Hello everyone. Here is a surprise! I must love ya or somethin'! :) Loving being able to write for funzies again.
Enjoy!
Chapter 28: His Weakness
Her heart thundered; shuddering her ribcage. Rin's lungs somehow couldn't get enough air as he stalked towards her, the knuckles of his right hand flexed and sporting five toxic claws at his side as he peered over her. His eyes burned with some sort of deranged purpose, a cloudy haze of numb detachment. Sesshoumaru didn't look like himself, and Rin could sense it.
Her testing confession just moments before-
"Because I trust you…"
-had granted her a momentary reaction from him. A momentary glimpse into a part of a soul that he just might have. Between the tresses of his cruel humor and the anger that shortly followed, was a single strand of compassion, one that she had seen him—time and time again—try to bury beneath some other primal part of his nature.
He was intending to dispose of her, to either hurt her bad enough to where she couldn't speak of it, or shred her to sliced daikon and throw her remains into the Kashigo river, where the scent of her blood would be washed away.
Anything to prove his cruelty to himself.
She found her eyes descending, focusing on the swaying and dying grass just in front of her while her peripherals blurred him closer and closer.
Could she stop him? Could she convince Sesshoumaru that the part of him that felt the same as what she felt was just as real as the other, darker part?
And yet, what if she was wrong? What if these "feelings" were all just some illusion to make reality more bearable for herself? An attempt to decorate this horrific moment so that she could find something other than death to focus on? That could be it… but it didn't feel right.
Rin was no expert in demonic body language or expressions, but she thought just maybe she knew this demon well enough.
As he came even closer, she brought herself to stand—teetering a little from her pained ankle—and before he could do so himself, she closed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his armored torso. She dug her head into the cold obsidian of it, at the spot where his heart would be. She imagined her head pressed to his chest, hearing it beat in that moment. Would it be fast? Would it be slow? Would there be nothing at all?
He stopped dead in his tracks. His expression, Rin couldn't even guess as she clenched her eyes shut, her body shaking uncontrollably as her hands weaved between the silver locks cascading down Sesshoumaru's back—held tightly to the back of his armor by her suffocating hold.
She heard him scoff with amusement and her heart sank. A wide and encompassing hand covered the breadth of her back. First, only a palm and fingers. But then they started to curl and she could feel the tips of his talons as they scraped and shredded her kimono, threatening to slice her muscles away from her brittle shoulder blades.
"Sesshoumaru-sama," she pleaded, but he didn't hesitate in his slow and calculated curling. Rin yelped at the onslaught of pressure about to give way to blood and searing hot pain. Her mind flashed to first meeting this monster… to him kissing her, to him saving her, and to him… taking her more gently than he probably wanted to. All of that couldn't be just his father. There had to be something else. Something that connected the two of them.
She could feel it, could he not?
It was unspoken, unacknowledged.
She didn't know how to quite convey it or if she even could. But if she were to go like this, by the hand of her first lover, by a demon, then she wanted to go with a veil of passion and delusion. Rin needed all of the cavities of her loneliness to be filled before she passed on to the next world. So, she opened her mouth and her heart for the very last time.
No wonder he wanted her gone. No wonder. She was a threat to everything Sesshoumaru had ever considered himself to be. She was his weakness. Because of something so pathetic as this statement, he was made to question what had led him here in the first place. He cracked the joints in his hands in preparation.
She trusted him?
A human trusting a demon with all previous inhibitions destroyed, is a dead one. How could he even pity such ignorance? And she was the one with that devilish past, the one that led her to hate him and his kin, initially. The same past that gave way to her impudence and her judging glares when they had first agreed to conspire for their mutual benefit. Had she no shame?
He brushed off the lingering curiosity as he strode towards her, keeping his iridescent eyes on her even as she stood, weak and defenseless. Sesshoumaru could sense her moves before she made them. He saw her lock her feet, ready to push off of the ground towards him. Whatever she was about to do, whatever retaliation she had in mind, wouldn't even be worth his time to dodge. In fact, it would give him more reason to shut out these emotions that—even now—swirled within the depths of his battered conscience. He welcomed the glimpse of Rin's innate desire to survive. He wanted it to bleed into her actions against him, because then it would reveal her to be as glaringly dull as the rest of her kind.
It would make her selfish; a standard product of this earth with the same, boring purpose.
She was just a human. And the part of his heart that thought that maybe she wasn't just anything, was on the verge of being silenced forever. Even when her attempt to attack him had actually cowered into a pleading embrace. It was even worse. He chuckled to himself as his growing irises drank in her ignorance. She didn't even have the backbone to put up a fight. Did she think him to be so easily swayed by-
"Sesshoumaru-sama," she whispered as his claws began their inward descent.
A sharp pang of guilt swept across the forefront of his thoughts and he cursed himself, even as his demonic nature continued to fuel his fingertips. She cried out and he both savored and abhorred her daring scream. Could he actually kill her? Yes, he could. He could turn her insides to ribbons and make her pearly eyes glazed and lifeless in a matter of seconds. The real question was...
…could he truly rid himself of her by killing her, alone?
Her voice echoed up his armor.
"Because I love you."
He heard her say through sobs, yet it was somehow melodic, and his claws halted, instantly.
She what? Anger tore up his body. His eyes widened and his nostrils flared despite the guilt that flooded through every thought and action that his mind contemplated. Whether this was a ploy to keep herself alive, or it was the truth, something about it struck him harder than any sword or hand.
What was she, that she had this sort of power over him? How did she continually-
"I know what you are feeling," Rin stated, softly, and uneasily. "Because I feel the exact same way."
Her grip tightened on his torso as she looked up into his horrifying pupils, his breathing was erratic.
Boldly, she stated, "I don't want to love you, either. But I do."
He clenched his jaw harder than he ever had. How dare this woman-
"Lord Sesshoumaru!" A panicked voice called out from behind.
She meant it. No matter what she had previously used to try and convince herself otherwise, that one statement summed up the bulk of her actions over the last few months. It cleared the haze that accompanied her feelings and left her breathlessly tranquilized for his claws. At least she was able to finally admit some truth to herself, no matter how absurd it made her in this moment.
But when he stopped—a year-long moment of halted breaths and simultaneous wonder—it revealed the truth behind the mask that was Sesshoumaru.
She knew it, now. Without a doubt. Sesshoumaru held some sort of feelings for her that transcended obligations.
And he hated it as much as she did, too, as evidenced by the demon's lingering anger and flagrant lack of action to end it. She looked up at him and mouthed something so very daring... but she couldn't get the fullness of his reaction because of the sudden, warbling voice of none other than Jaken.
"Lord Sesshoumaru!" The wailing servant jumped out from the brush at the edge of the field, too distraught to focus on the embrace that his lord looked to be sharing with Rin.
She watched as Sesshoumaru's conflicted eyes struggled to leave hers. They finally did, turning their focus to the imp falling apart in the distance.
"It's your father, my lord!" He shouted, distressed and nearly sobbing, and Sesshoumaru's eyes widened. "Please, you must come quick!"
Rin felt the demon's breathing slow as his deadly hold on her diminished back to the softness of a palm and fingertips before it disappeared altogether. In the flash of apparent lightning, Rin was alone, tears falling needlessly down the red trails now engraved into her cheekbones.
Something had changed her since that night five days ago. She could feel it festering. She was colder and more bitter than ever before, but her heart and soul were on fire.
Rin sunk to her knees, and curled over as waves of indistinguishable emotions racked her shaking body.
See? I told you guys I loved you and you didn't believe me :P More to come! I'm excited to be writing my favorite couple again!
Please review or critique. I appreciate your feedback greatly!
