There was a faraway look in her eyes.

Sesshoumaru had seen it before, this silvery, enigmatic misting of her gaze. It was not a look of sleepy detachment, but of active thought removed elsewhere. Why it transfixed him now, and not before, he couldn’t say—except that his desperation to pin her down had led him to hyper-focus on every aspect of her that eluded him.

Or perhaps she was simply being more elusive than usual. Whatever it was, it had succeeded in slipping beneath his skin.

Sesshoumaru set down his brush with a click, and wrenched up his rolled sleeves afresh. “If you are preoccupied with something, perhaps we should call it a day.”

“Hm?” Kagome murmured, as if returning from afar. “Oh, no, I’m sorry—it’s nothing, really.”

Her dismissal only irked him further. “It doesn’t seem that way to me. I need you to be present, here.”

The words with me remained lodged in his throat.

She crooked a smile at him which disarmed him completely. “Honestly, I’m surprised you noticed that I’d gone away; no one else ever seems to pick up on it, or if they do they don’t bring it up. They probably just figure I’m zoned-out or something.”

So he had guessed correctly: she wasn’t just idly daydreaming. Despite his vexation, Sesshoumaru’s curiosity was piqued.

“Where is it that you go?”

“The past,” she answered. “The distant past. Does Sengoku Jidai ring any bells to you?”

The Warring States era—

“Not particularly,” he said.

Sesshoumaru found history a dull subject, but he saw no need to insult her profession. Kagome smiled in understanding.

“Well, the historical details don’t matter all that much,” she continued, “because it’s a fairytale version of the setting, anyway. I come from a long line of Shinto priests and grew up on legends of ghosts and magic and demons.”

“Demons,” Sesshoumaru repeated dully, unimpressed.

Kagome nodded, her eyes aglitter. “Oh yes, demons most of all. From the way my grandpa talks, he’d have you believe that they’re still running amok, causing mischief and mayhem in modern times—but the Feudal Era was their mythical heyday. Since I was a little girl, I’ve been adding to the legends in my head, dreaming up new characters and adventures. Sometimes I get so caught up there, with them, that I lose track of where I really am.”

This was all a bit fanciful for Sesshoumaru’s tastes, but seeing the way her face lit up as she spoke, he was inclined to indulge her. “This time-traveling of yours, how does one go about it?”

“Oh, there’s all sorts of ways,” Kagome said, beaming. “But it just so happens there’s a magic well at my own family shrine—would you believe it? Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can jump down into it, and it’ll take you straight back through to the past.”

“And on the other side of that well?” Sesshoumaru prompted, picking up his brush again.

“The meadow of the Sacred Tree, which is so great and big and old that it’s ancient, even back then.” Kagome’s smile softened as her eyes became silvery once more, though this time Sesshoumaru felt almost as though he were traveling along with her. “There’s an enchantment on it, or rather, on the boy who’s sleeping there against its trunk. There’s something strange about him that makes you think he’s not entirely human, and the reality is that he’s older than he looks, and that he’s been asleep for many years, frozen under the spell of the girl he loved and lost through betrayal…”

Sesshoumaru paused with a frown. “Inuyasha.”

Kagome’s look was sheepish. “Well…yes and no. It’s a fairytale, after all.” Her gaze turned reflective. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in the telling.”

Her phone buzzed then, and it was Inuyasha of course, demanding to know when she’d be home. Sesshoumaru was irritated, but he didn’t let it show. What right did he have, to try and hold her here? She left in such a fluster that it wasn’t until the next day that she saw just what it was he’d been painting while she spoke—the old well and the forest glade, and the slumbering half-human boy, bound up in flowering vines, to the trunk of that great mystical tree.

Kagome herself stood rooted before it. “Sesshoumaru…this…this is…”

He had never felt anxious before any critic. None could ever be as harsh as himself. But he hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until she turned toward him, her eyes wide and shining with wonder.

“This is more perfect than I’d ever imagined.”

~

He began to illustrate her ‘travels,’ as they called them. Steadily, the sketches and paintings piled up, as new chapters unfolded in her tale of the hanyou boy, now awakened, and his quest to retrieve the shattered Jewel of Four Souls, which if pieced back together could grant any wish to its beholder.

“But what does he want with it?” Sesshoumaru asked her. “He seems capable enough on his own.”

Kagome’s smile was melancholy. “He just wants to feel whole.”

~

Sesshoumaru didn’t know whether to be complimented or insulted, when the boy’s ‘stoic’ elder brother was introduced to the tale—

“Half-brother,” Kagome corrected with a teasing grin. “They share the same father, who was a great dog-demon warlord of the west. But this guy is all demon, through and through. He’s cold and aloof, calculating and ruthless—”

“Handsome,” Sesshoumaru put in dryly.

Kagome laughed. “Well, naturally, yeah. He’s got it all—or at least he seems to. But when he shows up on the scene, it’s clear he’s after something.”

“Fragments of the Jewel?”

“No, no,” Kagome said, shaking her head. “He’s too proud for wishes. Whatever he wants, he sets out to take by his own hand.”

All the wryness had left Sesshoumaru’s expression. “And what is that?”

Kagome glanced off, as if she hadn’t yet decided. But even after her moment of hesitation passed, she still didn’t quite meet his gaze.

“His brother’s most prized possession,” she said.

Sesshoumaru was silent at this. Before he could say anything to it, she was slipping off the table where she’d been fiddling with his paints and then through the door with a hasty goodnight.

~

Of course, it was the character of the traveler, the miko from the future, who most intrigued him. She was the narrator of the tale, whose perspective Sesshoumaru had assumed in all of his previous works in the collection. By now, there was more than a gallery’s worth of fine art to show. But this secret creation of his would be the centerpiece.

To say he had labored over it would be an understatement—yet unlike his previous efforts, in this fictionalized version of her, he felt the closest he had come to capturing Kagome’s true essence. Her earnestness and zeal. Her calm strength of self. Her light and her warmth and her unwavering resolve.

Her beauty, in body and soul, which was both ethereal and earthly to him all at once.

As he lifted his brush from the canvas, he felt an echo of the captivation he experienced whenever she was near.

~

On the night of the Feudal Era exhibition, Sesshoumaru found himself distinctly on edge. It wasn’t a nervous feeling, exactly, but rather a sense of keen anticipation.

As the gallery filled almost to bursting from the start, he made the token rounds he’d been beseeched to make. But through the crowd, his eyes were scanning, searching.

Though her evening hours were normally off-limits, Kagome had promised him she would drop by. He was counting on it. His glance strayed to the large painting that was curtained off back and center, and drawing even more excited attention than the works on full display. Only a small silver plaque beside it was visible, bearing the title The Priestess of the Sacred Jewel.

“I should have hired more security,” his agent Jaken muttered anxiously, bobbing into view near Sesshoumaru’s left shoulder. He dabbed a kerchief to his bald sweating head, his features even more pinched than usual. “They’re going to get bolder soon, Sesshoumaru-sama. One good tug on that curtain, and the unveiling is ruined. How much longer do you want to delay?”

Sesshoumaru’s jaw tightened. As his gaze swept around the gallery again, there was a vibration at his hip. Irritably, he pulled out his phone, his stomach sinking from the moment he saw her name flash across the screen—

Inuyasha’s in bad shape tonight. I’m so sorry but I’m not going to be able to make it. I hope—

Seething, Sesshoumaru shoved his phone back into his pocket. In bad shape—more like drunk out of his mind, and putting her through hell no doubt.

“…Sesshoumaru-sama?”

He looked to Jaken in such cold fury that his agent visibly shrank. “This exhibition is over. Nothing is for sale. Tell these people to go. Get them out.”

Jaken went green in the face. “N-nothing…but—”

“Nothing,” Sesshoumaru said, his voice rising and cracking like a whip. Those gathered closest to him drew back with a start, a ripple of hushed confusion spreading through the crowd. Eyes flashing, he raised his voice further still. “This show is over, I said. Get out of here, damn you—get out of here now!”

Before his thunderous advance, people gasped and scattered. Striding straight up to the curtained piece, he ripped it down from the wall, covering and all, and stormed out with it into the bitter dark.

~

Sesshoumaru didn’t sleep that night. Even so, restless with resentment as he was, he was incensed to hear a ring of the doorbell not long after dawn. Then, to his simmering rage, another.

Not bothering to make himself decent, he stalked half-naked to the foyer and wrenched back the door—and instantly regretted it, as he met with Kagome’s wide staring eyes. Sesshoumaru exhaled through the vise of his teeth.

“What do you want?—it’s 7 A.M.”

“…I was worried about you,” she said, her cheeks coloring slightly as she averted her gaze. “You didn’t reply to my texts.”

“I didn’t read them,” Sesshoumaru replied, closing the door a pointed fraction. “But as you can see, I’m fine.”

Kagome frowned, her eyes flitting over his drawn features and doubtless seeing in them the same exhaustion that shadowed her own. “Could I come inside for a moment?”

Grudgingly, Sesshoumaru stepped back to let her pass. Slipping off her shoes, she padded forward across the hardwood entryway and stood hesitating beside the island at the periphery of the kitchen. Against the marble edge of the countertop, her fingers curled as if for purchase.

“I just wanted to tell you again how sorry I am that I missed the exhibition last night. I know how much it meant to you—”

“No, you don’t,” he interrupted coolly. “But that’s beside the point. You weren’t there, and no amount of apologizing is going to change that fact.”

“Well,” Kagome said quietly, “I’m sorry all the same.”

Her lashes descended as she bit at her lower lip. Sesshoumaru shouldn’t have found it enticing, but he did. As she traced some swirling pattern in the stone, he stared her down in brooding silence.

Eventually, her eyes lifted to him, wearily. “Is there something you want to say?”

Sesshoumaru’s tone was cutting. “You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked,” she said, just as sharply.

“Very well,” he said lowly, stepping toward her. “He may be my little brother, but your fiancé is a degenerate and a fool.” As he stopped just before her and peered down, she tensed in apprehension. “You’re wasted on him, and you know it.”

Kagome flinched back from him as if struck. “You were right—I shouldn’t have asked.”

She started to turn away, toward the door. Before Sesshoumaru could think better of it, his hand shot out to intercept her. The moment he grasped her by the wrist—the moment he felt the satin slide of her skin against his, the warmth of their connection, he was undone.

“I love you,” he said.

Kagome, who’d been turning back toward him, froze. Slipping his other arm around her waist, he pulled her the rest of the way to him, and slanted his mouth against hers.

Her hands fluttered to the bare muscle of his chest, and the feathery feel of her touch there, so close to his thundering heart, left him dazed with rapture. For a blissful instant, she softened against him, long enough for a wild rush of hope to manifest—before her palms flattened and pushed him firmly back.

Flushed and trembling, she glared warily up at him, stumbling back a half-step herself. She looked so frightened, so helpless, that it was all Sesshoumaru could do not to reach for her again.

“Kagome…” he ventured carefully, keeping his hands clenched at his sides. “I—”

But she was already pivoting on her heel. “I-I have to go.”

“Wait,” he grit out, taking a step after her.

Tossing him one last panicked glance, she crammed her feet into her flats and bolted through the door.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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