INTERLUDE: MADE OF EMPTY SPACES

"If there's empty spaces in your heart,
They'll make you think it's wrong.
Like having empty spaces,
Means you can never be strong.
But I've learnt that all the spaces,
Means there's room enough to grow.
And the people that once filled them
Were always meant to be let go.
And all these empty spaces,
Create a strange sort of pull,
That attract so many people,
You wouldn't meet if you were full.
So if you're made of empty spaces,
Don't ever think it's wrong,
Because maybe they're just empty,
Until the right person comes along."
(Ernest Hemingway)

It burns like fire, like acid, like poison. Like death. There is probably an ironic sort of justice in the fact that there is blistering poison flashing from daggered claws raking across his face. What he had done to so many before, now being done to him. He can feel his own poison start to drip from his nails in anticipated retribution and retaliation. But the pain hits a second after the sensation of rending flesh and he staggers under the suddenness of it.

It burns.

Knees lock together in an effort not to stumble to the snow covered ground. He forcibly stills the tremor in his hand as he raises it to press against his face. Blood gushes from between his fingers, smoke hisses from the poisonous wound, his face throbs with pain.

He pins the demoness with a piercing glare with the eye that is not pulsing in time with his heart. His voice is a rumbling growl. "You bitch."

She smirks at him, an echo of beauty in the white of her teeth and the slant of her eye, underneath the grim. "Once almost your bitch, my lord." Her chin lifts up defiantly. "Or did you forget how ardently you courted me no more than mere moons ago?"

He snorts, then clenches his eye closed as a fresh wave of pain hurtles through him. "A mistake."

"You seemed to enjoy it while it lasted."

"You were merely a means to an end, Akira." He forces his spin to straighten, forces himself to lower his hand from his wound, though it still drips blood and ichor. His head tilts until he can stare down at her in haughty disdain. "A trifling injury such as this is a small price to pay to be rid of you once and for all."

If he is startled when she bursts into sudden laugher, so loud and cackling that several others glance in her direction and shift away. "Oh, you will never be rid of me, Sesshomaru." Her gaze, when it pins him, is iron-willed and resolute. "You shall think of me every day as your life, your lineage, crumbles around you, ground to dust beneath the cage around you heart. You shall see your face and know that it, and you, are the only reason that your father's great legacy is no more. You shall curse the day you ever cast me aside like trash."

Sesshomaru, heedless of the fate that she speaks into being, sneers at her, before leaving without a backwards glance. He resolves to forget her.

But then the wound does not heal.

Not like it should. It is a slow and agonizing process. The poison Akira possess seeps deep, deep into his skin, into the muscle and flesh, and will not be removed. It bubbles and roils within him until he feels as if his skull if fit to burst like a volcano, until he feels like he will go crazy with the pain.

Physicians are summoned from all the lands, even one terrified human doctor is compelled to attend him. But nothing they do speeds the healing that should, for a taiyoukai who possessed his own poisonous attributes, been child's play. But days go by, then weeks. And it has barely healed. The tracks of her claws bisect his face, from the left side of his forehead, down over his eye and the corner of his mouth. His eye… it has gone milky and vacant. Blind. But the wounds – they are not clean and closed and rugged. They are ragged, the edges of the mended flesh is bubbled and warped like a burn.

It is terrifying in a way that is new and dreadful to him.

Sesshomaru is used to others, human and demons alike, being scared or awed or wary of him. He is used to humans attempting to avoid his notice, used to weaker demons skating around his peripheral so they did not draw his ire, used to other nobles engaging him with deference due to his rank and power. But what he has now is nothing more and nothing less than disgust. He is looked at with pity, with revulsion, with horror. He is looked at like a freak, like an unfortunate.

He cannot bare to see their pity so he avoids them, retreats to the solace of his own home and castle. But the same look appears in the eyes of his servants and he rages at them, demands that they leave. His advisors, attempt to calm him, attempt to remind of what had brought all of this about in the first place.

"Do not forget, my lord, that, per your father's will, you must marry before you one thousandth year, or forfeit the throne to the next in line, namely, you half-brother Inuyasha."

"I will tear this fortress down brick by brick before I see that half-breed seated where my great father once sat."

The advisor nods, a noticeable tremble in his shoulders. "Rightly so, my lord. Which is why you must find a mate."

But they do not know that he has tried. He had courted countless demoness' and found them all lacking. He does not wish to seat anyone as Lady of the Western Lands. He knows that they all had thought, hoped, Akira would have proved the one he chose, but when her father had lost several battles along the southern border that should have been easy victories and fallen out of favor (and then fallen into the gambling ring and into destitution) Sesshomaru ended their courtship. He knew his advisors thought he still should have pursed her, but he would never stoop so low.

And they could not know that now, with his mangled face and unseeing eye, demonesses tittered at him behind their fans, made jokes about who would be unfortunate enough to wed him and have to wake to that once beautiful, now monstrous face. Not even the allure of his title could sway the emptyheaded royal woman, who only thought vainly of beauty. Even human women were repulsed by him.

When they continue to nudge him towards courting this or that woman, he loses his temper again, rages at them and banishes them from his court. Until soon there is no one in the castle but Jaken, Rin, Ah-Un, and Sesshomaru. And even from them, he hides himself away. They are a reminder of what he had, of what he is about to lose to a bastard mutt who will ruin these lands the way he had ruined his life. He retreats into his chambers, and lets the castle fall apart around him.

He does not care.

The gates clang closed and do not open. He assumes Jaken continues to care for Rin but he makes not effort to check. He still hears their chatter and their movements amongst the ghostly empty hallways, so there is no reason to venture forth.

Akira was right, in the end.

He was cursed.