Lord of My Dreams
Chapter 3: Excavation
Now that she knew that Kagome and her friends were hiding something or another regarding odd dreams, Rin's aimless puzzling over her dreams became a determined search of Kagome's house for clues—any clues, really.
She had added the odd Sengoku Era dream to her dream diary, simply because there had been too much detail in the dream for her to be able to say that she had entirely drawn it out of the words she had read in the book before drifting to sleep.
Unfortunately for Rin, the following day was a Monday, and she was up to her neck in classes and schoolwork. By the time she got home in the evening, Kagome and Inuyasha were both already home from work, and there was no time for Rin to search the house as she would have liked to.
Rin patiently waited for Thursday to roll around: she only had afternoon classes on Thusday, and could spend the entire morning searching the house to her heart's content.
Tuesday and Wednesday seemed to drag by, and Rin found it harder by the day to concentrate on her classes and homework. She almost wished she would have another dream that would distract her, but no such thing occurred. In fact, she did not remember any dreams when she woke each morning.
On Thursday morning, Rin could scarcely stay asleep: she woke up once at four, and then again at five; when she woke at six, she could no longer convince herself to go back to sleep, and she lay in bed with her eyes closed, listening until Kagome and Inuyasha got up, got dressed, and had breakfast. The clutters of their activity seemed unnecessarily prolonged, and it felt like an eternity before she finally heard the front door close, leaving behind only silence.
She waited a few minutes to be positive that they were gone, then leapt out of bed. Making a beeline for the trapdoor that led to the attic, Rin pulled the handle and opened the door, and then pulled down the folding ladder. She hastily turned on the light, and then looked around.
Rin felt her heart sink at once. There were so many boxes—it would take more than a day to sort through all of them. Sighing in resignation, she was about to pick one to start with when the doorbell rang.
Rin froze.
I'm not here…I'm not here…go away, go away!
But the doorbell rang again.
Rin panicked. The house was hardly soundproof, and the trapdoor to the attic wasn't at all quiet. If it was Sango or Miroku outside, they would be able to tell that she was closing the attic door. On the other hand, if she just went downstairs and answered the door, she would risk them discovering the attic door wide open.
The doorbell rang again, and Rin gave a silent scream of abandonment. Climbing back down the ladder, she headed down the stairs and opened the door.
"What could you possibly want at this hour, you know it's my day…off…" Rin trailed off, staring up at the face of the man that she had dreamed of and missed desperately for years.
"Se-Sess?" Rin murmured, afraid that if she spoke too loudly the mere sound of her voice would erase this beautiful illusion.
"Ah, no improvement to your eloquence, or lack-thereof." His tone was cold, emotionless. A shudder went down Rin's spine, and she wondered if she hadn't gone back to sleep and slipped into a nightmare.
"Sess?"
"As I have returned to Tokyo relatively permanently, I am merely paying my half-brother and his wife an obligatory visit. Is he here?"
"N-no, Inuyasha and Kagome are already at work…" Rin briefly wondered if she had dreamed those five years. Or perhaps Sesshoumaru had forgotten them.
"Unfortunate. I shall be taking my leave, in that case." He turned and began to walk away.
"Wait, Sess!" cried Rin, not even bothering to slip on a pair of sandals as she sprang out the door after him.
Sesshoumaru stopped in his tracks and slowly turned his head to fix her with a piercing glare: glares that she had seen directed at many people—most people, in fact—but had never been fixed with herself. She felt her throat close as if to prevent her from vomiting the shards of her shattered heart.
"First of all," said the icy voice, "I do not appreciate being addressed in that manner. I have a name. It is Sesshoumaru. Use it or do not, but I do not appreciate mutilation of my name. Second of all, we are scarcely even acquaintances; what gives you the idea that it is appropriate to make any demands of me?"
Rin stood in muted shock, staring after him as he simply walked away to a car parked on the side of the street, got inside, and drove away. Not once did he look back at her. A tear slipped down her cheek, and Rin wondered numbly why she could cry when she couldn't feel anything at all.
She dumbly stepped back inside and registered that she was about to break down into sobs.
No.
Now more than ever, stoicism was important. She had a mission, and she was not about to abandon it.
Rin marched herself straight back to the attic and sat down determinedly with a box.
She sorted through albums, old school papers, and copies of old legal documents in vain. She thought of nothing but to find something that would tell her what Kagome had been talking about the other day. Minutes turned into hours and the hours went by one by one, but Rin determinedly failed to notice.
But Rin was only human, and there came a point where her concentration snapped. It was no big matter—she merely spotted a spider scuttle by, and swerved to look. It had already disappeared between the boxes, but when she looked back at the pile of papers that she was holding, she could not recall which she had last been looking at.
It took only that one moment in which she held a shred of uncertainty. Suddenly, Rin was overwhelmed by the memories of Sesshoumaru, gentle and caring, seemingly without a care in the world but Rin's wellbeing. She saw his expression as it was, slightly closed that day when they had spoken in the library.
And then she could not help that her mind went to his expression, his voice as they had been today. She thought of the coldness, the impersonal attitude he took towards her, and wondered why she had ever so much as thought about leaving.
If I'd been a little more clever and stayed, I'd still be living with Sesshoumaru and Jaken, she reflected, and tears overflowed again. But then what? Have him give up everything just so I could stay there? I didn't want that—he'd have resented me eventually, I think… Or maybe not. I don't know anymore!
This time, the tears would not stop at one or two. Each tear was followed by one more, and Rin could not even see the papers well enough to redirect her attention to them. Finally she stopped fighting.
Rin crossed her arms over a box, buried her face in her arms, and let herself cry in earnest.