Bingo: Promt: "White Horse by Taylor Swift"
Songfic written for inusongfics
Prompt: White Horse by Taylor Swift
Song: White Horse by Taylor Swift
Pairing: None
Warnings: N/A
Say you’re sorry,
That face of an angel comes out just when you need it to.
As I pace back and forth all this time,
‘Cause I honestly believed in you.
Holding on, the days drag on.
Stupid girl, should have known.
I should have known…
He was wonderful. He was beautiful. He was graceful. He was perfect.
He was also vicious, bloodthirsty, and cold as the ice his skin tone replicated, but she loved him. She loved him even when she had been too young to understand what love really meant. She had followed him and looked after him and she had been the thorn in his side, but he had never once complained, never once told her to go home.
He was everything she dreamed about and everything she wanted. He was her dream and her nightmare all rolled into one because she knew, of course she knew, that there was a part of him that was not nice and fluffy the way she pictured him to be in her fantasies. There was a part of him that was ruthless, that would stop at nothing to get his way, and killing was never, ever beneath him.
But she never thought that part would be directed towards her.
She was older now, a lot older, far from the eight years she had been when she had first stumbled upon him purely by accident in the woods by her hometown. Closer to being a woman, closer to knowing what she would want from life, and she left the home she had made for herself among the humans to follow him one last time. He hadn’t wanted her to go, had in his own way begged for her to stay, but the second his back had disappeared over the ridge she had set out on foot to follow.
It was difficult being so close to a demon without having him detect her, but she used all the knowledge she had picked up in her earlier travels and somehow she made it to his destination without being discovered, though there had been more than a few close calls.
She should have known. He was a demon, and a powerful one at that. Demons didn’t reach the levels he did by sitting back and allowing those he fought with to live. It was kill or be killed and for all she had seen, she had yet to come to terms with the way he made his life, with the way he settled his debts.
With the way he killed his enemies.
She didn’t know the circumstances behind this instance because he never would tell her, claiming that she did not have a need to know, and, in truth, she didn’t, but that never stopped her from wanting to know and from longing to be just that much more in his life. She didn’t know what this cocky, young fool had done to gain Sesshoumaru’s attention, but she did know that it probably wasn’t worth death, though death was all he was going to get.
He was brave and went down fighting, that much she would give him. Whatever wrong he had done, he stuck to his convictions and died for them and that was something always to be admired, treasured and not thrown away, but he obviously didn’t see it that way. All he saw was another obstacle, another rung in his imaginary ladder that led to his goals, and he was not going to be subtle about taking that next step either.
Body parts literally flew as the young demon screeched in agony as the poison began to seep into his wounds. He was armless, with one leg and bleeding from a gaping hole in his abdomen, but he was not dead. Sesshoumaru watched on in cold detachment as the demon before him finally broke down and begged for his life. Pleading with the wall of stone before him to spare him this pain, to ease this suffering, but the wall of stone would not listen, would not be swayed, and would not bend.
After all, stone can only be what you make it, nothing more and nothing less.
She wanted to cry, this young girl, not quite yet a woman, but she didn’t. She wanted to jump up and scream at him to have a heart, to save this poor soul because whatever it was he had done, no one deserves this slow, torturous agony. She wanted to run away, back to her home and just forget. She didn’t want to see this side of him anymore. She didn’t want to have to live with the thought that she loved a common murderer, for that was what he was. For all his grandeur and aristocratic leanings, he was still a cold-blooded murder and no amount of pleading was going to change that.
Heaven only knew she had tried.
Dark and thick, the demon’s blood was puddling on the forest floor beneath him as he began to gasp for breath. The thick fluid sinking down into the thirsty forest floor, and she was transfixed on the puddle, lost in her own private fears, the poison of her thoughts rising up through her body just as surely as the poison in the young demon’s veins, coursing through him and bringing him closer and closer to the threshold of death even as she was being drawn closer to the realization she had always carried deep in her heart.
Suddenly, the demon slumped over, splashing into his own blood as his muscles lost the will to hold him upright. All of his energy and concentration was on keeping his lungs going, on bringing in every last bit of precious oxygen that he could while he forced his demon heart to beat once more. One more time, and then another, and another, and then… No more.
A single, solitary tear traced its way down her dirty cheek as she mourned for this creature she had never known, had never spoken to. He had never done anything for her, or to her. She had never seen him before, and yet she mourned for his soul because she knew no one else would. He was just another nameless demon, lost in the ever present struggle for power and supremacy. He was another casualty in a war in which there were no victors, only losers because to win would be to give up more than just the life of those they crushed to reach that pinnacle of victory.
To win was to give up your very soul.
His elegantly upturned nose tilted up into the evening air and she realized too late that he now knew where she was. A sharp tang on the air brought about by her one tear, only detectable by one who has spent his entire life honing the highly tuned senses given to him by birth. Senses he used to know when there was someone behind him, watching him and waiting for him to make one wrong move, one small slip in order to take him out in his moment of weakness.
He turned slowly; trying to delay the inevitable she was sure. She wanted to stand then, to show herself to him, to show him that she was unafraid as always, but that would have been a lie. She had just witnessed an execution carried out by his own hands and that was not something she could dismiss. When he was fighting for his life and hers she could make excuses. When he looked into the eyes of his prey and listened to them beg for his mercy when he had no intention of giving it, that was something she could not ignore, could not dismiss, and could not write off as the way of the world. That was cruelty in its purest form and that was something she hated.
And he was something she hated and now something she feared.
“Rin… I thought I told you not to follow me.” His voice echoed throughout the clearing and she cringed away from him instinctually. He was trying to be kind, trying to be gentle, she could hear it in his tone, but all she could picture were thousands upon thousands of demons and humans pleading for him to save them, looking upon him for help and receiving nothing more than death in return. How many lives had ended just because he had said the words? How many brothers and fathers and mother and sisters had not come home because he had seen to it personally?
How many times had he looked into the eyes of his victims as they were being eaten alive by the poisons in his claws and seen their humanity, but ignored it? Walked away and back to where she was waiting for him with open arms and a cheerful smile when the empty shell of his enemy was left behind, never to return to its little girl or little boy or mother or father to see their arms opened wide, to see their smiles bringing them warmth and love.
How many times?
He took a graceful step forward and this was when she rose to her feet, shuffling backwards and away from him in a way she never would have before. A flash of hurt crossed his hauntingly beautiful eyes, and she knew he had allowed her to see it on purpose. A man like him did not give away his emotions so easily and deep down there was a part of her that was still touched. A part of her that wanted to run into his embrace and beg for him to tell her that everything was going to be okay, even when she knew it wouldn’t. Nothing was going to be okay, and in that instant when their eyes met and held, he knew it, too.
So when she ran, he let her go.
I’m not a princess, this ain’t a fairy tale.
I’m not the one you’ll sweep off her feet,
Lead her up the stairwell.
This ain’t Hollywood, this is a small town.
I was a dreamer before you went and let me down.
Now it’s too late for you and your white horse…
To come around.
“She doesn’t want to see you, Sesshoumaru.” The harsh tones of the half demon filled the air as Rin lay silent and alone in her hut, a blanket pulled up to her chin and her hair a tangled mess around her. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to see anyone. “Look, I don’t fucking know what you did to her or said to her, but she’s upset, and she’s not going to want to see you for a long time. Get lost.”
“This is not something that concerns you.” His usual monotone was almost broken, and she could practically feel the strain he must have been under. She had been his light in the darkness, his reason for seeing past what he was supposed to be, and now she was gone. Not that she had apparently helped much, but it was a nice thought none the less.
“When a little girl comes running out of the forest crying and runs into my arms pleading with me to never let you touch her or see her again, it becomes my business.” He was stubborn, her self-proclaimed protector, but he was wrong. It wasn’t his business, though she didn’t mind using him as a shield for the time being, at least until the pounding in her head went away and she began to feel like herself again. “You broke her heart, and now it’s too late for you to be coming back trying to fix it. Now fucking leave before I make you leave.”
There was a long pause in which the tension grew to become an oppressive heaviness that weighed down on top of her. Would they fight for her? She hoped not. If they fought she would have to go out there and face him, to make him stop because no one deserved to be hurt because she had made a mistake and had chosen to throw her lot in with the devil. She didn’t even think she could walk, but she would not lie there and let them fight.
There was a sharp noise, a disappointed hiss of air through his barely parted lips and then he was gone. She couldn’t say exactly how she knew he was, but he was, and her new protector was left cursing to himself as he stared out at the empty place where his brother once stood. She relaxed into her pallet and sighed heavily. Crisis averted for now.
But she would have to see him again, she knew that much. There was going to come a time when she was going to have to face him and tell him that they could no longer see each other, could no longer even be friends because she could not live with knowing what he did. Besides, she was everything he hated, a reminder of weakness that he shouldn’t have to live with since he was obviously bound and determined to keep up his charade of a demon in charge. She couldn’t look up to a man like that, never in a million years.
It hurt for all her illusions to be brought down in one fell swoop. Normally people faced these kinds of disappointments over time, losing faith in their cherished one throughout the space of years, the small instances building up time and time again until there was nothing left of the foundation. All their hopes and dreams eroded away into the darkness, piece by piece until you woke up one morning to find that the man you thought you could trust was really a wolf in disguise waiting for you to drop your guard just long enough for him to gain the upper hand.
For her it had been quick and unbearably painful, like a rug being ripped out from under her feet so that she was left scrabbling not to fall over in its wake. She hadn’t quite been knocked flat down, but she was still struggling, hoping for her balance to come back to her so that she could walk forward and away. So that she could get over her disappointment and move on to something that would make her feel worthy of living again.
She had saved his life only to have him destroy hers, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to be angry. She had known what he was, had always known what he was deep in her heart in a part she didn’t want to listen to, but that didn’t make the pain any less. Knowing it was coming never made the burning ache inside of her dim. Seeing is believing and she now lay there wishing she been stricken blind. Had she not been able to even see, would she have believed in the good in him? Had she not been able to open her eyes would she have watched on in awe as he saved her life time and time again, risking his own in the process, thinking that she had been the one to change him? Thinking that he was going to become something better than a petty killing machine.
Well, she had been wrong.
She was nothing special. She was nothing more than a silly human caught in a game that was worlds above her.
She was just normal.
Baby, I was naive, got lost in your eyes,
And never really had a chance.
I had so many dreams about you and me.
Happy endings, now I know…
He had been everything she had ever wanted to look up to back when she had first met him. Granted, he had been wounded and in no position to move or do anything to impress her really, but he hadn’t needed to. His physical appearance alone had stunned her into admiring him from the moment she set eyes on his gravely wounded form all those years ago.
He would have said that he was caught in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness, and, in truth, he had been. He was injured, missing one of his limbs, and defeated by one he viewed as inferior to him. He was not anywhere near the perfect creature she came to know afterwards, but he had been perfect in her eyes even then.
She couldn’t say exactly what it had been. Maybe it was the way the light was glinting off his silvery hair in a way to make it reminiscent of moonbeams. Maybe it was the way the greenery around him showcased his snowy, white skin. It could have been any number of things, but Rin was most convinced that it had been his eyes that had drawn her in and held her, making her believe that there was a better world out there than her dingy, little village and her narrow minded friends.
In his eyes she saw her own hopes and her own dreams, and perhaps somewhere along the way she had thought he might come to share those with her. That he might be able to make her dreams his own and then there wouldn’t be cause for this pain she was feeling. He could be the father she had always dreamed of and they could live happily together and he would never need to play his stupid power game again because when you’ve found someone to love and cherish as your own, what other power is there?
Except maybe he didn’t love her after all. For all she knew, maybe she didn’t love him either. Maybe she just thought she did because it made sense. He protected her and he allowed her to follow him and he taught her things in his own way, and maybe, just maybe, she had thought he wanted to take up the role forever, but perhaps she didn’t even love him like that back then either.
After all, love is an emotion and emotions are often as fleeting as dreams, and just as easily crushed.
But he had protected her! Had she been reading too much into that? How could this demon save her life and then turn around and brutally torture someone else without so much as the slightest of pauses? What kind of lesson did he think he was teaching her?
All she had learned was that not even the man she had come to love and respect was someone to be trusted? What happened if she crossed that invisible line someday and crossed over from his barely tolerable side into his annoyance that needed to be dispatched side? What did she even have to do to get there?
She had never thought about it much and now that it was the one thought she seemed to be unable to escape from, she realized that she had never asked because she hadn’t wanted to know the answer.
How could someone build you up so high and then let you down so horribly?
Rin didn’t want to know the answer that question either.
I’m not a princess, this ain’t a fairy tale,
I’m not the one you’ll sweep off her feet,
Lead her up the stairwell.
This ain’t Hollywood, this is a small town.
I was a dreamer before you went and let me down.
Now it’s too late for you and your white horse,
To come around.
It took her days to gather the strength to leave the hut, and even then she never went far. She knew he was out there watching her. She could feel his gaze on her every move and she knew he was waiting for her to wander just far enough away to be considered as out the village boundaries so that he could talk to her without the interference of those who had sworn to protect the village and its occupants from harm.
Rin had to be careful, she knew that if she let her guard down for even a second, she would find her feet taking her straight to him of their own free will, simply for the need to see if he was alright, if he was hurt or needed anything, just as she would always do. It would be too easy to fall back into her old pattern: ignore what he did and just focus on what it was that she wanted him to be for her. She didn’t want to do that. When she saw him she wanted to be able to know for certain what it was that she expected for him and she was going to ask him if he could give it to her. A part of her knew he couldn’t, but that part was very small and very far away.
She wasn’t done trying to make her dreams a reality. After all, she was only sixteen. Sixteen year old girls were still allowed to cherish their dreams. The harsh bite of reality wasn’t supposed to reach her just yet and it tugged insistently at her heart that it had.
She didn’t want to grow up, but it was starting to look like she had to.
And there you are on your knees,
Begging for forgiveness, begging for me.
Just like I always wanted, but I’m so sorry…
She took a deep breath as she made her way through the line of trees on the outskirts of the village and into the dense forest within. It had been months since that day when all her illusions had been shattered. Months since she had lain there in her hut, unmoving and distraught because she knew that she was going to have to make a tough decision. She still didn’t know if she was truly ready, but she knew she had to try. Nothing was getting resolved by avoiding the issue.
She hoped he was in there somewhere. He was not a patient being and it would be just like him to have given up hope and to have left her, never to be seen again. She had made it quite clear that she didn’t want to see him when he came around. Would he show up now that she had turned the tables? Would he want to meet her on her terms? That didn’t sounds like him at all.
But he was there as she stepped out of a particularly thick set of bushes. He was standing about fifty feet away from her, with his back turned staring off into the distance. She knew he was aware of her presence. She knew he had allowed her to find him. If he wanted to be hidden, he would have been.
Pausing in her efforts to disentangle her clothing from the thorns she tested her resolve. Did she want to run to him? Yes, but the urge was held easily at bay. Did she want to throw herself down on the ground and beg for his forgiveness, beg to go back to the way things were and that she would never go where he told her not to again? Of course she did, but that part of her didn’t rule. It was just inane squawking at the back of her mind.
He turned towards her then, just as she had managed to release the last bit of her hem from the bush’s clutches, and she had to hold back her gasp of awe as usual. He was so beautiful, always so beautiful and so perfect. How he couldn’t see the perfection in himself she would never know. Standing before her was not a weak man, it was a strong one, but he would never believe her no matter how many times she told him so.
This was the moment she had spent the last few months preparing for. If there ever were to be a time in which her resolve would falter, it would be now, with him looking serenely into her eyes and waiting for her to say what she had come to say, but the thought never crossed her mind. She had to be strong, and knowing this gave her that extra prod she needed. Regardless of the way things went today, she was done being protected.
She was done being coddled and pushed back to the shadows for her own protection. If he wasn’t going to be there for her forever, then she needed to start taking the steps to becoming independent. If he couldn’t change what he was and become that perfect person of her dreams, then she didn’t want to be strung along for two or three more years before coming right back to the place again. They could be friends, and she would still love him in her own way, but he would not be the example she looked for and his would not be the first shoulder she would come to cry on.
“Do you want me to beg?” His voice startled her and she physically jumped from the shock. She honestly hadn’t expected him to care enough to even spare her the simplest of sentences, much less to begin a conversation that was sure to end in heartache for the both of them. “I will lower myself to begging if it means you will smile again.”
Rin shook her head sadly at that, the wavering wall of her resolve solidifying from that one statement, from his willingness to lower himself to something he feared. To purposefully make himself weak. “No, I don’t want you to beg. I want something from you that you are never going to be able to give me, but that’s okay… I’m fine with it now.”
He raised one eyebrow in a show of emotion more telling than he had probably meant for it be.
“Why?”
“Because you can’t change over seven hundred years of thinking a certain way just because I told you to.” Rin shrugged. “I’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot of growing up, and I still want to see you, and I want for you to know that you can always come find me whenever you want, but that I’m not going to be your little girl anymore. I needed it back then, but I’m older now and I don’t need it anymore. I am going to have to find myself in my own way, and the way you do things is not the example I would like to follow.”
“You do not have to do this.” He was trying so hard to keep his masks in place and she appreciated the effort. Had he really been able to break down in front of her, she knew all of her careful preparations would have blown away, no more substantial than the dust on the wind.
“But I do.” She insisted. “You and I both know that this wasn’t something that was going to last forever. We knew there was going to come a time when our paths would go separate ways. You would never be happy catering to the weaknesses of a human and I can’t stand watching the brutalities of a demon. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop loving you, or that I don’t ever want to talk to you again. You just… You just aren’t the role model I need.”
He didn’t say anything more at that point and after staring at each other for what felt like hours but was really only minutes they exchanged goodbyes and went their own ways. Him back to his duty and his quest for more than what was possible to reach and her back to her life of just trying to get by, and it hurt her.
It hurt, but she would get over it. It was all a part of growing up after all.
‘Cause I’m not your princess, this ain’t a fairytale.
I’m gonna find someone someday who might actually treat me well.
This is a big world, that was a small town,
There in my rearview mirror disappearing now.
And it’s too late for you and your white horse…
Now it’s too late for you and your white horse,
To catch me now…
Oh whoa, whoa, whoa.
Try and catch me now…
Real life is never the way it is told to be in books, Rin had come to know that now. There was no ordinary girl taken away from her humble beginnings and magically transformed into a princess. There was no happy ending, only new beginnings. Where one story ended another picked up and the princess didn’t ever get to live happily ever after because there was always another story to tell.
Her heart had been broken, that much was true, but it hadn’t been smashed beyond repair, though it had felt like it at the time. Sure, the image of the guy riding in to save the day, of the man with no flaws who was morally upstanding and ready to be there at a moment’s notice had turned out to be nothing more than a fanciful dream, but there were more dreams to be had. Just because she had to give up that last thread that tied her to the childhood she had never really had, it didn’t mean she had to give up her hopes and her loves.
It just meant that she got to dream up whole new ones.
He wouldn’t be there to protect her, and she knew that her journey was going to be difficult, but that didn’t seem to matter as she stared at the empty space in the forest where he had so very recently stood. All that mattered was where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do. For the first time in her young life she was really and truly free.
It was thrilling a terrifying all at once, to know that she was free to do whatever she wanted, but also to know that there would be nothing to catch her if she fell. She had convinced herself that she had needed him for so long that there was a palpable empty space next to her as she made her way forward, deeper into the woods and away from the village she had come to know as her home, but that space would fade with time.
She was going to be her own person and this time she wasn’t going to let anyone stop her.
And she would do for him not in spite of him.
Because even if it was only deep inside of her, hidden and buried so that the jagged edges would never be able to cut her heart again, she still loved him…
And that love was now the wings to the beginning of truly living.
Oh, it’s too late to catch me now…
Prompt: White Horse by Taylor Swift
Song: White Horse by Taylor Swift
Pairing: None
Warnings: N/A
Say you’re sorry,
That face of an angel comes out just when you need it to.
As I pace back and forth all this time,
‘Cause I honestly believed in you.
Holding on, the days drag on.
Stupid girl, should have known.
I should have known…
He was wonderful. He was beautiful. He was graceful. He was perfect.
He was also vicious, bloodthirsty, and cold as the ice his skin tone replicated, but she loved him. She loved him even when she had been too young to understand what love really meant. She had followed him and looked after him and she had been the thorn in his side, but he had never once complained, never once told her to go home.
He was everything she dreamed about and everything she wanted. He was her dream and her nightmare all rolled into one because she knew, of course she knew, that there was a part of him that was not nice and fluffy the way she pictured him to be in her fantasies. There was a part of him that was ruthless, that would stop at nothing to get his way, and killing was never, ever beneath him.
But she never thought that part would be directed towards her.
She was older now, a lot older, far from the eight years she had been when she had first stumbled upon him purely by accident in the woods by her hometown. Closer to being a woman, closer to knowing what she would want from life, and she left the home she had made for herself among the humans to follow him one last time. He hadn’t wanted her to go, had in his own way begged for her to stay, but the second his back had disappeared over the ridge she had set out on foot to follow.
It was difficult being so close to a demon without having him detect her, but she used all the knowledge she had picked up in her earlier travels and somehow she made it to his destination without being discovered, though there had been more than a few close calls.
She should have known. He was a demon, and a powerful one at that. Demons didn’t reach the levels he did by sitting back and allowing those he fought with to live. It was kill or be killed and for all she had seen, she had yet to come to terms with the way he made his life, with the way he settled his debts.
With the way he killed his enemies.
She didn’t know the circumstances behind this instance because he never would tell her, claiming that she did not have a need to know, and, in truth, she didn’t, but that never stopped her from wanting to know and from longing to be just that much more in his life. She didn’t know what this cocky, young fool had done to gain Sesshoumaru’s attention, but she did know that it probably wasn’t worth death, though death was all he was going to get.
He was brave and went down fighting, that much she would give him. Whatever wrong he had done, he stuck to his convictions and died for them and that was something always to be admired, treasured and not thrown away, but he obviously didn’t see it that way. All he saw was another obstacle, another rung in his imaginary ladder that led to his goals, and he was not going to be subtle about taking that next step either.
Body parts literally flew as the young demon screeched in agony as the poison began to seep into his wounds. He was armless, with one leg and bleeding from a gaping hole in his abdomen, but he was not dead. Sesshoumaru watched on in cold detachment as the demon before him finally broke down and begged for his life. Pleading with the wall of stone before him to spare him this pain, to ease this suffering, but the wall of stone would not listen, would not be swayed, and would not bend.
After all, stone can only be what you make it, nothing more and nothing less.
She wanted to cry, this young girl, not quite yet a woman, but she didn’t. She wanted to jump up and scream at him to have a heart, to save this poor soul because whatever it was he had done, no one deserves this slow, torturous agony. She wanted to run away, back to her home and just forget. She didn’t want to see this side of him anymore. She didn’t want to have to live with the thought that she loved a common murderer, for that was what he was. For all his grandeur and aristocratic leanings, he was still a cold-blooded murder and no amount of pleading was going to change that.
Heaven only knew she had tried.
Dark and thick, the demon’s blood was puddling on the forest floor beneath him as he began to gasp for breath. The thick fluid sinking down into the thirsty forest floor, and she was transfixed on the puddle, lost in her own private fears, the poison of her thoughts rising up through her body just as surely as the poison in the young demon’s veins, coursing through him and bringing him closer and closer to the threshold of death even as she was being drawn closer to the realization she had always carried deep in her heart.
Suddenly, the demon slumped over, splashing into his own blood as his muscles lost the will to hold him upright. All of his energy and concentration was on keeping his lungs going, on bringing in every last bit of precious oxygen that he could while he forced his demon heart to beat once more. One more time, and then another, and another, and then… No more.
A single, solitary tear traced its way down her dirty cheek as she mourned for this creature she had never known, had never spoken to. He had never done anything for her, or to her. She had never seen him before, and yet she mourned for his soul because she knew no one else would. He was just another nameless demon, lost in the ever present struggle for power and supremacy. He was another casualty in a war in which there were no victors, only losers because to win would be to give up more than just the life of those they crushed to reach that pinnacle of victory.
To win was to give up your very soul.
His elegantly upturned nose tilted up into the evening air and she realized too late that he now knew where she was. A sharp tang on the air brought about by her one tear, only detectable by one who has spent his entire life honing the highly tuned senses given to him by birth. Senses he used to know when there was someone behind him, watching him and waiting for him to make one wrong move, one small slip in order to take him out in his moment of weakness.
He turned slowly; trying to delay the inevitable she was sure. She wanted to stand then, to show herself to him, to show him that she was unafraid as always, but that would have been a lie. She had just witnessed an execution carried out by his own hands and that was not something she could dismiss. When he was fighting for his life and hers she could make excuses. When he looked into the eyes of his prey and listened to them beg for his mercy when he had no intention of giving it, that was something she could not ignore, could not dismiss, and could not write off as the way of the world. That was cruelty in its purest form and that was something she hated.
And he was something she hated and now something she feared.
“Rin… I thought I told you not to follow me.” His voice echoed throughout the clearing and she cringed away from him instinctually. He was trying to be kind, trying to be gentle, she could hear it in his tone, but all she could picture were thousands upon thousands of demons and humans pleading for him to save them, looking upon him for help and receiving nothing more than death in return. How many lives had ended just because he had said the words? How many brothers and fathers and mother and sisters had not come home because he had seen to it personally?
How many times had he looked into the eyes of his victims as they were being eaten alive by the poisons in his claws and seen their humanity, but ignored it? Walked away and back to where she was waiting for him with open arms and a cheerful smile when the empty shell of his enemy was left behind, never to return to its little girl or little boy or mother or father to see their arms opened wide, to see their smiles bringing them warmth and love.
How many times?
He took a graceful step forward and this was when she rose to her feet, shuffling backwards and away from him in a way she never would have before. A flash of hurt crossed his hauntingly beautiful eyes, and she knew he had allowed her to see it on purpose. A man like him did not give away his emotions so easily and deep down there was a part of her that was still touched. A part of her that wanted to run into his embrace and beg for him to tell her that everything was going to be okay, even when she knew it wouldn’t. Nothing was going to be okay, and in that instant when their eyes met and held, he knew it, too.
So when she ran, he let her go.
I’m not a princess, this ain’t a fairy tale.
I’m not the one you’ll sweep off her feet,
Lead her up the stairwell.
This ain’t Hollywood, this is a small town.
I was a dreamer before you went and let me down.
Now it’s too late for you and your white horse…
To come around.
“She doesn’t want to see you, Sesshoumaru.” The harsh tones of the half demon filled the air as Rin lay silent and alone in her hut, a blanket pulled up to her chin and her hair a tangled mess around her. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to see anyone. “Look, I don’t fucking know what you did to her or said to her, but she’s upset, and she’s not going to want to see you for a long time. Get lost.”
“This is not something that concerns you.” His usual monotone was almost broken, and she could practically feel the strain he must have been under. She had been his light in the darkness, his reason for seeing past what he was supposed to be, and now she was gone. Not that she had apparently helped much, but it was a nice thought none the less.
“When a little girl comes running out of the forest crying and runs into my arms pleading with me to never let you touch her or see her again, it becomes my business.” He was stubborn, her self-proclaimed protector, but he was wrong. It wasn’t his business, though she didn’t mind using him as a shield for the time being, at least until the pounding in her head went away and she began to feel like herself again. “You broke her heart, and now it’s too late for you to be coming back trying to fix it. Now fucking leave before I make you leave.”
There was a long pause in which the tension grew to become an oppressive heaviness that weighed down on top of her. Would they fight for her? She hoped not. If they fought she would have to go out there and face him, to make him stop because no one deserved to be hurt because she had made a mistake and had chosen to throw her lot in with the devil. She didn’t even think she could walk, but she would not lie there and let them fight.
There was a sharp noise, a disappointed hiss of air through his barely parted lips and then he was gone. She couldn’t say exactly how she knew he was, but he was, and her new protector was left cursing to himself as he stared out at the empty place where his brother once stood. She relaxed into her pallet and sighed heavily. Crisis averted for now.
But she would have to see him again, she knew that much. There was going to come a time when she was going to have to face him and tell him that they could no longer see each other, could no longer even be friends because she could not live with knowing what he did. Besides, she was everything he hated, a reminder of weakness that he shouldn’t have to live with since he was obviously bound and determined to keep up his charade of a demon in charge. She couldn’t look up to a man like that, never in a million years.
It hurt for all her illusions to be brought down in one fell swoop. Normally people faced these kinds of disappointments over time, losing faith in their cherished one throughout the space of years, the small instances building up time and time again until there was nothing left of the foundation. All their hopes and dreams eroded away into the darkness, piece by piece until you woke up one morning to find that the man you thought you could trust was really a wolf in disguise waiting for you to drop your guard just long enough for him to gain the upper hand.
For her it had been quick and unbearably painful, like a rug being ripped out from under her feet so that she was left scrabbling not to fall over in its wake. She hadn’t quite been knocked flat down, but she was still struggling, hoping for her balance to come back to her so that she could walk forward and away. So that she could get over her disappointment and move on to something that would make her feel worthy of living again.
She had saved his life only to have him destroy hers, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to be angry. She had known what he was, had always known what he was deep in her heart in a part she didn’t want to listen to, but that didn’t make the pain any less. Knowing it was coming never made the burning ache inside of her dim. Seeing is believing and she now lay there wishing she been stricken blind. Had she not been able to even see, would she have believed in the good in him? Had she not been able to open her eyes would she have watched on in awe as he saved her life time and time again, risking his own in the process, thinking that she had been the one to change him? Thinking that he was going to become something better than a petty killing machine.
Well, she had been wrong.
She was nothing special. She was nothing more than a silly human caught in a game that was worlds above her.
She was just normal.
Baby, I was naive, got lost in your eyes,
And never really had a chance.
I had so many dreams about you and me.
Happy endings, now I know…
He had been everything she had ever wanted to look up to back when she had first met him. Granted, he had been wounded and in no position to move or do anything to impress her really, but he hadn’t needed to. His physical appearance alone had stunned her into admiring him from the moment she set eyes on his gravely wounded form all those years ago.
He would have said that he was caught in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness, and, in truth, he had been. He was injured, missing one of his limbs, and defeated by one he viewed as inferior to him. He was not anywhere near the perfect creature she came to know afterwards, but he had been perfect in her eyes even then.
She couldn’t say exactly what it had been. Maybe it was the way the light was glinting off his silvery hair in a way to make it reminiscent of moonbeams. Maybe it was the way the greenery around him showcased his snowy, white skin. It could have been any number of things, but Rin was most convinced that it had been his eyes that had drawn her in and held her, making her believe that there was a better world out there than her dingy, little village and her narrow minded friends.
In his eyes she saw her own hopes and her own dreams, and perhaps somewhere along the way she had thought he might come to share those with her. That he might be able to make her dreams his own and then there wouldn’t be cause for this pain she was feeling. He could be the father she had always dreamed of and they could live happily together and he would never need to play his stupid power game again because when you’ve found someone to love and cherish as your own, what other power is there?
Except maybe he didn’t love her after all. For all she knew, maybe she didn’t love him either. Maybe she just thought she did because it made sense. He protected her and he allowed her to follow him and he taught her things in his own way, and maybe, just maybe, she had thought he wanted to take up the role forever, but perhaps she didn’t even love him like that back then either.
After all, love is an emotion and emotions are often as fleeting as dreams, and just as easily crushed.
But he had protected her! Had she been reading too much into that? How could this demon save her life and then turn around and brutally torture someone else without so much as the slightest of pauses? What kind of lesson did he think he was teaching her?
All she had learned was that not even the man she had come to love and respect was someone to be trusted? What happened if she crossed that invisible line someday and crossed over from his barely tolerable side into his annoyance that needed to be dispatched side? What did she even have to do to get there?
She had never thought about it much and now that it was the one thought she seemed to be unable to escape from, she realized that she had never asked because she hadn’t wanted to know the answer.
How could someone build you up so high and then let you down so horribly?
Rin didn’t want to know the answer that question either.
I’m not a princess, this ain’t a fairy tale,
I’m not the one you’ll sweep off her feet,
Lead her up the stairwell.
This ain’t Hollywood, this is a small town.
I was a dreamer before you went and let me down.
Now it’s too late for you and your white horse,
To come around.
It took her days to gather the strength to leave the hut, and even then she never went far. She knew he was out there watching her. She could feel his gaze on her every move and she knew he was waiting for her to wander just far enough away to be considered as out the village boundaries so that he could talk to her without the interference of those who had sworn to protect the village and its occupants from harm.
Rin had to be careful, she knew that if she let her guard down for even a second, she would find her feet taking her straight to him of their own free will, simply for the need to see if he was alright, if he was hurt or needed anything, just as she would always do. It would be too easy to fall back into her old pattern: ignore what he did and just focus on what it was that she wanted him to be for her. She didn’t want to do that. When she saw him she wanted to be able to know for certain what it was that she expected for him and she was going to ask him if he could give it to her. A part of her knew he couldn’t, but that part was very small and very far away.
She wasn’t done trying to make her dreams a reality. After all, she was only sixteen. Sixteen year old girls were still allowed to cherish their dreams. The harsh bite of reality wasn’t supposed to reach her just yet and it tugged insistently at her heart that it had.
She didn’t want to grow up, but it was starting to look like she had to.
And there you are on your knees,
Begging for forgiveness, begging for me.
Just like I always wanted, but I’m so sorry…
She took a deep breath as she made her way through the line of trees on the outskirts of the village and into the dense forest within. It had been months since that day when all her illusions had been shattered. Months since she had lain there in her hut, unmoving and distraught because she knew that she was going to have to make a tough decision. She still didn’t know if she was truly ready, but she knew she had to try. Nothing was getting resolved by avoiding the issue.
She hoped he was in there somewhere. He was not a patient being and it would be just like him to have given up hope and to have left her, never to be seen again. She had made it quite clear that she didn’t want to see him when he came around. Would he show up now that she had turned the tables? Would he want to meet her on her terms? That didn’t sounds like him at all.
But he was there as she stepped out of a particularly thick set of bushes. He was standing about fifty feet away from her, with his back turned staring off into the distance. She knew he was aware of her presence. She knew he had allowed her to find him. If he wanted to be hidden, he would have been.
Pausing in her efforts to disentangle her clothing from the thorns she tested her resolve. Did she want to run to him? Yes, but the urge was held easily at bay. Did she want to throw herself down on the ground and beg for his forgiveness, beg to go back to the way things were and that she would never go where he told her not to again? Of course she did, but that part of her didn’t rule. It was just inane squawking at the back of her mind.
He turned towards her then, just as she had managed to release the last bit of her hem from the bush’s clutches, and she had to hold back her gasp of awe as usual. He was so beautiful, always so beautiful and so perfect. How he couldn’t see the perfection in himself she would never know. Standing before her was not a weak man, it was a strong one, but he would never believe her no matter how many times she told him so.
This was the moment she had spent the last few months preparing for. If there ever were to be a time in which her resolve would falter, it would be now, with him looking serenely into her eyes and waiting for her to say what she had come to say, but the thought never crossed her mind. She had to be strong, and knowing this gave her that extra prod she needed. Regardless of the way things went today, she was done being protected.
She was done being coddled and pushed back to the shadows for her own protection. If he wasn’t going to be there for her forever, then she needed to start taking the steps to becoming independent. If he couldn’t change what he was and become that perfect person of her dreams, then she didn’t want to be strung along for two or three more years before coming right back to the place again. They could be friends, and she would still love him in her own way, but he would not be the example she looked for and his would not be the first shoulder she would come to cry on.
“Do you want me to beg?” His voice startled her and she physically jumped from the shock. She honestly hadn’t expected him to care enough to even spare her the simplest of sentences, much less to begin a conversation that was sure to end in heartache for the both of them. “I will lower myself to begging if it means you will smile again.”
Rin shook her head sadly at that, the wavering wall of her resolve solidifying from that one statement, from his willingness to lower himself to something he feared. To purposefully make himself weak. “No, I don’t want you to beg. I want something from you that you are never going to be able to give me, but that’s okay… I’m fine with it now.”
He raised one eyebrow in a show of emotion more telling than he had probably meant for it be.
“Why?”
“Because you can’t change over seven hundred years of thinking a certain way just because I told you to.” Rin shrugged. “I’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot of growing up, and I still want to see you, and I want for you to know that you can always come find me whenever you want, but that I’m not going to be your little girl anymore. I needed it back then, but I’m older now and I don’t need it anymore. I am going to have to find myself in my own way, and the way you do things is not the example I would like to follow.”
“You do not have to do this.” He was trying so hard to keep his masks in place and she appreciated the effort. Had he really been able to break down in front of her, she knew all of her careful preparations would have blown away, no more substantial than the dust on the wind.
“But I do.” She insisted. “You and I both know that this wasn’t something that was going to last forever. We knew there was going to come a time when our paths would go separate ways. You would never be happy catering to the weaknesses of a human and I can’t stand watching the brutalities of a demon. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop loving you, or that I don’t ever want to talk to you again. You just… You just aren’t the role model I need.”
He didn’t say anything more at that point and after staring at each other for what felt like hours but was really only minutes they exchanged goodbyes and went their own ways. Him back to his duty and his quest for more than what was possible to reach and her back to her life of just trying to get by, and it hurt her.
It hurt, but she would get over it. It was all a part of growing up after all.
‘Cause I’m not your princess, this ain’t a fairytale.
I’m gonna find someone someday who might actually treat me well.
This is a big world, that was a small town,
There in my rearview mirror disappearing now.
And it’s too late for you and your white horse…
Now it’s too late for you and your white horse,
To catch me now…
Oh whoa, whoa, whoa.
Try and catch me now…
Real life is never the way it is told to be in books, Rin had come to know that now. There was no ordinary girl taken away from her humble beginnings and magically transformed into a princess. There was no happy ending, only new beginnings. Where one story ended another picked up and the princess didn’t ever get to live happily ever after because there was always another story to tell.
Her heart had been broken, that much was true, but it hadn’t been smashed beyond repair, though it had felt like it at the time. Sure, the image of the guy riding in to save the day, of the man with no flaws who was morally upstanding and ready to be there at a moment’s notice had turned out to be nothing more than a fanciful dream, but there were more dreams to be had. Just because she had to give up that last thread that tied her to the childhood she had never really had, it didn’t mean she had to give up her hopes and her loves.
It just meant that she got to dream up whole new ones.
He wouldn’t be there to protect her, and she knew that her journey was going to be difficult, but that didn’t seem to matter as she stared at the empty space in the forest where he had so very recently stood. All that mattered was where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do. For the first time in her young life she was really and truly free.
It was thrilling a terrifying all at once, to know that she was free to do whatever she wanted, but also to know that there would be nothing to catch her if she fell. She had convinced herself that she had needed him for so long that there was a palpable empty space next to her as she made her way forward, deeper into the woods and away from the village she had come to know as her home, but that space would fade with time.
She was going to be her own person and this time she wasn’t going to let anyone stop her.
And she would do for him not in spite of him.
Because even if it was only deep inside of her, hidden and buried so that the jagged edges would never be able to cut her heart again, she still loved him…
And that love was now the wings to the beginning of truly living.
Oh, it’s too late to catch me now…