(no subject)
Title: When I Waited For You
Pairing: Sango/Sesshomaru
Fandom: InuYasha
Theme: #91 Endless Love
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha or any related characters. Nor do I own the poem, ‘How Do I Love Thee’.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
It has been many long years. I last saw him when I was twenty-five, young and agile. He could have been any age, what exactly it was, I was not certain. It is nearly impossible to tell with demons. The last time I saw him…
That is not important. It can be told later. I suppose that I should start at the beginning. Perhaps not the very beginning, because my life isn’t the story that I want to tell you. My love is.
--------------
There was once a woman. A demon slayer. A lady. She worked hard, cared for her friends, and never gave up. That was the plan. Never giving up. Because if she gave up, where would her brother be? Her dear, sweet brother whom was under the control of Naraku. Her dear, sweet brother whom she would give up the world for in a second flat.
Her village had been massacred. He was all that she had left. And he had been taken by the evil demon who had destroyed her village, squashing the human life out of it. Finding her brother, saving him from this evil, became her only wish. It was what drove her for a long period of time. Then, along her journey, she made friends with a strange group: a girl sent from the future, a half demon, a monk with a few sexual tendencies, and a small fox demon.
They were the people who led her not only on a strange path to find herself, but on a path towards her one true love. Although it didn’t start out that way. Her love, that is.
The first time she had ever seen him, he was fighting his own brother. He was out for blood. And she couldn’t understand that. Who would want to kill their own kindred? What sort of monster was he? She soon found out that he was no mere monster. He was Lord of the Western Lands, a demon to be reckoned with.
The more she saw him, the more she disliked him. Oh, she had a certain amount of respect for him. Even if he did fight his own brother, he was a skilled fighter and not one to be taken lightly. He had his own set of moral and honor codes that he followed. He hated humans, but he kept one by his side, after all.
That slight bit of respect was what grew. There was once where they had faced an entire onslaught of demons sent by Naraku. The demon lord had saved them. Although she hadn’t questioned why, the girl from the future did. Her female companion was the only one brave enough to question this proud demon. And the answer that she had received wasn’t surprising once one thought about it.
He hated Naraku. To him, Naraku was the one thing that bound him to his brother by honor. Although he hated his brother, this demon he hated more. He was willing to work with his enemies to defeat this cruel demon. At least just this once. It could have had something to do with the fact that his little human child was in danger, also. But the woman didn’t like to think of that.
Nor did she like to think of how much and how greatly her respect grew over time. He was a demon, after all, and she killed demons. Nothing really should have made her grow fond of him, either. He was cruel and cold. He was nothing like his half-brother or the monk or even most of the demons that she had ever met. Perhaps that was what made her stop and really look at him. He wasn’t like the rest. And that came as a shock to her. How could such a demon come into being? One moment he was cruel, the next he was as close as he could possibly get to kind?
But that didn’t quite tip the scale of love for her. Because she was in love with the monk. After all, he was human and he was always there for her. What did it matter if there was a silver haired demon lord there, sometimes coming to save the day, other times coming to destroy them all? What did any of that matter when she got down to the nit and grit of it?
It got to the point, though, when things wouldn’t add up. The monk would go off often. Alone. The demon lord would come often, mostly to pick fights with his brother, but sometimes just to watch their encampment with ease, knowing that he was more concealed.
That was how the two originally met, in fact. He was watching. She was hunting. Really, their run in was quite disastrous. She screamed and yelled and fought. He was calm and collected, although in the depths of his eyes genuine surprise could be seen.
He held her down. She was breathing hard. His head inched closer. Hers tried to dig deeper into the ground. Then he was gone. Her friends came. They were too late. But she wasn’t injured, so the only loss was to her pride. Imagine a demon slayer being beaten by the demon. Even if she wasn’t, this once, going for the kill.
His golden eyes had captivated her.
They haunted her, really. Sometimes she would see them in the darkness and nothing would be there. His eyes had reeled her in.
Really, never would she have thought much about the demon. He was, after all, just a demon. But those eyes. Truly she longed to see them. She longed to see them more than she longed for the monk to become exclusive. It was one of those things that would never happen, not the way that she wanted it to.
Many surprises later, she got her wish. She saw his eyes. His cold, steely, golden eyes that would have made lesser women go weak at the knees. Her katana was at his throat. He had no fear. When the battle began, he could already sense that she wasn’t out for blood. The kill wasn’t with her.
She drank him in. Every bit of the demon was memorized. His hair. His tattoos. His facial planes. They were all etched into her mind. Now she could die happy. If he wanted her to receive the final blow, she wouldn’t care. Only when her katana was against his neck did she realize that she wouldn’t be able to mar one part of his precious body. Pity, too. Her father would have been so disappointed.
Neither dealt the final blow that day. He left again, quickly, almost as if afraid. Raggedly breathing, she still lay on the ground, wondering why she had been allowed to live. Both were filled with questions. And, somewhere, both knew the answer.
X-X-X-X-X-X
It wasn’t considered proper for a demon to let a human live after he had such an opportunity to kill. But, then, the Lord of the Western Lands wasn’t exactly known for being proper throughout the land. After all, he did travel around with a human child and a demon that was no where near his equal or should have received the honor of being able to travel with the powerful demon. And, really, a demon lord should have been at his palace, sorting through matters of life and death, not sleeping on the ground and traveling. So, no, the Lord of the Western Lands was not proper.
And that was more than likely why he let the human woman live. She had put up a fair fight for a human. By demon standards, it was nothing, but to her it would mean everything. There was that fire, too. The fire that was in her gaze nearly every second of anytime he saw her. Relaxing. Fighting. Laughing. She was a girl with more fire in her than anyone he had ever met. For some reason, the demon didn’t want to take away that fire.
So, the demon lord went about his business, sometimes running into the woman, sometimes not. The more he saw her, the less he wondered why he saved her. For a human, she was intelligent, strong, and beautiful. Those were three aspects, that for the first time, he felt he couldn’t take away from the world. Slowly, their fights became arguments. Their arguments became debates. Their debates became discussions. Their discussions, eventually, became just talking.
Strange. Even the demon lord considered it strange that he had taken a strange liking for this human. Perhaps even started loving her. It was abnormal, even for him. The Lord of the Western Lands didn’t like it. But there was nothing he could do about it.
His love was one from afar. Never would he presume to tell the human how he felt. Not only would it more than likely send her into a shock, but also it went against everything he believed. So he sat and watched as she and the lecherous monk she traveled with courted. It killed him.
X-X-X-X-X-X
So many years seemed to pass. Of course, Naraku was eventually defeated. Along with that, the group seemed to go their separate ways for most of the time. The girl and the half demon fell in love, and had to work hard to make their relationship work. The monk had better things to do than sit around and wait while the demon slayer decided whether she truly loved him or not.
That was the problem, really. Every time the slayer would think she was ready to marry the monk and have his children, something would just pop up. There would be a demon attack. Someone would need her help. And, surprisingly often, the Lord of the Western Lands would turn up, making her second guess every decision. The love she had for the monk was not the kind of love to sustain a marriage, she discovered. But the love that she had for the demon lord was. Oh, how she loved him.
There truly was no chance, though. A demon lord loving her? Only if pigs could fly. Hope, though, flooded through her whenever the demon would choose to turn up. There was just this look in his eye that made her wonder. Perhaps things were not all as they seemed? Maybe he did see them as more?
A kiss was all she needed. A kiss was all she wanted. With a kiss from the demon lord, she would be satisfied, she decided. No need for marriage (as the demon lord did not seem to be the marrying type). No need for strings to be attached. All she wanted was a kiss.
But how to go about receiving such a kiss? The risk of death was also included, after all, how many people go around kissing demon lords? None. At least not sane people. The demon slayer must have been insane.
Six times the slayer almost had him. Six times she had to corner him, without being suspicious. It was hard work. The first time she walked up, grabbing the sides of his face and bringing his head down to eyelevel with her. The second time she tackled him. The third time she ‘fainted’ into his arms. Once she pretended to drown. Another time, she tried to do it while he was asleep. And the last time, she simply tried to kiss him. Each time, she got interrupted. Someone would come with some sort of an emergency and she would never quite get around to the kiss aspect of her plan. She felt that the Lord of the Western Lands was getting suspicious.
The seventh time didn’t follow any of her plans. It also wasn’t initiated by the slayer. Instead, it was the demon lord who took control of the situation, his lips crashing onto hers. Shock jolted through her entire body. After all, this was a demon lord. Demons did not kiss humans. But, he did, and in doing so, he broke every rule ever created.
That was truly when it all started. The kissing. The passion. Never wanting to be away from each other for more than a few hours at a time. At least on the slayer’s part. What the demon lord was feeling, she was never quite sure. He was as mysterious as ever.
One day, he left to solve some troubles in his lands. And he never came back. Whether it was a sign that they weren’t meant to be or what, the slayer couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that he was gone. Everyone was gone. It was sudden and rapid and she wasn’t quite sure that it had happened at all. Romance, friendship, happiness all of it had disappeared. Her life was a bleak, gray world of lifelessness. He should never have left her.
--------------
Yes, my brave Lord of the Western Lands, the one man that I truly felt that I could love, left me. Later I learned that it was not of his own choice. His lands were in peril. He died to protect those lands. Died. There was nothing about not wanting to return. He was simply unable to.
I saw his lifeless body with my own eyes. Demons seemed to decay at a much slower rate than that of humans. My demon lord, my Sesshomaru, was dead. He died bravely and honorably and respectably. My heart will always be with him. Even dead, he was everything that a man should have been: handsome, brave, strong, and loyal. His people saw me as a human. I could not stay with them. My life would have to continue exactly how it had before the demon lord entered my life.
Truly, it was easier than it sounds. Being an old maid really wasn’t all that bad. And now, as I sit in my old age, I’m truly happy about my life. There are things that I wonder about, though. The main one being whether I will return to my love in death, as young and beautiful as I once had been.
Honored Sister, Honored Demon Slayer, Honored Lover
Live Long, Live Free
Sango
A/N: Yup, this was weird. The ending, I think was inspired by Lord of the Rings. When Arwen sees herself still young and Aragorn old and dead by the cask he was buried in, I think that it was a very touching scene. This is also much longer than most of my fics.
Pairing: Sango/Sesshomaru
Fandom: InuYasha
Theme: #91 Endless Love
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha or any related characters. Nor do I own the poem, ‘How Do I Love Thee’.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
It has been many long years. I last saw him when I was twenty-five, young and agile. He could have been any age, what exactly it was, I was not certain. It is nearly impossible to tell with demons. The last time I saw him…
That is not important. It can be told later. I suppose that I should start at the beginning. Perhaps not the very beginning, because my life isn’t the story that I want to tell you. My love is.
--------------
There was once a woman. A demon slayer. A lady. She worked hard, cared for her friends, and never gave up. That was the plan. Never giving up. Because if she gave up, where would her brother be? Her dear, sweet brother whom was under the control of Naraku. Her dear, sweet brother whom she would give up the world for in a second flat.
Her village had been massacred. He was all that she had left. And he had been taken by the evil demon who had destroyed her village, squashing the human life out of it. Finding her brother, saving him from this evil, became her only wish. It was what drove her for a long period of time. Then, along her journey, she made friends with a strange group: a girl sent from the future, a half demon, a monk with a few sexual tendencies, and a small fox demon.
They were the people who led her not only on a strange path to find herself, but on a path towards her one true love. Although it didn’t start out that way. Her love, that is.
The first time she had ever seen him, he was fighting his own brother. He was out for blood. And she couldn’t understand that. Who would want to kill their own kindred? What sort of monster was he? She soon found out that he was no mere monster. He was Lord of the Western Lands, a demon to be reckoned with.
The more she saw him, the more she disliked him. Oh, she had a certain amount of respect for him. Even if he did fight his own brother, he was a skilled fighter and not one to be taken lightly. He had his own set of moral and honor codes that he followed. He hated humans, but he kept one by his side, after all.
That slight bit of respect was what grew. There was once where they had faced an entire onslaught of demons sent by Naraku. The demon lord had saved them. Although she hadn’t questioned why, the girl from the future did. Her female companion was the only one brave enough to question this proud demon. And the answer that she had received wasn’t surprising once one thought about it.
He hated Naraku. To him, Naraku was the one thing that bound him to his brother by honor. Although he hated his brother, this demon he hated more. He was willing to work with his enemies to defeat this cruel demon. At least just this once. It could have had something to do with the fact that his little human child was in danger, also. But the woman didn’t like to think of that.
Nor did she like to think of how much and how greatly her respect grew over time. He was a demon, after all, and she killed demons. Nothing really should have made her grow fond of him, either. He was cruel and cold. He was nothing like his half-brother or the monk or even most of the demons that she had ever met. Perhaps that was what made her stop and really look at him. He wasn’t like the rest. And that came as a shock to her. How could such a demon come into being? One moment he was cruel, the next he was as close as he could possibly get to kind?
But that didn’t quite tip the scale of love for her. Because she was in love with the monk. After all, he was human and he was always there for her. What did it matter if there was a silver haired demon lord there, sometimes coming to save the day, other times coming to destroy them all? What did any of that matter when she got down to the nit and grit of it?
It got to the point, though, when things wouldn’t add up. The monk would go off often. Alone. The demon lord would come often, mostly to pick fights with his brother, but sometimes just to watch their encampment with ease, knowing that he was more concealed.
That was how the two originally met, in fact. He was watching. She was hunting. Really, their run in was quite disastrous. She screamed and yelled and fought. He was calm and collected, although in the depths of his eyes genuine surprise could be seen.
He held her down. She was breathing hard. His head inched closer. Hers tried to dig deeper into the ground. Then he was gone. Her friends came. They were too late. But she wasn’t injured, so the only loss was to her pride. Imagine a demon slayer being beaten by the demon. Even if she wasn’t, this once, going for the kill.
His golden eyes had captivated her.
They haunted her, really. Sometimes she would see them in the darkness and nothing would be there. His eyes had reeled her in.
Really, never would she have thought much about the demon. He was, after all, just a demon. But those eyes. Truly she longed to see them. She longed to see them more than she longed for the monk to become exclusive. It was one of those things that would never happen, not the way that she wanted it to.
Many surprises later, she got her wish. She saw his eyes. His cold, steely, golden eyes that would have made lesser women go weak at the knees. Her katana was at his throat. He had no fear. When the battle began, he could already sense that she wasn’t out for blood. The kill wasn’t with her.
She drank him in. Every bit of the demon was memorized. His hair. His tattoos. His facial planes. They were all etched into her mind. Now she could die happy. If he wanted her to receive the final blow, she wouldn’t care. Only when her katana was against his neck did she realize that she wouldn’t be able to mar one part of his precious body. Pity, too. Her father would have been so disappointed.
Neither dealt the final blow that day. He left again, quickly, almost as if afraid. Raggedly breathing, she still lay on the ground, wondering why she had been allowed to live. Both were filled with questions. And, somewhere, both knew the answer.
X-X-X-X-X-X
It wasn’t considered proper for a demon to let a human live after he had such an opportunity to kill. But, then, the Lord of the Western Lands wasn’t exactly known for being proper throughout the land. After all, he did travel around with a human child and a demon that was no where near his equal or should have received the honor of being able to travel with the powerful demon. And, really, a demon lord should have been at his palace, sorting through matters of life and death, not sleeping on the ground and traveling. So, no, the Lord of the Western Lands was not proper.
And that was more than likely why he let the human woman live. She had put up a fair fight for a human. By demon standards, it was nothing, but to her it would mean everything. There was that fire, too. The fire that was in her gaze nearly every second of anytime he saw her. Relaxing. Fighting. Laughing. She was a girl with more fire in her than anyone he had ever met. For some reason, the demon didn’t want to take away that fire.
So, the demon lord went about his business, sometimes running into the woman, sometimes not. The more he saw her, the less he wondered why he saved her. For a human, she was intelligent, strong, and beautiful. Those were three aspects, that for the first time, he felt he couldn’t take away from the world. Slowly, their fights became arguments. Their arguments became debates. Their debates became discussions. Their discussions, eventually, became just talking.
Strange. Even the demon lord considered it strange that he had taken a strange liking for this human. Perhaps even started loving her. It was abnormal, even for him. The Lord of the Western Lands didn’t like it. But there was nothing he could do about it.
His love was one from afar. Never would he presume to tell the human how he felt. Not only would it more than likely send her into a shock, but also it went against everything he believed. So he sat and watched as she and the lecherous monk she traveled with courted. It killed him.
X-X-X-X-X-X
So many years seemed to pass. Of course, Naraku was eventually defeated. Along with that, the group seemed to go their separate ways for most of the time. The girl and the half demon fell in love, and had to work hard to make their relationship work. The monk had better things to do than sit around and wait while the demon slayer decided whether she truly loved him or not.
That was the problem, really. Every time the slayer would think she was ready to marry the monk and have his children, something would just pop up. There would be a demon attack. Someone would need her help. And, surprisingly often, the Lord of the Western Lands would turn up, making her second guess every decision. The love she had for the monk was not the kind of love to sustain a marriage, she discovered. But the love that she had for the demon lord was. Oh, how she loved him.
There truly was no chance, though. A demon lord loving her? Only if pigs could fly. Hope, though, flooded through her whenever the demon would choose to turn up. There was just this look in his eye that made her wonder. Perhaps things were not all as they seemed? Maybe he did see them as more?
A kiss was all she needed. A kiss was all she wanted. With a kiss from the demon lord, she would be satisfied, she decided. No need for marriage (as the demon lord did not seem to be the marrying type). No need for strings to be attached. All she wanted was a kiss.
But how to go about receiving such a kiss? The risk of death was also included, after all, how many people go around kissing demon lords? None. At least not sane people. The demon slayer must have been insane.
Six times the slayer almost had him. Six times she had to corner him, without being suspicious. It was hard work. The first time she walked up, grabbing the sides of his face and bringing his head down to eyelevel with her. The second time she tackled him. The third time she ‘fainted’ into his arms. Once she pretended to drown. Another time, she tried to do it while he was asleep. And the last time, she simply tried to kiss him. Each time, she got interrupted. Someone would come with some sort of an emergency and she would never quite get around to the kiss aspect of her plan. She felt that the Lord of the Western Lands was getting suspicious.
The seventh time didn’t follow any of her plans. It also wasn’t initiated by the slayer. Instead, it was the demon lord who took control of the situation, his lips crashing onto hers. Shock jolted through her entire body. After all, this was a demon lord. Demons did not kiss humans. But, he did, and in doing so, he broke every rule ever created.
That was truly when it all started. The kissing. The passion. Never wanting to be away from each other for more than a few hours at a time. At least on the slayer’s part. What the demon lord was feeling, she was never quite sure. He was as mysterious as ever.
One day, he left to solve some troubles in his lands. And he never came back. Whether it was a sign that they weren’t meant to be or what, the slayer couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that he was gone. Everyone was gone. It was sudden and rapid and she wasn’t quite sure that it had happened at all. Romance, friendship, happiness all of it had disappeared. Her life was a bleak, gray world of lifelessness. He should never have left her.
--------------
Yes, my brave Lord of the Western Lands, the one man that I truly felt that I could love, left me. Later I learned that it was not of his own choice. His lands were in peril. He died to protect those lands. Died. There was nothing about not wanting to return. He was simply unable to.
I saw his lifeless body with my own eyes. Demons seemed to decay at a much slower rate than that of humans. My demon lord, my Sesshomaru, was dead. He died bravely and honorably and respectably. My heart will always be with him. Even dead, he was everything that a man should have been: handsome, brave, strong, and loyal. His people saw me as a human. I could not stay with them. My life would have to continue exactly how it had before the demon lord entered my life.
Truly, it was easier than it sounds. Being an old maid really wasn’t all that bad. And now, as I sit in my old age, I’m truly happy about my life. There are things that I wonder about, though. The main one being whether I will return to my love in death, as young and beautiful as I once had been.
Honored Sister, Honored Demon Slayer, Honored Lover
Live Long, Live Free
Sango
A/N: Yup, this was weird. The ending, I think was inspired by Lord of the Rings. When Arwen sees herself still young and Aragorn old and dead by the cask he was buried in, I think that it was a very touching scene. This is also much longer than most of my fics.