shiegra (shiegra) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2010-03-31 23:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 2010 harlequin challenge, author: shiegra, crossover: inuyasha/narnia, pairing: sesshoumaru/susan |
Bargain (Narnia/Inuyasha, Susan, Sesshoumaru)
Title: Bargain
Author/Artist: shiegra
Fandom: Narnia/Inuyasha
Pairing/characters: Sesshoumaru/Susan
Rating: PG13
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Despite the pain Susan Pevensie caused Sesshoumaru, Sesshoumaru finds Susan Pevensie irresistibly attractive.
It wasn't the bow she wanted.
It wasn't the bow she missed. Susan slid her thumb along the string, an idle gesture. It was the only thing that betrayed her unease.
She sat on a moss-laden stump outside of a ramshackle hut that had long since surrender to the woods' insistent growth. The air was thick and electrified with magic, but not the kind she was accustomed to; one that was closer to that which Aslan carried around him like a second coat of fur. A wild magic, full of teeth and velvet fur. It was not a queen's composure which kept her calm and still, her face smoothly composed. The queen she had been would have been on her feet; her wisdom and experience would have her bow strung and ready to fire. It was a schoolgirl's recklessness that kept her still and non-combative, and a young lady's tea-room stillness that kept her serene against all irritances.
Susan tightened her grip on the bow, and then relaxed it. She had no real expectation that he would come, she reminded herself. It was at best a risky business, at worst suicidal. They had not parted on good terms and on top of that, though it had been years since she lost Narnia, she still wore the Great Cat's scent close to her skin.
Nonetheless, Susan was waiting.
He didn't announce his presence. He must have been there for several long moment before she detected him; Susan was good, but the youkai was not human, and she would be the first to admit that years in England had dulled her keen ear.
She came to her feet when she saw him, perhaps too quickly. "Sesshoumaru," she began, and then stopped. It had been years since she'd last encountered him. He had changed, naturally, not at all. She wondered what he thought of her, since she had definitively lost near half a score of years since he'd last looked upon her.
She'd been High Queen then. Now she was just a girl.
They stood there in stillness for a long, fraught moment. At last he said, "you have bought yourself only a little time. Speak."
"You owe me," she said.
Perhaps not the best way to begin a conversation with a youkai lord. But Susan has developed a solid faith in the effectiveness of getting to the point. And, after all, he did.
"I've come to call it in," she added.
There was a moment of long silence. She stood, her bow clasped loosely in her hand, battlefield instincts ruling her even though her quiver leaned against the trunk, not over her shoulder or even against her knee, her own small gesture of peace. Don't squeeze it in your grasp.
"Answer me one question," came the reply finally, his cold beautiful voice unreadable. "And I will grant it."
Susan hesitated, her hand tightened on the bow - and then didn't even know why. It was a bargain that favoured her outrageously. Maybe it was for that reason that she paused, but either way she had no other choice. "Very well," she said warily.
He approached, soundless as the night wind through the clouds, and brushed her hair away from her shoulder. Susan twitched, cheeks colouring, trying to control a dozen conflicting impulses - back away, bring up her bow, yelp like a startled puppy - that didn't even take into account his warmth, near her, demon-high. And then those long fingers, with the lethally graceful claws, drew along the shoulder of her blouse.
Susan cursed, foully, as the sides fell away from her shoulder. She grabbed for them and demanded sharply, "what are you - "
"You no longer bear my mark."
She stared at him for a second, and then the pieces snapped together. They'd battled, once, before they'd been uneasy allies under his father and her brother's pennants. He'd left a scar, over her shoulder and down to her breast. It had healed well, but Lucy and her elixir had been too far away to completely subliminate it.
"Is that your question?" She asked, her court training catching up with her before she could begin to stumble out explanations.
His head inclined.
"I don't," she said. "I - " How did one explain such a thing? Honestly, she supposed, when faced with a youkai lord. "Time turned back for me. When I lost Narnia, I lost the time I had gained within it, and grew once more to be - " she gestured down her body. " - as you see me."
Sesshoumaru's eyes glittered briefly, measuring her. "And now you have returns, bearing neither crown nor the Cat's boon." His smile, if you could call it that, was very thin. "What are your intentions?"
Her hand tightened on her bow again. "To kill a man," she answered. "And - and return home." Her voice faltered on the last. She could not find it in her to truly call England home, not now, when so much was lost to her.
She could not tell what he was thinking, and it startled her. She'd known him as well as anyone could, at least, but now he was alien again, unreachable. She knew him too well to assume that he'd missed her hesitation, but she didn't know him well enough to reliably guess whether that was the subject of his silence. The hard and razor-edged smile that surfaced confirmed nothing but the nervous thrill down her spine.
"We shall see," he said. "I will fulfill my bargain."
Somehow that was less reassuring than she'd expected.