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Rating:
PG
Summary: more a phrasing of thought than an actual story
# Of Youkai and Humans #
Never love a monster…
She could never love…
Him.
In the gripping darkness of shadow, blood has no color. Only thickness, only blackness as it weakly reflects what light there is with an oily, wet sheen. In the night's shifting dance of savagery, only the foolish move without fear. The tiniest mouse knows to freeze under the menace of a predator's presence. Animal, spirit, youkai alike know such things with basic, primal survival instincts.
She does not.
Hunger is never the innocent rumble of an empty stomach for his kind. Hungeris something that gnaws and bites and ravages the insides until its demands are met. He is not driven by something as soft as emotion. Anger, rage, fury they are nothing compared to the obsessive, spiraling, far reaching madness of a youkai's grudge.
He…
Hates humans.
All of them.
She…
He does not hate her.
Humans are filthy and short lived. A race blessed by its very blindness as the atrocities of one generation are forgotten in the smoke and flames of the next. There are many of them; more than there are stars he can name in the sky. No matter how many he kills, there will always be more. Always.
He had only one father.
And he died.
For a human whore.
And left behind…
A squalling half breed brat.
His…brother.
It is not vengeance. It is not revenge or greed. It is not justice or punishment. It is the jagged pieces inside him left after everything he believed in shattered. It is the razor sharp illusion of happiness that slices him raw every time he dares reach for it. It is the lonesome, forlorn, forsaken task of defending his father's, his—their honor after his father willfully destroyed it all for a human.
The fang Tessaiga…
He would have filled the night with the darkness of blood until…
Not a whisper of dishonor remained.
For the father he loved.
He is the cast off son with the cast off sword. He is the cast off defender of a cast off legacy. He is the cast off product of a cast off family. Humanity inherited the riches of his father's favor and ground them into dust. Men shared in the spoils of his father's power and spit on him in disgust when he dared to touch one of their women. Izayoi's lord took advantage of his father's benevolence and then killed Izayoi, her son, and her lover for daring to bring a hanyou into the world.
Yet his father…
Loved humans more than he loved his own flesh and blood.
She is a cast off child who does not even belong to herself. She is the forgotten and the forsaken, the lonely one left alone. And so she dies unlamented until he takes her as his. He hates what she is. He hates having her near him. He hates how weak she is. He hates the pitiful noises she makes when she cries in fear. He hates the way she smells and the mess she makes. Yet he keeps her because he does not hate her.
Monsters do not love.
They eat and devour and destroy…
Just as they are eaten and devoured and destroyed.
She is his own destruction; the ending to what his father once begun. She is the choice he makes that puts his feet upon the path to oblivion. She is the weakness that will leave him vulnerable in the moment the death blow falls. He sees all this and does nothing.
Because he does not care.
The madness of a youkai's grudge is a pale weedy blossom compared to the rich, multi layered rose of a youkai's eternal devotion. He lives with all his being. He breathes with all his being. He hunts and kills and feeds with all his being. He hates with all his being and…he loves with all his being.
He is Youkai.
And she does not know any better than not to love him in return. Even if it means her destruction as well because…
She is Human.
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