InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Gathering Word ❯ Injury ( Chapter 3 )

 

Disclaimer: Inuyasha and its characters are not mine. They belong to Rumiko Takahashi and Biz. I receive no compensation for fan fiction.

 

A/N: These stories are exercises in theme, style and structure. Please do not flame based on pairings. If you are going to roast me, I ask that you do it in a constructive manner.

 

Genre: Introspective, Angst

Characters: Sessmom, Inu No Taisho

Warning: Suggestive

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Something gained is not always treasured.

 

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Injury

 

She couldn't say that she was surprised.

 

It had been nearly ten decades since they traded words, and those had been clipped and brief. Their son was grown, off to wander the lands of his forefathers, honed in bloodshed. There had been no reason for them to speak, and she was never one to pursue something without reason.

 

She understood the attraction.

 

Yokai court was tricky business, filled with empty promises and half-hearted allies. The best ties were bound in the marriage bed and sealed with offspring. This was how their bond was formed. In a breeding ground of backhanded compliments and halfhearted promises, she had found his honest cadence, if not endearing, at least refreshing. He had no reason to placate. No yokai could stand against his formidable strength. He was ruthless and he ruled his hard-won territory with a grip of solid steel.

 

And he was a cocky bastard, this Inu No Taisho. For a young upstart warlord that always chased a challenge, what better challenge existed than the aloof daughter of an adversary?

 

“My frosty princess,” he crooned in her ear, his hot breath curling at her neck, “I will thaw you yet.” He wrapped his thick arm around her slender waist, grinding against her all too suggestively. It was the first time in her memory that someone could garner a reaction from her. She broke contact and spun, her arm following the motion, slapping him clear across the face. Everything stilled, the festivities around them forgotten. She met his gaze with a cold expression; his stone faced anger marred by an ever-reddening handprint.

 

“Hentai,” she smiled a cool smile at him then, and he returned it.

 

She was not sure when the fire had left them.

 

Perhaps it had been after their son was born, after she had fulfilled her duty towards him, and his continued interest was not necessary. Or maybe it was even sooner than that, after he had gained her favor, when she writhed beneath him, a battle won. She was territory secured and soon forgotten.

 

He came and went as he pleased. After Sesshomaru came of age, she saw him even less, and her son went with him to train and gather strength of his own. She paced the halls of her fortress in the sky with idle disinterest. She kept her fighting skills sharp, patrolling the surrounding territory, and kept her loneliness to herself. There was no one to listen to her anyway.

 

She had grown used to his absence.

 

He told her that he desired passion. He said that her heart was too frigid, that she stifled him beneath her remote façade. She wanted to tell him that he had earned that response from her. There were only so many dalliances she could take before she shut down from his affections completely. She had aimed to make him suffer, to make him as lonely as she had become, but she forgot the power he wielded, not just brute strength, but charisma. When she heard about his human concubine, she refused to behave irrationally; she would not let him goad that manner of reaction from her.

 

“Go,” she told him calmly, “you have your son and he is nearly grown, our alliance was sealed with that. There is nothing to bind you to me.”

 

She watched him walk away, enveloped by the winter night like a phantom. The ghost of their union devoured by a lowly mortal woman, a brief memory.

 

When he left her, she couldn't say she was surprised. The tears did surprise her.