Title: The Maiden in the Field
Author: SavingRain
Pairings: Sesshoumaru/Kagura (implied), Sesshoumaru/Kikyou, Kohaku/Kikyou (implied)
Summary: Lust, happiness and glory are the desires of every being, be them human, youkai, or dead.
p More than fifty years ago, she donned the bow and arrows of a miko. There was no halberd to stab her enemies, as Tsubaki employed, there were no paper spells or muttered prayers. Kikyou's choice, of every weapon that had been presented to her, was the bow and the arrow.
As a young girl, she was told she had impeccable eyesight, and Kikyou, eager to please, had taken the bow and arrows allowed to her, and spent many hot summer days out in the field at target practice, and many cool, blissful mornings picking herbs and creating medicinal dressings. She imagined that Kohaku's childhood had been the same: running through fields of sakura and learning to fend off demons on odd nights, slowly becoming acculturated into a world of death and violence. When she turned her head around and spotted him, she nodded to him to join her.
There was no solitary soldier anymore. When Kikyou walked beside Kohaku, she recognized that their alliance was the end of her solitude, and very nearly the end of all things. A walking dead boy was the answer, thinly dressed in worn armor, with dark, wide, ageless eyes. He walked beside her, shoulder's slumped and a quickened pace in his step, easily slipping past her steady, firm strides. He rushed ahead to survey landscape, calling her "Kikyou-sama" and bowing his head, holding out his hand timidly when she asked to heal his wounds. He combed a path before her, through the rising grass, leaving a narrow line of brown along the tall, flowing green. Clouds swept over-head and painted pretty beams of light on the pale glow of Kikyou's face, and she smiled at him sadly, giving her usual assurances as they followed Naraku through his many guises.
"Anything else to tell me Kohaku?" she asked, hair flowing down her back, leaning into the soft grasses and luxuriating for a brief moment in their common sadness.
He gazed at her forlornly, watching as she rethreaded her bow, and then closed her eyes gently to lay down in the open field. Kohaku rarely saw her recline, but when he did, he held his breath and looked on with sublime reverence. The movement behind her eyes was gone, and the simulation of breathing life was gone. She lay before him, like the perfect penitent Buddha, sublime and emptying herself of every human vice.
When he was just a young boy, running through fields and gathering flowers for his sister, or learning to track youkai alongside his father, Kohaku had often imagined, in his lonely hours in the night, or the quiet hours of the morning, that he would find someone like this. He would be a strong, tree trunk of a man, making a name for himself and his village throughout the north and the south, and one day, Kohaku thought, re-tracing the age-old story in his head, he would come across a lovely maiden, laiden in flowers and reclining in a field. Black hair would pool around her, framing her perfect, oval face, and sparkling dark irises would stare at him from beneath heavy lashes. A soft blush would rise on her cheeks, and she would raise one hand to beckon him to her, gazing lazily over the tall grasses and swirls of sakura in the air. Then he, Kohaku, the strongest taijiya in the land, would kneel down beside her, bowing his head, and touching her delicately on her perfect, rosy lips.
A grasshopper briefly caught his attention before he looked back at her beautiful face and long, slender neck, dipping into her perfect breasts. His cheeks warmed and he shot to his feet, palms sweaty and heart racing. Was this the woman he fantasized about? Kohaku liked to think that she was, because—yes, who else could she be? He would die soon, he would set things right, and quite justly, fate had awarded him the woman that he wanted, the maiden he had dreamed of below the cherry blossom trees, laying in the wide, open field. His heart raced as the feeling came to him again, the fiery compulsion of foolish youth that he would never learn to tame in his short years rose up and gripped him, and Kohaku stammered, barely able to stop himself from throwing himself into the miko's arms. He started, and then seeing the familiar white ghost descend onto the plains, leapt back.
"A demon!" he stammered.
Kikyou's eyes fluttered open slightly, and she gazed at him, with an iron glint in her eye and dark shadows growing on her cheeks.
"It is not Naraku," the fair-faced wraith rose to her knees and looked him in the eye, holding his attention with an indescribable strength.
He shuddered and dropped down before her, almost burying his face in her neck. Kikyou remained emotionless, and she accepted his sweet kiss on her lips with restrained interest.
"Kohaku," she reminded him stiffly, barely able to look him in the eye after his repeated transgression.
"If you do not come back this time," Kohaku breathed, tears welling up in his eyes, shaking his head violently as the stalker came near. "I will wait for you."
"Go." Kikyou demanded tersely, pushing him off gently. Her eyes briefly met his before she closed them again, apparently concentrating on something of importance.
"Kikyou-sama, forgive me," he begged, and ran feverishly into the woods.
The youkai watched him, narrowing his perfect eyes and running his hand through his perfect hair.
"Dismiss him." Sesshoumaru demanded, standing too close to the miko, glaring downward at her dark, stormy eyes.
She looked back, unmoved, with an equal, unreadable determination.
"He left because I asked him to," she answered his unasked question, and in a smooth, unencumbered movement, rose to her feet. Her bow rested comfortably in her hand, and her arrows were slung lazily over one shoulder.
"That human has no fear in him." The demon said the words distastefully, looking into the distance and then back at her mouth, still moist and hot from the dead boy's passions.
Kikyou smiled sadly and admitted to sharing the same fear, even as she stood before a great demon that recently seemed to have lost his bloodlust. A drive in his eyes seemed to have replaced the once prominent vacancy, swirling in the golden, shimmering orbs. Kikyou wondered what had happened to him since the last time they met, what had made him acknowledge her as more than a rival for Naraku's head?
"You are not afraid to die," he said irritably, moving to step past her and follow the boy.
Kikyou stepped in his way, easily unsheathing an arrow and knocking it into place. Sesshoumaru glanced at her briefly, revealing his curiousity at her sudden aggression.
Kikyou refused to think anything of it, and merely pulled the string on the bow taut; emptying herself of any lingering doubts or fears. What had Kohaku just done, kissing her, relying on her, worshipping her—was it the madness created by lack of fear? She once felt the same madness in her heart, it had caused her to love someone foolishly and fast, a hanyou who tore her lips with his clumsy teeth and broke her heart with his equally unreliable love. Now, here stood his brother, in pursuit of a common enemy, full of drive and wonder, anger and hate. She narrowed her eyes at him, and in a brief moment, recognized a ghost they shared in their unusual pity.
Someone had once possessed the desire to kiss Sesshoumaru there, but there was no running, hopeful, willingness to die. The woman had wanted to live, Kikyou thought, sensing his newly unbridled emotions as they rose from his glowing, fearsome spheres. A profound sadness followed her death, one that bordered on pity, festering in the bowels of confusion. Like a child, he did not yet know what love was, he could not differentiate easily between desire, frustration, lust and love.
How odd, Kikyou thought, lowering her bow when he stalled his pursuit to look at her more closely. The intense beauty of his gaze, the slenderness of her neck, they easily came together, hotly passionate on cold, unused lips, dark long hair entwined with bright, silvery white. He buried himself in her, consorting in the wiles, the dog and his gentle maiden. She closed her eyes and he opened his, daring the other one, the quiet dead boy, to come near.
Brimming light and brown embers met from across the field, and taught muscles flexed over lovely, lily-white skin. His lips kissed Kikyou's and left no marks.
Moving his hands over her familiar, slender body, Sesshoumaru had to remind himself to be very delicate with her. In the thin whisper between the onslaught of violence and a gentle, teasing touch, he handled Kikyou as if she were a vase. She was more fragile in her false body, a ghost bottled inside of a beautiful, moving shell, she bent her head back like a gentle stalk, and her hair pooled over her lovely breasts and caught the bright sunshine in their autumn darkness. Striped arms against white skin, dark eyes flashing against frightening yellow, these were their garish characteristics, the shameful isolation that made one beautiful and the other evil.
She gasped desperately without a breath, unaccustomed to a more physical love, one that pushed her beyond the naive kisses and half-murmurings of a dead boy. The older demon, with his hard body and harder soul, wreaked havoc with her softer tresses and weeping heart.
"What will you do when you find Naraku?" She demanded things of this Sesshoumaru, as if he had any obligation to answer a mere human.
A breathy silence, one unable to fill their lungs, and the other growling within it, followed every exchange, as his hard eyes softened uncharacteristically, and he reached for his sword and armor.
Kikyou wondered if that was how Inuyasha's father had responded when his human mother began to question. Why was it necessary for a demon to die? Simply, Kohaku answered, with the burning confidence that came when one knew his cause was right, because he had killed millions. Kikyou would agree and watch his brow knit and panic rise in him when she brushed too close, and her hair touched his cheek. He slunk away and gaped at her nervously.
Yes, she would answer in kind, with the same tone that she counseled the elder demon, he should die, he should die for the suffering he's cost, and for the pain that he's caused me. The boy would nod and fall to his knees, swearing obedience, and the demon would glare angrily at her, misunderstanding her grief or dismissing her anger.
How could a human understand? Would Sesshoumaru lower himself to reveal his private frustration and grief? Their eyes met, their lips met, and he poured himself into her, breathing himself into her empty breath and rolling his beautiful eyes down her beautiful neck, falling into the endless, lilting sea of her eyes. She caught his kisses and let them pass between her, wondering at the gentle touches and the roughness of his sword's edge.
"He will die," he answered absently, stroking his hair, digging his claws into the grass.
Kikyou watched the absence in his eyes, now momentarily present. The vicious aggression loomed behind his brow, and beneath it she saw the absence of life.
"What kills us," Kohaku asked her, "the possibility, or the life that was lost?"
Kikyou reasoned they were both tragic events in one's life, but did not bother to give him such an answer. Instead she brushed one hand over his brow and absently touched his cheek. His lips came forward and she pushed him away, feeling a strange resurgence in those long-lost affections.
She had no answer, so she asked Sesshoumaru. It made sense, he was her other, her darker half, the one who clawed in the dark and seeped into her skin with slow passion.
"A foolish thing to ask," he told her, glaring down as he stroked her cheek, the youkai and his dead miko, tangled in fields and laying about on cool, olive-colored grass.
"It is both, isn't it? Is that why you are here?" Kikyou whispered, her eyes were stormy with endless thoughts and her limitless questioning.
Sesshoumaru gazed at her, possibly fascinated by her persistence, though he barely betrayed it in his face.
Is this what they did? Is this where they went, those few, when they were solitary, together with others, but by themselves, ebbing out their existence on rage, or dragging down the long, narrow road of silence? Kohaku kissed her and she feigned from it, Sesshoumaru blended his blood with hers and she luxuriated in it. They were all common, his hate, her sadness, Kohaku's endless suffering. He rolled with her in the golden fields, tasting the dead, tasting her sweet, decaying breath, and reassured himself that this time, the one whom he loved, who his sword wanted to protect, would not die.
End.