Lien

The world is dead.

1.

Princess Izayoi is a curse to be disentangled, just waiting—he surmises—to be unleashed and then all hell will break loose. She is young and pert (impertinent) and a massive, nauseating migraine.

She never shuts up.

His father had been an idiot, absolute, despotic moronic in "marrying" her (Sesshoumaru never understood what that word is all about). And so, he bears her a grudge for storming into their lives and like a bottomless, rapacious void she takes and takes and takes. And Father is pleased.

Father has a death wish in mind.

. . .

"Why are you still here?" he demands that of her one day, random and terrifying out of the blue.

"Because I love him."

But her eyes rotate around an awful lot, and he could tell she lies. An awful lot. She scrunches up her features into a rictus, on the verge of crying. Oh shit. He glares at her, thinking this will frighten her to distill some more coy, little deceits.

She doesn't. (He feels injured.)

"Pathetic," he mutters.

"I am not."

Sesshoumaru struggles against the urge to kill.

. . .

He wears a human face to make her think he loves her. She smiles naively back hoping he'll think her stupid.

Izayoi blushes when he touches her (secret kisses in places she didn't even know where). He laughs. And she thinks innocence will be her salvation.

. . .

The son (that's what she calls him) visits her today. He never does that, never wanted to be anywhere near her. She is amused and just a bit hesitant (he has no rues against choke and crack).

He speaks to her and is almost kind. Surprised, Izayoi asks him to please sit down and stay for a while? Sesshoumaru shudders and declines.

But the world is beautiful that day.

. . .

In blind sight, she wrestles fragments and figments out of him. Reluctantly, he would give. And she would take and store her hard-won treasures inside a chest (where she kept her mind and love safe for maybe-one-day).

. . .

The Father never inquires, and she never admits.

Izayoi thinks she's starting to like Sesshoumaru (love, but just perhaps).

. . .

Air grows stuffy in the summer—she's been here for three years—and for the twilight breeze, she would gladly prop open a window. But Sesshoumaru warns her not to, warns her of the leering men.

She blushes furiously. The white fades to pink deepens to scarlet. Out of amazement, she almost asks who the men are. But only almost.

. . .

It's become too musty, too bright, too intense. She can see him behind closed lids, inside walls—stealthy and light-stepping—and most of all shifting like a shadow across paper screens. Translucent, he surfaces as a ghost, in white and pearly glass.

Waiting to take her away.

And some yearning, ridiculous part of her wants him to do just that.

But Sesshoumaru never does. He barely takes notice of her now (too busy and consumed by not-listening).

It troubles both of them, but even she won't speak. Too mortifying and fatal if ever discovered.

. . .

Sometimes, she wonders if the Father has an inkling (could bet her life he does).

So when he looks at her with dove-adoring, blood-spilt, vicious eyes she thanks heaven and earth that he doesn't.

But in the back of her mind, she keeps tabs on both of them, placing stakes with herself on who is the really big sadist.

Sesshoumaru wins, for now.

. . .

Izayoi gives birth when the plum buds unclothe and reveal themselves as more devious than apparent. Their soft violet petals are all she can see as the screams hurl in.

She calls out for Sesshoumaru and is told he is away. Izayoi sighs and mutilates the hand of the youkai lady and earns herself another jab of pain.

. . .

"Ugly," Sesshoumaru declares.

And his father laughs at the declaration. "Better than you were. You were a ball of blood and wails," he teases.

Sesshoumaru is not humored and leaves (wanting to see how she is and thinking of some polite and decent way to end this—their not quite trysting tryst).

. . .

The Father dies, wounded from battle and still dripping blood to protect his wife and new-born kid.

And the older son would have mourned, at least shown some damn remorse, if he cared that much. But Sesshoumaru isn't someone for sentiments. Decisive and apathetic, he dispatches guards to salvage her (and the brat) from the wreckage.

And contemplates over what to do with her.

. . .

He sends her to live with another court, a human one to be sure, after she emerges from the gauzy sheets and bindings.

Inuyasha (the disgusting hanyou) cries for his mother day and night.

And because he is so compassionate and filial, Sesshoumaru sends her his way. Izayoi protests, begs and shrieks, but demons do not yield. It is time to settle this.

"In this lifetime, we are nothing."

She nods, knowing precisely what he meant. And she would have shed a tear or burst into heaving sobs (one or the other, like she expected) if she cared too.

. . .

Hidden deep within the palace and strangled up to her neck in fancy silks, Izayoi understands what the other ladies truly mean by "post-partum depression."

It is too absurd that she wants to laugh.

. . .

Word travels fast from east to west, and Sesshoumaru quickly learns of her death. He is not surprised. Humans. Too short, too long.

He is finally at ease.

2.

Once, by a sickly river passing by, he thought he saw her—sitting and sighing and alive and tangible again. He tried to touch her cheek, feel the soft and vulnerable girl-skin and when he did (reach), he seized the empty and static sky.

Like a bird slammed into the water, Sesshoumaru quietly gasped for air and life. That day, he soaked in the running, dignified flows (of water ruins and drenched dreams) asking and responding a thousand questions swirling around.

Dawn came, and still, Sesshoumaru sat. Asking and Responding. To himself, he had an infinite vault of answers. For himself, he just couldn't twiddle and fiddle with each riddle till some plausible belief comes out half-alive.

Make room, budge over and let out something.

"Do you have any regrets?"

No, he never did.

Oh. So that is that.

3.

He accidentally raised the dead.

Resurrected a little girl with big, brown eyes and a curtain of soft unruly hair.

Accidentally, he reminds himself.

. . .

Rin, she reiterates and ingrains into him. Rin so you won't forget this time.

Rin-Rin-Rin. Rin.

The name sounds heavy and coppery like blood, it drips from the roof of his mouth and onto his tongue. He swallows, but the name stays like a scarred patch of raised flesh.

"Rin".

The girl smiles. At last, ensnared.

. . .

He found himself weary of her constant prattles, always jabbering to herself or Jaken (the unfortunate toad). And he found himself gravitating to her. Like a common fly or worse, a bee—Sesshoumaru hates honey & bees.

Repulsive. Sweet (sweat).

(Izayoi always smelled like honey.)

. . .

The girl grows older, he does not. She is human, he is not.

Her legs stretch from sturdy, stout pattering roots into long, long, long limbs. He can't keep away from her. She's like those webs bees make, intricate and lethal and deliriously compelling.

Father, father became a fool was foolhardy died foolishly, Sesshoumaru chants. Keep the bees at bay, keep the honey stashed far away.

. . .

He could sense it coming a month before it is actually due: the blood.

She cries in agony and misery. He holds his breath and orders Jaken to resolve the matter.

. . .

The hilarious thing is Izayoi never slept with him.

And he intends to keep it that way.

. . .

He lied.

Rin feels good and right under him. Even with her perplexed face mocking him, Sesshoumaru doesn't care—can't seem to be bothered. Not now.

She giggles, it tickles, and he gives a slight ghostly smile.

. . .

Not like Father.

The Idiot.

Who was consumed. No. He is not. He is merely interested.

"Rin, come here."

She obeys unquestioningly. Rin always obeys, and he is grateful for that (makes these matters much easier). And he is one to appreciate simplicity. And elegance. Sesshoumaru accomplished everything with elegance.

. . .

Not like rape. That is the first image that hones in home before him. Some woman, a moan, and then hush—no more. The woman drops dead, beautifully—a folded crane caught by a wind—the woman doesn't stir again.

Someone laughs. And Sesshoumaru thinks for a moment it is him.

. . .

Sex is sex. And nothing more. It's useless to embellish it into some insane ditty or epic poem. Skin is skin: she slides her legs over his, and he bites down on her lower lip. Rin shivers from the cold (or maybe his fingers entering the tightness—it doesn't matter).

Because—

Sex is sex is sex.

They play roughly sometimes, a-tumbling off the cushions and a-hitting the hard wood below. And when the floor catches her, he takes her into his arms (in the imitation and intimation of embracing) and peels her raw and bare.

In the moonlight, she glistens, is almost surreal. Sesshoumaru wraps his fingers inside her messy locks and pulls—waiting to see her reaction.

She lithely sidesteps his hold. Catch and run, tag you're it. And in the end, no doubt, he gets the girl.

Sex is sex is sex is sex.

. . .

Rin contracts an illness that pierces her lungs. Prayers become useless and medicines die into placebos and she coughs and coughs and coughs. The muffles do not end. He hears them miles away, searching.

"It must be fate," they (the nearby human villagers) say when she shows signs of recovery.

Not fate, just pure and dumb luck.

That boy, the one she loved so much—the demon-slayer—he died three days before she stopped burning from the fever.

. . .

Facades mean something. And so, Sesshoumaru pretends to pretend that he doesn't care. But the gnawing thorn at this side won't abate—stings—throbs reminding him that honesty mean something too.

Thought not as great and might as a façade.

And slowly, the stings ebb but is latent is constant is perpetually there to serve as a double-edged memento.

3.

When she was younger she talked herself into believing a game called happily-ever-after. Once upon a time, she would meet a handsome prince who would sweep her off her feet and together they would live in a palace in the mountains.

And when the slaying came, claiming her parents and brothers and everyone in the village, still Rin would hang onto the game desperately. With detailed elaborations here and there, she concocted a perfect and personal fairytale (she was always the princess in it).

And when she died, she still had the game.

And when she nearly died the second time (from the sickness) the game was there, a solace, a forever-delight she wasn't going to release.

So when the prince did come, she watched—motionless—as the game garnered a noose. It erased itself, it killed itself. It—

Became all too real to handle.

The genuine baseline dealt with competition swift and spitefully.

4.

Maybe happiness isn't impossibly tossed over the sky. Maybe she deserves some happiness too. Maybe he isn't as ruthless and cold as others think.

Maybe—maybe everything is dead and is not dead.

Maybe they are existing and breathing and really…

She allows the words to trail off and looks up at him, patient and curious, and sees nothing. Nothing is good. Nothing means nothing will happen.

The world is beautiful again that day.