InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ What Matters the Most ❯ Only Human ( Chapter 14 )

A\N: Agh!

By some sort of mix up, I forgot to upload this chapter! So now it’s all messed up...

Anyway, I hope everybody still gets the story, and I’m sorry for all the confusion!

DISCLAIMER: To tired to write a proper one, so: I own none of the Inuyasha characters and make no money off of them. They belong to Rumiko Takahashi. The story belongs to me. ~*~   Only Human

‘Lord Sesshomaru?’ The tentative voice of Rin reached Sesshomaru’s ears and he glanced back, eyes cold at the girl who actually had the audacity to poke her head in the door and look around for him without receiving any sort of answer.

He turned away, deciding to leave it be for now, staring back out the window at the familiar grounds splayed out before him while he felt Rin’s gaze fall upon him as she tentatively entered the room-- again, with no invitation to do so.

‘I do not know what the customs are where you come from, but in this household we await an answer before entering another’s chambers.’ He said, his voice a blanket of ice that shot back to envelop her, and she froze halfway into the room.

‘Hai, Lord Sesshomaru, and believe me, if this were not a case of utmost urgency, I would not have veen dared to do so, but I have been looking for you everywhere, in all the rooms and I simply could not find you, and there is not much time for me to tell you this I fear, so I’m afraid I had to abandon the customs of aristocratic society to save time.’ She said. The girl had a tendency to rant, and it, quite honestly, both amused and angered Sesshomaru.

And now he was intrigued as to what exactly was so urgent that the girl would risk disturbing him in such a way. There was a moments silence as both waited for the other to speak, before Sesshomaru seemed to sense that Rin was currently not feeling inclined to do so, and decided to save time (and get the ningen away from him as fast as possible) by breaking the silence. ‘What is it you want, Rin?’ He asked in a tone that said he really couldn’t care less and was only asking out of morbid curiosity.

‘I’m glad you asked.’ The girl said, though her voice had a tone that said that she wasn’t entirely convinced of that face as she continued on ‘You see, there is something very important I must tell you--’

‘I assumed as much, otherwise you would not have “searched every room” to find me as you claimed.’ He said.

‘Well I did!’ Rin shot back, and Sesshomaru blinked in surprise: The only ones to ever talk back to him were his father, that ningen mate of his and Inuyasha. But they were all considered his equals or betters (at least by others) and so had right to do so. This ningen wench, however, was hardly worthy of such a right. He glanced back, taking in her distance-- about ten feet away: well within easy striking range, should she choose to further evoke this stolen right of back-talking.

He raised an eyebrow, taking a moment to scrutinize the girl’s appearance, something he had never much taken an interest in doing before, but now that she had caught his attention, he had to admit she was not a bad-looking woman. For a human, anyway. By youkai standards she was unbelievably plain.

Her eyes were deep brown-- nothing unusual there as most ningen’s had brown eyes, but these held stories behind them that no eyes of a girl that age should be able to tell. Her hair was long and dark, falling down to mid-waist, and held in an unusual style where all but a single braid on one side about mid-way back was loose and hanging about her, falling in a shiny (if slightly messy and uneven looking) sheet of satin, framing her face, which, in Sesshomaru’s opinion, was far too pale-- It was as though the girl never saw sunlight! And, judging by the amount of time she had spent outdoors, just lying amongst the grass or running about in a very unladylike manner, she probably did not get to go outdoors much.

She also wore a necklace or large beads with fangs placed at regular intervals that and it reminded Sesshomaru of a rosary he had once encountered. It was too long and looked incredibly out of place on her, further enhancing the idea that she was not the true lady she pretended to be, hanging oddly on her skinny frame.

That was one thing she had in common with Inuyasha-- besides their free-spiritedness: The girl could pack away a small mountain of food and never gain a pound. It was almost startling, as though their metabolisms were working on overdrive to make sure no food stayed in them long enough to get them fat, while they themselves battled to do the very opposite.

He realised that the girl had been rambling on about something or another that he (strangely enough) had been completely ignoring. Ignorance was a weakness in his eyes, and so he had always made it a point to never ignore what another said, for, more often than not, the truth of a persons intentions could be heard clearly in both what was and what was not said, it all depended on who listened to the information and what they did with it.

Resentfully, he forced himself to focus in on the girl’s rant.

‘...And he holds our very lives in his hands, so we are forced to do whatever he wants or he’ll kill us, and this time he sent us here to become your-- you and Inuyasha’s, that is-- mates, but then you two mated each other and so he came up with a new plan, but I do not wish to go through with it, only I did not know what to do to destroy him. Kagura said that you were probably strong enough to defeat him, and I agree--’

Sesshomaru watched in morbid fascination as the girl continued to rant on for a good few minutes about him, his youkai beginning to get more agitated than it had been before the girl had come in.

Something had been bothering it, other than his fight with Inuyasha. Ever since they had marked each other, Sesshomaru had felt strangely connected to his otouto. He wasn’t sure if Inuyasha could sense it, being only half-demon, but Sesshomaru had begin to faintly lock in on his brother’s emotions. He had felt Inuyasha’s happiness that morning when they had woken up, had felt his discomfort and agitation at the few lustful stares he had received, and that, coupled with his own anger that anyone dared to look at his mate in such a way, had been the main things to drive him to become so possessively protective over his mate.

But now there was something else there. A lot of confusion, which Sesshomaru had accounted to their encounter, but something else, something entirely new that he could not place, and it bothered him, causing his youkai to thrash and snarl in agitation.

Rin was still ranting in the background, and Sesshomaru decided it was time to end the girl’s constant stream of words and get to whatever it was that was so damn important before they both died (him from boredom, her from decapitation), and, without thinking much of Rin’s status, he lifted his narrowed gold eyes to her and said ‘Be silent, Rin.’

Immediately the words died on her lips as she stared up at him with wide-eyed that held none of the usual traces of resentment or hurt that people usually held toward his commands to “shut-up”. Ningen and beneath him or not, she was still of higher status than a servant or even a warrior, and therefore he had no real right to command her silence. Neither of them, however, seemed to care very much about that insignificant little fact.

A moment after he came to this realisation, Sesshomaru wondered why he cared. She was only human, after all.

‘Now.’ He said, smoothing the agitation from his voice before it passed his lips. ‘What is it exactly that you have come here for?’ He asked, and Rin blinked in a way that suggested she herself wasn’t entirely sure.

A moment later, however, her face cleared, then became dark as she met his golden eyes (something even some youkai had trouble doing) and said ‘Sesshomaru, I think that Inuyasha is in trouble.’

Before she knew what was happening, she was hanging by her throat in midair, Sesshomaru’s claws wrapped cruelly about her neck-- tight enough to choke, but not suffocate. Not yet, anyways.

‘You had best explain your words is you value your life at all, ningen.’ He said, deliberately using the word that he so often threw out as though it were an insult.

Ever since he come to his room that strange feeling he could not name had begun to grow and seethe within him, sending his youkai into a frenzy, but only now was he finally beginning to consider what it actually might be.

Fear.

A pure, unadulterated, fear-for-your-personal-safety-and\or-life kind of terror.

And it was something that Sesshomaru had never, never felt from Inuyasha before. And now that he was beginning to realise what it was (his youkai confirming it by thrashing about violently in need to get to his mate now that the idiot in control had finally caught on) he felt panic (another thing he had never felt before) beginning to wash through him.

‘Please... Lord Sesshomaru...’ Rin wheezed out, her small hands coming up to wrap around his own, trying to convince him to let go (though really just encouraging him to hold all the tighter, an urge he barely resisted) ‘let me down... and... I’ll tell you...’ She gasped. Sesshomaru eyed her a moment before letting her fall to the ground, not bothering to even attempt restraining her or blocking the door. She was, after all, only a ningen, and if she tried to run, she would not make it three feet before he would catch her and kill her.

Rin coughed a few times before looking up into his deadly eyes, hand going to her throat, chest heaving as she said, ‘Lord Sesshomaru, please, try to understand.’ Another statement that made no real sense to Sesshomaru’s uninterested mind, as it barely registered the fact that she had spoken at all. He could feel Inuyasha’s panic beginning to rise, and he knew that he needed to get to his mate soon if he wanted to protect him from whatever monster had gotten it’s grips on him.

‘My sister an I were in the plot to mate with you, put there by our brother, Naraku...’ she said slowly, swallowing several times and wincing slightly. ‘But, after you two mated, our brother said that the only way to break your bond... would be to kill Inuyasha.’

Sesshomaru’s eyes widened imperceptibly, then narrowed as anger and the promise of death seeped into them (though if it was directed truly at Rin, neither knew). He had expected some sort of mating plot from Naraku, having been on the brunt of many such scheme’s. But Naraku was a fairly conniving and unpredictable sort of demon, and anything he came up with would more than likely end in some kind of brutal and evil way for whoever was on the receiving end of it.

In this case, it was him and--

‘Inuyasha.’ He said, his voice a low murmur, and Rin glanced nervously at him before moving quickly to finish before he could either take off or kill her. ‘He commanded Kagura an I to try and drive you two apart, and then he would kill Inuyasha. He is trying to break you to get your empire.’ She finished quietly, and Sesshomaru’s eyes narrowed further.

‘Why do you tell me this? Why do you go to such measures, risking your own and your siblings lives in your betraying of your brother?’ He asked, his voice low and cold as Rin stared sadly up at him.

‘Because.’ She said quietly ‘As my brother has often reminded me, I am only human, and a human is driven as much by their emotions as their instincts. And I know in my heart that you two do not deserve the fate of death. He does.’ She glanced at the window where the sky was getting darker slowly, then back at Sesshomaru. ‘Inuyasha ran to the forest. I suggest you hurry, I do not know how long it will take my brother to find him.’

Sesshomaru stared at her calculatingly before his youkai’s desperation for it’s mate drove him to move, and he stepped over the girl, going to the door, before pausing, turning back to look at her. ‘That was a wise answer, and it may have saved your life for now.’ He said, not loosing his icy demeanour for even a second. ‘If you try and run while I am gone’ he added, his voice taking on that deadly tone again ‘I assure you, you will not make it to the borders with your life.’

‘I will not run.’ Rin said as he exited the room, closing the door and moving with inhuman speed in the direction of the forest, the direction his youkai was screaming at him to go, while Rin sat and stared sadly at the emotionless block of wood that was the door.

‘I have nowhere to run.’ She whispered to the uncaring room, before glancing toward the window that Sesshomaru had been staring out of when she had first come in.

‘Good luck, Sesshomaru.’ Rin thought after the demon who held her very fate in his hands. ‘I hope you find your brother. I hope you kill my brother. For all our sakes.’

END

Glossary

Osuwari - (In my rant at the beginning, not the actual story) Sit. Seems to be a command form of the word and is used mainly for dogs (ironic, huh?)

Hai - Yes

Ningen - Human

Youkai - Demon

Otouto - Little Brother