Inuyasha characters do not belong to me but to Takahashi Rumiko.
The song titles used as prompts for this twoshot also do not belong to me but their respective artists.
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Valentine’s Day Drabble/Drawble Night: February 13, 2012
Theme: Unrequited Love
Word Count: 200 words each
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Prompt 1: Spider Lily
Moonlight from the waning crescent weakly lit the night, barely penetrating the dark gloom of the night. He walked with sure steps through the mist, past the numberless, nameless headstones of the cemetery. Red spider lilies littered the grounds as withered leaves crunched under his weight, breaking the stillness of the otherwise flawlessly silent darkness. His long, argent hair flowed freely behind him, causing his already pale complexion to appear ashen when contrasted with his entirely black-clothed ensemble. His ancestral markings, splashed boldly across his face, were relics of a long forgotten past, the waning moon emblazoned on his forehead reflecting the decline of his kind as time marched forwards.
He finally paused in his wandering, stopping before an altogether unremarkable tombstone. Time had worn the engravings away entirely; the grey granite was smooth and polished from centuries of exposure to the elements. His long fingers reached out to touch the cold stone, tracing with perfect precision the place where an inscription had once been carved.
Nishimura Kagome
Beloved daughter, sister, and wife
May she forever live on in our hearts
Tonight marked five centuries since her passing.
“Kagome,” he whispered, her name all but a sigh, “I miss you.”
Prompt 2: “Forever Yours” – Nightwish
How long he knelt before the grave of his wife, he had no idea. His legs had long since gone numb and the coolness of the autumn night had left him shivering, yet he remained, a part of his deadened heart warmed by the closest approximation he got to being within her proximity. He knew intellectually that her body had long decomposed—she had not been mummified, and the humid climate of Japan was not at all conducive to the desiccation techniques the ancient Egyptians had so favored. It was impossible for her body to have remained after five centuries. He doubted a single fiber of her persisted beneath the soil. Yet he could not help but be drawn back here, year after year, to bask in her presence.
Snippets of a song, written by a band while she had still been alive, filtered through his brain. It feebly expressed what he felt, the words describing a topical, singular ripple that barely touched the vast depths of the ocean that was his love for his wife.
“No love left in me,
No eyes to see the heaven beside me,
My time is yet to come,
So I’ll be forever yours.”
Prompt 3: "Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." – Robert Frost
Rational thought stridently dictated that he was being entirely nonsensical and that his irrational idea that part of her persisted here was utter rubbish, but emotion silenced reason with the raw, aching yearning he felt daily for her, the intensity of which had not abated in the least since she had left him in this realm. The feeling was not unlike a quote he had once read by the American poet Robert Frost: “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
How true, he thought with cynicism and bitterness. I’ve loved and lost, and I’ve no doubt I’ll never love again.
His eyes slid shut, and he imagined that she was there with him. If he thought hard enough, he could nearly fool himself into thinking he could hear her silvery laughter. The cool brush of the wind became a substitute for her hands, and the scent on the wind—
His eyes snapped open. The scent the breeze carried to him was undeniably hers, that unique mixture of honey and vanilla and all the other things that were oh-so-Kagome. His senses, unused for so long because he was the absolute last surviving youkai, flared to life with a vengeance.
Prompt 4: Obsession
She stood not ten feet away—a pallid imitation of herself shrouded in the pale midnight mists. It was as if someone had attempted to bleach her of all color and opacity, and had nearly succeeded. As it was, he could see the landscape of grass and tombstones through her as though he saw it through white gauzy fabric. His amber eyes drank in her form like a man a hair’s width from dying from thirst; he could not tear his eyes away from her, and he had no inclination to do so. She was his love, his obsession, his everything. He stood, wobbling as the sensation of pins and needles attacked his disobedient legs and, licking his suddenly dry lips, he breathed, “Kagome?”
Her grey eyes creased gently with her radiant smile. “Sesshoumaru,” she replied in a croon that fell so sweetly on his ears a shiver rippled violently across his body from the sheer pleasure at hearing her voice again in five hundred years. He hesitantly picked his way towards her, reaching a hand out to grasp hers that hung against her side. He barely repressed a howl of unmitigated grief when his hand slid right through hers.
Prompt 5: “Every Breath You Take” – The Police
Her slate eyes darkened at his expression of utter misery. “Sess,” she whispered, unable to stand the sight of her love in such pain. She reached out with translucent fingers, and both gasped when her questing hand solidly connected with his chest. She gave a shuddering exhalation, barely able to comprehend that for whatever reason, she could touch him but not the other way around. The world hung in suspense for an infinite moment; then as if by unspoken agreement, they collapsed towards each other, arms twining tightly around each other’s form. They held each other close, relishing the feel of each other—his warmth, her coolness.
He hummed softly, mournfully.
“Every breath you take,
Every move you make,
Every bond you break,
Every step you take,
I’ll be watching you.”
She chuckled, her laugh heavy with nostalgia. “It was such a creepy song,” she said. “It was your favorite, you stalker.” He made a low, rumbling noise of protest, and she savored the sensation of warmth and comfort that he exuded. “I can hear your heartbeat,” she commented.
“I can’t hear yours,” was his quiet rejoinder.
She pulled away just far enough to look into his grieving, melancholy eyes.
Prompt 6: "Love that is not madness is not love." – Pedro Calderon de la Barca
“Sesshoumaru,” she said, gently pressing a hand to each of his magenta-striped cheeks, “I may no longer have a heart that physically beats, but I still have a heart that feels, and I know with absolute certainty that my love for you has not waned and never will.” Her frank honesty glittered brightly in her eyes. “I love you, Sesshoumaru. I will love you for the rest of time.”
Deeply touched, he leaned down to plant a longing, hungry, yet chaste kiss on her cool lips. “Kagome,” he murmured. “‘Love that is not madness is not love.’ If that were true, then I have been clinically insane since the day you we first became tentative friends. Your kindness and ability to forgive knows no bounds, and were it not for those traits, I would have never found the soul mate I found in you. You were my light, my love, my world, Kagome. It has been absolute torture living without you. And yet I do, knowing that it was your dying wish that I live. But it is a life half lived, for you were not here by my side. How could you have asked that of me?” he pleaded.
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End Part I