First and foremost: This contains non-con (implied, for now).
I love these two, I really do. But I can't help taking a darker take on how they could be.
This isn't the first time I'm posting a story of mine but this is a first for this fandom.
Full summary:
He knows of her beliefs of him, of herself and of the impossibility of a 'them'.
She thinks of her love for him as a tragedy which has always been doomed from the beginning and he, in turn, has done nothing to quell his growing need of her, had even trampled it down to a point that he had fooled both himself and Rin into believing it wasn't there.
Regardless, Sesshomaru knows Rin will always choose him and that reassuring knowledge had always been enough to satiate the dangerous beast dwelling within him.
But then, Rin chooses otherwise.
"Even you cannot deny the instincts to claim what you already deem as yours. You cannot suppress such a primal part of you. When the time comes and should, heaven forbid, her choice not be you, you might find control as something that is no longer in your grasp. What ever will you do in the aftermath of that?"
"To stay in Edo, Sesshomaru-sama," Rin tells him, certain and unwavering. "That is what I have chosen."
The demon Lord does not move, does not react.
Amber eyes continue to stare through the open shoji doors, gazing into the small, private garden that had been planted years ago solely for her pleasure. The two of them are in her chambers, his back to her as they stand too many feet apart in the room that Rin occupies in the Western palace on the occasional days she would leave Inuyasha's village to stay here for a few, short days.
Sesshomaru does not ask why she has come to such a decision. He already knows why. She had already apologised so profusely in the past about it.
"I'm so sorry, Sesshomaru-sama."
"I know it's embarrassing for you, my Lord. Forgive me."
"It must disgust you, I understand. I apologise, Sesshomaru-sama. Please, don't treat me any differently. Nothing will change between us."
He knows. Everyone who knows the two of them knows.
She is a girl -no. A woman. She is a woman now, almost 19 springs old- who had always bared her heart and emotions out in the open like a bleeding wound.
"I love you with all my heart, Sesshomaru-sama."
His response is always the same.
"It is of no consequence, Rin."
Sesshomaru stands by that response, even now. It was and is of no consequence. The things she feels so openly for him never disgusted him, never once embarrassed him.
Rin thinks of her declarations as something far beneath a demon of his stature, yet proclaims it out loud for him anyway because she knows he will still listen. She thinks of her love for him as a tragedy which has always been doomed from the beginning, sees it as something which can never be reciprocated - only left to burn bright and true in lonely silence until it fades into ashes along with her own life when time itself finally decides to whisk her away.
He knows of her beliefs of him, of herself and of the impossibility of a 'them'. He knows and yet he has done nothing.
"You don't need to trouble yourself with my well-being anymore, my Lord," Rin continues, pulling him away from his thoughts. Sesshomaru's eyes narrow minutely, her words causing an unsettling shift inside him. The reality of this conversation and where it is heading is beginning to dawn on him and something inside stirs - something he had caged long ago as soon as Rin had begun to blossom into her womanhood. "I will leave at dawn tomorrow and this will be my final night here in the West. Please, don't inconvenience yourself with visiting me at Edo any longer. It is best we-"
"No," he cuts her off, tone so icy that it would have frozen a foe on the spot had he been in a battlefield. It does not deter her though. She has never been afraid of him.
…Foolish woman.
"You've already done so much for me. I don-"
"I refuse."
There's a tick of silence between them. A slight shuffling. And then-
"…Please, my Lord," Rin whispers to him.
Sesshomaru turns to the sight of her on her knees, the silk of her kimono strewn around her as she bows deeply, forehead touching the floor.
She is begging him.
Refuse.
"I've tried to convince myself that just being by your side was enough. That just being a ward of the West until my last sunset in this world was enough," Rin says, voice breathless but the scent of tears absent.
She is a Lady through and through now, he is abruptly reminded, and as much of an open book she can be, Rin had also learned how to contain herself far better than most women of Noble birth when circumstances call for it. Aristocracy does not run in her blood but it had been ingrained in her through other ways. Sesshomaru and even his own mother had seen to that. It didn't matter that Rin spent her growing years in that human village his Hanyou brother resided in.
She is of the West, always.
Not just a ward. Not anymore. Fool.
"But you will have to start a family soon, my Lord, and I-" Rin's throat constricts suddenly, cutting her words short. She takes a deep breath, her delicate form still hunched on the floor in front him. "I wish you all the happiness in the world, I truly do," she continues with heart-breaking sincerity. "But I've realised that I can't be there to see it, my Lord. It would kill my heart."
Sesshomaru listens, unblinking as the girl-turned-woman pours her heart out before him. He listens to the words she utters out loud, deciphers the words she does not but still means for him to hear all the same.
A youkai wife and pure-blooded children are what Rin has come to define as his happiness.
…Ridiculous.
The corner of his lips curls up ever so slightly in a barely-there snarl, one that nobody else but Rin herself would have been able to spot.
His happiness? Dependent on having a youkai wife and pure-blooded children?
Preposterous.
He smooths down his expression easily, quelling down on the sudden surge of anger and disgust that Rin's image of his so-called 'happiness' had provoked.
Repulsive. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
These gnashing echoes from the beast dwelling within him is nothing new. Those always accompanied every thought of her in some form or another, even back when Rin had only been as tall as his knees. Those echoes were always there, usually as a whispering subconscious mantra of protect, protect, protect.
The fairly recent, brutal, possessive undertone in the resounding echoes, however, was something Sesshomaru could not accept.
He doesn't know when the beast inside had begun to preen every time Rin sent one of her sweet, carefree smiles in his direction, could not pinpoint when the sound of her laughter had begun to stop him in his tracks and make his stare linger a second too long. He knew, however, that when the beast had growled, so low and so angry -Crush those fools' heads. Break their necks. Rip out their spines- after hearing of Inuyasha's snide tale of how his Hanyou brother had to shoo away another one of her suitors -a demon this time. A strong, young noble who travelled all the way from the South- that something was very, very wrong.
He had made the mistake of consulting his mother about it not too long ago and as expected, her input on the matter was not the kind he wanted to hear.
"You have already chosen. And yet you continue to deny her and yourself. Why?" she had said. "You are the Lord of the West. A most powerful Inu Daiyokai, perhaps the most powerful there will ever be but even you cannot deny the instincts to claim what you already deem as yours. You cannot suppress such a primal part of you," his mother continued, words almost a warning if not for that annoying matter-of-fact, flat tone she almost always used when chiding him. "Thread lightly while you are still able to, Sesshomaru. You are the one that has always told her it would be her choice. When the time comes and should, heaven forbid, her choice not be you, you might find control as something that is no longer in your grasp. What ever will you do in the aftermath of that, my son?"
He had not answered his mother then, face as stoic and unreadable as always but Sesshomaru could not hide the scent of the blood seeping between his fingers when his claws dug into his palms hard enough to puncture skin, the stirring beast inside growling in anger at the suggestion of Rin choosing anything but him.
Rin would always choose him, no matter how she would go about it. Sesshomaru had been sure of that. Their lives would always be connected some way or another. She will always be there until her last breath.
'Forever,' Rin had promised over and over, after all, hadn't she?
His mother had turned her chin up at the metallic scent in the air, painted lips pursed in disdain.
"Cease this foolishness before the consequence of your refusal to take what you already know is yours wraps its claws around both your throats."
Sesshomaru remembers narrowing his eyes, swiftly turning and walking away from his mother without another word.
Being pursued by him is not what Rin wants.
Even if he had taken that route and pursued her in the way she deserved, Rin would have irrevocably turned him away in the end, would have never let anything more than a small, short-lived spark blossom between them under the notion that he deserved something better than what she was.
Sesshomaru knows this as the truth.
He knows this because those had been the words he overheard Rin herself utter so brokenly too many moons ago as she confided to his brother's Miko mate -and I can live with that, Kagome-chan. As long as we're in each other's lives in some way or another, I can live with that. Even if it means just watching him from the side-lines- unaware that Sesshomaru had been stood atop the hut they resided in, well-within hearing range.
She had said back then that she was content simply being what she is now - just a ward of the West. Only a ward of the West.
He resolved to respect her wishes, had set himself in keeping a distance that was far enough to let her know he had no intention of getting closer but still kept her within reach as to not wake the beast inside that growled selfish, troubling demands at him when she was too near.
Rin would always choose to have him in her life in some way or another, Sesshomaru thought, and that reassuring knowledge was always enough to satiate the dangerous predator with ill-intents in him into a near-slumber.
Foolish.
He wonders if Rin had communicated her heartache to his mother somehow. Perhaps the two had a brief, wistful conversation about it on those occasions both women happen to visit the Western palace at the same time. Maybe words had not been needed and a slip of sadness in Rin's eyes had been enough to tell his mother everything.
"And what of you?" Sesshomaru asks suddenly, sharply drawing away from the thought of Rin being sad because of him. Such a thought made him too uneasy, made him feel as though he was too close to the razor edges of not being in control. "What will become of you in that village?"
Rin finally raises her head, staring up at him for a long, few seconds before sitting up on her heels. A few heartbeats pass and she looks away from him, dark tresses falling down her shoulders like silk.
"I will continue to train under Kaede-baa-sama," she says, "and live my life in the village as any human should. As you intended me to." Brown eyes peer back up at him resolutely. "That is the choice I have made, Sesshomaru-sama."
Sesshomaru stares back, her wordless echoes of 'Not you. I have not chosen you' resounding louder than a scream in both their ears.
The same gnawing at the pit of his stomach is back in an instant, burning hotter than ever and it reaches his chest like a molten fist driving through his ribcage.
Rin wants to leave him, truly, Sesshomaru realises then.
She wants to leave him and she wants to sever all the ties that binds their lives together permanently. That is what she had chosen for the both of them.
Unacceptable.
The beast inside finally opens its red, red eyes.
She will not leave.
Sesshomaru clenches his jaws tightly.
"And what do you see that life entailing, Rin?" he asks, voice giving nothing away of the uncontrollable fury beginning to surge through his veins.
The beast within is wide awake now, prowling and baring its fangs in anger at what was happening.
She cannot leave. Never.
"I don't know, my Lord," Rin answers, looking down at her folded hands in her lap, oblivious of the raging storm she had brew in the most powerful demon to have ever breathed. "Peace, I hope."
That's right. Don't look at me in the eyes. Submit.
"You speak of myself starting a family in your absence," Sesshomaru says, aware of the sheer want to sink his teeth into the juncture of her neck in an irreversible claim now being at the forefront of his thoughts instead of being hidden away in the dark recesses of his mind. Still, he continues, wanting to know what she could possibly see in this future she speaks of. "Will you choose to have your own in my absence, then?"
Trusting brown eyes glance back up at him.
'Forever' is what Rin had always told him -forever by your side, no matter what, my Lord- and Sesshomaru had never questioned her devotion or her promises, reassured by the way she sealed all of those with her blinding smiles.
Forever, she kept saying.
When had she come to find his presence so unbearable that she would choose this? Had he looked away from her for too long? Or had she simply become so capable of concealing things from him that she was able to easily hide the inner conflict that must have tormented her before finally coming to this decision?
Lying wench.
"I… hope to be able to learn to love someone else first before I think about that, my Lord," Rin tells him honestly.
He imagines it - this same, beautiful Rin with the same, beautiful smile, devoting her time and her love to a stranger. Someone that was not him – and it paralyses the demon Lord, freezes his limbs like a warrior struck down in battle.
Sesshomaru knows right there and then, before Rin could say anything more, that his mother is right and it is too late.
He has done nothing to quell his growing need of her, had even trampled it down to a point that he had fooled both himself and Rin into believing it wasn't there and now, that primal need for her had morphed into something darker, had twisted into something far more dangerous than it should have been.
The image of her in a faceless man's embrace burns through his head - a strong Lord from another land, his irrational mind goads him- and brings with it a hot, white rage he has never felt before.
"If… if I could just learn to do that first then…yes," Rin says.
The beast inside snaps its jaws.
Unacceptable.
"Perhaps having a family of my own someday isn't so far-fetched," Rin confesses quietly.
Sesshomaru sees it so suddenly, so vividly – her stood in a field of flowers, belly rounded with an unborn heir, carrying an offspring not sired by him – and his vision corrodes away at the edges like Bakusaiga itself had been unleashed, leaving only Rin at the centre of his sight.
He snarls low in unison with his beast at that, amber eyes bleeding into red in an overwhelming, uncontainable rage.
Betrayal.
In a flash, Rin is lying flat on her back, staring up at him in the dark with wide, brown eyes.
"S-Sesshomaru-sama?!"
Maybe in another time, in another life, he could have done things differently and she could have viewed the possibility of them in a different light. Maybe in another reality, he could have reigned the violent possessiveness in his instincts better and give her the sweet, slow-burn of a tender romance she deserved, convinced her in a different way that she would have been enough for him as she was.
But his mother is right and as his claws tear through the fabric of Rin's kimono the same way her confessions of being able to live a life without him had shredded through his control, Sesshomaru knows it is too late and there is no going back now.
She will not leave him.
He will make sure of that.
I truly do adore Sesshomaru and Rin and I do apologise for twisting a story involving these two into a such a dark angst (though considering Sesshomaru's nature, this kind of take might not be so far fetched).
Thoughts, please?