It was a long red spring
Sure it's done me wrong
But I can remember thinking
It's not really a something
I guess that makes us nothing
I don't believe in flings
Maybe I believe in one thing
Like the color red
I remember the way things used to be.
Bare feet firmly planted on the aging, pockmarked wood, ankles brushed gently by the century-old vines. I waited all night by the mouth of the well, staring down at the dark abyss from which she often rose- on her own time, of course. She was inconsiderate. Clinging to her petty schoolgirl life when she knew in her heart that we needed her, that Naraku was far from vanquished. I remember hating her and missing her all at once.
It was a feeling I try to detach myself from. Yet, it still lingers, even now.
It was in that same position that I was approached by my former rival, the eerie silvern moon hanging low in the sky, vast stretch of velvet sky speckled with sharp stars. Our eyes met in the dark. He didn't know why this well was so important, or who I was waiting for. It occurred to me that he didn't know very much of anything.
His voice came, a rasp in the overwhelming silence of the night; and he tried, he tried so hard, to hide the tears- but he couldn't. Maybe he missed her too. Yet I started off our usual conversation with an insult, happily salting -his- wounds to take my mind off my own. His response was uttered on a breath of sorrow that I couldn't quite make out, and he delicately sank to the earth, sobbing openly before me. Needless to say, I was half-convinced this was a puppet of Naraku's in disguise, and not the arrogant, tactless wolf demon I was so used to encountering.
One of the few things I -don't- remember about that night was how he ended up in my arms, holding on to me like some lost child I'd never known, wanting so badly the thing I had already claimed. He couldn't seem to comprehend the idea that I didn't have her either- she was digging deeper into me, and at the same time, always holding me at arm's length.
She didn't want to be hurt.
But she was handing it out like no one else in the world mattered, not even just a little.
Many long hours into the dawn did I console him. (As best I could, anyway). Some part of me had been woken from the ashes of childhood, and I held to him as he did to me, thinking about my mother. My father. Even Sesshoumaru- and all the time I was wasting being angry at the world. It dawned on me that I needed Kouga to keep that part of me from falling back asleep.
I couldn't keep on living the way I was living.
Because it -wasn't- living. And now that I had come to terms with this, I knew that continuing to fight even the ones I loved would be the death of me.
Maybe.. I could learn to truly love, I mused, glancing down at the placid face of the slumbering demon. I had to leave, soon. I had to begin my sorrowful retreat back to our makeshift camp, and look at the knowing expressions of my companions one by one, before feigning denial. Anger.
Strength.
But what would become of Kouga? Would he open his eyes to a cold horizon, seeing I'd abandoned him, or would he be repulsed by the scent of me..and his actions?
At that moment in time, I had no idea about the future.
Later on, I found that Kouga had been pondering 'us' just as much as I had- or more. He told me almost ruefully that the one thing keeping him aware, and awake, and hopeful in the many days of my absence following that night was a vision in his head; -constantly- in his head, he groaned, of the bright red fire-rat garment that I always wore. Not my face, or my eyes, but that one piece of cloth. After all, he'd been wrapped up in it for hours, letting his soul trickle slowly through his eyes and into its fabric.
He had breathed the color red.
And it was waiting for him when I'd decided to find my new purpose, my new home, in him.