The Muse by wonderbug

The Muse

Author's note: Who says an old dog can't learn new tricks? :) This is my first SessKag AU fic ever, based off my blog mini-series of the same name. For all the latest writing from me, check out my blog (ficaholic.com)! Reviews always appreciated :) Happy reading

The Muse

His studio was in shambles.

Again.

Torn, busted canvases lay scattered about. Easels tottered on broken legs. Containers of paint oozed and spilled where they hadn’t simply burst against the walls and the floor and the thick-paned windows. Sticky and wet and gleaming like so many mixed streams of gore, the whole place had the look of a crime scene—and he the hapless wretch caught red-handed in the middle of it all.

Slicking his fingers through his disheveled hair, Sesshoumaru winced at the bruise already forming on his cheek. Like a wild wounded creature, his attacker glared up at him, her fists trembling and chest heaving with irrepressible fury.

“You’re such an asshole,” she hissed out, her lovely features contorted in anguish. “You’re a cold-hearted monster, and someday you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

Violently, she strode past him, her heels snapping across the tiles. He grit his teeth as the door slammed shut behind her, and he was plunged into grim angry silence once more.

~

“So another jilted model wrecked your shit,” Inuyasha said, smirking as he leaned back in his seat. “When are you gonna stop leading ‘em on?”

From across the low table, Sesshoumaru looked coldly at his younger half-brother. “I do nothing to encourage them.”

“Feh, who says you have to ‘do’ anything. You’ve got our old man’s devilish good looks same as I do,” Inuyasha said smugly, “and you’re rich and famous besides.”

There was a touch of pettiness in this last remark. Sesshoumaru chose to ignore it. His little brother had always been petty and contentious, and indulged by their father to harbor such vices, since his mother had died when he was so young.

“I make it clear from the start that I don’t want any complications,” Sesshoumaru said, glancing coolly aside. “That I value my solitude. Why is it so difficult for them to respect this?”

Inuyasha snorted. “Because that’s exactly the sort of talk that drives these hungry bitches wild. No wonder they keep going crazy on you. They don’t really see you as unattainable—they see you as a prize catch. Acting like that just makes them want to sink their claws into you even more.” Rubbing his chin, Inuyasha squinted in thought. “What you need is a woman whose sights are already set.” A snide grin tugged at his lips. “Staking out wedding chapels might be a good place to start.”

Sesshoumaru didn’t dignify this with a response. As Inuyasha tipped the last of the sake down his throat, the apartment door banged open, and the frazzled form of his fiancée appeared in the threshold, her windburned face just peeping over the edge of the grocery bags she was juggling.

“I’m home!” Kagome announced a little breathlessly, as she plopped the bags down upon the counter. Seeing Sesshoumaru, she smiled warmly. “Hi there. How are you?”

Before he could return the greeting, Inuyasha asked her gruffly, “Hey, did you buy more sake?”

Smiling still, Kagome rifled through the bags. “Yep! Here it is.”

”Great. Bring it over.”

Sesshoumaru frowned, but Kagome seemed as unfazed by Inuyasha’s rudeness as she always did. With her coat still on, she hurried over to the table with bottle in hand. Pressing a kiss to his cheek, she bent to refill his cup, before reaching politely for Sesshoumaru’s. As she did so, her thin scarf slipped, and his eyes were drawn inexorably to the curve of her throat.

How had he never noticed before, Sesshoumaru wondered, what a graceful curve it was.

~

“Model for you?” Kagome blinked. “Me?”

Sesshoumaru nodded, trying not to grimace in dread at the memory of debacles past. “I think you would be perfect for it.”

Her cheeks flushed. “Would I have to, um, get naked in front of you?”

“Not if you do not wish to.”

A bit of her tension eased at this. Yet still she shifted, her eyes fixed upon the teacup she was clutching in both hands.

“I don’t know...I don’t think Inuyasha would like it.”

Certainly not, Sesshoumaru knew, though it shouldn't concern him. “I’ll pay you, of course.”

She had such an expressive face. In Inuyasha’s absence, her features had lost their habitual soft schooling, and the array of emotions that flitted past was so vivid and raw that Sesshoumaru wished he could sketch her right then and there. It reminded him of the play of sun and shadow through a veil of shifting cloud, but all that light and darkness came from within her instead.

He could read the deliberation in her downcast eyes. Against her reservations, she was weighing Inuyasha’s debts and her own, and finding in the balance some dream long deferred. But when she looked to him again, her fair face was clear—like marble swept clean by the rain.

“How much?” Kagome asked him.

~

It was another week still before she arrived at his studio, and only, Sesshoumaru supposed, because of his dogged insistence. She looked haggard, rather exasperated even, as he met her at the door and invited her in. There were kohl-dark smudges beneath her lashes, as if she hadn't slept well in days, though this didn't detract from the unvarnished allure of her gaze. Rather, it seemed to throw the brilliance of her eyes into even sharper contrast.

Catching the light, her blue irises faintly sparkled, as she stepped across the threshold and into his domain. "Oh my...this is a lovely space. It's so bright and open."

Standing back, Sesshoumaru observed her as she wandered forward. Her eyes trailed over the tables of brushes and inks, the sculptures and sketches, the stacks of painted canvases both finished and unfinished. Her hands she kept to herself, for which Sesshoumaru was grateful. He was as particular and prickly about his workspace as he was everything else.

But it was the high, shining wall of glass at the back that seemed to draw her most. Through it, the crisp green-and-red vista of a traditional Japanese garden was displayed. Stepping up to the window, Kagome peered beyond it, her gaze following the garden's gradual slope.

"You can see the river from here," she said, a small wistful smile pulling at her lips. "It's kind of freeing, isn't it? To just watch things drift along on their natural course."

The view she was describing was precisely the reason he had bought this place to begin with. She had a good eye, his would-be sister-in-law—though this discovery didn’t surprise Sesshoumaru as much as it once would have. He was beginning to expect the unexpected from her.

Absently, she touched her fingers to the glass as she continued to gaze out. In doing so, Sesshoumaru noticed the ring on her left hand had changed. Where before there had been a golden band with a small solitaire, there was now just a cheap ring of silver. He could guess well enough where its predecessor had gone—either to the loan sharks or the gambling dens, whichever his brother had happened upon first.

Sensing his icy stare upon her, Kagome turned. Her eyes traced the severity of that look back to her hand, which was still pressed to the pane.

“...I’m sorry,” she said, abashed, as she lifted her fingertips from the faint, misty imprints she’d left on the glass. “That was careless of me—”

“No,” Sesshoumaru said, so abruptly that she tensed in alarm. Forcing his voice to lose its strident edge, he crossed over to a fresh canvas and quietly said, “Stay just as you are.”

~

"You really should have us over sometime, Inuyasha and I. All these years, and you've never invited us once."

Sesshoumaru kept painting. "Are you offended?"

"A little," Kagome said, but he could hear the smile in her voice. "Mostly I just want an excuse to tour the rest of this killer house."

"I don't like guests," he said flatly, his brushstroke landing heavier than intended.

"I get the impression you don't like much of anything."

Sesshoumaru glanced up to where she sat. And now he could see the sparkle in her eye. It unsettled him. Had it always been there, this clarity of perception?

All these years, and he had never really bothered to look at her, let alone get to know her. He knew how old she was and which university she'd attended. He knew that her family were shrine-keepers, and that she taught Japanese history to high school students. But he knew next to nothing about her as a person. It was as though he had labelled her as "Inuyasha's love interest," and then promptly written her off.

He had a habit of writing people off. Most of the time, he felt that he was right.

But with her, he was beginning to doubt.

"I like models who chatter less," he said curtly.

As Kagome blushed, he returned to his portrait, and added to it the most beguiling tinge of red.

~

In truth, he didn't mind her chatter. She talked to put herself at ease, and he wanted her to be as natural as possible. He didn't direct her much at all, in fact—which for him was a departure from the norm. He was typically quite exacting with his models, but with Kagome he found himself content merely to study her wherever she sat or leaned or stood.

She was so unaffected in her manner that Sesshoumaru felt almost as if he were intruding upon her, whenever he asked her to pause and hold a pose.

"Tomorrow is mine and Inuyasha's six-year anniversary." Her chin was balanced on her knuckles; ever so slightly, they dimpled the creamy smoothness of her cheek. "Six years," she added with a soft little sigh. "It really makes you think."

"About what?" Sesshoumaru asked, to his own chagrin.

"Time," she said simply, and he left it at that.

~

For all her good cheer, there was a deep sadness in Kagome. Sesshoumaru could sense it, though he couldn't define it. Its edges were formless, yet somehow distinct, like a line of waves breaking upon the sand.

"My father died when I was young," she told him one day. "I think that's why Inuyasha and I became so close, because I understand the pain that he feels."

"Yet you do not let it dictate your behavior," Sesshoumaru said, brisk and matter-of-fact. "He has been wallowing in his victimhood all his life. I can attest to it."

Kagome frowned. "You're too hard on him."

"And you are too soft," Sesshoumaru said, his eyes snapping to her. "You enable him."

Her face fell. Perhaps he had pressed the issue too far, but Sesshoumaru couldn't bring himself to regret it. He supposed he was every bit as cold-hearted as he'd been accused.

"Some people just need more than others," she said quietly, meeting his gaze. "There's a difference."

Sesshoumaru wanted to retort that there would never be an end to what his brother 'needed' from her. That she had the face of the first girl Inuyasha had ever loved, and the spirit of his mother, and that the great, futile effort of his life had been to fill in the holes his losses had left in him instead of patching them over and moving on. And if there was any real victim in all of this, it was Kagome herself.

“Tell me then,” he replied instead, a sharp note of challenge in his voice, “what do you think I need that I couldn’t provide for myself?”

“Not much,” Kagome said. "But something." She smiled at him then, and the radiant warmth of it set him aflame. “Isn't that why I'm here?”

~

Not in many years had Sesshoumaru felt this inspired. Perhaps he never had.

There was a frankness in Kagome—a purity—which fixated him.

In vain, his hand strove to keep up with his eye—but always there was another glance from her, another turn of the lips, another subtle movement that would arrest him. The images tormented him as he felt them slip through his fingers, like grains of the finest gold.

He held to them as fiercely as he could, to no avail. Even what he retained of her left him dissatisfied. For the first time that Sesshoumaru could recall, he felt inadequate to the task of capturing what he sought.

Of capturing her.

He took photos to help him, but they only served to deepen his frustrations—these dead broken moments of her. He erased them in contempt. From memory, he painted a dozen pictures just of her eyes, and ripped them all to shreds.

Then he snatched up his phone and begged her as much as he'd ever begged anyone in his life—

Come by earlier tomorrow, if you can.

~

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 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.

~

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 about to head 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 first 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 lips tugging up at one corner. “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. Trailing his fingers through the dark, glossy spill of her hair, Sesshoumaru pushed his doubts to the back of his mind, and held her to him all the fiercer.

~

It amazed him, how easily Kagome assimilated into his daily life. He had never gotten on well in close quarters with anyone—not even his parents, and especially not his obnoxious little brother. His creative space had always been a prized commodity; his privacy, a jealously-guarded thing. But now Sesshoumaru wondered how he had ever lived without her.

Perched on the edge of a table in his studio, she was wearing one of his shirts as if it were her own, and Sesshoumaru found himself consenting wholeheartedly to its appropriation. The long line of buttons hung invitingly open. Beneath and between them, she wore nothing at all. Letting the charcoal fall from his hand, he knelt before her as her thighs parted open with a soft, rosy gleam—

"You..."

In Sesshoumaru's hair, Kagome's fingers seized in fright. A few strands tore loose as he jerked back his head, to find Inuyasha standing red-faced and glaring from the open door.

"You son of a bitch. I should've known..."

Abruptly, Sesshoumaru stood as Kagome scrambled off the table behind him and clutched at the folds of her shirt. But there was nothing for it; the evidence was damning enough, even without the finger tracks of charcoal smudging her bare inner thighs. Sesshoumaru grimaced. He'd been mentally preparing to confront his younger brother, but not like this...

"Inuyasha—"

"Don't—don't you fucking dare try to talk me down. And you," he snarled, turning his wrathful gaze upon the pale, shrinking figure of his former fiancée, "don't you say anything either, you two-faced, lying slut."

As Kagome clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle her anguished cry, Sesshoumaru strode forward, his expression hard with anger. "Leave her out of this, Inuyasha. Whatever quarrel you have, you can direct it at me."

Inuyasha's features twisted in scorn. "Always so fucking sure of yourself, aren't you? Asshole."

Before Sesshoumaru could respond, Inuyasha was flying at him, his thrown fist clipping Sesshoumaru just beneath the jaw. Kagome screamed out at the bone-grinding crack, but Sesshoumaru shook it off, and brought his knee up hard into Inuyasha's stomach. Before their father had made his fortune in real estate, he'd fought competitively on a national scale, and his sons had inherited his martial talent. Inuyasha was a savage brawler, but Sesshoumaru had always had the advantage of poise—that, and a cool, level head.

As Inuyasha doubled over wheezing, Sesshoumaru clutched at his busted jaw. "Get up," he said coldly, glaring down, "and get out."

Inuyasha glared back, still gasping violently for breath. "Fuck you...Sesshoumaru..." For a minute his jaw locked tight. Angry tears boiled in his eyes. "You always...always got to...knock me down. What little I got...you gotta take that from me too..."

"What 'little' you have?" Sesshoumaru's tone was caustic, withering. "You, who's been given nothing but handouts your entire life? You're the one who always takes, and still you have this chip on your shoulder." Resentment spiked through him, and he couldn't stop himself. "Grasping and lowbred, just like your tramp of a mother."

Inuyasha's face was a mask of white-lipped fury. "Shut the fuck up about my mother...you bastard..."

"You are the bastard," Sesshoumaru shot back. "My family was torn apart because of you—because of her. I'll say whatever I damn well like about her. She was my nanny before she was your mother, and I loved her before I grew to hate her." A pain so old he'd forgotten he'd buried it lanced in his chest. "But with you I had no choice."

Inuyasha staggered to his feet, swaying slightly. "So you've always hated me, too." Lost, he looked to Kagome, who was staring at him just as despairingly. "Well then, that explains it."

Sesshoumaru's teeth clenched in vicious denial. "No—"

But Inuyasha didn't seem to hear it. There was a utility knife sitting on a table near him—then suddenly it was in his hand. Sesshoumaru tensed, bracing himself for a charge that never came, as Inuyasha turned the point of the blade back upon himself.

~

Sesshoumaru could still see the flash of the ambulance lights burning behind his tired eyes. Grinding his knuckles into them once again, he reclined against the hard back of the hospital chair. Beside him, Kagome sat stiffly, her face bloodless and graven with tension.

He reached for her. In his hand, her own felt cold and small.

Silently they waited, as the hours ticked by.

At last a harried nurse approached them, speaking in a rush of medical jargon which Sesshoumaru struggled to digest in his state of fatigue. But from Kagome's watery sigh of relief, he caught the gist of it.

"...He's stable. You can see him now," the nurse concluded, giving Sesshoumaru and his bloodied jaw a hawkish once-over. "But you ought to let me stitch that wound of yours up first."

Kagome had already shot to her feet, but hearing this, she looked to Sesshoumaru with an uncertain frown. "Go on," he told her gruffly as he stood. "I'll join you when I'm through."

"...Okay," she said, her fingers slipping through his like smoke.

~

It took longer than Sesshoumaru would have liked for that nurse to stitch him up. Drugged though Inuyasha would undoubtedly be, Sesshoumaru didn't relish the prospect of leaving Kagome alone to bear the brunt of his discontent, no matter how subdued.

But as he stepped up to the open room, he saw his little brother lying meekly in his hospital bed, the bandages around his chest showing the faintest line of red. His eyes were heavy-lidded as he gazed up at Kagome, who was sitting beside him with her back to the door. Quietly, they conversed; so quietly that Sesshoumaru had no hope of hearing the words that passed between them.

Yet somehow he knew.

And when Kagome's hand pressed tenderly to Inuyasha's cheek, when he closed his eyes and turned his face into her palm, all Sesshoumaru could hear was the sound of his own heart splintering in his chest. She happened to glance back at him then, and a pall of regret fell over her. Her eyes gleamed with an apology her trembling lips couldn't seem to frame.

But Sesshoumaru had seen enough. He turned from her and walked away.

~

If only he could leave the image of her so easily behind.

He saw her everywhere he looked. Before, he had relished her presence, basked in it like some sort of divine visitation. The thought of her alone had awakened him, revitalized him. Now the memory of her haunted him instead.

It was as though a shadow had fallen over his world, tainting everything. Even after he'd sent the last of her things back to her, his home felt not his own. There wasn't a corner of it that didn't bear some reminder of her. The cool darkness of his bedroom was no longer a comfort. He couldn't retreat beneath the sheets without feeling some imprint of her there beside him.

But his studio was the worst. Sesshoumaru couldn't stand to set foot in it, he felt such a strong sense of aversion. All the desire to create art had fled him. He doubted it would ever return. Contemplating his past creations filled him with increasing disdain.

As the days crawled by, this feeling of disdain fomented, until Sesshoumaru pried open the crates containing the collection of Feudal Era paintings. Gathering them up, he broke them down and burned them along with his sketchbooks in the firepit out back. The curtained piece he saved for last. Uncovering it, he threw it whole into the crackling flames, and as Kagome's likeness turned to ash, his emptiness consumed him.

~

"I'm retiring," Sesshoumaru told Jaken shortly over the phone.

"R-retiring?" the agent exclaimed, spluttering. "But how?—you're only thirty-two! Who on earth retires at thirty-two?"

"Someone for whom the well has run dry," Sesshoumaru replied, the words tasting bitter on his tongue.

~

He put his house on the market.

"The list price is too high," his realtor said with a frown.

Sesshoumaru ignored this warning and listed it anyway. He had his few remaining personal effects put into storage. He moved into an apartment in the city.

He had a string of meaningless affairs there, with women whose faces he forgot as soon as he looked away. His days were spent on investment calls, and in conference rooms which felt as barren as his soul. But the coldness of counting yen appealed to him. He felt more walled-off and icy than he ever had, and the cool impassivity with which he watched his wealth amass put fear and admiration into the eyes of his associates.

He loathed them, as he loathed himself.

Jaken sought him out, begged to stay on as his agent. Sesshoumaru agreed, and not even that reluctantly; Jaken had always known far more about business than art.

Though his primary subject of study seemed to be Sesshoumaru himself.

"And if you ever do decide to return to your craft," Jaken said with glinting eyes and an impish smile, "we'll simply call this stint of yours a mental sabbatical."

Sesshoumaru frowned and glanced away, resisting the impulse to chuck the granite paperweight he was clenching in his fist.

~

When he received word that an outlandish offer had come in on his house, Sesshoumaru was conflicted. Despite his desire to be shed of the place, and all the painful associations it harbored, he felt a strange reluctance to accept.

Perhaps it was simply inertia.

He decided to visit his home again, thinking that to subject himself to that atmosphere of remembered disappointment would spur him into action. But when he stepped foot across the threshold, he didn't feel that strangling hold on his throat that he'd expected. He felt only a quiet lonesomeness.

Desperate to arouse in himself some sense of antipathy, he stepped into his dreaded studio. The space was incongruously bright compared to his dark expectations. Walking around in that innocuous space, searching for something to offend him, Sesshoumaru began to feel ridiculous.

But as his eyes raked over every inch, a flash of white caught his attention—peeking from beneath a cabinet in the corner.

It was a sheaf of heavy paper. Some scrap of cardstock the movers must have missed when they'd cleared out his things. He bent down and picked it up—and a flare of intense feeling pierced through his chest.

Emblazoned on the surface was an image of the Jewel, half-completed. A forgotten relic from those bygone days he'd spent with Kagome, illustrating out of love for her this fantastical tale from Sengoku Jidai.

But this wasn't one of his sketches—it was hers.

It had survived the purge of his art only because it had been incomplete, and unknown to him. It had evaded being cast into the darkness of oblivion only by chance.

The engraving quivered in his hands as he gazed upon it, and felt only half-complete himself.

He set it down upon a table. He took out a pen from his pocket and pressed it to the page. Slowly, tortuously, he inked in the rest, as though etching each line from the vein.

~

When his work was finished, he slipped the page into an envelope and took it with him into the city.

Not to his apartment, but to hers—hers and his brother's. Or so he still assumed it to be.

With the etching tucked beneath his arm, he knocked on the door. It was an odd time of day, early morning on the weekend, but after a moment of scuffling from within, the door cracked open. A familiar face peered out.

"...Sesshoumaru," Kagome said, soft and surprised.

Resting against the frame, her left hand was startlingly bare. But as the door opened wide, he could see the rumpled couch behind her, the twisted blanket and flung pillows. Her eyes were hooded, her hair and nightclothes so sensually mussed that Sesshoumaru found himself clenching his jaw and glancing away. He'd been expecting his brother to answer.

As if expecting that he'd been expecting this, Kagome said, "Inuyasha's not home now; you've just missed him. He's at the gym, training." In his periphery, she shivered, fidgeting with the flimsy straps of her camisole. "He's been working really hard, to get back into fighting shape after all these years. There's a tournament coming up next month."

Sesshoumaru nodded, still looking askance, "I'm glad to hear it."

Truly he was, despite how forced his reply had sounded. Kagome smiled gently.

"Thank you for taking care of the hospital bills," she said quietly after a moment. "You really helped us out. We've finally managed to get our heads above water now."

Sesshoumaru hadn't done it for them—he'd done it for her. He would have done more, if he'd thought it wouldn't cause trouble between her and Inuyasha.

"It was nothing," he said, cursing the frigid strain in his voice.

"And for the emails," she added, more quietly still.

Sesshoumaru looked to her directly. A faint blush limned her cheeks. So she knew about them then—but well, why wouldn't she.

For better or worse, his little brother had never been one to hide anything.

~

About a week after the knife incident, Sesshoumaru had sent the first one. It was an apology letter more than anything. He'd signed it with love, though it had been difficult and awkward to express that kind of thing to his brother, even in written form. He hadn't expected a response, but a few days later he'd gotten one anyway. Laced with invectives though it'd been, a line of honest communication had opened between them at last.

It seemed it was easier for both of them to speak to one another through the tempering medium of typed words on a screen. They'd been corresponding regularly ever since, mostly about the past. Their father and their mothers, childhood experiences, university days which had both been cut short for them, for very different reasons. They didn't speak much about the present, and never about Kagome. But Inuyasha wrote to him often about Kikyou—his high school sweetheart who'd dumped him under the allegation he'd pawned her grandmother's locket for spending money, which to this day he vehemently denied.

...But then, I thought, fuck it, she thinks I'm such a piece of trash, maybe I am. It really screwed with my head, the way she dropped me like that out of nowhere. And I was drinking so much anyway, and doing all sorts of other reckless shit just to try to forget her, so it kind of just spiraled from there. I got kicked out of uni. I gambled away my trust fund. I stopped training and competing, and you know fighting's the only thing I've ever been good at. It's like I just got stuck in that moment when she walked out on me, and I've been stuck there ever since...

~

"It meant a lot to him," Kagome said presently, "that you reached out. I wanted to—I picked up my phone so many times to talk to you, but I just couldn't find the words..."

She trailed off helplessly, but Sesshoumaru understood. He had done the same thing, countless times.

Kagome's lashes fell like wingtips toward her reddened cheeks. "Inuyasha...he has a good heart, you know."

"I know," Sesshoumaru said.

"And so do you," Kagome replied, her gaze settling upon him, calm and clear, blue as untroubled skies. A few beats of silence passed between them. "Would you like to come in? He should be back in an hour or so."

"No," he said tersely, taking the envelope from beneath his arm and extending it toward her. "I'm selling my house, and I was going through some things. I found this and thought you might want to keep it."

"...Oh," Kagome said mildly, blinking as she accepted it. "Thank you—"

But Sesshoumaru had already turned away and started down the street. He should never have come here. He felt stupid, embarrassed, giving her a silly thing like that. It was hardly even her drawing anymore, now that he'd penned in the rest.

So lost in his heated stewing, he was more than halfway down the block before he heard the sound of soft, hurried footsteps falling in behind him. Sesshoumaru turned as Kagome crashed into his chest, the sketch of the Jewel crushing flat between them. He steadied her as she held fast to him—irrationally concerned for her bare little feet, amidst all the frost and grime that crusted the pavement. Her tearstained face peeled back from his shirt, and he saw now what her sleeping on that couch had really meant. His jaded illusions fell away, and he saw only her, as she was. A true, selfless friend to his brother, and to him—

"I love you," she said, smiling up at him through the sheen of her tears. "I love you so much."

~

They were married in the spring, just after the snow had melted. It was a small ceremony, held at the Higurashi family shrine. Though the setting was traditional, they said their vows to one another in their own way, beneath the ornamented branches of the Sacred Tree.

Inuyasha was conspicuously absent. Kagome was distraught at this, but Sesshoumaru was strangely heartened by it. With the bottle of sake he'd sent them as a wedding present, Inuyasha had attached a note, which said he'd be going abroad during that time, to Europe, and he didn't know when he'd be back. Sesshoumaru understood, perhaps better than anyone else did, that his brother needed to find his own way to sort through his heartache. Kikyou's last known whereabouts were London, after all.

As firecrackers lit the darkening sky above them, Sesshoumaru spirited Kagome away. Sweeping her off her feet, he carried her across the threshold of his home—their home, as ever it had seemed to him now in his mind—and up the steps to their bedroom. Kagome's eyes glowed with love and wonder as she gazed up at him, her arms wound around his shoulders.

"It feels like I'm flying," she said with a laugh.

~Eight Years Later~

"Papa!"

Sesshoumaru turned with paintbrush in hand, arching a brow as a small dark-haired figure barreled into him at top-speed. Ruffling his free hand through her bangs, he smiled down as his daughter drew back from him, gap-toothed and beaming.

"Rin," he said, "you're home early. How was school?"

The little girl screwed up her face. "Boooring. And soccer practice was canceled for today, remember?" Rocking up on her toes, she peeked around him. "What are you painting, Papa? Oh, it's Grandpa Touga. But...who is that lady with him?"

Sesshoumaru glanced back to the painting. Though it wasn't exactly of his father, Rin recognized him anyway, as the Great Dog-Demon General of the West. And in his arms—

"Your step-grandmother Izayoi," Sesshoumaru answered. "She was a princess of the Western Lands."

"She's very pretty," Rin said with a blush.

"She was," Sesshoumaru replied. "And kind as well."

Rin dashed over to an easel not far from his. "I should add her to my painting, too!"

Borrowing from Sesshoumaru's palette, she brushed in her caricature of Izayoi beside that of Touga, to join in her own flower-framed curation of Feudal Era heroes. Loftily above and to the far left was Sesshoumaru's elegant mother. On the far right were Rin's Uncle Inuyasha and Aunt Kikyou. And between them were Sesshoumaru, Kagome, the impish Jaken and even Rin herself, and all of their other fabled friends, both demon and human alike. It was a canvas full of storied characters, brought to life by a family of time-traveling dreamers.

"Rin-chan," Kagome said gently from the door, "it's homework time."

Rin groaned, but set down her brush and skipped away. Her mother smiled after her.

"She's such a daddy's girl," Kagome laughed as she drew up beside Sesshoumaru. Slipping her arm around his waist as he did the same, she gazed admiringly at his latest addition to the famous Tales of Segoku Jidai, which had now inspired more films, comics, and novels than Sesshoumaru could count. "This one may be your best work yet."

Sesshoumaru snorted. "You always say that."

Placing a hand to his chest, she grinned up at him. "And I always mean it, too."

As he skimmed his lips against hers, her eyes glimmered with such heated promise that Sesshoumaru had to forcibly remind himself that their daughter was within earshot still. Breaking away from his wife, for now, he let his gaze stray elsewhere, to land on the framed drawing of the Sacred Jewel, the lone survivor from the original Feudal Era series.

"You never did tell me," he said, "what the priestess wished for, in the end."

"Nothing," Kagome murmured, tightening her arms around him with a happy sigh. "Her heart was full."

~the end~