Though her rejection of him was a foregone conclusion, Sesshoumaru was gutted by it just the same.

At first, he sent her a long series of texts, which she ignored. He hazarded calling her, only to find that her phone was turned off. He debated attempting to seek her out in person—then realized at last how psychotic his thought process had become, and fell into a listless, self-deprecating depression.

He punished himself with the images of her in distress. All those condemnations he had heaped on Inuyasha, only for him to turn around and prove himself the greater cur. He had betrayed her trust, ambushed her, made her feel cornered and threatened. He could have said his piece to her and left it at that, but instead he’d put his hands on her like some worthless lowlife. The only consolation to him in all of it was that at least he’d resisted the bestial urge to grab at her again.

These were the thoughts that berated him into isolation. He closed the shutters and drew down the shades, as if to cordon himself off from the rest of the world. Languishing for days in the cave-like darkness of his bedroom, he felt like the worst sort of fool.

But he couldn’t shut himself off forever.

Eventually, he had to drag himself up and switch on his phone again. There was nothing from Kagome, of course—and though he’d expected as much, he had to clench his teeth against the bitter wave of disappointment that swept over him. This, combined with the hundreds of texts and calls and emails that glared at him from the screen nearly sent him back into seclusion again.

No less than fifty of them were from Jaken. Even as Sesshoumaru scrolled through, his agent was calling him again. Only the possibility that he was about to be served for his violent outburst at the gallery, or that this might be the last call before Jaken showed up at his house, persuaded Sesshoumaru to answer it.

“…You—you’re there!” Jaken squeaked from the other end of the line. “What a relief…I’ve been at my wit’s end trying to reach you. As a matter of fact, I was just on my way over—”

“Don’t,” Sesshoumaru said darkly, and he could almost hear his agent’s blood pressure ratcheting up a notch. “I’ve been…unwell.”

“Ah, I see—I’m sorry to hear it,” Jaken said with a simper. “But, Sesshoumaru-sama—I have the most incredible news!”

“I’m not being sued?” Sesshoumaru asked flatly.

“Sued?—what—no. No, no—in fact it’s quite the opposite. You caused such a sensation the other night at the exhibition—just go online for a moment, and you’ll see all the stir you’ve created. I can barely breathe I’ve been inundated with so many inquiries. People are quite literally foaming at the mouth to get a piece of this exclusive, ‘not-for-sale’ collection of yours. The offers have been downright certifiable! And as for the curtained piece—Sesshoumaru-sama, you wouldn’t believe—”

“No,” Sesshoumaru said, coldly and distinctly. “We’ll talk later, but not about that. Never again about that.”

“B-but wait, just a moment, hear me out—”

Sesshoumaru hung up the phone.

~

When the device lit up ringing only a few minutes later, Sesshoumaru’s gaze slashed to it with burning vehemence. It wasn’t like Jaken to press his luck this far, and Sesshoumaru was in no mood to suffer it. But when he seized his phone in hand, it wasn’t Jaken’s name searing into his eyes—

It was Inuyasha’s.

Bracing himself for some sort of calamity, Sesshoumaru took the call. But this fallout he never could have anticipated. At first there was only inarticulate drunken raving, intermingled with what sounded like violent, rasping sobs.

“Inuyasha,” Sesshoumaru said sternly, his head beginning to pound. “I can’t understand you. Speak clearly, or I’m hanging up.”

“K-Kagome—it’s Kagome, she…she’s gone—she’s fucking gone…”

Sesshoumaru was on his feet. “What do you mean ‘gone’?” he shouted into the phone. “Answer me!”

But the other end of the line had devolved into commotion once more, and he could get nothing sensible from it. Coursing with adrenaline, Sesshoumaru dressed quickly and called his driver, and in less than an hour, he was all but knocking down Inuyasha’s door.

“What the hell is going on?” Sesshoumaru demanded as he barreled past his red-faced younger brother and into the apartment, which looked as though a small typhoon had roared through it. Whirling around, he locked eyes with that tawny gaze, which though glazed and dilated with intoxication, was so much like his own. “What have you done?”

Inuyasha bristled. Sesshoumaru’s hostility seemed to have sobered him slightly.

“I haven’t done anything,” he blurted.  “She…” He swallowed thickly, his finger streaking toward the kitchen. “…She fucking left me!”

Sesshoumaru followed the line of his accusing finger, to the small table on which Kagome’s engagement ring lay dully gleaming, beside a crumpled, handwritten note. He started to step toward it, then thought better of it and stopped.

“Go on,” Inuyasha said furiously. “Go on and read it, I don’t care.”

Sesshoumaru crossed the short distance and took up the note—

Inuyasha,

I’m so sorry, but I can’t stay here any longer. I can’t stay with you. I don’t mean to be cruel, but I don’t want to mislead you. I need a clean break. I need to go away. I hope you’ll understand, and forgive me.

Love always,
Kagome

Relief ebbed through Sesshoumaru, knowing that she hadn’t fled under duress. But it was a short-lived feeling—fleeting in the face of the guilt that rose to eclipse it.

“Six years,” Inuyasha ground out, his voice rising unsteadily as Sesshoumaru looked toward him. “Six fucking years, and all she leaves me with is a scribble on a goddamn notecard. She couldn’t even bring herself to face me. ‘I need a clean break,’ my balls.” He lashed out, a heart-shaped vase smashing from a shelf down onto the floor. “…Bet she’s already shacked up with some other guy. You can bet your ass that’s why she left me—as soon as she found a bigger sucker she skipped out on me like yesterday’s news. Spineless little bitch…”

Biting his tongue so hard it bled, Sesshoumaru glared, his hand balling to a fist around the note. As Inuyasha rampaged about, continuing to wreak havoc and spit every vile curse that occurred to him, Sesshoumaru could see quite clearly why Kagome had chosen to leave as she had.

“Fuck her, I don’t need her,” Inuyasha snarled, slamming his fist into the door, which splintered. Breathing heavily, he sank down into a crouch, his forehead knocking against the frame. “I don’t need anyone…”

Standing in literal counterpoint to this claim, Sesshoumaru shook his head. He let the note fall from his hand. Wending his way through the rubble, he pulled Inuyasha to his feet. But all the sake from the bottles strewn about the place must have finally gotten to him. With a pitiful whimper, he sagged in Sesshoumaru’s hold, teetering on the verge of total collapse.

“She’s gone…Sesshoumaru, she’s really gone…what the fuck am I supposed to do now…”

Sesshoumaru had no answer for him. He scarcely knew what to do with himself.

~

Though Kagome had given no indication as to where she’d gone, Sesshoumaru had an inkling. But as desperately as he wished to see her, he forced himself to wait. When he saw her again, he wanted to be in a more stable frame of mind—for both their sakes.

He waited a week. His heartache was no less, but it had dulled enough so that he could trust himself not to do anything rash.

As he ascended the stone steps to the Higurashi shrine, a curious calm suffused him. He saw the fabled wellhouse and the great tree with its ring of sacred chimes. Though he had never stepped foot in this place before, it felt so warm and familiar to him that a smile pulled at his lips nonetheless.

Even if by some chance she hadn’t returned here, it had been well worth the visit, just to feel a shadow of that closeness they once had shared.

As he turned to the two-story house, there was a sound behind him, like the crunch of wheels over gravel. Sesshoumaru glanced back. At the sight that met his eyes, his heart gave a pang so sharp and fresh that he warred against the urge to retreat after all. Yet he felt suspended.

Through a sunlit break in the trees, Kagome had appeared, like a vision pulled straight from her tales. Gripping the handles of the bike she’d been wheeling up to the porch, she stared at him motionless.

“Sesshoumaru,” she whispered at last, breaking the spell.

~

Introducing him hastily to her grandfather, mother, and brother, who’d been spying on them through the kitchen windows, Kagome ushered him back outside. Together they sat alone on the porch steps. A heavy silence stretched between them—that, and a fat purring calico cat, who was blissfully oblivious to the tension.

“Inuyasha,” Kagome said at last, hesitating, “how is he?”

“Devastated,” Sesshoumaru answered brusquely. “How else could he be?”

Kagome frowned, her eyes falling to her huddled knees. “I know, I just didn’t see any other way to go about it. I was worried what would happen if I tried to confront him directly. You know how he gets.”

Sesshoumaru knew, but her words rankled him all the same. “Flight seems to be your natural response to emotional confrontations.”

At her look of wounded disappointment, Sesshoumaru wished he could take back what he’d said. “If you think I feel anything less than terrible about all of this, then you don’t know me half as well as I thought.”

“I didn’t come here to criticize you,” he said, his voice softening in contrition. “I came here because I wanted to apologize for how things ended between us.”

For a while, Kagome was quiet, contemplative. Her gaze strayed to that great old oak, its silvery boughs creaking and rustling in the breeze, then to the shrine with its green-tiled roof glowing as bright as the treetops. A soft smile touched her lips as she looked to him again, and stood.

“You haven’t seen it yet, have you?” she asked. “The Bone-Eaters Well?”

As he shook his head, she turned and walked toward it with a wave. Sesshoumaru rose, following after her.

The inside of the well-house was dim and close. At its center was a plain-looking square shaft of wood. Peering over its planked ledge along with her, Sesshoumaru squinted, but all he could see at the bottom was brown, dusty earth.

Kagome grinned to him aside. “Can you feel the magic?”

“No,” he said, his voice turning dry. “The well doesn’t open for the likes of me.”

Kagome turned to face him. When her hands slipped into his, light and warm as the expression in her eyes, his heart leapt unbidden.

“What about now?” she asked. As Sesshoumaru nodded slowly, her eyes drifted shut. “Let’s travel there, together.”

Her fingers pressed to his with the gentlest leading pressure, and Sesshoumaru felt himself transported. Behind his closed lids, the well-house fell away. Above them there was only clear blue sky.

“We’re there,” Kagome murmured. “Can you see it?”

“We are there,” Sesshoumaru answered, murmuring back. “The meadow is full of spring flowers. The wilderness stretches around us as far as the eye can see, and the air between us is alive and teeming with magic.” He smiled lightly. “We’re ourselves, and not ourselves. You are the priestess of the Sacred Jewel, and I am the demon lord of the Western Lands. But other than that, we are the same. We are together there, just as we are here.”

When he opened his eyes again and returned to the present, Kagome was gazing up at him, her cheeks glittering with tears.

“I want to be with you,” she said. “All the time.”

Her hand rose to trace the line of his jaw. As she stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his, Sesshoumaru clasped her to him with all the rashness he’d sworn to suppress. When her mouth opened against his, lush and sweet and yielding, he growled into her with a need so fierce it overwhelmed him.

Breaking away, he held her by the nape as she leaned against him. “Go get your things,” he said.

~

Sesshoumaru waited for her at the bottom of the stairs. Her teenaged brother approached and stood beside him, arms crossed at the chest.

“Are you taking her back to Inuyasha?” Souta asked with a sidelong glance.

“No,” Sesshoumaru replied shortly, and the younger man relaxed.

“Good,” he said, smiling slightly as Kagome burst starry-eyed into view at the top of the steps, a bulging yellow backpack slung across her shoulders.

~

The car ride back to his home was nothing short of torture. Sesshoumaru held her close to him all the way, squeezing her thigh as she clung to his chest, the brush of her lips against his throat driving him steadily insane. It was all he could do not to throw away every ounce of dignity he possessed and topple her over onto the seat beneath him.

But out of respect for her he resisted—though it was a near thing. The moment the door closed behind them, he pushed her back against it, his mouth seeking hers. Fingers seized and slipped and sought. Clothing tore from their bodies, and suddenly they were together, skin against skin, gasping and clutching and striving. Pleasure bloomed in her eyes, and he was lost in it, swept away along with her to a paradise all their own.

In a way neither of them could have ever expected, he gave her the tour of his house, as they made love on seemingly every surface between the doorway and the bedroom. Reaching it at last, he followed her down onto the sheets. She knelt up, and he fell over her, taking her like an animal from behind, until she came howling his name and he bit into her shoulder, and they collapsed together in the aftermath, panting and sweaty and depleted.

When he woke the next morning it was to the warmth of her touch, drawing him in again.

~

The days passed in a golden haze.

“I guess you finally got me to model naked for you,” Kagome said, smiling a little as he lay beside her, sketching her in all of her flushed, tousled glory. At the sudden growl of her stomach, her smile crooked. “Now, about that breakfast…”

Sesshoumaru’s eyes darkened with a hunger of their own, as he set his sketching aside and climbed over the irresistible sprawl of her body. “…Soon,” he said. “I promise.”

He cared for her, possessed her with a furor that distantly disturbed him. Even when he was inside her, he felt desperate for her, as if there were some part of her he still couldn’t claim.

There was affection in her eyes when she looked at him, but it was tinged with melancholy. Her gaze would glisten and stray to the window. Her smile would grow trembling and faint before she bit her lip to contain it.

When she reached for him, there was a fragile quality to it, as though at any moment this dream between them might come shattering to an end.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Jk lol…there’s one part to go <3

Series Navigation

<< SessKag Series: The Muse, Part 2SessKag Series: The Muse, Final Part >>