InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Thisbe in Repose ❯ Thisbe in Repose ( Prologue )

Title: Thisbe in Repose

Author: Sanyin

Series: Inuyasha

Summary: Inuyasha sleeps and Kikyou reflects. Moonlight and blood; burgeoning trust and the thin line between love and hate. **Revised 11.03**

Notes: Revised for the --- I've lost count --- time. I just can't seem to leave this thing alone. Just cleaned up the language. I think of Kikyou as being spare but using somewhat outdated language per the Sengoku Jidai; ridiculous dub notwithstanding. "Ye have come, Inuyasha." ^_^

Pre-Naraku Kikyou/Inuyasha vignette. Kikyou POV. My take on the dysfunctions of their relationship before outside factors came in. Kag/Inu may make more sense, but the bitterness and tragedy of Kikyou has always been a point of interest.

Title is from the old Babylonian myth of ~Pyramus and Thisbe~, the original star-crossed lovers that Shakes took a tip from. You may also recognize them from that bit with the players in ~A Midsummer Night's Dream~

Kudos to anyone who spots to the homages to Shakes, Catullus, and Sappho. Happy reading.

Disclaimer: I bow down to Takahashi-sama!

~odi et amo~

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Thisbe in Repose

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He is painfully young when he sleeps. As his features relax into the senselessness of slumber, I remember that he is little more than a child to the demons that bore him, not quite the blood-drenched beast of tales told to quell fractious children. Moon-white hair darkens the appearance of impermeable demon skin. Kaede, not yet tested with her first blood and naïve still, has protested often the sheer injustice of silken hair and preternaturally smooth skin, all lost upon one such as he, utterly blind to beauty's more delicate paths.

[so you're the bitch miko who keeps the jewel]

Be not mistaken, for perfection flees his grasp; flaws cry out while virtues merely sigh. But there are times, especially in sleep, when a strange, timeless beauty settles over him, incandescence like the raw fire of an unfamiliar sky. Irony reclining into a laugh. His lashes - wings of inky darkness slashed across moonlit skin - there is a roughness to it all, but unlike the harsh contours of earth and stone. Beauty too rich for use; an unpolished diamond.

[rough voice coarse unlearned ratty red garb]

Lips full and soft now that he is not consciously holding them in a grim, angry line. The lower one swollen because he chews on it whenever he is anxious. The clean line of his jaw, the delicate curve of his brow, the sharp sweep of his cheekbones. A face that still carries the rounded angles of boyhood, and of seeming innocence. With golden eyes shut, he appears almost human, soft and so breakable with all his usual bitterness and veiled rage swept from his expression.

[so this is a demon]

A slight shift in position allows me the chilled caress of steel in waiting, the blade spelled and warded against youkai meat. It would be so easy to-

What? Let iced metal part the layers of his flesh? Hear steel kiss skin as he gasps his last agony? Watch his blood defile that smooth skin and rival his crimson garb? Stain the unyielding white of a miko's robe with the departing life of a demon. Lick its salt from my blade as he fades before me. Feel his body arch beneath me, unnatural strength failing him at last. White and red. Black and white. Crimson spreading beneath our embrace. Beautiful. One last intimacy before oblivion. So fitting. So easy.

[so young]

My only love sprung from my only hate.

When I look at him, I want to die. It throbs, as sweet as it is bitter, as if all my flesh has been stripped to white bones; and only my heart and sex remain. Flames licking behind my eyes, and torpor upon my tongue. A delicate line of heated steel running the length of my limbs; my flesh sighs. I hate him; his unnatural eyes and white claws mark him as a fated enemy. But there is more, a spark of something true amid a feral gaze. Despite his decades of living in this mortal world, his impatience is childish, and his fury naive, a strange and twisted innocence amid blood and curses. Sometimes, there is something in his eyes or the lines of his body, a startling vulnerability and something else --- I do not know.

I want to be the one who keeps the anger from his countenance. The one behind the widening of his eyes and the softening of his expression.

[beautiful raging angry mine or his]

The one who teaches him how to be human.

[his aura amazing fierce unlike a demon what is this what is this]

Sunlight lit with fierce brightness of scarcely contained flame and thick flowing tides of froth-tipped red, ripped from purer flesh. Storm-tossed seas rising with careless rage against the fury of weeping heavens. The dew of dawn-kissed petals. The dark lushness of fertile soil. A single gold-tipped tear, shed for the loss of something that never was. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen. When I close my eyes to welcome blackness; it remains, burnt there forever.

My eyes, gifted with the sight of a priestess, are privy to the mass of contradictions that is my --- what? Friend? Lover? Enemy?

I love him and I hate him.

Or maybe something else altogether.

[give me the jewel wench GIVE it to me musky scent harsh breathing kami oh kami]

I have known the sharp cruelty of his claws, the harsh timber of his voice, the unnatural strength in his wiry form. But I have also felt the softness of his skin, the almost gentle luminescence of his eyes, the fleeting ephemeral thing that is his smile.

[claws and eyes and hands what is this]

He has long, tapered fingers, with smooth, almost human skin, and resting innocuously where blunt nails might have been, the unnatural claws that have won calluses for those same fingers, sharp as blades on soft skin, drenched in blood, these claws. How many lives ruined and stolen?

-so easy to-

Willowy and slender, imbued with a slight, graceful build, surprising, considering the strength that he exudes and abuses with the brash, arrogant certainty of youth.

[wards burning flesh birds have stopped calling fading sunlight eyes golden eyes]

The darkness of the new moon haunts me still.

[bitch]

It reminds me that he has so thoroughly betrayed his human side, his own kin, spilt human blood with demon claws, rending flesh and bone like so much parchment.

[monster]

Yet…this form, this vulnerable, wide-eyed child, this is what he could be.

[what is this]

My human lover.

[power that's what I want power so I can tear those fucking bastards apart they'll see they'll see when blood and bone and blood and bone and power]

The long, ebon hair and violet eyes alter him in countless, subtle ways that are both unfathomable and painfully clear. The new vulnerability that beckons in his countenance, frightened and unsure how to react to the emotions coursing through him, an almost childlike wonder as he sees this world he knows so well through gentler eyes. So startlingly open and vulnerable that I see behind my eyes the old rage and the bright terrifying demon that made my blood course faster.

[hanyou he's a hanyou infamous young so young claws and eyes and hands]

The softness of those human features and the fragility of that human body are things that I grasp in my memories with clawed desperation. They are what runs through my head when he is at his worst. And --- perhaps, just perhaps, everything will happen ~right~ this time, and I will be able to see him, human and mine, day after day, see what that black hair looks like threaded with sunlight.

-tear that demon flesh-

I clench my hand around the Shikon no Tama, feeling its smooth surface pressing into my palm, and staring at its brightness. The hope and joy that wells up inside is painful in its throbbing intensity, as if sunlight and laughter had flooded my veins instead of blood. And I feel light, unburdened with moonlight instead of flesh, ready to take flight and lift myself into still air. To be free, free from this cursed thing, free to live out my own life, to let it run its natural course. I -

I still cannot quite believe that he, my familiar peevish, selfish, furious demon, will throw away his eternal life and power for one, painfully short, human lifetime. Everything he's wanted for so long, gone, to be replaced by something new and surely, terrifying. Sometimes I awake from my dreams, and fear, for a single, horrified moment, that all of his whispered promises and strange, beguiling gentleness are dreams themselves.

We have worked so hard, seen so much. Is it all a dream? A terrifyingly beautiful dream. The smell of his haori, the strange comfort of his embrace. His eyes. His hands. His gruff words. Am I hoping for too much?

[fucking bastards]

I see the yearning in his eyes still; the frantic need to prove himself, hone his strength, and dominate his youkai kin. That nervous energy that has driven him for so long. To win, to gain power. I wonder if he still dreams of murdering me and taking the jewel for himself. But that painful, terrifying need is, as with everything about him, a double edge.

-drench white purity in the redness of blood-

He confuses me, angry and so cruel at times, when the youkai rises in his golden eyes, yet there are those moments when a half-formed sentiment of touching vulnerability blossoms from hesitant lips, before color floods those dusky cheeks and silence follows. He denies these moments as if they were his greatest weaknesses, and perhaps they are, but they are also his greatest strengths.

[pain rage fury claws and eyes and hands sunlight pain rage fury can't think can't think

what is this]

My heart aches within my breast when I look at him for what he is - I do not know. It is not a word, only the racing of my heart or a flush in my cheeks, an unfamiliar weakness in my limbs. Coarse and unrefined, always a wanderer and a vagabond at heart, despite his heritage. He seems far from princely to me. With a tongue that could blister skin from flesh and mannerisms that would have sent my mother into a fit. Hard to believe that his father was any sort of nobility.

-feel his life fly from his body-

Innocent and lovely while asleep, unaware of everything, and for once, in complete relaxation. Breath steady as my heartbeat. Limbs loosened like water. I do not want to ruin this moment, when his childish beauty is unmarred by fury and left to shine in all its whitened charm. I think - I want now, more than ever, to hold him, my human youkai, or perhaps he is a youkai human. Hanyou. I want his passion and his fear - I want - his impotent fury and awkward tenderness, biting insults and sweet nothings. I want --- I want --- his human soul, in my own heart.

This loving hate that burns and consumes like cold fire. This bright smoke that clouds my eyes and illuminates my vision, trapping me in still-waking sleep.

[hands ward moving claws at my throat blood sunlight breeze birds not calling claws and eyes and hands]

There are times when - anger drives my blood lust and my ofuda-wielding hands, miko hands, so that I want nothing more than to see him writhing in the agony of the holy wards. And I know this is right, this game that we play, when both sides lash out only to hurt, to take. I know that our battle can end only in blood. And even as that rage rises, I love him so much that every breath aches and sends fire sweeping through my blood, something more fierce and more inexorable than empty tigers and roaring seas. Sometimes, I fear for the wholeness of my own mind, lost in the rush and the fury and the joy of the game; sometimes I draw pleasure from his dark bruises and agonized gasps, as well as the sight of my own blood on his hands. Because I ~know~. This is our destiny, our broken bones and torn flesh as intimate as kiss-swollen lips or languid pleasure. Hate a closer embrace than love.

But I am tired of fate. I -

[what do I do fucking bastards what is this]

If I close my eyes, I can feel the pulse and rhythm of my own heartbeat, steady and deep, so different from the burning, erratic rhythm of his youkai body. I let two fingers float above the softness of his exposed throat, not quite touching but close enough to feel the warmth of his skin. His youkai senses will let him know immediately if I unite human skin and demon flesh. I feel his aura singing through the air with its invisible intensity, beating against my fingers. The power is terrifying and beautiful all at once, and I tremble.

-like the rest of the monsters-

It is testament to his growing trust in me that I can gaze upon him like this at all, that he is so familiar with my aura and scent that he rests so peacefully in my presence, his head cradled in my lap, features smoothed in the blissful oblivion of slumber.

[WILL take the jewel bitch if it kills me I will have it.

go ahead and try.

sunlight and claws and eyes and hands what is this]

And he kept his promise, for nothing could stop him on his quest for the jewel. We met and fought many times, wounds remembered, eyes flashing, until ---

The clash of ofuda and claws turned to angry words --- then ---

--- even the anger was gone; we simply spoke.

Spoke about how I would never be a normal woman, never able to marry or raise children; the Shikon was my lover, my child, my life. How no human would understand my destiny or my calling. My youthful death, drenched in my own blood and that of a monster's. My inner fears, doubts --- terror; how I was so afraid to be alone, to die alone.

And he told me of his human mother, his demon father, his own fears. Haltingly at first, but the words flew faster and more fluid with time. They came easily from his lips, and I watched the glint of his fangs, listened to the roughness of his voice. Sitting together in a green field, reveling in the unreal moment, watching the clouds journey across their azure path.

He trails me on my hunts and patrols, a silent, red shadow fleeting from place to place in my wake, protecting me without so much as a word. I feel --- freer around him, able to speak of my own fears, and my hopes, in a way that I have never done so before. Strange how a miko is closer to a youkai than her own brethren.

We are happy, for now.

Two weeks, Inuyasha. Two weeks and we will have our happy ending. The both of us.

Two weeks. And you will have the Shikon no Tama. And I will have it too.

I have managed to tame my human youkai, for all our bloody fate, and he sleeps now so peacefully, head resting in my lap like a child. I am careful not to move, so as not to wake him. I want to stroke his hair, touch him, but that would destroy the peace that now rests so easily on his features.

No, I will not wake him, and instead, live this moment when my almost human lover is still resplendent in all his white, seeming innocence.

-but I won't, because I --- I -

[heart pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding.

birds not calling sunlight pain rage fury claws and eyes and hands.

what is this.

what is this.]

Love.

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~the end

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