30shards | Sess + Swords - Tenseiga

Title: Nothing
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst/Deathfic
Squicks: Blood, odd theories, character deaths, hanging endings
Couple: Sess + Swords (Tenseiga)
Theme: #25 - Lies
Words: 1,937
Summary: Just because something is new does not make it improved.
Notes: New canon (as in, the newest stuff with Tenseiga, so spoilers)

----

Toutousai didn't like surprise visitors. Especially when that visitor was Sesshoumaru.

The expression on the inuyoukai's face didn't make this meeting any better. In fact, it made it downright terrifying. Because that wasn't Sesshoumaru he was facing. It was an enraged animal in a human skin.

"You lied."

Toutousai took an involuntary step back, hammer raised in some pittance of self-defense as he stared at the sudden whirlwind of anger who had disturbed the relative peace of his forge. Positioned at the mouth of the dark cave, back to the cloudy night, Sesshoumaru was almost unrecognizable. Eyes hard as flint and just as cold bore down at him, peering out from a visage washed with blood. His immaculate garments were rags now, blood-splattered and torn like the clothes of a dead man. Lacking his signature armor he finally looked his proper age, so small and disillusioned and shockingly young.

And thrust before him, clutched in firm, steady fingers, was Tenseiga. Its blade was red turning brown and Toutousai didn't like the sight.

"What did you do to Tenseiga!" the smith shrieked, rushing forward despite his coward instincts to try to wrench it away from the inuyoukai.

He was shocked into stillness when Sesshoumaru struck him with it. Sharp steel ran along the weathered skin of his palm and Toutousai almost didn't feel the pain of the cut through his wild thoughts. Tenseiga wasn't supposed to cut! What---?

"You lied!" Sesshoumaru hissed again, his mask-like face carved with a madman's knife. Toutousai had never seen him so irate. The surge of youki around them was thick and stifling and the old smith barely felt his lungs moving under the strain of it all.

"I did no such thing!" Clutching his wounded hand to his chest, Toutousai took a hesitant step back. One quick move and he feared to set the other youkai off. His expression may be stiff and schooled even in anger, but the emotions behind that face were nowhere near as ordered.

It was such a silent, deadly strength. All the more so because it was rarely tapped into.

There was a clatter against the stone and it took Toutousai a moment to realize that Sesshoumaru had dropped the bloody sword. His hand still remained out, opened over the hilt almost as if he expected it to come back on its own. It was then that Toutousai saw the broken claws and the gashes along the smooth skin of his arm.

When Sesshoumaru next spoke it was in a quiet, measured tone that belied his anger. And that scared Toutousai even more. "That is not Tenseiga."

Toutousai opened his mouth. He wanted to say, Of course it is! He wanted to protest that You have no right to call me a liar. He wanted to tell him that That is Tenseiga. And it shouldn't be cutting.

What did YOU do?

But all he did was open his mouth and then think about what was wrong. Then he shut it again.

"What did you do to my sword." Sesshoumaru's eyes were locked on him and Toutousai did not appreciate feeling like prey. But that was what he was, and it took a great deal of will power that he didn't know he possessed to remain still.

"You mastered it, didn't you?" he began slowly, piecing his words together in the same manner that one would normally slink away from a predator-- slowly and quietly. "The Meidou Zangetsuha, I mean."

Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed fractionally. His sole hand dropped back to his side, hanging limply as trails of blood encircled his wrist. "What of it?" His voice was stiff and rough, like he was sliding it out between two unyielding stones. Which he most likely was, in a sense.

Toutousai sighed, feeling his old shoulders slump. "I feared that would be so."

"Feared what, old man?"

Sighing, Toutousai bent with excruciating slowness, his hand stretching for the blade on the ground. He felt Sesshoumaru's eyes on his back but he couldn't just leave Tenseiga to lay there. Sesshoumaru made no movement whatsoever to stop him and Toutousai thought that he might get out of this situation in somewhat good condition. At least that was until his fingers touched Tenseiga's hilt.

A heavy, booted foot slammed down on his wrist, crushing the fine bones and grinding them painfully against the sword pommel. "What. Did. You. Do." Sesshoumaru practically hissed, punctuating each word with deadly intent.

Toutousai's first instinct was the burn that offending foot off his arm, but then Tenseiga would melt and that just would not do. Because, although it was changed now there was no possible way he could create such a sword again. The best thing he could do was explain quickly and get this literal time bomb out of his forge.

"Tenseiga was created as a healing sword and yet, as you know, it called out to me not too long ago to be reforged." Toutousai risked a glance up at the youkai, who watch him with a blank expression. The smith struggled to keep his voice even. "It answered your desires, Sesshoumaru. Tenseiga thought that you had learned and thus would use its gift wisely. How wrong it was."

Bones snapped again under the inuyoukai's boot and yet Toutousai grit his teeth more in anger than pain or fear. "Tenseiga thought so highly of you, boy, more so than anyone else. It believed that you were on the right path and this is how you betray its good faith--by destroying its very essence. No longer is it a sword of life but one of death. All because you were greedy. Did you not realize that two such powers must exist in balance in order for both to work? By mastering the Meidou Zangetsuha you smothered the blade's ability to heal.

"I should have denied Tenseiga's request," he finished with an angered mumble. "It placed far too much faith in you and your heart. Hoping that you would continue to heal--pah!"

Silence fell with those last words, one that the old smith did not like. He did his best to try to cower away, fearing the worst…

It took Toutousai a moment to realize that there was no longer any pressure on his wrist. Raising the now useless appendage off the blade's hilt, he risked a glance up to Sesshoumaru. He had not expected this show of mercy. In fact, he thought he would be dead.

The other youkai was gazing down at him with a closed, almost empty expression that looked ghastly on his bloody face. In fact, he looked closer to death than Toutousai felt. His eyes were so pale, almost glazed over and the smith felt a chill run through him. Getting to his feet unsteadily, Toutousai inched away.

Sesshoumaru's eyes didn't follow his movements. His interest appeared to be in the sword and the sword alone. Taking a small step forward he made a movement to bend down to retrieve the blade, but he halted soon after, hand raised but not outstretched. He hovered there like that for an undeterminable amount of time before doing something Toutousai never thought he'd see.

Sesshoumaru fell to his knees. Bending slowly and stiffly at his bloodstained knees he hit the ground right by the tarnished blade. His entire faced seemed brittle in the faint light of the forge, something so tightly contained that the seams were beginning to crack.

His hand went out once more, as if to touch the sword, but he drew back. "So soon," he mumbled in a voice that was more a growl than true words. "Was this what you were trying to tell me, Tenseiga?"

Toutousai watched this scene with a pounding heart. So Tenseiga had tried to warn him? To no avail, it seemed.

"You allow yourself to be mastered when most needed…and yet you betray me just as quickly…" Sesshoumaru seemed to forget Toutousai's presence; he spoke to the sword in such a raw voice that Toutousai had to look away.

Hearing those words, however, made Toutousai wish to know what he happened more than ever before. "Who died…?" He poised the question to the inuyoukai as delicately as he could manage. It still came out rough and even a bit irritated, but Sesshoumaru didn't appear to notice.

Sesshoumaru did not reply for some time. Toutousai was even beginning to believe that he had not heard him speak, but a quick movement of the other youkai's hand proved that he had. Before Toutousai could react, Sesshoumaru reach for the sheath at his side.

Toutousai hadn't seen the sword there earlier, but when the youkai grasped a very familiar hilt it was all the old smith could do to keep calm.

Light from the sword's imbedded barrier flashed along the walls of the cave as Sesshoumaru drew Tessaiga. The blade was thin and dull once more and stained in dark, almost black blood. He held the sword out in front of him even as the spell burned away at the skin on his hand. Toutousai almost forgot to breathe, seeing that weapon in the other youkai's hand…

It was only then that Sesshoumaru spoke. When he did, however, it was in echoes, cold and empty despite the dark depths behind his words. "Him, among many others." He did not look at Toutousai or Tessaiga as he continued. Tenseiga still held his complete attention. "It was only then that Naraku was defeated. Sent to hell because of Tenseiga. And now, nothing."

Time crawled up Toutousai's spine, trapping him in this everlasting moment as he stared at the young youkai before him…this youkai who now held the power he had wanted for so very long…and there was no one to stop him from taking it…

The sharp clatter of metal against stone snapped the old smith out of his daze. Tessaiga now rested on the dirty floor beside its brother. Sesshoumaru was on his feet shortly after. Toutousai stared at where he had once knelt, watching the dim light reflect in the sizeable pool of blood.

Yet when he raised his head, Sesshoumaru stood just as tall and proud as always. He sent the smith one last, unreadable look before turning swiftly towards the exit. He swayed just slightly, enough the Toutousai caught it, but the old smith said nothing.

He really couldn't find any words now, even if the fate of the world depended on it.

It was only when Sesshoumaru was steps from the mouth of the cave, his bloody form almost disappearing in the inky darkness, that Toutousai's voice worked. He sought for anything to say in the face of such suffering. "You will return to that old toad and girl now?"

Sesshoumaru stopped then, his feet scuffling against the stone. He stood there, shoulders rising and falling as he breathed, slowly and calmly. It was a long time before he answered.

"I told you--now there is nothing."

And then he was gone, morphing into the shadows like a ghost.

Toutousai stared at the place the other youkai had once stood, before reaching out tentative fingers to brush against the two blood-covered hilts before him. Neither reacted to his touch, just as he had thought.

Drawing in a stilted breath through his old teeth, Toutousai rose to his feet and returned to work. There was nothing to be done. Nothing at all.

Behind him, in a puddle of once shared blood, lay two broken brothers that nothing -- not even time or magic or pure stubbornness-- would ever be able to mend again.