Idle Curiosity
By: The Hatter Theory
Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Inu Yasha
AN: An exercise in perspective. Unsure if erotica applies, or if the rating is too high, but done for general safety.
~*~
It begins with the taste of sweat and tears and salt stinging your tongue from the scent laying heavy in the air. Somehow it overpowers the copper of blood and the bitter miasma of death that is already clinging to the earth, the specter shadow that lays itself, heavy and stifling over the spring field, deadening color until there is nothing but muted gray. Even to your eyes the world seems dim.
People have died, as is natural in war, and the battle you have emerged from was nothing less. But you are not moved as the rest are. It is not your way, even when you almost wish it was. You envy, because they don't taste the salt of tears and sweat, they release the despair, they have reason to despair.
You tell yourself it is merely idle curiosity, this curiosity of despair, and when their world is caving in and falling apart, you walk away. It is all you can do, even if leaving is considered cowardly, you know there is no other option. They would not welcome your words of honor and comfort, because what is comfort to you has never been and will never be a comfort to them.
Different species, different blood, different souls.
You almost envy them, but as you walk away and realize that you feel nothing but relief that the war is over, you do not. Perhaps you haven't paid enough, or you have paid too much. The past seasons have taken more from you than you had ever considered possessing, but there have been compensations. Only time will tell if they were enough. You don't feel like considering the future, and so you don't.
But you don't think about the past, either.
~*~
The call to battle is one that cannot be avoided, and you think for a moment you might be able to deny them the questionable pleasure of participating. But there is no other choice, and you hate that they must become involved. But they are strong, and the war has barely just passed, they will still be ready, will still know. You do not expect them to find favor with it, you know they will hate you.
But this enemy is strong, which doesn't matter. That they are numerous does.
You don't want to ask, but you do. You don't want to pray, because prayer is for asking and asking implies need and you don't want to need. But the knife twists and you're left knowing at least this; you need them, and you pray that they answer before the land is scarred more than it can bear.
You nod in gratitude when they appear and lead them to the battlefield, and you watch as they fight, bellowing their fury (in your name and damned if that isn't utterly mystifying, unintended and unexpected) to the sky. You watch as power clashes and bursts in garish antithesis, fire and water colliding to steam and burn, and it burns everything it touches, even you.
Blood takes over everything and you become a wild, berserk creature, growing and howling and you feel and revel in the putrid sweetness of flesh tearing to strings between your teeth.
You are fearsome and strong, power radiating from every corner of your being and red red red hazing everything with a fierce joy. This is the power that has always been yours, beyond swords and attacks that must be summoned, this is the strength that was born to you, the spirit that calls out when you are contained, collapsed down and caged within such a tiny form, every cell shivering and shuddering at it's confinement. This is what longs to be free every moment, and it is let loose with abndon.
You are yourself most in these moments, monstrous and beautiful.
Even when the battle is over, when blood stains the field a red that will not fade for decades, when spirits cling to the dirt (and you feel them beneath your feet, stirring restlessly already) you are hesitant to return to your smallness, not ready to give up the freedom of being just yet.
But when the words reach you, even at your great height, they are a sigh laced with amazed blue eyes.
“Glorious.”
She has always been what you expected, except for then, and that is the moment you remember to notice her, the fierce, gentle she that the beast recognizes as natural enemy and willing ally.
You do not bow, you have never bowed. But you have asked and prayed before today, and those are things you do not do either. And if those surrounding you find it strange, maybe you find some amusement in their consternation when you give your best approximation of a bow, your hulking form shadowing over the small group.
~*~
You dance around it, because conquest is never so satisfying as when it is the result of careful planning. But you dance feebly, clumsily, because she is surprising you at every turn, reacting in ways no proper woman should. You didn't know if her odd manners and bold ways are repulsive or gratifying, but they are interesting, they are drawing. She reacts as no woman would, and because of that you are dancing closer, much closer much sooner than you thought you would. Plans never survive first contact, but she's taking them and blowing them like so much smoke into the warm winds, words and ideas lost in the sky.
You plan to entrap but she's dancing around you, glancing over your skin and consciousness and you're sure for a moment that she's playing the same game, that she's moving to entrap. Like two stars orbiting the same end, there's something waiting, waiting and you can't wait because the end could be beautiful, could be horrible, could be anything, the only certainty is that it will change, change you and her both, change everything.
When the dance ends it just begins, lips pressed hungrily, angrily, slick and slippery, the edges of self finding the spaces that fit together perfectly, rasping harshly, pleasantly, hurting and soothing away the impatience, granting something unnamed. It's dragging everything out longer and the wait is getting to be too much but suddenly it's everything, the waiting, the eternities of pleasepleaseplease and touch and gasps.
Fighting. You have been fighting (all dances are battles and maybe this one more so than any other) and you are still trying to pull yourself back together when she presses her lips to yours again, hungry invitation. Something lurks, angry and bestial, something entirely too you that she is provoking and pulling on, pulling out until the ends of the civilized creature they all assume you to be are unraveling to reveal the monster you are. With an ease that would shock courtesans and an artlessness that would shame them she bites at you lips and slips her tongue against yours, the wet, shuddering heat of it throbbing and pulsing everywhere. The dark thing inside of you that she pulls at makes you clench your jaws tight, makes them ache for the want of biting down on her flesh to feel the heat of her blood on your tongue.
You know you'll break her, tear her apart if she keeps going, hands moving over your chest, you'll rip her into pieces so small no one will ever remember what she had been like before you. But she's determined and pulling carelessly, and you wonder if maybe, maybe, she wants to bruising, bleeding sharpness of you sliding, smoothing, pressing, wants you to try because you can't, and even if you somehow can, she might like the pain, the visceral shuddering pulsing throbbing (it's everywhere now, drowning out the world because blood will always be that much stronger, that much thicker than you want it to be) that is as much as part of you as you try to hide.
Ache and pleasure and pleasurable ache, all combine, blend until there is the sound of a scream in your mouth, ragged and pained and pleasured. Blood is on the air, thick and hot, blood on your tongue, sweet and filled with power, and her scream, echoing into you until it reverberates in the place where the notion of a soul once resided.
~*~
When did breathing become so difficult? Unable to remember, you scour your mind for the moment, and even now you know, you know the moment it happened, but you can't look at it because experience tells you where those thoughts lead. But avoidance only lasts for so long, and even though you are a master of the tactic, you know that the truth will be there, waiting.
How is it that her face becomes a mirror for the truth you try to ignore? Every fine line and wrinkle, every smile that deepens them, every carefree laugh and irritated frown become highlights, a reminder. Mocking you with all of the things that made you love her, they now make you hate that small, imperfect part of herself. And it would not be an imperfection if it would last, if it wouldn't wither and weather and die. It would be perfect, she would be perfect-
You try not to think about it, but you do anyway, it's unavoidable the longer you know her, the closer you hold her. Nothing can hold back the wretched, greedy talons that time is, that death demands. You hold her, hold her close like a ghost that is already disappearing, and try not to break her fragile (human!) bones in your fervor to keep her close. Praying (you don't pray, you don't, except you are) for more time, for more breath, for more, because more greedy than even time and death is love, and you are a prisoner inside of your own need.