Masashi was not a creature acclimated to rejection.
Even weeks after the incident with the bandits, Midoriko's words stung. He was well aware the miko did not need him, but he had hoped she might want him. It was a significant difference, but seemingly unanswered in her stony welcome when he returned to her that night.
In all their months of travel together, he thought she had warmed to him but perhaps that was just his arrogance speaking for her.
When he had initially sought her out, only his curiosity had urged him on. He'd wanted to know who she was and why she killed his kind so indiscriminately—and why even those of great strength hesitated when it came to talks of her assassination.
What he had found in that first meeting, and the many weeks after as she healed from the sand dragon's poison, intrigued him. She intrigued him. She was all spite and venom wrapped up in beautiful silk and riddled with insecurities—and a desperate need for love he was sure she was not at all aware of.
He'd wondered often after that first week and the ones that followed if she'd ever known even the simplest of loves life had to offer.
Masashi had not been able to help himself but to stay with her, to travel with her. He'd been pleased to find she did not seem keen on being rid of his company. Perhaps it was because of that lullaby, but he'd also seen her cast more than a few odd glances his way. He was not blind or stupid—but he didn't press as her.
For all her strength and power and age, she was still a child. He knew the humans often made mates of their females at her age, but he could not imagine such a fate for her. Granted, it wasn't his place to think of her fate but she was so very young.
He eyed her from across the fire as the canopy above them shuddered in the wind. "You once said you became a miko because youkai destroyed your village."
She paused in her arrow crafting, but nodded. "Yes."
"Was it because you loved the ones they killed or because you feared the ones who did the killing?" He wanted her to look up at him, to answer him—to give him something.
"Can't it be both?"
Her eyes were black in the night, even with the fire dancing between them. He thought it would be a mistake to guess at her emotions in that moment. "Not for you." Her fingers clenched around the arrow shaft she was whittling, and he wondered if she would finally kill him.
"Because I'm incapable of love?"
An almost undeniable surge of rage roared through him, but he stifled it before she could see or sense it. "Who told you that? No, don't answer." He knew. She said it with such surety she must have been told from birth. Perhaps it was not such a terrible thing her village had been taken. "It's not that you can't—it's that you don't know how."
Midoriko finally looked up at him and Masashi held his breath as their eyes met across the fire. The fierce challenge in her gaze pulled at the beast inside of him, begged him to meet her defiance head on.
"You think you're the one to teach me? Big strong youkai here to woo the wilting miko?"
Masashi chuckled. "It would be my great honour, if you were so inclined. But there are more loves than the one you speak of. Friends, allies, family."
"If we are friends, that means you want something from me." The words were quiet but there was a disdain there she couldn't squash.
He was ill with sorrow at the thought that all she'd known in relationships with others was a give and take barter. "The only thing you could give me that I could not take myself is your trust." He eyed the bandages peeking through the lip of her haori. "You could trust me to defend and protect you, even if you don't need it. I would, and have, put my life in your hands before."
Midoriko barely contained the instinctive urge to touch her bandaged shoulder. The wounds were almost completely healed now, and she was only wearing the bandages as a precaution. They had argued many times about that night the bandits had attempted to rape her. She still didn't understand why it was so important to him but perhaps it was because of his youkai nature but she was curious enough to consider it with his talk of friendship. If he was lying, she could just kill him later. "I can…try."
His smile bloomed in the dancing light of the flames at her words, slow and beautiful like a flower turning to the sun after a long, dark night. She was struck with the near irresistible urge to do anything that would keep it there.
"I think that is the best answer I could hope for." Pleasure settled in his chest and curled around his bones. It wasn't much, by normal standards, but it was a great boon from one such as her. It was a step he had not been sure she would be willing to take. "A wilting miko." The very thought made him chuckle.
Across the fire, her fingers clenched and snapped the arrow shaft she'd just finished whittling.