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unlockthelore · 4 years

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Experience the Unknown

A mother-to-be asks for the wisdom of a mother fully realized and finds that experience is the best teacher. From the series Affections Touching Across Time on Ao3, and part of the Talking To The Moon fic. For more updates, follow the affections touching across time tag on this blog. For more of this fic, follow the talking to the moon tag.

To Rin’s relief, Inukimi had enough foresight to have another plate delivered outside of the study. Pretense cast aside in favor of near ravenous hunger pinking Rin’s ears when she noticed the demoness staring at her amusedly. She was vaguely aware of the sight she made. Cheeks stuffed with food, a dribble slipping down her chin wiped away with the crook of a finger, and wide-eyed at being caught. Inukimi’s laughter was quiet but loud in the study’s silence and Rin’s face burned as she pawed at her mouth in an effort to hide the mess, swallowing a mouthful thickly.

“So,” Inukimi began. A short, light chuckle hidden behind the drape of her sleeve when Rin glanced in her direction. One claw tapped at the corner of her lips and Rin swiped at her own. “Tell me what you’ve been feeling.”

For a brief, almost painfully long moment, Rin considered a half-truth but Inukimi’s knowledge was invaluable and for all her aloofness — the demoness proved to be family thoroughly. Wracking her brain for the last few weeks of sickness swallowed with mint leaves and spring water, hunger tempered by requesting to cook her own food to the cooks’ confusion, and constant glimpses into mirrors at her body’s shape. Hands resting against the flat of her stomach to her navel’s dip in wonder of what it would be when she showed. Excitement joined with fear distracting her from the presence at her back.

Silver hair slipping over her shoulder as lips pecked at the back of her neck, sending shivers down her spine just as a yelp rose up her throat. Golden eyes met her own in the mirror’s reflection and the fear is assuaged temporarily. Sesshomaru asked her what was wrong every time he caught her standing before the mirror undressed. Misunderstanding her half-hearted excuses for a lack of confidence in her body, and far too eager to show how he disagreed.

“Perhaps you can keep the thoughts of your moments together for another time, little bird.”

Rin lurched out of her thoughts to find Inukimi staring at her amusedly, one brow raised and her hands resting in her lap all too politely for the smugness radiating from her.

“H—“ Rin started, then clamped her mouth shut. If she asked her how she knew then that would be acceptance but if she said nothing, that wouldn’t be a firm denial. Groaning inwardly, she shoved thoughts of Sesshomaru aside and hoped they wouldn’t find home with the guiltier ones. After a short while of scanning her fingertips, counting and mulling it over, Rin murmured. “Hunger…”

Inukimi set the empty plate aside the others and tapped her claws against one of the scroll’s knobs. “In appetite or…” Her voice trailed off, gaze flicked to the doorway and Rin bristled.

“Mother!”

“I only tease, little bird. Now go on. Tell me something I’m not entirely aware of.”

Rin wanted to protest there was little she didn’t know of but cheekiness wouldn’t help her in this situation. Thinking back to a strategy meeting some few nights ago, her brows furrowed. “Perhaps a little aggression…”

“Little?” Inukimi scoffed, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “That isn’t what General Harikawa would say.”

Rin breathed heavily, scrunching her nose and turning her head aside to glare out the window. Even the mention of the craggy-faced inu yōkai was enough to make her skin want to crawl.

“He would object to the sun rising in the east if it would spite me.” She flicked her hair behind her shoulder with a sharp twist of her head, glancing out the corner of her eye to Inukimi.

The demoness seemed not only amused but curious. She studied her for a moment with narrowed golden eyes. Then, she smiled. “You are starting to behave like Sesshomaru.”

Before Rin could respond, Inukimi reached out to cup her jaw and tip her head one way then the other. The touch was gentle but her eyes were calculating in their depths as if she was searching for something Rin could not yet see.

“Perhaps it’s the prolonged explosure,” she murmured thoughtfully, seeming to speak more to herself than Rin much to her chagrin. “He has been kinder since you both wed. Mm, no. Even before then. He would never have greeted me in my palace with such kindness.”

She drew her hand away and Rin lowered her head. Thoughts turning back to the day she’d first met the demoness, Sesshomaru’s reaction to her didn’t seem warm in the slightest. At least now how Rin would have greeted her own mother if she were still living. But she was aware of the difference in their relationship and their stilted ways of showing affection. That Sesshomaru recognized her as his mother spoke volumes in itself. Had he not before? Was there a period in their relationship where they were so at odds that he distanced himself from her? Could it have been her doing or his own? A misunderstanding?

“Breathe, Rin.”

A muted touch, warm and grounding, dragged Rin back into her body. Someone was breathing — short and uneven — and it took her a painfully long moment to realize that it was her. Evening her breaths to the slow counts of Kaede’s voice within the reaches of her mind, she sighed longingly and tucked herself closer to Inukimi’s side. Head pillowed against the demoness’ shoulder, fur soft against her cheek, Rin felt much younger than what she was especially when Inukimi’s fingers glided through her hair.

“I’ve read almost every account of a hanyō’s birth, which isn’t much, but…”

“You have no clue of what it will be to experience your own.”

Rin sighed, nuzzling her face against the fur lining of Inukimi’s cloak, her eyes shutting tight. “Or what mother I will be.”

They both lapsed into silence. Slender fingers slipped through Rin’s hair with ease, patting down the mused strands with each stride then returning to the top of her head to begin anew. Upset began to even out. Rin couldn’t tell if Inukimi thought little of her for being this concerned, or if she simply was allowing her to vent her frustrations. Her mother-in-law was incredibly difficult to gather a reading on, and wonderfully adept at dodging questions with relative ease. Her displeasure was felt in small potent doses and Rin hardly wanted to experience it, especially now when she needed her most. Although her thoughts were admittedly furtherest from Inukimi, and even the few souls wandering about the palace. Her mind lingering to the east near a quiet village that’d grown into an outpost in the recent years.

“When I lived with Lady Kaede, I helped with so many births. Some mothers took to their children quickly but others grew to hate or despise them…”

She could still see the faces, young as her own, but weary and despondent. Their souls aged beyond their body’s youth. It hurt her heart to see their child’s cries cause them to shiver. And when their husbands came to bring them home, they begged her and Kaede to allow them to stay for a few days longer. Some of the girls returned home, but others disappeared off into the night, with only the belongings brought to them for their comfort.

“Too many girls whispered to me that they felt they weren’t ready. They couldn’t mother a child, they had barely lived, and yet… it was expected….”

Something bitter touched her lips at the thought. Kaede’s reassurances that she would never have to marry unless she wanted held true, but the priestess kept her busy, kept her curious, kept her thinking. An unwed woman — beautiful, opinionated, and strong — would be the envy of her peers and a target for men. Whether Rin believed the world to be better than that or not, her experiences showed that a person’s nature had a duality, and not all sides were benevolent. Kaede wanted her to stand on her own two feet, live proudly the way she chose, but also safely.

And Rin couldn’t thank her enough for the lessons she taught.

Rin sighed. “I was fortunate to have a different life, to live as I wanted, but I’ve always had a desire for adventure and to see the world with my own eyes. Will that change once they’re born or will I—”

She cut off abruptly, the unspoken words hovering in the air where they evaporated into vapors, choking her with their essence. Laying her hand on her stomach, Rin curled her fingers in her obi and bid the children within her to forgive her for what she might have said. She clutched her obi tightly, twisting it until the fabric was fit to tear. Clawed fingers brushing against her knuckles then settling over the back of her hand, delicately easing it from her obi.

“That you can’t bring yourself to say it conveys more than you know.”

Rin pursed her lips and lowered her eyes to the stack of bowls. She knew being unable to say the words she’d been holding back was one thing. Guilt at having thought them were another. No one deserved to be thought of that way and no amount of fear would justify it.

“Regardless of what anyone may claim, Sesshomaru was not born for the sake of an heir.”

The sudden confession drew Rin from her hiding place. She looked up at Inukimi confused at the abrupt display of honesty but the demoness was as unfazed as ever.

“I loved Tōga with all that I am,” she said wistfully, glancing toward the scrolls. “And Sesshomaru was not what either of us planned, but when I sent a missive telling him I was with child — he was at my side by the next moon.”

She chuckled softly and Rin couldn’t help but smile. Her readings of the late daiyōkai painted him as quite the character. He reminded her of Inuyasha with Sesshomaru’s grace, but there were moments where he was as stately as he could be childish. And he loved Inukimi. His glowing accounts of her from her ruthlessness to her quiet affections were in detail, and Rin couldn’t bare to read it all if she wanted to look her mother-in-law in the eye.

She began to gather the scrolls, setting them inside of the polished lacquered box adorned with the Inu no Taishō’s symbol. Inukimi handing her few when she couldn’t hold them all within her arms.

“Conquests took him from me so often, but he returned time and time again, laid with me as if we were first wed and spoke to our son so he would always remember his father’s voice.”

WIth rapt attention, Rin tried to summon the image but no painting or tale spun from Myoga and Totōsai’s ramblings could do Tōga justice. Instead, she thought fondly on Sesshomaru. She hardly expected him to be the doting type but to speak to his daughters before they were born. Let them hear their father’s voice and know they were loved. She blinked away her awe and smiled at Inukimi, who stared wistfully out the opened window.

“When Sesshomaru was born, I expected the love Tōga felt to fade, yet it only grew stronger…”

Rin’s smile faltered slowly. Inu yōkai were difficult in regards to kin. Territory, pride, strength, duty, loyalty — it was all so important to them that it seemed seemed into their very being. That Tōga loved Sesshomaru so fiercely was strange in itself by their standards. Few of the journals she read depicted an inu yōkai increasingly hostile toward its young, especially the men toward their sons. If a son were to grow and overthrow their father then allowing them to reach adulthood would be foolish. No matter the need for an heir, to dwindle and die by one’s emotion was a fool’s death.

“I expected to find myself weary of being tethered to this helpless and needy being, eventually finding him to be a burden, and kill him when it suited my needs.”

Rin stiffened at the admittance, and Inukimi turned almost lazily in response. She raised a brow as if asking her to question it but Rin couldn’t find it in herself to. Those feelings, while not as profound, were the same in a human woman. It was ugly. Unkind, and terrible to a child who was blameless but the world could be cruel.

After a lengthy silence where they did little but keep one another’s gaze while the winds called, rattling the tiles on the roofs and shivering the trees, Inukimi sighed.

“And yet he still breathes,” she murmured, a touch of awe in her voice as if confused by it herself. “Not all mothers are the same, Rin. We are not always good, and we are not always just, we may think ill of our children but they are ours, we must remember that. If not, we may live to regret it.”

All at once despite the youthfulness of her features, Inukimi seemed to age before her eyes. She held out an arm and Rin settled against her. Nimble fingers stroked her hair, a strange yet comforting sensation reminding her of a woman long dead and buried but still fond in her memories. Her own mother had been rather stern and if she had lived to see this day, she might have grown to like Inukimi and perhaps Sesshomaru. Tears welled in her eyes and she pressed her face to Inukimi’s fur, hoping to lose the overwhelming sadness. Never would her parents lay eyes on their grandchildren or her brother become a man full grown and spoil them as he did her with songs, games, stories, and sweets.

“Does he know… how you felt about him…?”

“When he was of age,” Inukimi said resignedly. “His heart had grown colder and his eyes blind to that which was around him. To watch him walk this Earth was a corpse masquerading as my child.”

Rin considered it to be her love for Sesshomaru that incited embers of discontent at those words but they were doused in a frigid realization as she leant back, finding Inukimi’s eyes. “… Was this after his father…”

She nodded.

“Why?” Rin hissed in abject horror, leaning further out of the demoness’ grip.

Inukimi released her with little fight. “I wanted to remind him that we choose who we are — what we wish to do — who we wish to love,” she said crisply. “Sesshomaru had grown into what some would call a monster. To me, he was my beloved son. No matter the atrocities he committed.”

Cracks showed in her impassive visage. A slight furrow in her brow bespoke of contempt while the barest downward flick of her eyes was shame. Rin’s anger slipped aside. She’d seen those very same emotions on another face, one that she’d held cupped in her hands often to bid him to look at her. She was no stranger to Sesshomaru’s nature. It would’ve done not only him but her a disservice if she brushed it aside. And yet, she loved him fiercely. Aware, and accepting.

Inukimi had been known to be an observer. Watching over not only him but Inuyasha, or so she said.

“I saw his rouse using the Mu-on’na, and when Inuyasha cut him down, I wept for him.”

There was a harshness to her words and a cold look in her eyes. Rin suppressed a shiver, her stomach knotting as she recalled the story Kagome told her.

“You didn’t save him…” Rin whispered, disbelieving and sick with understanding.

“I can’t deny I felt some satisfaction. His behavior was unruly... though I know where it was born from — to see her memory tarnished in such a way was nothing short of repulsive.”

Inukimi stared at her longingly, and Rin knew she wasn’t asking for forgiveness or understanding. As a mother, she couldn’t fathom the choice. As a lover, she could. If someone were to come to her in Sesshomaru’s form while her heart yearned for him, she would have struck them down. Without hesitation. Rin closed her eyes for a moment, and they sat in a respectful silence.

“I watched him fall, and in that moment, I saw you.”

Rin slowly opened her eyes, lifting her gaze to Inukimi’s face. Lost was the frigid chill and its accompanying expressionless mask. Her stiffened frown bending into a sweet smile, appreciative and kind.

“A foolish and stubborn little girl… brave enough to pour water over the head of one of the most dangerous daiyōkai of this age.” Inukimi laughed, and Rin’s cheeks burned at the memory. She couldn’t help but laugh as well remembering the drowned almost stricken look on Sesshomaru’s face then.

As they sobered from laughter, Inukimi sighed longingly. “You returned life to my son’s eyes, and coaxed his heart to thaw.” She patted Rin’s hand gently, curving her fingers in the crook of her thumb, holding it tenderly. “Just as he sought to return you to life, and now, you both have created life.”

Rin swallowed thickly, laying her hand over her stomach.

“That is no small feat, Rin…” Inukimi squeezed her hand then glanced aside, quick and intent, her gaze lingering on the door for a split second. Rin looked back, her eyes softened, lidded as she looked down at her lap. “A mother’s love is not a fragile thing when it’s true.”

Rin was quiet for a moment, allowing seconds to pass before she asked in a quiet voice. “How long was he outside the door?”

“You’ve spent much of the night here,” Inukimi pointed out, and Rin wilted, lowering her head. “Did you not think he would come looking for you?”

A part of her had hoped. Though she knew if she saw him, she would have put this off for another day, assured herself she needed a bit more time. That she had more time. But the time had come and she would need to rise to meet it. With a squeeze to Inukimi’s hand, Rin slowly stood, and let her fingers slip from the demoness’ grasp.

She was shooed away from trying to gather the bowls and plates, nodding graciously as she walked to the door. Her hands curled close to her stomach as she stood before it, thinking to herself.

“Thank you.”

Inukimi looked up from one of the scrolls she’d begun to undo, then rolled her gaze down to its tie. “You seemed to need the reassurance,” she said loftily. “And I don’t mind. It’s rare when you show hesitance.”

Rin smiled to herself at the backhanded compliment. “Not that…” She lifted her head, looking over her shoulder. “Thank you for bringing him into the world.”

It was Inukimi’s turn to be silent but unlike her, Rin didn’t want or wait for an answer. Sliding open the door and shutting it softly behind her before following the trail of her restless husband.

#inuyasha fandom #sessrin #sesshorin #sesshomaru x rin #rin #inukimi #fanfiction #my fanfiction #affections touching across time #talking to the moon

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alexthegamingboy · 4 years

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Toonami Weekly Recap 10/10/2020

Assassination Classroom EP#07 - School Trip Time/1st Period: The students of Class 3-E prepare for a field trip to Kyoto, which is also being used as a venue to assassinate Koro-sensei. The students are arranged into groups, in which Nagisa, Kaede, Karma, Sugino, Manami and class idol Yukiko Kanzaki agree to be in a group. On the train ride to Kyoto, high school male delinquents steal Yukiko's itinerary noting the group activities. On the next day, the group visits all the assassination landmarks, but they are ambushed by the male delinquents, who kidnap Kaede and Yukiko. Whilst in captivity, Yukiko laments to Kaede about her rebellious acts due to being raised in a strict family. Nagisa, Karma, Sugino and Manami manage to use an extensive guidebook written by Koro-sensei, which provides a thorough procedure for hostage situations, to deduce where Kaede and Yukiko are being held. Koro-sensei arrives to deal with the delinquents, while Nagisa and the others knock out the delinquents with their guidebooks. Following the incident, Yukiko is encouraged by Koro-sensei's words of wisdom, in which those with the will to drive forward will come out strong regardless of situation or status.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind EP#37 - King of Kings: Diavolo attempts to grab the arrow with King Crimson, but Bucciarati destroys Chariot Requiem, returning everybody's souls to their respective bodies. However, with his body already dead, Bucciarati's soul begins to ascend to the heavens. Before departing, he thanks Giorno for making him feel alive again when they met and leaves the arrow in Giorno's hands. Diavolo contemplates escaping after seeing Giorno with the arrow, but when Trish reveals her father's intention to flee, he has a change of heart, believing he is entitled to be king and that he should have no reason to run away. Giorno pierces Gold Experience with the arrow, apparently damaging Gold Experience; Diavolo takes advantage of this and attacks Giorno to reclaim the arrow, shattering Gold Experience's face. However, Diavolo's attack doesn't harm Giorno; instead, Gold Experience absorbs the arrow into its body and sheds its skin like a shell, revealing its new form as Gold Experience Requiem. After using Epitaph to witness a vision of himself defeating Giorno, Diavolo uses King Crimson to erase time and attack Giorno; however, Gold Experience Requiem uses its power to nullify his attack, rewinding time to the point of King Crimson's activation. With Diavolo confused and unable to fight back, Gold Experience Requiem viciously pummels him.

Black Clover: Six Months of Training Arc EP#135 - The One Who Has My Heart, My Mind, and Soul: Finral decides he must get serious about making Finnes Calmreich happy and asks Asta to cure his habitual flirting. Asta takes Finral to a mixer with Rebecca Scarlett and her friends Karen and Eliza, and bans Finral from flirting, though Finral panics when his lack of flirting actually attracts Eliza. A nearby Sekke tries to impress women by taking credit for Asta’s heroics against the elves, so Noelle punishes him. Secre notices a disguised Langris and Finnes observing Finral trying not to flirt. Captain Charlotte is also attending a mixer organized by her knights to get her and Yami together, but Yami is so dense he doesn’t notice. Charlotte is advised to feed Yami and touch him physically. Asta’s mixer improves as Eliza realizes Finral resembles the prince from her favorite novel, and Karen begins to take an interest in Luck. Charlotte accidentally touches Yami’s hand before she is ready and overreacts. Finral instinctively saves her but impresses Finnes when he doesn’t flirt with Charlotte and declares he loves someone else. Eliza and Karen lose interest and leave but both mixers decide to have one big mixer together, despite the embarrassment of the ladies and idiocy of the men. Yami hopes everyone trains hard together for the next six months.

Slightly Damned Page 985: https://www.sdamned.com/comic/985

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#Toonami #Toonami Weekly Recap #Toonami Game Review #Assassination Classroom #School Trip Time #JoJo's Bizarre Adventure #JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind #Black Clover #Six Months of Training Arc #slightly damned

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