In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan

Earth stood hard as iron

Water like a stone

— In the Bleak Midwinter, Christina Rossetti

 

Kagome’s breath misted out before her as she strolled through the boulevard of lights. Trees frosted over with winking bulbs lined the crowded street that led to Christmas Park. All about her, friends and families stood posing for pictures before the lighted displays. A mix of geometric and natural shapes, ghostly and beautiful in the evening dark. The closest thing to magic in the Modern Era that she’d seen.

There was the smell of gingerbread in the air, mulled wine and hot cocoa. Nostalgic scents that brought her back to her own distant past, when her father had taken her here as a child. He’d boosted her up on his shoulders so she could better see the twinkling lights. Soaring through the crowds from that height, she’d felt like she was flying.

A soft smile touched her lips. Children in puffy coats ran about her, playing and shouting. She saw the brightly-colored flashes of shopping bags, a rainbow of vibrant scarves and caps. Hair dyed in every shade imaginable. Almost as many multicolored Christmas trees to match.

Like a myriad of shining sentinels, they ringed the broad central skating rink. Approaching the railing, Kagome rested her elbows there on the garlanded steel. Before her the ice rink gleamed blue-white and translucent like a polished jewel, reflecting the glow of the lights that framed it.

She heard the sound of bells, bright and trilling as birdsong. And then she saw him, striding toward her as if that silvery chiming was heralding his approach. His hair was short and dark, blowing into his dark eyes with the wintry breeze. He wore a dark coat, dark slacks. A dark scarf and dark shoes. He cut a sharp dark figure, so at odds with the snowy image of him she remembered. Even if she couldn’t sense the suppressed simmer of his youki, she would have known him anywhere, all his present darkness aside.

He still looked lordly to her, even without his regal trappings of old. It was chiseled into the fine, aristocratic lines of his face. It was in the air that surrounded him, chilly and aloof as the look in his eyes, which seemed bored with everything they touched. As his gaze met hers, she thought she saw a glimmer of interest there, but it was probably just her imagination.

Or some trick of the light.

“Kagome,” he said as he drew to a stop.

“Sesshoumaru,” she replied, crooking a smile. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, you never responded to my text for one thing.”

His glance slid coolly aside. “I don’t bother with sending such frivolous replies.”

“Okay, your highness,” she said with a laugh. When his eyes cut back to her, she sobered. “Anyway, you never came here with us before.” She scratched a gloved finger idly over a dent in the railing. “I figured this sort of thing wasn’t your cup of tea.”

“It’s not,” he said flatly, gazing out over the ice. “But you invited me. And so, here I am.”

“Right,” she said softly, studying him in profile. “Well, thank you for being here. I appreciate it.”

He nodded. She bit her lip then, glancing away uncertain. Because she’d never really expected him to show up in the first place, she wasn’t prepared now that he had. 

They’d never really been alone together before. It felt strange to her. Uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t place. As though there were a void between them which should otherwise be occupied.

Feeling the need to speak to this silence, she said quietly, “We missed the lights last year. Inuyasha wasn’t up for it, though he wouldn’t say it. He just said he didn’t want to go.”

“Stubborn to the end,” Sesshoumaru said, glancing to her. Whatever sentiments underscored his remark were as inscrutable to her as the look in his eyes. “He strove to keep the worst of his weakness hidden from you.”

Kagome turned her face aside. “Funny,” she murmured, though there was nothing remotely ‘funny’ in it, “I always figured he was hiding it from you.” As the silence stretched between them, she turned back to him and said, “Want to walk around?”

“If you like.”

Together they walked through the bustling, lighted park, taking in the sights. Both were quiet at first. Sesshoumaru because he was generally quiet, and Kagome because she didn’t know what to say. The truth was, for all the time she’d spent around him, especially in recent years, she felt that she barely knew him at all.

Most of what she did know she’d gleaned secondhand from his brother.

“Inuyasha told me once about the time you two first heard the story of Christmas,” she said wryly, looking to him. “He said you were unimpressed.”

“A virgin birth is hardly so miraculous, in my view.”

Kagome laughed. “I guess not, when you can change into a gigantic flying dog and when you have a sword that can bring back the dead.”

Sesshoumaru’s dark eyes glinted at her, gilded by the Christmas lights. Casting a contemptuous glance over the sparkling decor that surrounded them, he said, “Not so miraculous as to warrant all this lurid spectacle, at any rate.”

“What a humbug you are,” Kagome teased. With a sweep of her hand, she gestured about them. “You don’t find any of this the least bit pretty?”

For a beat he held her gaze. “Some,” he said, before glancing away. “But most of it is garish.”

A little defensively, she said, “Inuyasha loved the lights.”

“Inuyasha was easily dazzled,” Sesshoumaru replied. “Once, we stumbled upon a glade filled with silver fireflies, and his eyes went wide as saucers. He wouldn’t leave until he’d caught as many as he could carry.”

“You make him sound like a child.”

“He was childlike in many ways.”

Kagome side-eyed him. “Is that what you think of me too?”

Sesshoumaru’s mouth slanted up at one corner. “I think you are much like him at heart.”

Kagome’s nose stung as she looked away. “…I loved him.”

After a moment, Sesshoumaru said, “He loved you, too.”

Glancing back to him, she asked, slightly quavering, “Will you tell me more stories about him?”

As they walked the glittering paths, passed through arches and triangles and domes of light, Sesshoumaru recounted the adventures he and his younger brother had had over the centuries. Kagome’s heart lightened as he spoke. It warmed her to know that Inuyasha hadn’t been alone.

“I feared for him,” she confessed, “after the well shut me out. He’d never been close with many people. I worried he’d feel abandoned all over again, that he’d withdraw from the world. I felt so guilty that I’d ever wanted to go back home in the first place.”

“He never blamed you,” Sesshoumaru said. “On the contrary, it was the hope of meeting you again in your era which galvanized him. He’d been dying for the better part of a century before you returned to his side. It was the thought of you that kept him alive.”

Kagome’s eyes burned. Rapidly she blinked against the tears that threatened to fall. She remembered that day, not long after she’d graduated high school, but long after she’d given up hope of ever seeing Inuyasha again. She’d come home to find Sesshoumaru standing on her doorstep, humanized in appearance as he was now, yet just as coolly superior in his manner as he’d ever been.

“Inuyasha’s been waiting for you,” he’d said, and her heart had leapt.

“Now that he’s gone,” she said tearfully, “I don’t know what to do with myself. I built my life around him. When I became a nurse, that was for him. So that I could care for him better. I feel aimless now, just going through the motions. It’s been almost a year, but it still hurts so much. My heart just can’t get past it. Without him, I feel shut out all over again.” 

Wiping her brimming eyes with the back of her glove, she saw Sesshoumaru’s jaw was tight, his expression stonier than she’d ever seen it. Kagome faltered at the sight.

“I’m sorry,” she said, abashed. “I’ve been rambling on, and I haven’t even asked you how you’ve been.”

“Of course you haven’t.” 

There wasn’t any venom in the remark. There wasn’t any inflection in it at all. He’d said it as if it were simply a matter of course, and because of this it cut her that much deeper.

“I suppose you think I’m very selfish,” she said, bowing her head. “That even in inviting you out here, I’m just being self-indulgent with my feelings.”

“A selfish woman wouldn’t have cared for my brother night and day as you did,” Sesshoumaru said briskly. “Despite his old age and infirmity, his last years were the happiest of his life because of you, and the sacrifices you made. I said that simply because you do not think of me. All the hours you spent in my home, and you were as oblivious to my presence there as any other object.”

Kagome’s chest clenched. “That’s a cruel thing to say.”

“Perhaps,” Sesshoumaru said, pinning her gaze with his. “But it’s the truth. I was invisible to you.”

Harsh as it was, she couldn’t deny what he said. With her concerns for Inuyasha consuming her, she had treated Sesshoumaru as an afterthought at best. She would never have thought that he’d care, one way or another. 

To learn now that he had left her momentarily speechless. Indifference was what she’d come to expect from him. Had she let this expectation color her entire perception of him?

“Inuyasha’s been waiting for you,” he’d said to her on her doorstep that day, but then, she realized now looking back, so too had he…

“Well,” she said quietly, heat rising to her cheeks, “I see you now.”

He took a step toward her. “And what is it that you see?”

A man too tall, dark and handsome to be real, her mind quipped unhelpfully. Shrinking back from him, she rubbed at her arms and blurted out instead, “Brrr! It’s gotten so cold out. I don’t know about you, but I sure could go for some coffee right now.”

“I don’t drink it.”

“Hot chocolate then,” Kagome said winningly. “Come on, I know you have a sweet tooth.”

From a vendor in the park, they purchased two steaming cups. Kagome practically threw her money at the poor seller on the off chance Sesshoumaru had been intending to pay for hers as well—

Because that would make it seem like they were out here on a date, and they most certainly were not.

“Mm, that’s good,” she chattered, taking a scalding sip as they walked away from the stand. “It’s kind of perfect actually, don’t you think?”

“Average at best,” Sesshoumaru said, his nose faintly wrinkled.

“Kami,” Kagome muttered, shaking her head, “is it really so hard for you to get in the spirit of the season?”

“To muster enthusiasm for what isn’t real,” Sesshoumaru said dryly. “Yes, I find that trying.”

“What isn’t real about it?”

“The fake splendor,” he replied. “A children’s tale commercialized to bewitch the masses. Chemical candy, plastic trees and electric lights.”

“A humbug attitude,” Kagome said again, in all seriousness this time. “There’s no other way to put it.”

“Call it what you will.”

Tossing their paper cups away, they paused beneath an arbor of glowing green strands. Dangling above their heads was an illuminated mistletoe. 

“Uh oh,” Kagome said with a grin. “Better keep moving.”

“Why?”

She blinked, having no idea whether he was pulling her leg or not. His deadpan expression gave her nothing to go on.

“Ha ha, never mind,” she said, shifting in her boots as she waved. “I’d say the risk is minimal, wouldn’t you?” When he still just continued to stare, she joked lamely, “I mean, it’s not like you’re angling to kiss me or anything, so there’s no need for me to worry about getting caught.”

“You are saying that if I made some advance to you under this artificial plant,” Sesshoumaru remarked with utter dispassion, “you would have to submit to it.”

At the words ‘advance’ and ‘submit’ Kagome’s brain briefly short-circuited. Belatedly, and somewhat breathlessly, she replied, “…That’s the gist of the tradition, yeah.”

Sesshoumaru snorted, stepping past her down the path. “Ridiculous,” he said.

Kagome sagged as the tension mounting in her bled out. Willing her jumpy nerves to calm, she hurried to catch up with his long strides. She was panting a little by the time she did, though Sesshoumaru had drawn to a halt to let her.

“What’s ‘real’ to you then?” she asked him suddenly, planting her hands on her hips. When his brow furrowed, she pressed him rather hotly, “You said all this is ‘fake splendor’—so what’s not? What fills you with wonder? Does anything, or are you too jaded to feel that sort of awe anymore?”

His gaze fixed on her, sharp and unblinking. So inhumanly intent she started to regret she’d ever put forth the challenge.

“Come with me,” he said as he left the path, “and I will show you.”

Tugging anxiously at her scarf, she followed after, to a dark corner of the park where a couple of teenagers were making out on a secluded bench. Blushing, Kagome veered away. But Sesshoumaru continued on, nonplussed. He let his normally silent footfalls crunch, however, startling the necking couple out of their wits. They scrambled up and away as he drew to a stop beneath the three-walled pavilion and held out his hand to her.

Swallowing a little, she stepped forward and took it, his grip on hers so warm and strong. 

Youki rushed around her, blindingly bright in the darkness. Her reiki rose on instinct, but she tamped it down. There was a feeling of vertigo, of sudden and eerie weightlessness that made her cling to him as they shot through the sky. 

She squeezed her eyes shut in heart-pounding exhilaration, and when she opened them again, she gasped in shock at what she saw—

Together with Sesshoumaru, she stood upon a snowy mountain peak, so lofty and remote she could only see the silvered tops of the clouds far below, like skeins of drifting smoke. The rest was all darkness, velvety and deep, pierced only by the light of the moon and stars.

The air was icy and so very thin. As she shivered, she felt a soft, draping warmth enfold her. It was a train of ivory fur, dusted with sparks of youki that glittered like the snow around them. When she looked to Sesshoumaru, she saw him now as she remembered him—his hair shimmering like spun silver, his face so brilliantly marked and his eyes mirrored as burnished gold.

Looking to the canopy of stars that shone above them, he said, “This sight fills me with wonder, as ever it has.”

Gazing up along with him, Kagome felt herself transported back, to the unvarnished beauty of the ancient past. “I’d forgotten,” she whispered. “You’re right—those Christmas lights just can’t compare.” Lowering her gaze to find him looking at her in turn, she smiled. “I guess you’re not such a humbug after all.”

Soundlessly, Sesshoumaru approached her across the glinting snow. “What can be more lovely than these windows to the heavens which we see, and from which those who dwell there may look down on us in turn?”

Kagome’s heart quickened in her chest. The unexpected poignancy of his words arrested her completely. 

“I don’t know,” she said thickly, tears misting in her eyes. “I can’t imagine anything more beautiful than that, that the heavens are real and those we’ve loved and lost are watching over us from them.”

He caught her face in his clawed hands. Guiding her glistening eyes up to his, he gazed into them as if all the splendor of existence were contained within them.

“I can think of only one,” he said, as he brought his lips to hers.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Well I told myself I wasn’t going to write a holiday fic this year, but then inspiration struck so here it is 🙂 Updates for The Pact will resume next week.

Merry Christmas, y’all 💕❄🎄