InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Pride (In the Name of Love) ❯ Chapter 106

Pride (In the Name of Love) 106 / ??
Written by Jezz-Ra
Warnings - Not all warnings apply to all chapters. Yaoi, Het, Rape, Lemon, Violence, Language, Torture, Angst, Incest, Dark (at times). It's a massive story, folks, it's got a little bit of everything.
Disclaimer - I don't own Inuyasha, don't make money off it. Wish I did.

Sidestories can be found under my author profile at any of my archive sites.
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// blah // indicates thoughts.

A/N - So I walk up on high, and I step to the edge / To see my world below / And I laugh to myself while the tears roll down / 'cause it's the world I know, it's the world I know...

Ok. That's for me. Sesshy's is more like...hmm....

The lunatic is in my head / The lunatic is in my head / You raise the blade / You make the change / You rearrange me 'til I'm sane / You lock the door / And throw away the key / There's someone in my head / But it's not me...

All that you touch / All that you see / All that you taste / All you feel / All that you love / All that you hate / All you distrust / All you save / All that you give / All that you deal / All that you buy / Beg, borrow or steal / All you create / All you destroy / All that you do / All that you say / All that you eat / And everyone you meet / All that you slight / And everyone you fight / All that is now / All that is gone / All thats to come / And everything under the sun is in tune / But the sun is eclipsed by the moon....

Ahem. Anyway, almost got to chapter 60 in my editing before posting this, and I have the whole day off...plus I'm about four pages deep into another mini-Sesshoumaru sidestory. =D Just so y'all know.
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Sairex was present to feel the last stuttering beat of Toga's heart.

The raven frowned dangerously and sat down. // Nope. Not going to happen. If ever my people and all their tricks and necromancy were worth a damn... I will not let this happen. Toga, you're coming back with me or we're both going. //

Murmuring softly and tracing rapid symbols in the air with his talons, Sairex plucked one of the swords from his hip. He slit open his palm and used his blood to trace another symbol on Toga's forehead, and then traced an identical symbol on his own skin with some of Toga's blood.

Satisfied that all was well, he performed another rapid chant, infusing his sword with energy and then stuck it in the floor. A barrier slowly formed around him and the inu. It wasn't a strong barrier - Sairex wasn't at all proficient with them - but the raven hoped it would deter anyone from touching either of them until he was finished. Interruptions could be very dangerous and seriously undermine the success of his mission.

Sairex frowned, eyes flickering down the hallway as he drew his other sword. // Miroku, I'd do the same for you... if this doesn't work out, please forgive me. I do love you, damn crazy monk... // Sairex smiled slightly and closed his eyes, shifting before beginning a chant he'd never before had the chance to try - it wasn't something one could freely practice.

After all, on the final note, it culminated with the death of the spellcaster. Sairex drove the blade through his heart. He had time to be thankful that the sword was so wickedly sharp and didn't get tangled up in bones so he'd have to try again. That would have been dreadful...

Slowly, the raven fell back limply against the ground, his own death far faster and less painful than his friend's had been.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Inuyasha and Miroku frowned as Sesshoumaru came to. Almost without having to pause to think about it, the taiyoukai launched himself off the ground at the door. There was a tremendous howl and a violent, sizzling spark of energy as he connected with the sacred barrier Miroku had placed.

The monk winced, wondering very seriously if his barrier was going to hold. Both he and Inuyasha held their breath...but the invisible wall did not break. Miroku let out a small sigh of relief.

Inuyasha offered him a faint smile. "Eh...the raven's training must be paying off some. You HAVE gotten stronger over the past few years. There was a time Sessh would have laughed at your sutras and shit..."

Miroku offered him a wan smile in return. "Well...be that as it may, I'm not so sure it'll hold up to repeated assault. And Sairex's training hasn't really encompassed much in the realm of holy magic, which is only to be expected. He's a demon when it's all said and done. But he has let me practice seals and such against him, so I imagine I've grown a little better. Still...it's Sesshoumaru..."

Inuyasha nodded after a moment. He wasn't about to argue. Sesshoumaru, no matter the level of his mental stability, wasn't a demon to trifle with. It would take a much more practiced, powerful monk than Miroku to have a prayer of truly containing the powerful taiyoukai.

The monk idly trailed his fingers along the side of his staff, thinking. "Something about Sairex affected your brother."

"Yeah, I saw that...it parted the sea of batshit crazy. But I don't know how or why." Inuyasha frowned as he and Miroku watched Sesshoumaru.

The taiyoukai stalked back and forth a few times before sitting down in the middle of the floor and letting his head fall forward, muttering softly to himself.

"What happened before we got there?"

"I saw him plastered against the wall like he fully expected somethin' to be after him and he was hiding...bleeding like a damn waterfall from his forehead...he still is, dammit. I don't have any idea what happened there. He seemed royally pissed off. Then he said something about me tricking him...or someone tricking him using me...or some shit. I don't think he thought I was real. Then I mentioned our old man and he flipped and started screaming at me not to look at him and...fuck, Miroku, I think he was trying to tear out his heart. I stopped him and got slapped into a wall for the effort. Then you two showed up."

Miroku frowned and eyed Sesshoumaru thoughtfully. "He is truly mad, this is obvious...but the fact that, for even an instant, some bit of consciousness intruded...it means that he saw something that directly contradicted the logic and rules of his new reality. Just as if you or I saw something that simply could not be and could only be termed as insanity...the same thing happened to him when he saw Sairex. He was sure that Sairex simply could not be. It wasn't possible."

"So...we wave the raven in front of him until he's back to his supercilious, logical, asshole self?"

Miroku couldn't help but snicker. "Well. Something like that. We have to figure out why, precisely, Sairex's presence so affected him."

"Well, back a few years ago when that dead dragon bastard was here to gloat and shit, he was more than happy to show off that he could mimic my father's body. Fucker can shapeshift. He said he had convinced Sessh that all the shit that happened since he had gotten out the first time was a dream."

Miroku nodded. "Then chances are he did many terrible things using the guise of you and your father and others close to him." The monk paused, then grinned. "But Sesshoumaru didn't know Sairex when he was first captured, before all those things happened! And if everything that happened was really a dream, and he had imagined it all...Sairex could not possibly exist."

"So that's why seein' your bird snapped him out of it for a bit!"

"Well, that's my theory at least. Sesshoumaru probably figured in his typically logical fashion that you were another hallucination sent to torment him as so many before you have been... but Sairex was out of place and impossible, something too detailed to dream up and then find it exists, when there is no way you could know of it unless it was a true memory."

"So we'll have Sairex sit down and chat with him." Inuyasha grinned, and then his grin abruptly vanished. "Fuck...""What?""If he thought I was just a stupid illusion...then he probably thought the same thing about the old man. And he was out here bleeding his crazy little head off and freaking the fuck out. You KNOW our father wouldn't let him out of his sight unless..."

"Oh hell..." Miroku's eyes widened.

Inuyasha looked torn. He desperately wanted to find out if his father was alright, but knew if his brother broke out that there was no way Miroku could contain Sesshoumaru himself. The hanyou gritted his teeth and placed his back to the wall. "My father can take care of himself...and if Sessh surprised him, Sairex will take care of him. You need me here in case...well."

Miroku sighed heavily and leaned back against the wall next to the hanyou, his heart heavy with worry. // Please be alright, Toga...because if you aren't, and Sesshoumaru was the one to hurt you...there won't be a damn thing we can do to keep him sane once he finds out. Assuming we can get him sane in the first place... //

The two sighed and watched Sesshoumaru, although neither of them could hear what it was the taiyoukai was saying...and were grateful for that.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

It really was impossible. He must simply be hallucinating.

The raven could not exist.

His brother, his father...these were frequent ghosts that had haunted him since he awoke in captivity once more. They were simply images conjured up to eat at his straining mind. Although he hadn't seen his brother's ghost in a while, his father...

His FATHER!

Sesshoumaru let out a low, keening whine. "My Lord Father... you would be so horrifically ashamed and disgusted by us... we lusted sinfully for you...oh, so many visions and twisted fantasies. The dragon was right. I AM sick. What son obsesses so, even in dreams, of mating their father?"

// But we loved him. //

"Of course we loved him. He was our world. He was everything to us. He was the only one that meant anything to us until we began to care for Inuyasha and Rin. But that's normal. He was our father. Of course we loved him. He cared for us and raised us from a tiny pup when SHE discarded us." Sesshoumaru's eyes flickered to the window, but the moon was obscured by a passing cloud and thus did not get scorched by his malicious glare. "But that does not give us the right to lust for him sexually!"

// You know that we always loved him too much. We always loved him, held him above all others. We never took a mate because no one else could touch our heart. Their light was nothing but a candle in the face of the sun in comparison to our Lord Father. We just never acknowledged how deeply that love ran. //

"That doesn't make it any more right! Even if you aren't wrong. All we ever wanted to do was be near him. Even as a puppy he was the only one that understood us. He was the only one to accept us as we were. He was the only one that did not treat us as a Lord, but as Sesshoumaru. We did not have to follow any codes or honor any social restrictions...we could simply be. He would not judge us. He always loved us, no matter what."

// And then you came up with some excuse as you began to mature that lust and love was stupid...because you didn't even want to consider desiring someone else when you'd already found perfection. //

"Don't blame me, you sanctimonious bastard. You're just as much at fault as I am."

// Fine. But you know its true. We always sought perfection, and you had found that perfection in another... in the only person that would ever love Sesshoumaru just because he was Sesshoumaru. The epitome of beauty and grace, the pinnacle of power....smooth-spoken, open-hearted, amusing, intelligent...our Lord Father is truly a god made flesh. It is no wonder all the world bows to him. And we were always so painfully grateful to hold a unique place in his heart, to be noticed by him...held in high regard by him. There was a difference in the way he looked at us compared to the rest of the world, and it made us feel so...special. //

"Are you trying to say we lived in denial for nearly the past seven hundred years?"

// I absolutely am. How could it be anything but? You never felt even a glimmer of desire for anyone else, even in your awkward teenage years when all those damn hormones were waking up... //

"This Sesshoumaru was never awkward."

// Well...I suppose not. But you know I'm right. Even in the extremity of your newborn desires, you had no inclination to pursue another. //

"They were not worthy."

// How could anyone be when held in comparison? You yourself made it impossible. You instead worshiped at the altar of our Lord Father. You know it was not truly contempt for humans that made us so resent Izayoi. It was jealousy. //

"Watch yourself...I have no compunctions about finding a way to tear you out of my head."

// It's the truth and you know it. You didn't just hate her because she was human...or even that she so distracted our Lord Father or took up his time. You hated her because you felt replaced...you hated her because he WANTED her in a way he would not want us, because we lusted for him in the darkest places of our soul! WE wanted to be the one so intimately loved and cherished, lost in the ecstasy that only he was worthy to bring to us... //

"Shut up..."

// And then.... then he died. And we died with him, didn't we... //

"Yes.... life did not matter anymore. We had invested too much of ourself in him. We loved him above all others. We would have followed him, if it had not meant losing the lands he had worked so hard for and cherished so dearly. That would have displeased him greatly."

// Everything was hollow. Who was there to talk to that would understand us? Who was there to show things to? Who was there to care about us as simply Sesshoumaru? There was no one else. Without him, we were alone without hope of redemption. And even still, even in the extremity of our loneliness, we did not acknowledge how deeply our love ran. Gods, we were a broken thing. And now, two hundred some years after his death, we finally realize how much more he meant to us than we cared to admit....we acknowledge the truth of our carefully forgotten dreams over the centuries, the heart of our jealousy for the human wench... oh, we are sick...but we wanted him, so terribly badly. We still do. //

"We cannot have him. Not only would he scorn us, be disgusted by our twisted lust...he has been dead for two hundred years. We still should have admitted it...then. How could we lie to our Lord Father...to ourself?..."

// You always lie to us, Sesshoumaru... you pretend we do not feel at all, that emotions are a waste of time...because you are too afraid of being hurt. You are too afraid to open yourself and be thrown out and discarded again, to be unwanted before they even have a chance to know you...as SHE did. //

"Have we truly so lusted for our Lord Father....since we were small? Since we knew what lust was?... "

// It was never, ever simple lust...we loved him, completely, in all ways. Only in giving ourself to him, offering ourself to him as a sacrifice, could we hope to find ourself. He was...everything...the only thing. //

"We picked a fine time to realize it... hundreds of years after he is gone."

// It does not help that his ghost keeps appearing before us, so real...and taunting and tormenting us. The other ghosts are less difficult to deal with. Our mother is trying to hurt us again...but why? She has not sent these specters and tricks of the moonlight after us in a long time. //

"Nor have we thought of the illusion of escape in so long...but we will wake eventually, in that dragon's claws. He is our reality now. We will never be free of him....and does it even matter if we were?"

// No. Not really. Nothing matters. One place or another, our heart is long dead...and I won't let you feel the pain anymore. The dragon does not deserve our pain. //

A slight smile twitched Sesshoumaru's lips as he almost lovingly ran his claws down his arms, watching the bright red lines bloom under the sharp tips. He didn't hear Inuyasha's sudden yelp at the sight anymore than he felt the pain. There was no pain, after all.

Pain and emotion and feeling were things from his old life...and Tsetsukosei deserved and would get none of it, no matter what illusions the beast thrust at him.

Besides...the crimson rivers flowing from his pale skin were so beautiful, and always brought such a heavy, dark sense of peace...

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Yes, Sesshoumaru's conversation is held entirely with himself...half of it within his own mind.