White Dogs: Perversity.
Rating: PG-13,
R for some parts
Song listened to: Hear You Me – Jimmy Eat World.
Genre: Everything left of the middle. Beware the dry wit. And Sarcasm. Could be dangerous to your health.
Warnings: What could I warn you about that you haven't already read?
Disclaimer: Don't own. So, y'know… you can't sue me, you can't sue me, nyeah nyeah.
Summary: Shippo and Sesshoumaru have a little heart to heart, off-white father to not-quite son like bonding. Aww. Kodak moment.
Review Responses: I'd just like to say "Thank you" to the reviewers here, but I'd also like to point out that I got a lot of "update fast!" one liner reviews that are more like spam then anything. And while it's nice that my fic is loved and waited for with utmost impatience, it's irritating to just get ten "Update!" reviews for every one review I get where the reviewer tells me why they like my writing, where they comment on how silly Shippo is or so. Believe me, I'm not ungrateful for the turnout and love this fic is getting. I really, truly adore writing when people love what I write. But "update more!" and "Hurry up or I'll stop watching you" don't get me going. They do not lift my skirt, so to speak, and make me want to sit down and write up a storm. They don't make me feel warm and fuzzy. They make me feel pressured and galvanized, and then rebellious. I write at my own pace, I'm struggling with a major writers block (yes, still) and it's not easy to come up with something original and fresh in a place where plot lines are hacked to death and dissected afterwards. The dead horse called, he kindly asks that you stop beating him. Also, if you wish for my attention and my devotion to trying to give you all something good to read, I ask that you give me something good to read in return. Otherwise, don't review. Thank you.
This is a polite request, please do not get offended at me for saying what's on my mind. So, if you wish to take me out and rough me up, do so in a polite and congenial manner. We're all mature here, I hope.
Anyways, to those who have left me marvelous reviews, I freaking adore you. Hug. ♥
Furthermore, I haven't had the… "pep" to write lately, mostly because this fic is composed mainly of angst. I haven't been angst-ridden enough to get in here and write tear wrenching lines. And now I am, so I have more fuel to work with. You may dance….. now.
"When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it."
-Jacob Lawrence.
Chapter Fifteen: Fragility Meets Solidity.
There are tales of people who'd faced death but lived to tell of it. In these tales, they said that your life would flash before your eyes. Or that you were in total darkness after which you'd become aware of a sliver of a redemption blade slicing the ink of eternal blindness towards you; soon the blade becomes blunt and more cylindrical and you realize that this is the light at the end of the tunnel. There are other thoughts too- like how you expected something like a train tunnel and not this strange morphing blackness creeping around your mind or the purity of light before you. You'd wonder how you'd gotten there, or where 'there' actually was. Then you wonder if that razor light was Heaven reaching towards you or Hell deceiving you. But for the most part, the stories stuck to the generic "your life flashes before your eyes." As though the rush of pre-death adrenaline awakens and stirs up forgotten moments of your whole life and the journals your mind's kept of your existence are re-read as the scenes flash through your mind.
Shippo, dangling upside down by his ankles- rather uncomfortably might he add, was wondering where the light was. Or, for that matter, when these life flashes were supposed to happen, and whether or not they included pop-corn. Neither event was happening, though he was getting rather giddy from the blood rushing to his head. He stifled a giggle and tried to think sober thoughts. Youkai were of a tougher stock of creatures, able to withstand paper cuts and the other such inane human banes of existance, but they were not impervious to a head rush when hung upside down for an extended amount of time. Maybe this was why there were no memories! He metaphysically leapt on that possibility with a certain sort of manic glee. His brain was drowning in blood and there wasn't enough room for anything else. Oooh, wonderful thought that. Better avoid thinking of autopsies and finding causes of death by a bloody drowning. Too literal. Too mundane. Unusual, granted, but mundane naetheless. He'd had visions of an honorable death in battle… this was NOT honorable. This was shameful.
All that aside- and life-flashy memories not forthcoming- Shippo decided this meant he wasn't going to die after all. He figured (okay, knew) that Sesshoumaru was the sort of youkai who wasted no time beating around the bush and would instead get straight to the spilling of guts and relieving the pestilence (whomever they happened to be) of certain burdens. Such as particular organs which required the removal of other particular organs to get to. Whee! He Lived! Capitol on the "lived" 'cause it was important, mind you. Now the giddiness was more than just a blood rush.
He grinned up at the bored countenance of Sesshoumaru, and noticed something. Something that was quite worth pointing out. Or, at least to his way of thinking at that moment (which was rather drunken at that moment and therefore should not have been trusted in the least), it was worth it.
"Hey! Heyheyhey, I can see up your nose!" Said he, in total excitement and honest awe. The next instant, he'd been dropped on his head where he then crumpled into a surprisingly compact heap. Before he met carpet, he thought he saw a flicker of annoyed disgust flash over the other's cold, chiseled features. Probably his imagination though. A glacier had more expressive ions than this silver-haired fellow had.
"Oof." Was the fox's half-complaint, half-breath. Apparently, the elder did not agree that it was worth having this tidbit pointed out. 'Well, excuse me,' Shippo sniffed to himself testily.
Sesshoumaru's lips curled in mild disgust as his locked fingers disengaged their iron grip around the impertinent youth's ankles. Really, there was just no staying mad at the kid, he lamented to himself. It was like trying to stay angry with a puppy. A really big, retarded, dew-eyed puppy. With some sort of dementia.
With a moue of total disinterest, the tall youkai ever-so-helpfully toed the heap of wiry limbs and bright hair. He was vaguely put out that he'd sunk so low in recent years.
To think; a couple of centuries ago and heads would have rolled if someone so much as disturbed a hair on his beautiful head. Ugh.
For all his helpful prodding, the heap only grunted up at him. Sesshoumaru prodded him again, this time with less gentility and more brute force. This little 'game' of the kitsune's was tiresome; Sesshoumaru had better things to be investing his time in. Things that didn't involve impudent young upstarts who bore death-wishes.
Ugh, again.
Shippo popped up into a sitting position with enough speed to send up a small whirlwind to swirl in the silver freshly released hair of the older youkai, grinning like a fanged fruitcake all the while. The illusion over his tail, ears and fangs had given out some time ago, so now two pearly points made dents in his bottom lip as his face stretched ear to ear with his grin, with a bright tail of burnt sienna hue weaving in the air to his hind. Anyone else would have been made quite uncomfortable by such a display, but Sesshoumaru was un-phased and got to his point quite immediately. After all, 400 years of this … certain immunities were bound to form. But still, there were lines one should not flirt with.
The kitsune was flirting. Shamelessly.
"Kitsune who meddle in other youkai's affairs are not often long lived." He began, clasping his hands behind his back in a tell-tale sign of 'I mean business, cretin, so listen closely.' Stress had been placed on the last two words of his veiled warning.
Shippo made much ado about appearing attentive solely on Sesshoumaru, his green jewel-tone eyes were wide with mock apprehension and his mouth hung open to add to the effect. He milked it for all it was worth.
Sesshoumaru felt a headache begin behind his eyes with a bang and tango combination around his frontal lobe as he looked down at the kit. Members of the kitsune kind were such drama-queens, and this one before him was no exception. Rather, he thought, Shippo went out of his way to be more then just a simple drama-queen. He was almost a one person soap opera. Just as disturbing, too. Not to mention cheesy.
Had he been the gambling sort, he'd bet his bottom dollar on a wager that Shippo took his dramatics to the extreme just to vex him. The kitsune truly needed better hobbies. Like being the thorn in someone else's side on the other side of the planet. Or dancing in the forest on the other side of the plante. Or… playing with his leaves… also on the other side of the planet. Just, ugh.
Vexing kitsune: "You've said that since … fo-ever. It's lost its whole threatening feel, y'know?"
Irritated taiyoukai: "Are you in such a hurry to become acquainted with your mortality?"
Sobered up kitsune: "Not particularly. I rather like not knowing it. Thank you."
Slightly less than irritated taiyoukai: "Think nothing of it."
As such having reached a lull of conversation (which, Shippo noted, happened frequently with Sesshoumaru), things were still once more about the pent house. Sesshoumaru shoved the self-suffering sigh down in his chest and resisted the urge to rub his temples. This sucked. But as much as it sucked, he still had to lay some rules down- which he knew would be broken sooner or later, but at least with these rules he could later say "I warned him" when Kagome wondered why Shippo was no longer among the breathing- before the imp got it into his head to try something funny. Again.
Shippo approached Sesshoumaru with a proverbial stick and prodded, "Soooo… You like Kagome?" That was a safe topic, right? Right?
Sesshoumaru iced over. By the sudden shift of climate in the pent house, Shippo knew he'd hit some sort of raw nerve. 'Ohoh! X mark's the spot. Let us dig.' He valiantly kept his face carefully blank; a spot on study of Sesshoumaru's own expressionless visage.
Plot. Nod. Tread carefully; danger lies ahead. Insert Mission Impossible™ scene here. Duh duh duuuh.
He began again, licking dry lips first, "No..Right.. She like you?"
The pent house reached such an arctic climate, a polar bear would have found it nippy.
Several heartbeats. He counted, shifted, and plowed ahead nervously.
"Oookay. Well. How is she feeling in general?" This was a question Shippo hadn't intended to ask, and the answer was one he feared. But it had just spilled out. Freudian slip, he supposed.
The past slipped into his mind with cunning whispers, as though to say a heinous "hello". He remembered that last final argument between the too-good-for-this-earth miko and the dip-shit Inu hanyou. Remembered also the tears that slashed jagged across her fair cheeks as she darted away; the salty, pained-scent of them twisting in his sensitive nose. Inside, he felt his heart twinge. No one should have to be shoved into a mold not their own and forced into a shape they didn't belong in.
She was there in his mind, painted by memories of sunshine warmth, flooding laughter, soft hands, loving hugs and a spirit so bright and burning and infinite that even an enchanted mirror could not contain it. The other miko, Kikyou, was a bitter past molded of grave dirt and ashes to create a being of something that wasn't natural. Cold, hard, empty of anything but a revenge thirst that spilled out of her like tainted water from a diseased spring. Inu Yasha had tried to take Kagome- shining, burning with life and love Kagome and force her into the dead miko's mold of hard-edged hate and sharp bitterness.
Then, he remembered Kagome as he'd last seen her, a broken sham of a girl who'd given too much of herself and became a mockery of a shadow.
His eyes dropped to his hands and he found a sudden, familiar regret in him for not chasing her and begging her to stay, to tell her that she shouldn't listen to that mutt 'cause she as herself was beyond what Kikyou could ever have hoped to have been. In his mind then, Kagome was perfect. That still rang true now, he mused as he remembered holding her earlier with his grown up arms, feeling her solid-fragile body superimpose with feeling the over-whelming time in his life where she hadn't been there. He'd almost cried with her, and would have if the stoic frost-bitten boulder that was Sesshoumaru hadn't been there.
Sesshoumaru watched the youngling examine his hands and knew that he was wallowing in the past. Ahhhhe mused, that becomes too easy the older we get. Remembering the happier moments of times passed was one way to cope with the mundane life they lived now where they had become the stuff legends were made of, where the magic in the world was depleted and decaying into extinction. There where too few magic users nowadays to cycle the magic, no new blood for it to run through and be reborn. It was a horrible thing to have been born in a time ripe with magical currents, only to watch as those withered away beneath the weight of a world's disbelief and disuse. But, the taiyoukai conceded, such was the price of long life spans.
The kit had much more to learn about what dangers nostalgia and regret wrought. Regretting not having spent the time you had wished with loved ones better, not having said this or that… there was little one could do to stop the way things transpired and it was useless regretting what you could not have known would happen, nor stopped if you had. And there was little use in pointing fingers and laying blame. Sesshoumaru had learned this in the earliest few centuries of his quasi-immortal life. It had taken him nearly the entire sum of his adolescent years to realize this and let go the tangible bitterness he'd carried as a chip on his shoulder. The irony was that the creatures he had blamed and hated most for the downfall of his childhood were the very same creatures that taught him this lesson.
The lesson had been named Rin, and though Sesshoumaru never had the courage of heart in the past to say it then, he did now; she'd been the turning point in his life.
Sardonically smirking, he pulled himself back to the present and placed a firm hand on the kit's shoulder. Beneath his palm, he felt the kit jump and shudder. Then the wide green eyes were locked with his and the regrets of a lost lifetime swirled behind the jade irises thickly- a sludgy miasma.
"She is here now."
It had been the only thing the lord of the west had said; four simple words that reached to Shippo's heart and unchained it from its regrets. The young kit marveled at the power words could wield when spoken right. The power to heal, or the power to hurt.
Strange how Sesshoumaru, The Killing Perfection, was the one who healed and InuYasha was the one who destroyed when by all rights, it should have been the other way around. After all, Inu Yasha was the more human of the two and yet it was not so. Apparently, being human did not make one humane. Shippo smiled at the older male youkai and inclined his head to hide the sudden leap of hope in his eyes. Kagome needed someone solid and strong to pick her up and help her now, and by some odd chance she had ended up here with Sesshoumaru. Granite strength and steel solid Sesshoumaru who somehow had the knack to heal when he'd been born and named to kill. One couldn't say it to his face without some serious backlash because he was protective of his image that way but Sesshoumaru was a bit of a bleeding heart when it came to fragile creatures in need. A hard-ass to anyone and everyone at any given time, but dump a broken innocent in his lap and the supposedly cold-hearted taiyoukai did whatever he could do to help discretely (he disguised his intent by giving excuses or using his honor to hide behind- since caring was supposedly "weak"). Shippo couldn't name any person more innocent or hurt at this moment than Kagome was. She didn't know it yet, but there was no better place for her to be than here in Sesshoumaru's care at this moment.
As for the taiyoukai…well, Sesshoumaru was already caught. He was like some demented unicorn invariably drawn to a crying virgin in a dark forest. Bam- hook, line and sinker.
AN: I'm sorry it's not much, but I tried to make up with quality in place of quantity. Ahu.