It is easy, he thinks, for her to forget.
He may as well be made of air, for all the regard she gives him. Her attention is riveted on the half-breed, and his upon her.
Bloody claws caress her cheek. Golden eyes fix upon her own.
His hand clenches around Tessaiga’s hilt.
He forgets nothing.
And if he remains here a moment longer, he will cut the half-breed down again.
“Only once can Tenseiga restore one to life,” he tells her as he departs. “Remember this when saying your farewells.”
With him he carries the burden of their shared memories. But this decision he leaves for her to bear.
The next time the half-breed crosses her path, no allowances will be made.
As the screen door slides shut behind him, one of the servant women approaches from the shadows. His gaze rests on her briefly before he turns and walks away.
She follows.
“Sesshoumaru-sama,” she says to him, her voice as demure as her footsteps, “I would have written to you if I could. You must believe me.”
Why she insists upon this is beyond him. He does not even know her name.
As he crosses into the courtyard, she follows him still. Around him, the other humans mill about, awaiting his instruction.
Ignoring them all, he raises his eyes to the sky.
The night wind lashes through his hair. A skein of cloud draws over the face of the moon, in dismissal.
His claws flex at his side.
“Kagome-sama went with the thief willingly, my lord,” the servant woman accuses, her voice rising. “She meant to betray you—I am sure of it.”
He looks back at her. Her cheeks are flushed with passion, yet she is as dull as any other human.
She is nothing. They are all nothing.
Worms beneath his heel.
“She is blameless in this,” he says to her, stepping closer. “But you are not.”
She quails. “Please, my lord, have mercy…”
The corner of his lip rises as his hand strikes out, seizing her by the neck. Her flesh yields like tallow beneath his grasp.
“Mercy,” he seethes as the woman gasps for air, her muddy eyes wide with fright.
Casting her aside, he turns toward the others, a ribbon of brilliant green youki spooling from his claws. Like insects, they hover around him still, mesmerized by the sight.
“I have been merciful enough.”
Ten fall beneath the first crack of his whip. As the others break and run, his reach extends, slashing through the rest in a series of arcing, caustic blows.
Smoke billows from the severed corpses, steams from the wet hot spill of viscera and blood. He tilts back his head and breathes in deeply, invigorated by the scent.
The clouds part, and the moon reveals.
When his gaze lowers, she is standing before him once again.
Pale light wreathes around her, silvers the carnage at her feet. Her eyes glisten toward him in dismay.
In deference.
Desire coils low within him.
“Come,” he commands her. “It is time for us to leave this place.”
She falls into step behind him, her wordless obedience pleasing him even more. Together they disappear into the trees.
Yet they are not alone. The stench of the half-breed clings to her, and chafes at him. He will suffer it no longer.
He stops beside a stream.
She tenses when his his arms encircle her, unknotting the obi at her waist. The silk slides from her shoulders, his palm smoothing along the edge of her jaw. As his lips descend to cover her own, she turns her face away.
He stills.
Like his mercy, his patience has been spent.
She flinches as he pins her to the bank below, his weight settling at her hips.
Her open eyes stare past him, forgetting him again. Fisted in her hair, his hand steers her back.
“Look at me,” he orders, his other hand closing around her throat. “Look to whom you belong.”
She looks at him, and he sees, the moment before her consciousness fades, that she has remembered him at last.
Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi