Chapter 16
It's just a thin line, a very thin hair-line exists between spewing a lie and manipulating the truth. Sesshomaru, at a tender age of sixteen, was well aware of the difference, the real depth and the significance of it as he was groomed to be the next heir to the throne. The young demon had his fine share of etiquette lessons and somehow in the middle of the famous never ending lectures about the principles that a benevolent ruler should so rightly possess, the history of ancient kingdoms had lines on the importance of the truth, along with diplomacies that involved 'strategies', techniques on political deception and the likes.
It wasn't as if he was totally unaware of the art of bluffing, he just preferred not to complicate things by being so creative in lying. (And also, it was below him to come up with a lie. Usually if someone questions him, a cold stare would do a fine job of making the questioner shudder)
In the end, Sesshomaru always chose the path that promises him a peaceful night and it pleased him to a reasonable extent that bending the laws of truth doesn't acutely define lying.
And so, he really didn't feel guilty in sneaking in to the castle with the little kitsune hid in the depth his fur. Not even a tint of remorse touched him and it was all justified in his books.
However, he did regret (a lot) in letting Inuyasha in to the cosy secret. The thirteen year old had frowned and sniffed around the baby kitsune with a glare. Inuyasha simple doesn't like to share and he wanted the 'awww, so cute' wordings from Kagome only for himself. And the toddler had aimed for his favourite wooden toys of his childhood days. (Inuyasha had shrieked and saw pure red)
He hated every passing second Kagome spent in cooing the drooling baby. The hanyou so shamefully wished that his father would sniff them out and kick the green eyed toy stealer from the castle. But then things never ever walk in line with his desperate wishes.
The ball was in the evening and the ether was adulterated with breaths of so many different species. Only when the toddler drifted off to a dream filled with purest joy, Sesshomaru sniffed the air, finally.
"What is going on?" Sesshomaru asked his brother who was still glaring draggers at the snoozing kid.
Before the hanyou could cease his cynical thoughts and offer a rationale explanation on the acrid ripple, there was a swift knock on the doors by the guards. A quick throw of heavy blanket on the kitsune to cover up the fuzzy brown tail was initiated by Kagome and Inuyasha rolled his eyes, muttering something about 'stupid girl has zero subtleness'
"The Lady of the West requests , urr, Lady Kagome, for her attendance" The Royal Guard sputtered and exited with a quick bow to the heirs. Kagome had to blink and raised her brow when she was referred to as lady. She shrugged it off with casualness and exited the room to have her much deserved evening tea with the Lady.
~.~.~.~
"A what?"
Kagome had questioned with a voice that almost rivalled the softness of leaves' silent ruffle. It was almost lost with the air itself, as a passing waft meant to be unheard and the Lady knew that it was an expected reaction.
"A ball, Kagome." Inukimi said again. A clap of her hands summoned the land's best beauticians and Kagome was still in the same spot, her neurons in the brain refused to accept the command to grasp the reply, the need to comprehend the situation was lost.
"Why?" She asked when a minute rolled by lazily. Somehow, in the midst of drumming so hard, her heart whispered an obvious answer with a thud, an answer that she didn't want to hear but was so acutely aware of. Her eyes swam across the length of the chamber and rested on the satin gowns that sat so devilishly on one of the cushions, mocking at her, waiting to devour her.
"Silly Kagome. You are fourteen, a young maiden and isn't it reasonable to arrange a ball with fine suitors for you" The Lady said, her voice was straight, poised and it was as sharp as a shard of a broken glass.
She wanted to shout, she wanted to thrash out the whole room with an unknown fierceness and cry. She wanted to run in to Sesshomaru's arms and dissolve in to his chest like a small puddle. She wanted to scream that this in no way defines reasonableness.
Instead, she fell silent. Her vision was focused on nowhere in particular, almost lamenting as if something was indeed dead.
The Lady had her calculative gaze on. While she was sure that her little Kagome was so much in to her little boy, she needed a tangible proof, a strong basement on which she can build a castle of happiness for her loved ones.
And for that, she had to give the final push.
A harmless push that would finally make them realise the intensity and the power that they blindly have on each other. So, Inukimi went ahead and gave the final, tender, force to make them drown in a realisation of their devotion to one another.
"Why Kagome, even Sesshomaru knew that the ball for selecting your suitors was to be held tonight"
Her vision blurred, her eyes stung and her heart bled.
A voice from so deep within goaded her, laughed at her silly dreams and ruined her fantasy. She felt like an err, a hinder and her wishes were suddenly grey and ponderous. How stupid of her to even remotely think that she would forever stay with her Sesshomaru? The fate smirked at her lunacy.
It wasn't as if the thought hadn't graced her before. But a small hope always glowed brightly, vanquishing the spills of thoughts that even suggested that she would never get to live with him. Love was something she was unaware of, she had thought so. But her dreams at times were filled with a handsome prince twirling her around and making her radiate pure bliss whenever she has her fill of going through the myths and legends of ancient love stories in the royal libraries.
And off late, the faceless prince had a face and it came as a no surprise to realise that it had the silky silver strands and amber lit eyes, her very own Sesshomaru. She had been scared, timorous and was truly freaked out, but when her sanity agreed to return to her, she had rolled her eyes, smiled and promised her frantically beating heart that Sesshomaru would always be the one to hold her hands till the sweet pain of death kisses them in their lips.
She had thought it's love. The promise of forever that always stayed in his eyes had made him as her definition of love.
How utterly naive of her to believe in such a lie? A self woven lie that had made her smile and forget the graveness of upcoming loneliness in the future, and now she was reduced to a sniffling creature. It was all her fault.
Maybe the Lord and Lady hated her so much that they wanted their castle devoid of her presence? But then, Sesshomaru had known. He had known that today would be the day, the day she would officially belong to someone. She had been a liability, a due, a burden to them all these days.
And here she had secretly relished in an insane thought that her presence was the reason behind the rare smile that adorns Sesshomaru's lips.
Now she knew for a fact that if not for her, the rare smiles would have actually been multiplied with infinity.
It struck her chest, under her breast, inside her ribs, she was the real reason for his smile-less-ness. A heavy cloud of guilt lingered on her head and it burst out with torrent of pain, showers of remorse drenched her already weighed heart, guilt and complete sadness bathed her insides.
No wonder he wanted her gone.
She wished she could wither and vaporize in to a thin filament of dying smoke. But the inks of destiny is never known to be kind. She realised that with a heavy interest.
She was an ash in his otherwise pristine life. And she needed to get off before the tide washes her away with an aching splash.
She never noticed that she was moved to the bathing chambers, disrobed and bathed in richest of oils. She never actually felt the soft caress of the silk against her skin nor the scream of her scalp when the strands of her hair were pulled and twisted with curls, pinned with rhinestones. She never heard the chime of her anklets nor did she see the mirage of herself in the mirror's skin, the blush of azure as her silk dress.
She didn't feel the glow when the Lady said that she radiated the energy of divinity. Kagome felt empty, hollow and ugly, yet the world around her gushed the words that she was a symbol of pure beauty.
~.~.~
"Are you delusional?" Sesshomaru asked when his brother had said that the ball was for Kagome. The eldest was already well aware of the fact that his half brother lacked the essence of brilliance. But it always did strike him to actually witness the emptiness of the hanyou's skull.
"I'm not the one with an adopted baby. Am I?" The hanyou asked with a glare, which was shrugged off by the sixteen year old, as always. His line of vision rested on the human kid, the one that had semblance of remote brilliance.
"I do think that it is irrational to have a little kitsune tucked in your fur without the sire's awareness" Miroku informed and Sesshomaru narrowed his eyes with hints of malice and painful death.
"I will repeat my question only once, son of Myatsu, listen well. What did he mean by 'its a ball for Kagome'?"
Miroku gave an involuntary shudder. The fifteen year old was confused, deeply lost in the same question. It had been haunting him, devouring him from inside when out of nowhere a royal ball was announced for selecting Kagome's suitors. He would have asked his father about the stupidity behind it, but the minister had been busy, sending messages through hawk demons across the three directions as an invite.
"Lord Sesshomaru, it is true. The ball has been arranged for Kagome. I'm unaware of the reason behind such poorly thought plan." Miroku stated. He wished he wasn't the one to inform his future lord about the happenings that made no sense to him. He could see the small furrow of his elegant brow, the shift of his jaw, the twist of his lips in to something that could be traced with the lines of frown.
"Feh, I don't get it. It's just a ball. It means a grand feast. That's all" Inuyasha gave in. His words made Miroku to hiss and reconsider his association with the clueless hanyou.
"Idiot, it's a grand invite for Kagome to choose her suitor, her future mate. Two years of courtship and re drafting the alliance policies and such" Sesshomaru informed with a scowl.
"Lord Sesshomaru. Do you think maybe, maybe Kagome was aware of it? Maybe she is actually okay and excited to attend the gala?" Miroku asked, his brows were drawn together with a painful thought. He regretted letting those words out of his mouth.
"NO" Sesshomaru shouted.
His insides were on fire. It was as if the angel of death had crawled from the hole below to rip his heart from the flesh of his chest mercilessly.
It was just for a second.
His facade was drawn up in an instant; his heart was braced, numbed from the intensity of the tiniest flicker of meltdown. Something from inside shouted that Kagome was definitely not aware of it. But a major part of him tumbled down with a strong brutal wave of anguish.
"NO" he repeated again. Refusing to believe that words of the human before him. But it had to be true, his parents were never the one to go against her wishes. Her squeals of joy had been valued in par with Inuyasha, their son, and the eldest knew for a fact that his mother adored her like a daughter she never bore.
His brain was playing tricks and Sesshomaru was in the brink of losing his calmness. He had never been loved and had never loved anyone. Everything that resided in the meaning of love was routed with her and through her. He started caring for his half brother because Kagome had demanded so when she was a toddler. He had started swimming in the waters of patience because she had simply asked so. He had learnt to respect the words of Miroku because she had done so. He had learned to smile because it made her to smile.
"Pa-pa" There was a yawning greeting from a puddle of brown below. The baby fox slurred from the realm of unreasonable tranquillity.
The referring made his heart still. He had grown a tender heart because she was in it. And he craddled her in his heart, his soft heart, he had grown soft because she needed it. He had taken in a small fox because she wanted to.
He was a puppet to her strings. His acts were for her smile.
He didn't care before, but it pulled him down with a mighty force.
There was no meaning attached to his actions, his words and even to his existence without a smallest reference to her. It scared him, him, the mightiest of all the demons (next to his sire). It came with a hard realisation, an inflexible thought robbed his life force.
"NO" He said again, like a promise to himself. A small shimmer of hope was still ignited in the folds of his heart, giving out warmth, annihilating all the dark cold whispers in him.
"Why?" Miroku asked.
'Because, She is-'
'Because, I –'
'Because, without her-'
'Mine'
'My reason to smile-'
'Because, she isn't someone's-'
'I love-'
So many incomplete sentences were waltzing in the tip of his tongue, threatening to spill out, to finally be freed from the confinement.
"NO" The word came out again, with an imposed adversity. The silent plea to the heavens above and it shook him to the core that he had been reduced to a this shameful person, a parasite that couldn't be survived without an host.
Shame, anger, regret, hurt, pain, and many more brushed him with tendrils of persistent
ache.
"Pa-pa" The kid called for him.
But he had no ears to hear.
Now, without her, his heart was no longer an abode of warmth. It was cold with a kiss of a winter, like a lick of the death, like the touch of dark.
He left the room that felt crowded; the huge eyes of the baby fox suffocated him. He heard the muffled cry, the hiccup, the whimper. It never stopped him.
He heard his brother's call but it never ceased his path towards the room of decorated hall. He heard the loud cry from the toddler, felt the panic of his brother, the confusion of the human, but his legs never halted.
He didn't even turn when he heard Inuyasha muttering something about giving up his wooden toys to make the kitsune smile.
But his steps did come to an halt when he saw her in the layers of jewelled gown, under the soft blush of the moon, on the peak of the marble licked stairs. His breath gave up when he saw her dolled up like a bride waiting to wed the God himself, like an incarnation of an angel.
He felt selfish.
He felt lost.
He was at a loss.
The fate's play of plucking her often from his realm made sense to him.
She was never meant to be his.
A cold shudder, anger, and raw pain crawled up to his chest, blinding him. He turned and left her alone. He was too blind, too blind to see the glimmer of saline drips brimming in her rim, too numbed to smell her grief in the air, too ignorant to see the maiden in her state of utter defeat.
But she saw him. She saw him leaving her alone.
And so she did the only thing that her mind yelled to her.
She ran.
She ran without a direction, never stopping when the strange soles of her shoes shrieked against the well polished corridors, never stopping when the echoes of voices had already stopped, never stopping when the halls of lit castle had ended and the softness of the garden had welcomed her, never stopping even when the shrubs and the flowers tangled her ankles, almost begging her not to run. But she did.
She ran till her legs screamed in pain. She ran till her lungs refused to inhale, she ran till she saw white, she ran till nothing but only blur was there in her vision, she ran till her heart would finally give up, she ran till she heard the howls of beasts in the stomach of the forests, she ran till her voice of cry gave out.
She ran.
And then she fell.
Two strong arms took her waist, stopping her from cracking her skull open. How foolish she was to think that her saviour would have followed her here?
Her heart had always been the one to believe in the unreal, intangible, false hope. Her lips parted with a silent cry, a silent pray, the name of his dancing in the tip of her tongue, a shout to the world that she needed him.
But the voice of hers never came out and the fatigue hit her hard.
She hoped again.
She hoped to see the soft gold irises, the smooth silver silk. But instead, she saw violet orbs and raven tresses before her mind pulled her in to the pit of cold numbness, blackness and blankness.
~.~
A/N : wow i never thought i will be getting amazing reviews and suggestions :) Thanks a lot. I will surely make use of all the wonderful inputs. :)
I know its little sad, but what's a love story without a drama ? :)
Leave your thoughts in the box below :)
