CHAPTER 10: BETWEEN THE SHADOW AND THE SOUL

"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
In secret,
Between the shadow and the soul."
(Pablo Neruda)

When he wakes, it takes him a long moment to blink away the haze of sleep, wondering at the tightness in his chest, the remnants of anger still coursing through his veins in a rush, the twitching of his fingers as they spasm rhythmically against the sheets. The memory of the evening before surges through him like a wave.

A thought, passing and hopeful, about a clause he saw in an ancient scroll that might rid him of the need to be mated to retain his title. So he ventures from the foyer where he is overseeing Jaken scrubbing windows and up to his office.

The door, slightly ajar, something he has never left in all his long years.

The scent of jasmine and spiritual power that assaults his nose as he pushes the door open and steps inside means he knows what, and who, he will find inside even before he lays eyes on them.

So he is prepared to see her standing there, perhaps looking for him, perhaps lost, perhaps even playing a game with his ward. But he is not prepared to see her reading one of the loose sheets of paper on his desk. A paper that he knows, with a sudden feeling of dread, is a certified document outlining the exact legal reasons his claim to his title will be declared invalid in just a few short years.

The emotion that courses through him could be labeled terror from the way it pulls the blood from his face, makes the pit of his stomach drop out from under him, steals the air from his lungs, but Sesshomaru does not equate things like terror with himself. So what he feels swell through him… is anger.

He takes a deep breath in, breathes in the feeling of panic and shame, and breathes out smoke and ire. It rumbles through him like a rockslide and he can feel his eyes burning with it, his claws flexing, his canines lengthening. He swells with it as he growls out a question, then burns with it as he doesn't care about the answer. All he cares about it one thing.

That she leave.

That she forget what she saw here in this room and here in this once great castle. He wants her gone, gone, gone, to where he never has to see the look of confusion morphing into abject terror. To where he never has to choke on the feeling of shame that he let his father's seat come to this – roaring at mortal women while he tries and hide the proof of his failure.

But the next morning it all tastes like cotton in his mouth. His overreaction makes the moment more pronounced, more memorable. There is a possibility that, if he had just shrugged off the moment, made a passing comment about signing paperwork or updating antiquated laws, she would probably have forgotten it by morning. But no, he had to cause an unforgettable scene, searing into her memory the moment, until she would inevitably dwell on what had made him so heated. Obviously she would focus on what papers she had been snooping on. Obviously she would draw conclusions. And obviously she would dwell on whatever few brief sentences she had managed to read before he's frightened her from the room.

He'd acted as rashly as his brother. How disappointing.

Though it irks him to admit, he knows that he should go find her, barring she hadn't fled from his manor completely, and try and salvage their tenuous relationship as master and guest. He'd returned to his rooms late into the evening and, though he heard no sounds coming from the girl's rooms, he'd assumed she was asleep, or with his ward elsewhere and far from him.

Dressing silently, avoiding his own reflection in mirrors and windows, and contemplating what he would say, he eventually left his quarters, only to be barreled into by a waist-high ball of tears and snot. He looked down in abject surprise as Rin wailed into his leg, sobbing uncontrollably, and mumbling intelligibly. The only word he made out was "Kagome."

Extracting her from his clothing, he crouched down, tilting her chin towards him and using a thumb to brush away the tear tracks on her cheek. "What about Kagome, Rin?"

"Sh-sh-she ran away." Another round of sobbing ensues as he blinks.

"Ran away where?"

Rin just points downstairs. "I tried to c-c-catch her, but sh-she was too f-f-fast." Her lower lip trembles. "She d-didn't come back."

"I'm sure she is simply sleeping in one of the drawing rooms, I will find her," he says, as he starts to stand. Her next words make him pause partway through the motion.

"I looked everyone, Sesshomaru-sama. Sh-she's not h-here."

He pauses, wondering if the girl actually had completely left. "No matter, Rin," he says, standing and placing a comforting hand on her head. "I have said I will find her, and so I shall." Rin looks up at him with a trembling chin and teary eyes. "Now go to your room, and think no more of it." Rin nods, smiling tremulously up at him, relief in every line of her now that she can leave this to him, and turns to her room.

Sesshomaru waits until her door clicks softly closed behind her. He's fairly certain she was up all night crying and worrying and he's sure that she will be asleep in mere minutes. He's disappointed in himself anew that he did not notice her sorrow the evening before, but he also knows he would have been too much in a mood to want to help. But now, since he is of calm mind to track down the miko, he turns towards the direction Rin had pointed, and follows the stairs down to the foyer. At the bottom of the stairs, his head cocked to the side, he takes a subtle breath, but the scent of the miko that had grown familiar to his senses in the past day, did not head towards the front, as he would have expected, but towards the door leading to the garden.

He trails the scent, lavender soap and the scent of spiritual power that has a smell of its own but that he cannot put a name to, through the overgrown rows of flowers. It's winding and zigzagging, clearly she had been running in a blind panic, because there is no rhyme or reason to the path she takes. He hears Jaken muttering to himself even as he turns the next corner.

"Jaken."

A yelp, and the imp turns with a clatter. "It's not my fault, my lord! I tried to stop her! I did! But by the time I caught up she was already inside and I won't go in there! I can't!"

"Inside?" The word is uttered with one slim brow raising, stretching the skin on his cheek.

Jaken wrings his hands together as he answers. "Inside the maze, my lord."

There's a sharp inhale of breath as Sesshomaru hears the underlying implication in that answer. That she's inside the maze and there will be no way for her to leave. Because the only person who can control the maze is Sesshomaru, and Sesshomaru had not stepped foot in there for many, many years. It was wild now and it was anyone's guess if it would even recognize him as it's master anymore, if his powers even extended that far anymore.

He dismisses Jaken with a wave of his hand. "I shall retrieve her. Go and see to Rin." At least there would be no witnesses to see if he failed this way. When Jaken has scampered gratefully away and disappears around the corner, when he can no longer hear the pitter patter of his tiny feet, then, only then, does he step forward into the maze. The maze he had been avoiding since shortly after his father died, because the memory of wandering the paths together hurt too much to think about. So the maze had been left to organize itself at its leisure for far, far too long.

There's an inch to be hesitant, to move slowly and cautiously, but he knows the maze will sense it. So, instead he steps resolutely forward, looking neither to the left nor the right, eyes forward, every inch the powerful taiyoukai stepping onto his own turf, sure that when he walks forward there will be a path, that when he turns left it will take him exactly where he wants to be. He knows that if there is even a shred of doubt in his heart, the maze, the land will sense it, and they will eat him alive.

Well, they will try, at least.

So he moves slowly and resolutely though the maze, following the light scent of jasmine and the heady, electric scent of miko power that grows stronger and stronger the deeper he goes. When his very lungs are filled to the brim with the smell of sacred energy, he turns a corner and stops dead, trying to take in the scene before him.

There are great rends in the ground, as if huge claws had torn the land asunder and there is a smell in the air of some sort of feline demon, wet and damp and bloody. Sesshomaru's lip peels upwards in a snarl at the smell, the hair on his neck rising in a parody of hackles, at the thought of an intruder. It is only after his mind catches up with his nose and takes in the entire scene that he realizes exactly what he is looking at.

The miko is huddled into a corner built of vines and twining bushes, her fingers white-knuckled on her knees. There is a glow about her of residual spiritual power, still noticeable after a long night, so he knows she must be depleted and exhausted from the release of so much power. Her face is hidden from him, but he can smell the salt-tang of tears in the air, the sticky-sweet smell of dry panic sweat. He can see the tremors and shivers shaking her slight form as she holds herself tightly to ward off the chill of the night before. There is a sheen of dew in her dark hair, making the inky dresses look like they are scattered with a fall of stars.

For a moment, he feels a swoop of fright so great in his stomach he stutters on his next step.

It is only a moment later, when the girl shifts minutely, and he recognizes that she is not dead, that he steps forward in a flurry of motion. Crouching down beside her, heedless of the dirt that immediately stains his pristine hakama, he reaches out with his lone arm to gently nudge her shoulder, expecting to come awake with the force of a whirlwind as he himself would do if suddenly woken from sleep.

But she doesn't make any noise, only moves enough to turn her head towards the touch. Her eyes are bleary and heavy-lidded, partially with sleep, but mostly with a bone-deep exhaustion. She blinks at him and makes a low, questioning noise.

He doesn't know what he's supposed to say in a moment like this; he's not one for consolation. But he understands that he has to say something. "Miko," he says, his voice smooth and calm, because he does not know what else to say.

It appears that it is enough for her, because the next noise she makes is a sob and she collapses towards him. Only his quick reflexes help him catch her against his shoulder. For a moment, he doesn't know what to do next. On the brief occasions he has had to pick up Rin, she has been awake and able to twine her arms around his next to hold on. But Kagome has slumped into the borderland between exhausted unconsciousness and wakefulness, and he only has one arm with which to carry her.

He tilts her sideways, so they are face to face, arranging her arms around him shoulders. When he stands, he holds her under her hips. Her skin is cold as ice. "Hold on to me, miko," he says against her hair where her head is resting on his shoulder. When he feels her fingers grasping at his haori, he moves, walking out of the maze with the same noble verisimilitude that he had walked in.

Only this time, his arms are full of lithe and limber priestess, her skin like porcelain from the chill of the night still left in them. Her hair, tickling against his cheeks, crackles with spiritual energy that fractures and pings against the contours of his face like small bolts of electricity. He feels it on his eyelashes, on the ragged lines of his scar, on the corner of his lips. It is… not unpleasant. Instead sliding through him like languid lightning, filling his veins with pinpricks of light. It simmers in his blood like… like something that he cannot name, only to say that he does not dislike it.

There is little to actively dislike about the miko, besides the fact that her presence usually implies the presence of his half-brother. She is intelligent, something uncommon in women, and seems both strong and kind in equal measures. She is not unappealing to look at, withholding the strange, revealing clothing that she wears. The many issues he has with humans, their wretched smell, their stupidity, their weakness – all do not apply to her.

He is grateful that, as he carries her inside and up the staircase, that both Jaken and Rin are busy or asleep, or at the very least have made themselves scarce. It means he does not have to ignore the confusion on their faces or dwell too much on his own actions. He is instead free to deposit her on the bed of a room that has not been inhabited since his own mother.

She tumbles onto the bed in a mess of limbs and dark hair and, after a moment of thought, he tosses a blanket over her. It is only when he is turning to leave that she murmurs, quietly, into the rosy dawn glow of the room. "Thank you."

He pauses, hovering over her more uncertainly than he would have expected of himself. Was she not angry at the way he had treated her yesterday? At the way he had yelled at her and caused her to run from the palace? Was she not terrified of his anger and the fact that it caused her to sleep in a living maze, strewn with bloodthirsty demons?

She's blinking blearily up at him, with wide blue eyes, clearly not caring about any of those things in the slightest.

After a moment, he finally gathers his thoughts together enough to answer. "You are most welcome."