Note: Still in flashback, it will end in the next chapter.
Forbidden
Chapter Eight: Always Was and Always Will Be
The whole castle was alive and emblazoned with colorful lanterns, tapestries, ribbons and vibrant costumes the demons wore. It was a warm evening in late September, with clear , starry skies. The festival had started hours ago; men sat with friends and wives, drinking sake and enjoying the food, their daughters huddled together in packs, scoping out handsome boys and giggling, dressed in their best kimonos; little children were chasing each other through the gardens and setting tiny boats made from leaves afloat on the calm surface of the lake, on which hundreds of glass lanterns floated.
Sesshoumaru and Ryuu sat together at a table nest to the lake, their mothers at opposite ends of the table. Sesshoumaru's mother was discontent with the absence of her husband, her female friend at the opposite end huffed angrily to her son about her husband's uncontrolled drinking. Ryuu seemed to ignore his mother and occasionally winked, let out a sultry growl at girls that passed by, completely ignoring the fact that he had a black eye and two missing front teeth. Sesshoumaru looked bored out of his mind as he leaned against the railing, his head tilted back and resting on the wood plank. When he sat up and looked around, girls would smile at him and blow him kisses, at which he made disgusted face and returned to his 'bored position'.
Out of nowhere, his mother bolts up and turns around toward the stairs that led up toward the palace. "That sleazy dog..." She murmured in frustration as her husband approached the table, Nanami following behind him. Ryuu whistled quietly and nudged Sesshoumaru in his side. He sat up and looked at his father.
"Where have you been?" Sesshoumaru's mother hissed quietly so no one else could hear. "And what is SHE doing here?"
"Calm yourself. I had some unfinished business to attend to." Her husband replied in a discrete whisper.
His wife scoffed. "You went to see that human again, didn't you?" She asked and sat down. Her husband looked as if the wind was knocked out of him. He slowly sat down nest to his wife across from his son.
"Don't just stand there, sit down already." Sesshoumaru's mother barked at Nanami, who did not dare sit down without permission. She sat down in an open seat across from Ryuu's mother, Sesshoumaru to her left. She wore a silver kimono with blue blossoms on it and a golden obi. Her long hair was draped over her shoulder, sparse braids with gold and silver clips in them formed a net-like crown on top of her head. Unlike other girls, she didn't color her lips bright red, but left them bare and natural pink. Silver eye shadow glittered on her eyelids under the moon. She glanced at Sesshoumaru and then at the woman staring at her across the table, apparently aware that she was the one who beat up her son.
"I do not want that filthy chambermaid a my table." Sesshoumaru's mother muttered before sipping her tea.
"That is not for you to decide." Her husband responded, looking at the girl.
"No, I think it is, considering she scrubbed my floors for four years."
"That was four years ago. Now she is one of my students, not to mention one of the best. And she is the daughter of my best friend, she was never born to be a maid, and she will never be one again." Sesshoumaru's father defended the girl. Sesshoumaru finally recognized the girl as the maid from the palace that he used to be friends with when they were children, then he left with his father to war for five years.
"Huh, we shall see about that... what is her use in your pathetic little warrior posse anyway? Nightly entertainment for the boys?"
"Quiet yourself!" Inu no Taisho raised his voice, threatening his wife. Nanami stood up and stared at the woman viciously, and she returned a nasty smile.
"Did I blow your cover?" She hissed at the girl. "Where is our little wench going? A secret rendezvous in the bedchambers?"
Nanami walked up to the woman and stopped, purposefully looking down at her as if she was inferior. She discretely waved her hand over the back of the woman's dress, scoffed and walked away. Sesshoumaru and Ryuu noticed what Nanami had done and snickered.
"What are you laughing at?" Sesshoumaru's mother snarled. Ryuu politely pointed at her dress, which was on fire. The woman growled and snatched a goblet full of cold water from the table, and splashed it on her dress. Her dress hissed and she threw the empty goblet on the table and turned to her husband, frustration written all over her face.
"Leave!" She ordered everyone from the table except her husband to go elsewhere. All three stood up and left, Sesshoumaru told Ryuu he'll be back in a short while, and followed the same path as Nanami, while the other two split up and headed in their own directions.
"This is what you dearly protect? That caniving witch is worth your guardianship?" Sesshoumaru's mother hissed quietly.
"Why do you hate her so?"
"Ever since your general-friend brought her into our home, I knew she would be nothing but trouble. She has destroyed our family. She tore us apart."
"And how do you propose she has done that?"
"I punish her, you get angry at me and protect her. Never mind that... I know what she did... I know you don't love me anymore. She saved that sniveling little human- that Izayoi- and she was the one that introduced you to her. I am not ignorant nor blind! I know you love Izayoi instead of me! If that little witch had never showed her to you, this would have never happened! I know for a fact that you, my 'faithful' husband, would leave in the middle of the day, during the night even, to see your human pet. It's been happening for months now." Tears began welling up in her golden eyes. "Even now I can smell her on you..." She stood up and left quickly to the shore of the lake. Her husband was left speechless and guilt-ridden. He rubbed his forehead, sighed and grabbed the bottle of sake and drank from it. He looked at the forest behind the lake, stood up and walked into it.
Sesshoumaru had followed Nanami up the staircase to the palace and the clamor of the festival had faded into the warm night. Nanami walked up another flight of stairs to the far back of the castle, over looking the far end of the massive lake on top of the mountain. She knew Sesshoumaru had followed her, so she stopped and waited for him to catch up.
"Why are you following me?"
Sesshoumaru stopped in front of Nanami and looked at her for a while. "Do you want me to leave?"
Nanami remained silent for a moment. "I do not need apologies or explanations."
"I have neither."
"Then why are you here?"
"Simply because I want to be. If you wish me to leave, I will..." Again, Nanami remained silent. Sesshoumaru stepped closer to Nanami and she backed up against a screen door.
"For five years I have been gone, and you have changed so much. Five years I have not seen or heard of you, but I never forgotten about you-"
"Stop Sesshoumaru. We were just children... everything has changed now."
"Has it? Your eyes tell me otherwise."
Nanami stared at Sesshoumaru for a moment before opening the screen door and walking into a dark room. Sesshoumaru followed her and closed the door behind him. Nanami lit a small candle in one corner to light the room somewhat. Her heart began to beat faster, knowing she was alone in the room with Sesshoumaru. She felt hands gently take hold of her waist and turn her around. She found herself standing face to face with Sesshoumaru, her hands instinctively placed themselves on his chest, as if to push him away. Her breath quickened and her heart beat faster and faster, but she tried to remain cool and aloof.
"Stop it." She mumbled, betraying her attempt to remain unaffected. Sesshoumaru's eyes flickered in the candle light.
"Are you afraid of me?"
"No."
"Then why else would your heart be racing?"
Nanami blushed tomato red. Sesshoumaru took a step forward and pushed her against the wall. Nanami began to get scared when he extinguished the candle with his hand. But all he did was rest his forehead against hers.
"You used to always sing a song in the gardens... I want to hear it again." He whispered. His arms were above her shoulders, bent at the elbows, his forearms flat against the wall. Nanami could not help but smile and placed her hands on his upper arms. She began to sing softly.
"... рядом буть со мною, глаза не отвади..." Before she finished the phrase, sesshoumaru leaned in and kissed her lightly on her lips. Nanami did not know how to react. Sesshoumaru remained close to her face, as if seeing if she would do anything. Nanami stood in place, motionless. Sesshoumaru pressed his body against Nanami's, wrapping his arms around her waist and back, and kissed the girl again, more passionately. A slight moan escaped Nanami's lips at Sesshoumaru's sudden affection. Her left arm wrapped around his shoulders, and her right hand was on his neck and jaw, right below his ear. Nanami felt like she was burning up from Sesshoumaru's touch, and he knew it to, for her fingers grasped his kimono shirt tighter.
"Wait... no... someone might... find us..." Nanami barely managed to say as Sesshoumaru's lips kept interrupting her.
"They're all too drunk to care..." He answered back and kissed her neck. She stifled a laugh and shrugged as his kiss tickled her neck. Nanami could feel him smile against her skin.
"What about Ryuu or your mother-" Again Nanami was cut off by a kiss.
"You worry too much..."
"Im serious..."
"As am I..." Sesshoumaru pulled the girl up to himself even closer. Nanami held on to him tighter and kissed him eagerly. She could hear a few heavy breaths escape Sesshoumaru's lips as her hand slipped under his shirt and slid down his firm chest to where his heart was. He placed his hand on top of hers and whispered into her ear.
"It's yours... always was and always will be..."
Nanami's heart seemed to burst out of her chest and she hugged him as if for the last time in her life.
The door slammed open and Sesshoumaru's mother and Hatsumomo stood at the entrance. Sesshoumaru turned and stared at the two intruders, not letting go of Nanami and still holding her hand to his heart.
"Sesshoumaru..." His mother looked shocked. "What are you-" She was interrupted by Hatsumomo's bawling. The girl slumped, wearing a green kimono and lots of makeup. "Stop your crying." Sesshoumaru's mother warned the girl and walked into the room. Sesshoumaru let go of Nanami and stood in front of her. His mother scowled and stopped in front of her son. She slapped him forcefully across his face.
"You ungrateful brat! I forbid you to even come close to that witch! How dare you disobey me?"
"I decide who I come close to, not you... mother." Sesshoumaru let out a threatening growl. His mother ignored him and pulled Nanami out from behind him by her arm. She threw her against the wall, slapped her and tore at her kimono, screaming. "You filthy harpy! You drove away my husband and you stole my son from me! Good for nothing prostitute! Reject from hell!-" Sesshoumaru pushed his mother off of Nanami and out of the room, into the lake.
"Stop your idiotic accusations! She has stolen nothing from you! And it was my choice to follow her... and you cannot do anything to change it!" Sesshoumaru shouted. Hatsumomo stared at Sesshoumaru with jealousy while still crying.
"What is your problem? I do not even know you!" He frowned at her and walked back into the room to Nanami. She was on the floor, crying softly, wiping the blood from the scratches on her cheeks, her left temple, and her collar bone. Sesshoumaru lifted her up and embraced the girl.
"She wants me dead. I can't stand her abuses any longer. But neither can I bring myself to fight back..." She murmured into his shoulder. "I need to leave this place, Sesshoumaru. She has made me the scapegoat of the whole castle. Anything unfortunate or dishonorable is always somehow tied to me..."
"Come, we'll leave for a short while and wait for everything to settle down." Sesshoumaru led the girl out of the room and past the castle up to the mountains, toward an abandoned mansion that used to be Nanami's home.
Sesshoumaru and Nanami reached a recently deserted mansion on the coast overlooking the sea, a dense forest behind it. Its gardens began to overgrow with hedges and wild flowers. Some vines were starting to creep up the walls and stairs of the house.
"It has been two months..." Nanami mumbled. Sesshoumaru glanced at the girl and took her by her hand, leading her up the main staircase to the entrance.
"Come. Its no use staying out here and staring at it." Sesshoumaru pushed open the doors into the castle. A gust of dusty air rushed at him, making him frown and turn away. Nanami walked in past Sesshoumaru into the main room. Her ring began to glow in the dark and she waved her hand over the first torch on the wall, and it lit on fire. The fire quickly traveled down to the next torch by a wax string that ran along a tiny stone shelf on the wall. The whole room lit up, exposing furniture covered with white cloth and topped with a layer of dust. Nanami looked around at the familiar room and then opened all the windows and screen doors to ventilate the mansion. Sesshoumaru walked in and pulled off the cloths from the shelves, chairs, tables, desks, ottomans and sofas. There were Persian rugs on the floor, tapestries from various nations on the walls and plenty of maps and scrolls on the shelves. Nanami looked around and walked out of the room via an arched hallway toward the hot spring that was enclosed in a large chamber on the hillside. To her surprise, the water was still clean and running down the stones into the pool and then out of the chamber through a small tube like opening in the wall. Nanami took off her shoes and pulled her kimono up to her knees and sat down on the edge of the steaming pool, submerging her legs in the water. Sesshoumaru followed the girl and sat down beside her. She took off her earrings and jewels, set them beside her and cupped some water in her hands, cleaning off her wounds.
"How often does that happen?" Sesshoumaru observed Nanami and asked quietly.
"Too often. " She replied. "She always finds something to blame on me, since the very first day that I have lived with her. "
"Why does she hate you so?"
"God knows... But she never accepted me as a demon because I don't have claws or fangs or an aura or a different form that I can morph into. I am basically and immortal human being, but I am not, I am a demon, just like you, just like her... just different characteristics and origin. She could not stand the sight of my father. She said that he infected her husband with ridiculous theories of an alliance between my race and yours, and that the only reason my father asked yours for aid in war in our homeland was to kill him and take control of your people.
"Your mother always said to everyone that I was the child of misfortune, that I would bring catastrophe everywhere I went. That is why everything that went wrong was blamed on me, and I was punished for it, even if it was a ridiculous mistake. A maid breaks a cup, she gets beat and I get yelled at and slapped for putting her up for it. Once, when I was 14, a thief broke into the castle and stole some valuable jewels and swords, but he was caught and hanged, but your mother accused me for letting him in, so she whipped me 10 times before locking me up in a dungeon with nothing but stale water and rotten food. When an old physician found me, I was mere hours away from starvation and death. Your mother just told him that she must have forgotten to open the trap door and left with her friends to the tea house. But not before demanding that I be ready for work the next morning.
"Every time I received a package or even a letter from my family at home, she would snatch it out of my hands and burn it in front of me, telling me that it was to prevent me from scheming against her. I have not spoken to my family for 7years, until this year, when I finally received one letter and asked the messenger to bring it here to this mansion instead, where I have lived up to two months ago, when you and your father returned." Nanami explained as she finished washing the wounds on her neck and face. Sesshoumaru felt pity for the woman and anger toward his mother.
"How could she stoop so low? You were just a child for heaven's sake. "
"That didn't stop her."
"Your back is bleeding." Sesshoumaru touched a red blood stain between her shoulder blades. "You must have hit a nail or something."
Nanami tried to reach the wound but she could not reach it. Before she even said anything, Sesshoumaru already had a cloth in his hand an washed it in the spring.
"Here, let me help. It's the least I could do..." Sesshoumaru said quietly and loosened her obi and stopped, glancing at Nanami to make sure she was fine with him that close to her. She just straightened her back and tightened her hold on the front of her kimono, and pulled her long golden hair from her back, over her left shoulder. Sesshoumaru pulled her kimono down a few inches past her shoulders so that her shoulder blades were completely exposed. Instead of a simple dot shaped wound, there was a prominent scratch from a claw, but it had stopped bleeding a while ago because the blood started to dry . Sesshoumaru gently wiped the wound with the wet cloth and washed her soft skin.
"If I did not know you, I would have never thought that you were her son... With all the lies she spun around me to everyone, aren't you supposed to hate me?" Nanami looked Sesshoumaru over her shoulder.
"I am not ignorant, I did see you and speak to you often. I clearly did not see what my mother described about you, so I never listened to her." Sesshoumaru finished cleansing her injury and placed a light kiss on her back. Nanami turned around and kissed Sesshoumaru, wrapping her arms around his neck. Sesshoumaru gladly returned the kiss, trying not to hurt her wounds. Nanami stopped and stood up. She walked out of the chamber and headed down a narrow hall and into another room, her bed chamber. Sesshoumaru followed the girl into the room. She stood on the middle of the room, in front of a bed between two windows. Sesshoumaru walked up to her and embraced her tightly, she did the same and rested her head on his shoulder.
"Stay with me tonight? ... Please." Nanami whispered. Sesshoumaru kissed her forehead and answered quietly.
"I'll stay with you as long as you want me to." Then his lips lightly touched hers, and he pulled away, as if teasing Nanami. She smiled and kissed his neck, then his lips, all while her hands snaked around his broad shoulders to his chest. As his kisses grew more passionate, she began to pull his shirt apart and slipped it off his shoulders. Sesshoumaru took off his shirt and threw it on the ground. He kissed Nanami's neck and shoulders, hearing a sparse moan every once in a while come from the girl. He pulled her kimono off and left her standing in her undergarments. Sesshoumaru picked Nanami up, her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms around his shoulders and walked to the bed. He put the girl down on the mattress and kissed her again. She kept her arms around his shoulders and leaned back, pulling him with her. Sesshoumaru's kisses crept lower, down her neck to her chest, making Nanami breathe heavier and faster. His lips traveled along her breast bone, down her ab line to her navel. Nanami squirmed as Sesshoumaru's kiss tickled her stomach. She let out a weird sounding giggle and covered her face with her hands from embarrassment. Sesshoumaru looked up at her and smiled. He pulled himself up so that his face was now above hers.
"What the hell was that?" He muttered. Nanami uncovered her face and mumbled something quietly and laughed before kissing him. Her hands slid down his firm chest to his abs and back up. She kissed his collarbone and flipped him over to her side and leaned over him. She kissed his chest and rubbed his shoulders sweetly. Nanami put her head down on his chest and pressed her body close against his and closed her eyes. Sesshoumaru wrapped his arms around the girl and the two fell asleep.
In the breezy morning, Sesshoumaru woke up and stretched. He looked over to his right and saw Nanami sleeping quietly on her side, facing him. He lightly brushed his hand against her shoulder and looked at her face for a little while, admiring every feature, listening to her rhythmic breathing. Sesshoumaru ran his fingers through her hair and gently kissed her lips, trying not to wake her up. He stood up, put his kimono shirt back on and left toward the door.
"Sesshoumaru?" Nanami asked quietly, still lying in bed.
"I'll come back, I just need to speak to father."