally slanted the tree a look.
"Are you not? Is your Lord not the sun to which you will always face, even if it means taking light from the other flowers around you?"
She supposed it wasan accurate description. It was also mildly embarrassing. She'd never considered her love for her mate in quite that way. "I have always cut down any other flowers that dared to block him from my view," she said after some time had passed in more silence between them. "I have cut them down and did not think twice for their lost lives, for the suns they might have been yearning for. I did not let their deaths matter to me. And yet now…"
"And yet now, you love the flower that is standing in your way."
Fuiasu tried to summon a snarl, but it was lacking in heat and feeling. "I do not love anyone but Tōga and Sesshoumaru," she argued, but that too was lacking in heat and feeling. There was quiet again between them as the rain continued its onslaught against his leaves. And then, "I did not want to love her."
Bokusenou hummed. "If you kill the girl, you will create yet another timeline and her blood will be a stain you will never be rid of. You might yet lose your mate even if he still lives."
Another timeline? Why must everything be so complicated?
"If I let her live, if I protect her and the future she brings with her, there is nothing I can do to save Tōga. The mating bond will break, he will pup the human princess, and I will have nothing left when he is killed. I will leave my son to care for these lands and grieve the loss of his father. I will be broken and I do not know if I can put the pieces of my soul together again."
There was silence in the little copse again. Fuiasu glanced at the tree and saw that his eyes were closed. She sighed. At least he had not faded back into his tree yet. "Is it possible for a Daiyoukai to kill herself?" she wondered, the words a bare whisper among his roots. "Surely I have gathered enough enemies in the almost four thousand years I have lived. Maybe if Tōga dies, I can follow him."
She grit her teeth and closed her eyes, her heart a dull thud in her chest she could not bear to hear. How many more years did she have with him? What kind of life would be worth living if she did not have him by her side? "What life will be worth living if he is not by my side?" she said, and the words were ripped from her throat, a whisper of the agony she could not bring herself to face.
"I have found, in my near millennia of living, that the greatest challenges one might face is to find something that makes life worth living."
Fuiasu snorted and covered her face with her arms. "You have not said one useful thing in the three days I have mourned here," she accused the tree. "It makes This One wonder why previous Lords and Ladies of this House have not ripped you from the roots and used you for kindling. Haven't you anything useful to say?"
If he'd been capable, Bokusenou might have smiled a smile so wide it cracked the bark of his tree. "Greater demons than you have tried, Fuiasu of the House of the Moon." He paused and closed his eyes, as if listening to something. Abruptly, he drew back the barrier of his leaves. "You have lingered here too long, Lady. Your choice might come sooner than you think. Remain here, or return to your Citadel?"
And then he was gone, his ancient, lined face smoothing out as it sank back into the tree and left behind a smooth patch of soft, worn bark in its place—and an Inu, pale and uncertain as she hesitated in the enormity of the decision thrust suddenly, far too suddenly, upon her.
o.O.o
Word Count - 999