by
Resmiranda
My heart went fluttering with fear
Lest you should go, and leave me here
To beat my breast and rock my head
And stretch me sleepless on my bed.
Ah, clear they see and true they say
That one shall weep, and one shall stray
For such is Love's unvarying law...
I never thought, I never saw
That I should be the first to go;
How pleasant that it happened so!
-Dorothy Parker, "Surprise"
"So I'm going now," she says, inanely, as if he could not see the tiny bundle of her few belongings, as if he could not smell the apprehension on her breath. It is ridiculous that she feels the need to tell him anything. Surely he already knows.
He says nothing.
The silence stirs her toes, shuffling in place to nowhere. She shifts awkwardly, her feet still bare, hardened from so many years chasing the soles of his shoes into the world and out again, before she realized, before she grew into this. Now, half a life away from when he pulled her down from the other side of the sky and gave her breath again, she is cramped inside her skin. Now that she is more than half-grown - but not there yet - she understands.
Painfully, she feels as though she has been put together wrong, as though she is in the wrong body, the wrong story, the wrong life, so she stands, knock-kneed, uncertain, now that she is older and can understand what has happened to her; now that she truly realizes what they are.
Ah, yes: the peasant maiden and the youkai lord - a contrast so bright it hurts to think upon it - and between them is a canyon so deep she dare not attempt to cross, dare not descend for fear she will never come up again. Sometimes she can't even see the other side.
The space between them is so wide, she thinks, that they may as well be standing back to back.
Yet here they are, face to face. Funny, but she always thought that he would be the one to leave her, and even now she half-wishes to abandon this mission. She knows, though, that some things can only be found when one is alone.
Once, she remembers suddenly. Once, when she was younger, she wanted to stay with him forever, but now... now she is not so certain any longer. There are things she misses, hollows in her that she cannot fill, a restless angry yearning crawling under her hair, and if she could just get away from him she believes that could stretch out and become herself, that she could fill those caverns inside that ache with what she lacks.
She is troubled, full of fog and wishes, only wants to be...
...she knows not what. Needs to find out.
But she cannot do it here; that much is certain, for he fills the world and makes it his own, spreads his strong, tapered fingers over the universe and suddenly all is as he wishes it to be. A potter, nudging clay into shape; a god, sweeping the stars into place.
Yet she wants her own piece of the world, a place that he has not coaxed into his desires.
She is tired of being made.
Ready to go, she waits for him to say something, but he does not. Instead, he inhales deeply, though so subtly she would not have seen it if she had not been his for half her life. He is seeking out her scent.
And what secrets does he smell upon her - ?
- can he smell her fear? she thinks, the notion small and quiet amongst the riot of thought in her head, but no, that is a silly question, of course he can, and she is scared, so scared, and so, so determined; he must know, he must know this, and she imagines that she smells red and silver, like lightning and rain, like war cries and death knells, what do secrets smell of -
He will never tell. He holds her mysteries close, written beneath his skin in starry ink she cannot see, in faded languages she can never learn.
She is leaving, though. Perhaps now she can plumb her own depths, or find another who will do it for her.
And she thinks: it does not matter if there will be another, for he was the first.
It is so strange that he should be her first for so very many things. He owns her first breath, her first word, her first step - he owns them all, because he conjured her back out of the land of the dead and into his embrace, and when he rose she followed him, little feet slapping down on a muddy path, on the road that led over the river and out of hell.
She remembers glancing down and trying to trace the trail of his footprints, only to discover that he leaves none.
And now she is finished with following.
She feels so tiny, so small...
Does he know that she will miss him? Can he even understand what it means to carve out a bit of unhappiness and wind it around another? Can he comprehend what it means to long for someone gone, to always be a little bloody, a little wounded, a little less whole?
And, if he can, will it make a difference?
If he can, will he waste a little thread of regret just for her?
If he can, would she even want him to?
He is still staring at her, calm and gold and silver, and suddenly more indecipherable than she has ever seen him.
She thinks: she has had enough.
Shuffling in place once more she sets her bundle down at her feet.
"Well!" Rin says brightly. "Time to say goodbye!"
Goodbye.
Refusing to cry, she turns to Jaken and, before he can run away, she bends down, plucks him from the ground, and hugs him tight.
He struggles to break free, but not very much.
When she finally sets him down, well-squeezed, well-loved, he does not even scold her. It is sweet, in its own way, and even though his eyes are cast down she feels a smile live and die on her lips, just for him.
Then she turns back to her lord, to her Sesshoumaru-sama, who shields and traps her, tends and binds her, all at once.
"I have to go now," she tells him, and he blinks, very slowly. Then he surprises her by speaking, though she should have known what he would tell her all along.
"Do as you wish," he says, has always said, and then turns so that she can no longer see his face, as if that would make a difference in what she could see there.
For a moment her bitter adoration crowds against her teeth, damming her words before she sweeps it away in a cold, tight fury.
"I will," she replies.
Rin picks up her bundle, turns her heels, and walks off, down the grassy hill, in the direction of cookfires, in the direction of normal, in the direction of away.
She does not turn to look at him, and even as she does she knows that she will wonder, for the rest of her life, if he watched her leave.