Look Over Here
Number one on the Thirty Kisses prompt list, this is my interpretation of "Look Over Here". The idea actually came to me the other day when I was walking along and I thought it was a nice idea but it didn't have enough meat to be a full-length fic. That's when I decided to do the Thirty Kisses challenge, so this I suppose is the whole start of the idea!
In my Author's Note I mentioned that most of these stories will be influenced by music. That is definitely true for this one.
The song "Sakura, Sakura" is a very famous traditional song often performed with a Geisha's dance. I bought it on iTunes and as soon as I heard it again this little fic popped into my head. "Sakura, Sakura", "Go the Distance" from Disney's "Hercules", the symphonic arrangements of "Grip!" and "Every Heart" from the InuYasha "Wind: symphonic themes" album, "When she Loved me" from "Toy Story 2", and the "Homage for InuYasha Piano Solo" all inspired this story. If you have any of them, give 'em a listen while you read this story. Now, I've never written from Sesshoumaru's POV, so please bare with me if it's awkward.
Beginning with the original plot, then picking up in the present AU.
Sesshoumaru- 600+ years old.
Rin- 26 years old
DISCLAIMER: I do not own InuYasha or any of its' characters, nor do I own the rights to any of the aforementioned songs.
Look Over Here
"Look, Sesshoumaru-sama!"
She is frail. Gray in color as the cloth she is wrapped in. She is thin and weak, a weightless paper-like thing resting against my leg.
"Look! Look over there! A falling star!"
Yet with such energy she lifts her arm to the heavens and points a shaking finger at the glimmering sliver of light as it sails down from its' deep black abyss of sky and into the welcoming bosom of a far off green hill.
"Quick," She is telling me, gripping my leg with her slender hand, "Make a wish."
I watch as her eyes, alight and shining with white starlight, let themselves be lidded slowly as she inhales quick, ragged little breaths through her nose. I watch her breathe in and out, watch the shuddering rise and fall of her chest and the gentle swell of her breasts. She is young yet, barely a woman. She does not deserve this end to her life.
And I can do nothing to stop it. I am powerless.
She squirms a little as her eyes open and I can see for an instant all her pain, her sadness, her fatigue. I have the gut wrenching urge to rip my heart from my ribcage and give it to her, but that would do her no good.
She instantly replaces her expression of pain with a new one of weary happiness. She looks at me with big, bright black eyes that shine with hope. What an amazing human emotion hope is. This thing keeps her going in her pain and frailty, keeps her strong enough to live through this slow death. She smiles at me through thin, chapped lips.
"Did you make a wish?" She asks me gently. I shake my head. She smiles a wider, brighter smile and her eyes crinkle lightly. "You don't want to make one?" she queries. I shake my head no. She is quiet, still smiling up at me, studying me with those beautiful eyes. I watch her watch me, eyeing her hand as it travels to my ear, wraps itself in a strand of my hair.
"You made a wish, Rin." I say, my voice sounds far off, grave and solemn, unable to comfort her.
"Hai," she replies quietly.
A moment passes in silence and there is nothing in the world but her, the wind acknowledging her with a playful gust sent spiraling through her dark hair. She gives a weak and empty chuckle.
"You want to know what I wished for, is that it?" she asks, leaning back again to face me. I nod. She is laughing now, a warm, sincere laugh that I have not heard for quite some time. I am warmed by it, numbed by it, and left to hear its' echoes all around me after the laugh has subsided into silence once more.
"I can't tell you." She says in a cheery little tone. I blink down at her. Her expression changes, becomes wistful and soft. "If I tell you what I wished for," she whispers, "It'll never come true." She looks at me with a melancholy longing that gives my chest a terrible burning, freezing ache. Her eyes are half-lidded now, fatigue and anguish scrawled all across her pale face. I place my hand on her shoulder and recoil slightly; she is cold, as though she were made of ice. I grip her tightly: my Rin is a warm, youthful, explosion of color and sound and joy. This is not my Rin.
She takes in a deep rattling breath and it is a mistake, her eyes open wide immediately and frantically she lifts herself from the ground, coughing out what little air was in her lungs to begin with. She is wracked with convulsing whoops of air, her back bowing as she sucks in desperate amounts of it, only for her diaphragm to push it all out with a venomous dry hiss and crack. It is a while before she is through, the longest spell she has had yet since first she became ill. I back away.
Phlegm and fluid from her congested lungs spatter onto the grass beneath her until at last she is sick, the yellowish bile pouring from her with a steaming acidic heat until her stomach is empty and her lungs can give no more. She gathers all her strength to sit up and crawl away from her mess, weak, shaking, and winded. She collapses in the grass a ways up the hill.
I bring her into my lap again, a thin little creature, rasping weakly for breath. Her heart is barely beating inside the wreckage of her chest, and her body barely moves with each tiny breath she takes. I am repeating her name, but she cannot hear it. I bring her into my arms, sitting her up and pouring the tiniest amount of water from the bamboo pitcher into her mouth. She coughs and sputters again and I set the water down, patting her back until the wet coughs at last subside, and her shallow breathing is somewhat steady. I wipe the vomit at the corner of her mouth away with my sleeve, and note with a wince that there are bright strands of blood in the liquid. I look at Rin, her head resting against my chest, nestled in the soft fur around my shoulder. The hairs of the pelt move in and out as she breathes on them and I can see blood on her tongue through her open mouth.
I call her name again, but still she does not respond. So I begin to hum, I hum the little tune she always sings when she picks her herbs and her flowers, when she sews for the old woman, for InuYasha's children, and for the monk and taijya and their offspring. I hum the song she always sings to banish fear, to lull the newborn babies she helped birth to sleep. I hum for this land she loves and I hum in hopes that she will hear me and wake. Hope. There it is again.
But she is fading now. I can barely feel her breath against my hand when I bring it to her mouth. I run my fingers along her chapped lips, her sunken cheeks, the edge of her long eyelashes, the outside of her ear. I am humming as I stroke her long, beautiful hair. I close my eyes and listen to nature: to the wind, whose howling has died down out of respect, to the birds, to the stream rushing softly along its path unhindered.
Nature continues on as though Rin is not dying in its' presence.
I open my eye to look her over. The heart is barely making a sound; the lungs are barely working at all now. What cruelty is it that as her heartbeat slows mine quickens?
I bring my left hand to cup her face gently and I close my eyes, slowly bending my face to hers. I whisper her name one last time, and still she cannot hear me. But she can feel me.
As I press my lips to her forehead I wonder at the soft feeling of her skin against mine and the tickle of her hair against my face. I inhale the scent at the root of her hair, where death and sickness have not yet come to rest. Bittersweet, the smell is. Yes, I understand that now. Bittersweet.
And then she is gone.
No sooner has she passed than I open my eyes. She is perfectly still, serene and at rest in my arms. She is limp and nearly weightless as I hold her, an unsuitable remnant of a beautiful life. Lost. Forever lost.
I watch her. I simply look at her. All she was and all she is pass through me like a fish into water, an effortless connection between two souls, one living...and one dead.
I look back up to the sky and silently curse the gray clouds for the rain they are pouring onto her face, but no water falls from the clear skies tonight. The salt on my face is dripping onto hers as slowly as time itself.
If this is what it means to cry, if this is what it means to feel pain irreversible by time and healing, then I will suffer them both for her. I will cry over Rin.
The arena is packed full of people: ningen, hanyou and youkai alike. I have already informed Koga that I care nothing for this sort of thing yet he insisted we meet here. He sits down beside me as he folds his coat and places it behind him in the chair, assuring me with a wolfish grin that this "friend" who wishes to meet me is quite worth my suffering. I assure Koga as well that if this person is not worth my while Koga will find himself- or rather his head- on a plaque in my apartment.
The house lights are dimming now in a slow, repeated, methodic call to seats. When at last the lights die, it is sudden and quick like a flash of lightning and I can hear ningen all around me squawking and grunting as they attempt to find their seats in the black.
Time passes slowly for me in this place. Ironic, really. A human year passes by me quickly like a shower of brief rain or a solitary month of one season. Perhaps it is my conclusive hatred of this show before its' beginning that makes time linger so long on my watching eyes.
In the blink of a human eye, the lights are up. They are harsh white lights hanging from the rails above the catwalk, dousing the geisha on stage with a glaring fluorescent glow. She seems remarkably unhindered by the brightness and as the first ringing twang from the shamisen sounds behind her she begins to dance. The music takes me back, back beyond any human memory. The dance bores me after a moment and I close my eyes and savor the almost ugly sound of the geisha at the back of the stage: one tentatively plucking at the shamisen, another making guttural almost animalistic vocals in a deep, hollow voice.
The song ends, the audience claps, the geisha exit in a blackout. Then the cycle begins again, only now there are two geisha and they are sporting fans instead of the first's parasol. The musicians have added a geisha drummer. The routine begins again.
I swore I would kill this wolf before the night is over and I intend to: one dance was enough, six is quite a bit more than enough. The crowd is applauding as I massage my temples and another blackout proclaims the transition into the sixth and final performance. I shut my eyes again, relish the darkness and try to find quiet, try to find somewhere where I cannot hear the loud clap of Koga's massive hands striking against one another or the voices of five-hundred people circled all about me.
When the applause dies there is an expectant silence. The lights do not come up again. I sit back and wait for the end of this tedious night.
There is something in the dark now. My eyes are open, yet I feel blind. I see nothing in the dark. Time seems to drip as though from a leaky faucet, slowly and steadily hammering a pulse into my brain. I am searching the darkness now, for what I cannot know. Something here has my hackles up and every sense alert. I inhale sharply through my nose. Something faint is haunting me.
The koto rings out in a peal of eerie echoes; quickly, as though one of the geisha were dancing on its strings. I swivel in my seat towards stage left. The music is ascending from a corner there in beautiful arcing waves, tickling my ears and washing over me like the ocean in a winter wind. I can see nothing but the bare glint of the strings as they are plucked in the dark and the wave of the musician's arms.
Something is hypnotic about this music. I feel on edge and almost paranoid in this cloying space. I cannot turn away. The minute I allow my eyes to wander to where the geisha must be somewhere onstage, I am instantly drawn back towards the koto. Some presence is beckoning me. Look over here, look over here!
I am listening. A voice joins the koto, echoing with such grace and strength through the arena that I can feel every person around me react to the sounds.
Haru….Haru….
And suddenly I know the voice. I know her voice as though it were the very core of me. I know her voice after years of hearing it sound again and again in the memories I keep. I know her voice better than my own and it echoes all around this black room, swallowing me up and chilling me until I am numb with it. The lights are up and the geisha have begun their dance, but the musician is left in the dark, only her koto sounding over the geishas' shuffled steps. In the corner of my eye, Koga is facing me. I turn to look at him. He is grinning a strange wolfy grin. He nods slowly.
Rin….
I turn back to the stage. It is then that she begins to sing.
Sakura, Sakura,
Yayoi no sora wa,
Mi watasu kagiri,
Kasumi ka kumo ka,
Nioi zo izuru.
The lights fade in above her, revealing a beautiful young woman. She is dressed in marvelous layers of kimono in shades of peach, orange and green. Her deep brown hair is styled similar to the geisha onstage and she is marked by one dangling pin on the left side of her head as a maiko of a well-known okiya. Her face, however, is not painted like the geisha. She is gently made up for the stage and her youthful color shows through the make up on her cheeks. Long, delicate lashes frame a pair of shining, beautiful black eyes. Her voice is like a thousand bells ringing at once, irresistible peals of joy and mirth. She has taken this emotional voice and transformed it into a haunting and beautiful instrument, projecting a quiet yet mighty sound throughout the arena.
Iza ya, Iza ya;
Mi ni yukan.
She repeats the verse, the crowd paying more attention to her music than to the dance she is playing for. The song rattles me. The voice rattles me. And as she scans the crowd with those eyes… she lingers on me for a moment. She smiles as she draws from her lips the last consonant of the word, humming it through her lips and teeth. I am hit with a wave of nostalgia; of emotions I had long forgotten, of a song I had not hummed in many centuries….
She looked at me and she knew me. I could not fathom how, but she knew me.
Then, it is over. The geisha are frozen and Rin's beautiful eyes, full of feeling, are staring straight into mine. The arena goes black. The audience is so dumbstruck for a moment they are unsure whether to clap. The lights are up and I find myself on the edge of my seat, half draped across the back of the seat in front of me, still staring at the stage where she had been just moments ago.
Koga is laughing as we leave. He asks me if I like his friend. I dislocate his jaw in one swing.
He is still whining and moaning on about it when we reach the small park a few blocks away from the arena. I am aware that I am pacing but I also know I cannot stop.
"Sesshoumaru: she'll be here, don't piss yourself." He tells me. I send him a glance that has even this man I have known for centuries scampering backwards with his tail between his legs.
Time is slow again. Molasses slow. Asphalt slow. All the while I am wondering if this is not some sick fever-induced dream. All the while I am berating myself mentally and occasionally physically with a blow to a nearby trash bin. All the while I am convincing myself that Rin is dead, dead, dead! Gone and never coming back, my hopes will be dashed.
But that is it. I draw my hand from my head where I had been squeezing at my temples. I am hoping. I hope because Rin taught me to hope.
The wind is moving her scent towards me, pure, unadulterated: how can this be? Even if this woman is her reincarnation, she cannot be the same Rin.
Can she?
She moves into view and I feel that burning, freezing feeling in my chest only my Rin could ever cause. She is breathtaking. Still dressed in her traditional garb, she has undone the elaborate pile of hair atop her head and the dark hair is cascading about her exactly as I remember it. I blink my eyes and she remains the same, not a hair of her blurred. She is no illusion.
I do not know how long I have been standing here staring at her, but she is still regarding me with that beautiful calm smile and those captivating eyes. She is watching me watch her, contemplating me as I contemplate her.
"How…?" I am stammering like a fool in her presence.
She is grinning at me yet, that smile growing bigger and wider until her face is aglow with her white teeth and the healthy crinkle of her eyes. She steps towards me slowly, allowing her hair to whip around her as the wind changes direction.
"Do you remember our fallen star, Sesshoumaru-sama?" She asks me timidly.
When I do not reply, she gives a wet little laugh and I can see tears welling up in her eyes, beginning to slip down her cheeks. She has stepped closer now and I am powerless to do anything but drink her in. She is smiling, yet still teary eyed.
In an instant she is quite close and has thrown her arms about me, crashing into me. I can feel her tears wetting my shirt as she presses her face into my chest.
"…This is what I wished for." She whispers. And I understand.
I have folded her up in my arms, gripping her as tightly as I can manage to without hurting her. She is strong now, but still so frail, so human, so weak…
As I stroke her hair I close my eyes and in the darkness I can see the night sky dotted with stars, each one of them shaping her face. I feel at peace. I feel at home. I feel…lucky.
I made the same wish.