Angelus

Author note:
Please read and review. I would really like to know your opinions about this story.

Chapter 5

Sesshomaru did not speak to her that evening, or the day after. Even though she could clearly feel he was totally concentrating his attention to her being, he was excellent at hiding it and barely even looked her way. When she was looking, at least. He ignored her superbly and Kitana gladly returned the favour, not really knowing what attitude to adopt toward him.

Her body was still mending itself from the intense fight against the army of the red-eyed sorceress. The armour that she formed out of her clothes had prevented any fang or claw to rip her skin open, but the impacts of the blows hurt her badly. Broken ribs had been repaired in no time, but her inner organs were tender and needed more time to regain their natural functions. Her disgusting meal did nothing to help either, as she had to fight against vomiting for most of the first night and still got some bouts of nausea now and then. Even the strain she put on her muscles wasn’t yet healed and all she wanted to do at that point was to curl up in a faraway corner under the rocky ceiling and disappear, engulfed in the pain that plagued her body and soul.

It was not something that the young child would let happen, though. Their mind to mind contact created when Kitana helped the girl to heal have had side effects, the most prevalent being the blind trust and attachment of the small Rin for her, a deadly predator.

“Kitana-sama, how can you stay attached to the ceiling? Are you like a fly? Flies can walk upside down you know, just like you! But you have no wings, so you are not a fly. Maybe a frog? Rin saw a frog once sleeping under a leaf, and Jaken-sama said that it had second-cups under its toes. Do you have cups under your toes? I wonder if Jaken-sama has cups under his toes too, he looks just like a toad, we should try and stick him on the ceiling beside you.”

Kitana couldn’t help but smile at the child’s naivety and inquisitive personality. She uncurled her body and descended to the ground, where she sat cross-legged before the standing child. An intense golden gaze fell upon her at that moment. So, she thought, that is what it takes to make him acknowledge my presence.

“Can I hug you now Kitana-sama? Are your wounds healed?”

Slowly shaking her head, she tried not to deceive the young girl while not provoking the ire of her lord. He refused to kill her, even if she begged and coaxed him to, but he was preparing something and would surely not hesitate to hurt her if he felt that she was a threat to this child. She was in enough pain as it was.

“No Rin, I’m afraid it’s better if you don’t touch me. With my fangs and claws and spikes I could hurt you very easily.”

“Oh but you wouldn’t, would you Kitana-sama? Rin wants to thank you.”

With a smile, the black creature tried to reassure the child.

“You thanked me already Rin, don’t worry about that.”

“Oh no, not for saving me. Rin wanted to thank you for staying with us. It will be much more fun travelling with you around to play in the water, master Jaken never plays in the water. Do you think it means he is not a toad after all? Toads like water, and mud, and swamps, and I don’t think master Jaken does.”

She spent the rest of the afternoon resting there, listening to the joyous endless chatter of the child. It was highly interesting for her to watch the interactions of the girl with the other members of their group. The contrast between her sunny, lively disposition and the silent contained violence of the lord or the bad-mouthed, sour toad was striking and Kitana couldn’t help wondering why this child was amongst them. She shared none of the features of Sesshomaru so she discarded any familial bonds right away. Rin was seemingly in adoration before the tall alabaster creature, for a reason she couldn’t fathom, and it made it all more interesting.

She took a nap while the group, or rather the kappa and the girl, ate a lunch as the sun was setting. The heat of the day quickly dissipated, replaced by the camp fire crackling warmth. She woke up about midnight, stirred awake by a change in the general atmosphere. A subtle change that she couldn’t really pinpoint, but the feeling of oppression that she sensed all day long dimmed somewhat and it was enough to make her breathe with more ease.

Accompanying the solitude of the night came back her darker thoughts. The gentle and harmless chatter of the child and her light sleep had pushed them away, bringing a dim sunlight to her universe bathed in twilight, but now it was back full force. Sighing, Kitana rose to her feet and exited the shelter, hoping that the crisp air of the night would help her to feel better.

It was then, on the second night after the hunt that he came to her. For an hour or so she had been laying on her back atop the rocky roof of the camp, arms crossed behind her head so her crest pushing on the ground wouldn’t bring discomfort to her. She was there, looking at the night sky, when he approached her slowly and sat upon a rock, within arm’s reach of her. He took some time to inspect the sky with her, as if a greater truth was hidden beyond the stars. Minutes passed, then half an hour, before he broke the silence.

“Kitana”, he said, waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. He counted up to ten before her head turned his way and her eyes caught his. Eyes that seemed filled with sadness, even to an impervious demon lord, but also with defiance. She knew her heavy-handed display with the deer was still fresh in his mind and that he was in a turmoil over it, never freeing her from his gaze but never talking to her either. She hated her very nature at the moment, ashamed of herself as she had rarely been before, and she did not really know why. After all, she had nothing to prove to him. It had taken her years to accept what she was, to live with this reality without burdening herself with guilty feelings, and it was not a pompous demon lord living in caves in a barbaric place who would put this hardly-gained acceptance back in question again. Or would he?

He continued with what he had to say, obviously trying not to confront her openly. She couldn’t understand why, but to him it was clear. If he angered her, she would close up to him and it was not the good time for that attitude.

“You are not youkai”. It was a fact, not a question. She knew it, and she breathed deeply before answering. Maybe he deserved the truth, or a watered down version at least.

“I am not”.

The great dog youkai took his time. She was no more talkative about herself than earlier, but this time he would hope for an opening. He had been kind to her, in his own way, by trying to feed her and letting her live after her dirty slaughtering of the deer, and he wished that she would not be impolite enough to disregard that fact. She was in his debt, deeply.

He had spent the previous night and the following day wondering about her. He was not one to be easily disturbed from his ways, his quest for power and his hunt for Naraku being his foremost priorities, but on the other hand he was in no hurry and had all the time in the world to accomplish his destiny. That fact was clear to him, and from times to times bouts of boredom washed over him. His curiosity had been awakened by the newcomer as much, if not more than his wariness. Too many questions had been stirred in the last few days to be left unanswered by a rash death sentence, and this time was as good as any other to investigate her. He needed to know more about her, so he could decide how to judge her, what to do with her. If she was truly the monster he thought, then his honour wouldn’t be sullied if he killed her himself. And if she wasn’t, maybe she could be put to a use rather than hastily discarded. Contrarily to his father and his half-brother, he was not one to blindly go into battle without knowing his enemy. He was a coldly calculating being, and the gears in his mind had been turning at full speed for a few days now. He decided to give her a chance to answer him.

“What, exactly, are you?”

His gaze never faltered from her prone form as she gathered her thoughts. It seemed painful for her to share more about her, but he would tolerate no more secrets, no more deceit.

Sighing deeply, she sat up, straightened her back and turn to meet his eyes.

“I am an... experiment gone wrong. I ended up here by accident, in a misguided attempt at fleeing from what ailed me. And now, I cannot choose another path, for all the doors closed behind me. And so I am lost, Angelus.”

Her voice was almost too low to be heard, her plea for understanding almost too subtle to be recognized for what it was, but somehow he did. He heard her, and he wanted to hear more. Nodding, he encouraged her to continue. Her eyes left his golden gaze to look far in the horizon, haunted by things they saw faraway from there.

“I come from a world beyond understanding, a world your imagination could simply not conceive. A forsaken world. In this place, powerful beings are fighting terrible wars to obtain even more power. Amongst them, a small group decided that a certain species of bestial monsters, called the Aliens, would constitute the perfect weapon to terrorize their enemies and bring them final victory.”

His eyes reduced to slits at her blatant insult of his intelligence, he reigned in his temper. The story was apparently difficult for her to recall, and no threats from him would arrange the situation. He was beginning to understand the way her mind worked, and forcing her to do something did not appear to be the best way to go.

“Go on.”

With circumspection, Kitana searched the correct words and the way to present them. It had been so long since she told this story to another being that it somehow felt unreal to her, as in a fantasy, and she was far from sure if it was a good decision to share it with him. It was so unclear if this man was an enemy, a danger, or something else, she was unsure of the correct attitude to adopt towards him. She wanted to hate him for refusing her plea for a peaceful death, for not helping when she was assaulted by the horrifying mob of strange creatures, for pushing her to eat disgusting stuff and then be the witness of her humiliation. She wanted to hate him, but she also had a deep need for companionship and acceptance. Weighting the possible consequences of her honesty, she found out that she didn’t care after all. If the last thing she did before dying was to share her story, even with an enemy, then be it.

Her back straightened with her new resolve and her gaze left the faraway star to fall back upon the face of her unlikely companion. For the first time since she met him, she took the time to attentively detail his person. The youkai was almost ethereal, with his long shiny silver hairs that reflected the moonlight in a soft halo. The stripes upon his cheeks and the tint on his eyelids, although of a colour that could be qualified of feminine, brought out the angular yet soft set of his cheeks, and the result was a deep and strong sense of masculinity. His nose and ears had beautiful proportions, like they were carved by a master sculptor used to nothing but perfection, and his pale complexion added the final touch to the picture of a godly being, far away from earthly preoccupations. The eyes, though, with the gold shimmering of the irises and the slit of the pupils that reminded her strangely of her own dark yellow eyes, were what brought all this work of art to life. They were the only thing about him that betrayed his inner self, even though he was a master at schooling his expressions. She dived into these eyes, shattering the barriers that so often stopped her from sharing the story of her origins.

“They experimented, trying to obtain the perfect predator and gain control over it. In the process they soon realized that these beasts they bred were too savage to be tamed, too resilient to be broken. But giving up was not a possibility for them, the word failure was not a part of their vocabulary. They played games even gods shouldn’t play, trying to crossbreed their filthy beasts with more intelligent, manageable beings. And thus I was born, out of their desire to annihilate whoever dared to face them.”

Her breathing was slow and deep, the air of the night playing on her skin, soothing her.

“In the beginnings they considered me a failure. Even though I possessed all the physical abilities of the Aliens allied with a mind intelligent enough to be trained, they could not replicate me. They wanted an army, and they obtained a lone soldier. More than that, I showed no desire to fight or to destroy anything, except when… I… fed, which was a rare occurrence. As a child I was fascinated with beauty and life, and when they showed me their monsters I was terrified. However, as I grew up they quickly discovered that there was a link between me and their colony of Aliens. I could feel their presence, sense their outrage at being imprisoned, and taste their hunger for blood and revenge. I could direct it at whatever I wanted, for those creatures obeyed my very thoughts, revered my very presence. And my creators noticed it.

They started to use me in their experiments, breaking me, training me in stealth and close-combat techniques so I could eventually accompany a group of monsters in a sort of commando unit from hell. Of course I rebelled, but they quickly silenced me. So I did their dirty work, becoming a skilled assassin, leader of a growing group of freaks capable to wipe away a nation.”
She was brought back to the present by a wave of ire and disbelief. Sesshomaru was still looking at her, his bland mask of indifference hiding perfectly his reaction to her words. But to one who could sense emotions, he was as easy to read as an open book.

“How could they enslave you and force you to act against your will?”

Taking her time, Kitana weighted her options. The taiyoukai had obviously started to consider her a creature more powerful than he first thought, and as far as she could tell it was probably good. But now he wouldn’t be fooled by untruths and omissions. One couldn’t control someone like her by using regular means and he knew it. Slowly, she reached for her neck band. She touched the black jewel in the center and the band disappeared, as if absorbed by the central jewel.

Her neck under the collar was scarred with deep gashes, an inch wide and half an inch deep. One of Sesshomaru’s brows flew up in his bangs.

“They put a collar on me when I was still much weaker than them. The… powers you witnessed grew only after I escaped from them, but my quickly developing physical abilities told them that I would be too much for them to handle safely in a near future. They took no chance and collared me when I was still young and trusting. This collar had the power to discharge shocks similar to thunderbolts. It was not strong enough to kill me, but the pain was intense. If I tried to remove it, the shocks would send me into seizures and unconsciousness. My masters could activate it at will when they were close to me, or if I attacked them.”

Sesshomaru thought about a similar collar that he knew of, a collar that hung around his half-brother’s neck. Its power was too weak to subjugate him, a noble and great taiyoukai, but he almost shuddered at the idea of the downward pull being replaced by a thunder shock. A shock strong enough to permanently scar a creature who took less than two days to heal from a deep abdominal wound. Yes, as much as he loathed admitting it, such a device may have the potential to subdue him as well. He nodded, signalling her to continue.

Kitana was having great difficulties with the rest of her story. She never told anyone that part of her life, and it hurt so much to remember these details that she almost decided not to. But the understanding she felt coming from Sesshomaru a moment ago pulled the words out of her mouth in an unstoppable flow.

“I rebelled one time, despite the collar, as you can see from the scars”, she said replacing her golden ornament. “From that moment their trust in me was highly reduced and as I was healing from the blasts, they decided to start again with their regular training program. My masters employed, or should I say abducted, numerous animal trainers, the best they could find. Their work was going nowhere, except from one trainer who managed to obtain results with the creatures using a mix of carefully weighted rewards and punishments. When I finally awakened, months later, I met with this promising trainer as my masters wanted me to test the technique. I knew from the start that once the security walls were removed the Aliens would forget all their training and kill the trainer, along with anybody stupid enough to be in the vicinity, but I decided to play their game and did not tell them the truth. The trainer and I quickly became friends, and soon something else grew between us. We became lovers.”

She paused, as if trying to assemble her thoughts. A great sadness had fallen heavily upon her shoulders.

“I learned that my love was not really an animal trainer, but a spy doubled with an assassin, sent to gather information on what was going on in the facility. The bestial species from which I am issued is a universal taboo, it is highly forbidden to breed or hide them. Governing authorities had noticed some signs that worried them about the place, and they sent a spy to investigate. However, once employed by this group, one would stay there forever, or leave dead. My beloved was as trapped as I was.

We managed to find a way to escape the place. My love was well-versed in the type of restraint they used on me, and soon my collar was neutralized. I then used my control over the beasts to create a diversion so we could flee from the place.”

“A diversion?”

She met his amber eyes and nodded.

“You have seen the acid that flows under my skin. This trait comes from the Aliens, they are all like that. I pushed them to attack one of their own kind. It was against their very instincts but they obeyed me as blindly as they usually did. The acid ate at the walls and the floor of their prison, freeing them, and soon they were wreaking havoc in the entire place. While we both escaped and destroyed every possible issue they may have used, my masters were killed, or used to produce more monsters, and –“

“Explain yourself. Produce more monsters?” he asked.

Kitana immediately regretted saying those words; they just slipped before she realized what she had done. She had not intended to tell him about the way her kind bred.

“Well… The… Aliens live in large colonies. They are all sterile females, from different casts: soldiers, builders, caretakers. They can’t breed; they are all born from one fertile female called the queen.”

“Like ants. And termites” he added. She looked puzzled, but then nodded.

“If you say so. The Alien queen lays thousands of eggs, but what is inside the eggs will not become an adult. It is merely a vessel, a creature born to carry the true egg holding the future adult. When this thing feels the presence of a living creature nearby that could serve as a host, it then crawls out of the queen’s egg and attach itself to the chosen host. The true egg is laid inside the host, and the embryo feeds out of it. When ready to be born, the new Alien will burst the chest of its host from the inside, killing it. These monsters are a parasitic species, the worst kind of parasites.”

Sesshomaru was not bothered by her story as much as she anticipated. No weak hatchling could attach itself to him and lay an egg inside him, that was simply ridiculous. Humans, on the other hand, would easily fall prey to such a predatory species. Nodding again, he signalled that he was ready for the rest of her story. His opinion of her was slowly morphing into something new, far from the disgust he felt on the day of the hunt, but he still did not know what to do with these new facts.

“So with all this commotion we managed to escape unscathed. We spent the next ten years together. I was hell-bent to find and destroy every being that had a part to play in this experiment. Our future together was doomed before it even started, because of my damned obsession with revenge. We soon became outlaws, as the ones we slaughtered were often highly-positioned in the government or in well-respected businesses. One day we got caught by our enemies, and my love was… killed… by… them.”
It was becoming highly difficult to continue from now on.

“To make a long story short, I escaped alone, and while running away I arrived here. I tried to go on, helped by some kind people, I learned your language and some of your customs, but the desire to live was not burning in me anymore. I tried to put an end to my life but I discovered I couldn’t do it. I stopped feeding myself and became weak, and one day when I could not live with my memories anymore I crawled inside a cave, going as deep as I could, and I lost consciousness. I rarely had dreams, of some people coming close to me in my sleep, I knew my soul was put in contact with them somehow, but I did not want to awaken for that. Then your ward touched my soul, shared her memories with me, her intent to live. And she left, letting me fall back into slumber. When I was attacked, it was the first time I came back to reality after all this. I feel as if everything happened a week ago, as if I just… lost… my beloved. And I don’t know if I truly want to leave all that past behind me and move forward. I don’t have any reasons to. I am not like Rin.”

The moon was now shining brightly at the horizon. The night had come to the point were nocturnal creatures fell silent, preparing themselves for the day to come, and the diurnal insects and animals were not yet awakening. The silence was perfect, only broken once in a while by a light breeze meeting with playful foliage.

“Your story is… unusual, to say the least. But do you think This Sesshomaru is a fool?”

His hardened gaze set upon her, he waited for the answer. She merely sat there, confused by the sudden and violent change in his mood, so he continued.

“I am an old creature by human standards. I know of many things, things happening in foreign lands far away from here. I met with weird creatures over the centuries. Some of them told This Sesshomaru about even weirder beings living deep down the oceans or never leaving the shelter of underground territories. But not once I heard about a species such as the one you described. Never have I heard of this parasite, of this ordeal happening centuries ago amongst the higher circles of society when you slaughtered your once masters with your partner. If what you said were true, then words would have spread and your story would be already known to This Sesshomaru.”

He had been a fool for listening to her. The accents of truth in her voice were only a reflect of her own dishonesty, a foretaste of the betrayal that was to come if he kept her close to his group. His mind was set, and as he was beginning to rise over her, his hand on Tokijin’s handle, her whispers stopped him.

“That’s because… it happened far away from here. Far away from your planet itself. You see, Sesshomaru, I have been born at inconceivable distances from your homeland. I come from amongst the stars, and from the stars I have fallen.”

Saying the great lord was astonished was not exaggerating. Her already unbelievable story was now taking another twist, even more ridiculous. Even more surprising was that she seemed to believe every word she said, as if she was not even aware that she was describing a fantasy. For her, it was no lie but the truth that she was telling. Seven centuries spent in a cocoon had probably damaged her mind irreversibly. Pitiful. Decided to put an end to her misery, he was cut short by her voice.

“I know it must sound terribly stupid for someone as powerful as you are to believe that there are other worlds, let alone other forms of life, out there. Please listen to what I have to say before judging me. In reality, your world is not unique. From where I come from, we know that worlds are only spherical rocks that float in a cold, void space, revolving around a sun. All these stars that we see in the night sky are suns similar to yours, but so far away from here that their heat cannot reach us. Around them are other worlds, most of them frozen and sterile, but once in a while a world lucky enough to be coated with air and heated by a sun, does harbour life.”

She wanted him to believe her, but she really did not know how to make it sound true. Contact with primitive worlds was strictly prohibited and only advanced worlds were approached by the governing authorities of the universe. The ones who made the contact were highly trained in diplomacy and they surely had much better ways to explain the universe that she ever would. But she had to try.
Sesshomaru was puzzled. Some of the things she said were familiar to him. As a taiyoukai of great power, he had tried to fly to the moon and never managed to reach it. As he elevated in the sky, the iciness of the atmosphere and the lack of air had always put a stop to his explorations. There was also the fact that very few knew that the earth was in reality round, and not flat as was the popular human belief. He had seen it for himself: seen from high up the horizon is curved. His own father, in his youth, had travelled around the world in a straight line and ended up back in their land. He even heard of some advanced human theories that were newly developed and the most recent one, by a westerner called Copernicus if he remembered well, was professing exactly what Kitana was talking about. She did not seem to be capable of flight, and she surely hadn’t been around long enough to hear the latest human theories, so he was left to believe that she was speaking the truth. A disturbing truth, but true nonetheless.

“Go on.”

Relieved, Kitana continued.

“Multiple species inhabit planets scattered across space, and some of them met and formed a central governing body, with laws that controlled wars and trade. I was born on a ship that sailed from world to world, and when I fled I did it on a similar ship. I crashed it in the ocean near the coast of your land”.

“How come you are the first being from those outer worlds that I meet in all my life?”

She felt disbelief, but also a genuine interest coming from him.

“Do not take it wrongly, but your world is considered too primitive to be contacted. It is forbidden to come here, at all cost. When I fled I didn’t care where I would end up. I used a diversion so my enemies would have a hard time following me, and if they did they simply couldn’t come here without facing death penalty. They probably assumed I died in the crash and they moved on.”

Once again they fell in a companionable silence. Kitana was nervous about what he would think of her revelations, but she felt nothing coming from him that put her in danger. She waited for him to break the silence.

“Are your wounds healing well?”

Surprised, she answered.

“Well, I get better every day. It does not hurt as much as it used to.”

He nodded and added “Then your training will start tomorrow. Take some rest.”

He rose and left her to her solitude.