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Night. The closest the immortal can get to feeling a brief relief from the perpetual pressure of the eternal. Time seems to thin. Its threads almost gentle amidst the shadows sweeping the endless expanse. Darkness offering a depth of possibility. Comforting in its veil of ambiguity. Beautiful even. Gracious in contrast to the harsh glare of day, blindingly taunting in its absolute.
Throughout his whole existence, preference to the stretch of space gleaming under luminous reflections of light, ceased to waiver. The great DaiYōkai would almost dare to associate a passionate partiality to the stillness of night, if he was a being that cared enough for such sentimentalities. This evening, with its whispering echoes, cool passing breeze, fleeting impressions of fragmented moon dust, should be no different. The perfect stage for Sesshōmaru’s tittering proximity to the presence of peace.
And yet, tonight, it was resolutely not so.
In fact, it could not be further from what the DaiYōkai has come to expect whilst under the star's scintillations. He was nowhere remotely adjacent to anything with such luxury as that conceptual realm of peace. His nerves were grated, beyond customary levels of annoyance and dissatisfaction. The volitation of his thoughts so irritating, the manifestation of putrid bitterness coated his tongue. Instinctual incentives to relieve tension by slashing all in sight, surged at such intense intervals the DaiYōkai had to question, for the tenth time in the last minute, if he truly was experiencing dizziness.
And the source of all such intrepid disturbances continued as if the potential for imminent termination was nonexistent.
“Nghn …mmm… ehhh…”
On and on the insufferable sounds permeated his impeccable hearing. When the culprit of all his distress violently rolled again, as if the action would suddenly succeed after its previous seventeen failings, Sesshōmaru barely contained emitting a snarling growl.
His most faithful (useless) imp and capricious two-headed beast defiantly continued to slumber. Dispelling all sense of logic, their own proficient yōkai ears dared to somehow remain undisturbed by the relentless cacophony.
Fantasied rocks, gradually increasing in weight and sharpness, plummeting the blissfully ignorant imp became almost a mantra in its repetition. Although confident forcibly assaulting the toad would be a calming remedy to his proliferating frustration, pride kept Sesshōmaru still. He would not be so affected. Not by anything. Especially not the mere incessant mumbling, and frantic tossing and turning of a tiny little human.
Digging his claws further into the mutilated mulch underhand, the sole victim to the DaiYōkai’s discomposure, he once again scoffed at the detestable conditions of his current circumstance.
Being immune to such feebleness as a need for sleep, the moonlight’s glow was but a welcome guide in his uninterrupted wandering day and night. When having successfully pushed his underling and astonishingly apathetic dragon to their limits, they would be left behind, as they indulged in exorbitant intervals of rest. Amused by the unfailing exclamations of exasperation at the extensive distance needed to be trudged thereafter, in order for them to “catch up.” Nonetheless, the cyclical convenience of such practices met a definitive hindrance a couple weeks previous.
The young human proved she was arduously not immune to all the deficiencies of her species. Dependent on multiple and prolonged interims, stopping became part of the regular. The transition of making camp on occasion was obnoxiously met with enthusiasm from those that it was not intended for. The girl in question never once indicated any form of discomfort or inability to maintain pace. It seemed that every mundane second of their travels was a marvelous adventure to her. That trekking across the land in his shadow, the only thing fueling her infinite contentment.
However, after sustaining through a full day, and the moon’s subsequent raise, the distance between the light pads of her delicate feet, stretched further and further apart from his own unfailing strides. Looking back at the precise moment she was about to collapse finalized the adjustment.
Initially, after ascertaining a remotely sheltered location, silently appraising if the makeshift campsite met adequate qualifications, the DaiYōkai would leave the wearied to seek solace in the singular companion of moonlight.
He never got far.
Almost immediately after departing, just when his senses recognized the absence of perpetual sound, would he find himself rushing back. The tips of poisonous claws preventing the lowliest of yōkai from quelling their grotesque gluttony with a tiny midnight snack. After being deterred from his roaming four nights in a row, due to the complete incompetence of his imp’s ability to handle such negligible situations on his own, the DaiYōkai resigned himself to simply wait.
Sesshōmaru hated waiting.
Which only added to the intolerable predicament he found himself in right now. Tonight marked the fifth consecutive night he was revoked from sating his wanderlust. Confined to sitting at the base of a capacious camphor, he watched as his companions hastily succumbed to useless unconsciousness. Just when the utter boredom and fruitlessness of his situation demanded he leave the weak to fend for themselves, his eyes were instantly summoned to the most vulnerable.
Mere moments ago, steady even puffs of air fanned over two semi-opened petite fits, resting alongside the slender curvature of peaceful features. Presently those said hands clenched, so tightly their knuckles began turning starkly white. The once peaceful expression was now one of desperate contortion, as her whole body seemed to curl into itself, as if in an attempt to escape from some intense pain.
Immediately he extended his senses to everything surrounding her vicinity.
The DaiYōkai found no threatening presence.
Still physically convoluted as if under attack, he focused his nose in her direction, searching for some unseen alignment causing such a dramatic provocation.
Nothing.
Genuinely puzzled as to what just happened before him, Sesshōmaru was about to write off the strange display as just one of the many absurdities of human nature, when a pitiful whine resonated within her throat.
That tiny sound pierced through the evening air.
The DaiYōkai’s body was left stunned by the intensity in which its minuscule vibration penetrated his senses. How could a slight modulation, barely loud enough to properly reverberate in the air, strike so intrusively? Sesshōmaru’s body immediately tensed, stressed to a degree never once reached before, despite his centuries of fearsome battle. He was completely subdued. Was he going into shock? What was happening? And why did he still not know what caused the cursed sound to be released at all?
Assuredly despising the repellant invasion that dared suspend his grasp on control, the DaiYōkai rapidly shook his head, adamant in clearing all trace of the unwelcome violation. He then glared at the creature that inflicted the horrid sensation, intransigent in his decision to leave at once.
Of course, the fiend retaliated by violently turning her small body to the opposite side of its previous state of rest. Followed by a longer, louder, agitative moan.
And thus, Sesshōmaru’s incredulous descent into hell began.
Incomprehensibly irritated. Senses sore from overstimulation. Ferociously furious that this madness had gone on, and on, and on! And yet he still was incapacitated. The very source of his torture refusing to let him just move away. Sure that if he endured one more second of this excruciation, he would, with a simple flick of his wrist, have to put them both out of this misery... suddenly, she shot up, eyes bulging wide, a hand raised to her throat, gasping for breath.
Though clearly awake, her eyes frantically raced, unable to comprehend the jolting return to reality. Her heart was beating at such an aggressive rate, the thudding seemed intent on thrashing through her small frame to the point of irreparable damage.
“Rin.”
Instantly, she turned her panicked gaze to his, meeting the fiery embers reflecting his scorched senses. The instant their eyes locked he felt all the abhorrent tension strip away. Leaving in its place emptiness and exhaustion. Simultaneously, as her eyes focused on his own, her whole demeanor seemed to deflate, finally freed from horrors unknown.
“Sesshōmaru-sama…”
Still staring at him with a desperation that threatened to inflict the torment all over again, he took a harsh breath in through his nose, insistent that someone needed to reclaim authority over the terrors of this night. Large brown eyes, unblinking, remained connected with his golden ones. Just when he thought he was finally free, a whole new horrendous form of torture ensued as a horrid image began imprinting itself on his psyche.
Her supple skin slowly started tinting blue.
“Breathe.”
Her lungs expanded upon his command as she took an audibly deep breath. Within an instant, nothing else seemed to exist. Solely the measurement of each inhalation and exhalation. Posed ready, he waited for any indication of her lungs failing in evening out on their own.
After painfully drowning in what felt like the depthless waves of eternity, ones he once reprehensibly imagined as comforting, did her color return. Only when he could see the rays of sunshine from her dances among fields of flowers, properly grace her face again, did he allow air back into his own lungs.
The night air turned static and awkward, unable to discern what to do after such tumultuous calamity.
“I'm sorry… I must have had a nightmare…”
Her admission was infuriatingly anti climatic in its justification for the atrocity that was this evening. She slowly brought her knees together so that she could rest her chin, using them as a shield. Her whole torso followed suit, as if the need to protect her fragile body from some invisible danger still gripped her.
“I’ve had bad dreams since…I thought they would go away…now that you… now that I’m not…”
Her inability to articulate a complete thought, her voice shrinking away with each unfinished revelation, brought her initial state of muteness, severely to the forefront of his mind. The memory of her determination to provide him sustenance while her own malnourished frame looked on the brink of starvation flooded in.
A refusal to be denied in her offering, even with evidence of those bruises, the beatings that adulterated ethereal generosity. Dishonoring the one devoted to her desire to give, despite her need.
And just as in that moment, when he saw the abuse on her face, the haunting image that he will never be able to erase, Sesshōmaru was abruptly overwhelmed with an unprecedented need to reassure her. To let her know. I see you.
“It is over now.”
With a slight gasp, just like before, she slowly lifted her head to regard him. The gleam in her eyes, was that of endless incredulous gratitude. Once again, the great DaiYōkai was profusely dumbfounded at how the simple utterance of his thoughts could elicit such a profound reaction in the confounding creature before him. And why her reaction, consequentially, felt as if its significance impressed itself to him, everlastingly.
“Mm.”
Her vocal confirmation accompanied a massive nod of her head, a sign of the inner tenacity the DaiYōkai had come to recognize as uniquely her own. For a few hollow moments nothing else was said. The silence of evening, piously longed for previously, prevailed once more. The shadows spread, ever encroaching in their caress. The veil of ambiguity draped its murky film, shrouding the lines of landscape in planes of obscurity.
The billow of darkness felt smothering. Oppressive in its infinite opaque properties to unease eyes less sharp than his own. An irksome regard of dissatisfaction in the very essence of nightfall, vexed his senses. All its subtleties offensive in its procurable power to instill fear. At the precipice of remarkable hatred at everything that dared defy the DaiYōkai’s right to complacency this night, its ultimate strike unleashed.
Tears.
One. Then two. Streaming, one after another. Salty rivers cascaded down the softest peaks of stained velvet.
Crying. She was crying.
Damn it all.
The fury could not even properly flare its impetuous flame as his body was attacked anew. His nostrils burned, skin stung, ears buzzed, fine hairs zapping erect and eyes zoned in, with a focus that could impale its target. All the torturous sensations the DaiYōkai suffered earlier instantly were obliterated to insignificance as his nerves were assaulted by a stab indescribable.
"Rin."
What was intended as an undeniable edict to cease immediately instead opened the gateway for the abhorrent incursion to increase.
Tiny sobs, growing in vigor, shook the pitiful creature as floods of salty currents threatened to swallow him in the abyss of her despair. The sounds clanging the air resonated deeply within his own chest. Sesshōmaru felt the beginnings of a whine formulate, as if his own body needed a similar outlet to relieve this pain. Terror, so formidable it would never be admitted to, seized him as every nonsensical instinct of his body prepared to cry.
No.
“Rin. Look at me.”
The acidic harshness of his tone, one he had never intended to direct towards her, achieved its demand for acquiescence.
Her head immediately shot up, the wailing of her sobs quieting, as her glassy eyes looked directly into his. At the sight, something painful ripped through his chest. If he truly had lost all sense of reason, he would have been sure that he had been slashed through and was now bleeding out. His life’s essence slipping away. Unable to heal. Unable to ever mend such a wound.
Their eyes remained locked. No power on earth, above or beyond capable of severing their connection. And yet layers of grief obscured his access to her light. The DaiYōkai was thwarted to desolation. She was so far away. The distance so great, fear that not even she, with all her determination, could find her way back to him, was too much to bear.
“What do you need?”
Never once in all of his centuries did Sesshōmaru every consider the necessity of another as absolutely. It was not simply just one of the first times he had ever contemplated value in the feelings of someone other than himself, it was a complete transcendence. All there was, was what she needed. The only functionality, the only purpose of his existence was to be the vessel that ensured she received all that was rightfully hers.
A tiny flash, so infinitesimal he feared it imagined, lit behind the interference denying him the privilege of her spirit. The spark, a marvel that not only indicated her recognition of his inquiry, but complete understanding of the profound significance behind it. Unmoving, he waited for any sign to direct him as to what he was meant to do.
Still staring deeply into his eyes, searching for the source of her salvation, she slowly, yet surely, rose to her feet and closed the physical distance separating them.
Keeper of his entire focus, she stopped directly in front of him. She invaded his explicitly maintained barrier of personal space, intrinsically knowing her presence’s ability to infiltrate his walled fortress. Eyes piercing, for once at the same level as his own, she stood before him. Without a sound she moved, closer still, slightly turned to his right and then lowered to the ground, gently sitting beside him.
Warmth.
The entirety of her body measured to barely longer than the length of his arm, yet heat radiated from her with a ferocity that consumed. Without physically touching, every inch of his body felt her proximity. The repugnant barrage of salty water had ceased from falling but dried remnants clung to her skin. Markers mocking his failure.
Finally breaking the intensity, she glanced down to observe the white fluff that had surreptitiously brushed beneath her fingertips. Seemingly just as surprised as he was to find Mokomoko wrapped around her, effectively filling in every empty space of what had been an almost nonexistent gap between them. With a fascination, a wonder Sesshōmaru never knew to be possible before meeting her, she ran slender fingers through the fur.
The reaction was instantaneous, immutable, and intrinsic...
More.
As if somehow hearing his incoherent plea, she possessively stroked his fur. Running her hands up, down, around, through and every other possible configuration her curious fingers could render. She caressed the pelt until there was not a single strand left within reach wanting for her affections. Tenderly holding fists full of the covetous subverter, she once again brought her eyes up to his awaiting ones.
There, there she was.
A slightly bashful smile graced her no longer trembling lips as she returned her attention to her fondling explorations. She continued her gentle ministrations, hypnotizing them both into a stupor of tranquility.
It was not until she had fallen back asleep, immersed in her apparently personal cloud of fluff, that the DaiYōkai was then able to begin to distinguish conception from sensation. Now at liberty to reflect on the petting session, and numerous other distinctively canine reactions that possessed him this evening. Were he not still basking in her imposed euphoric stupefaction, a cooling balm to his spent senses, nor recovering from weathering the havoc storm of sensory overload, he would have deemed his current position preposterous.
As it were, Sesshōmaru found no inclination to think, to analyze, to do anything other than count gentle heart beats, reveling in the affirmation they brought with each palpitation.
Dauntlessly ignorant to its fallibility against the great DaiYōkai’s superior prowess, an invisible adversary dared once again to invade the peace of her subconsciousness.
Hands desperately clenching, body tensing, brow furrowing, the enchanting creature once more fell victim to a terror intent on stealing her away. He would not let it. He would not let her go.
“Rin.”
Still shrouded in the clutches of her tormentor, dread racing behind closed eyelids, she turned her slumbering face in his direction as if questioning the validity of his calling whisper.
“You are safe. Do not be afraid.”
I’m here.
With a gentle sigh, all signs of stress cleared away from her fair features. Her body settled, relaxing deeper into the promise of a protective embrace. Bewitchingly innocent fingers lightly rubbed imploring fur until finally coming to rest.
“Sesshōmaru-sama…”
The benumbed murmur, a beholden benediction.
For the final time that night, the unconquerable was brought to submission. Stripped vulnerable by the ineffable. He did not fight it. He did not attempt to understand the overwhelming sensation. Did not try to challenge its omnipotence. All that was beyond him.
He simply let it be.
Tenderly looking down at the enigma peacefully resting beside him, Sesshōmaru surrendered to the night’s mysteries. The ambiguity. The possibility. The beauty.