Chapter Text
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“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
— Mary Oliver, from “In Blackwater Woods”
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The thing about time that many seem to take for granted is how quickly it moves on.
Like the turning of a wheel, it will trick you into thinking that it isn't moving barely at all until it picks up such speed that it is almost unstoppable. When we are children it almost seems to go on forever; a summer will feel like an eternity and a day never ends. Then, suddenly, the passage of time moves too quickly, the things around us changing so fast that we don't even remember them doing so. Plants become untamed, buildings decay from disuse, people whither and grow, depending on how old they were to begin with, and roads become impassable from lack of care.
Sesshomaru cared not for the passage of time, for it meant nothing to him. He wasn't immune to its effects but the caress of time upon his skin did not change him as drastically as the those around him. In as much time as it took an empire to rise and fall, he would feel a bit older. Or wearier. He didn't know the difference, truth be told, between what it felt like to age and what it felt like to be a little less enchanted by life.
That is, until he met her.
She was so alive, to the point where it was almost astonishing in its ferocity. She did not shy from any of the aspects of life, instead confronting them and sometimes welcoming them with a smile and a laugh. Never before had he known a creature who could find such joy even in the simple act of sitting; the image of her resting delicately among the flowers with a grin, singing to herself was one that came to him often. She was like the sun, warm and blinding, and more than once he had caught himself unable to look away.
She had a wit to her, too, clever enough with her words to catch many in her traps. He lost track of how many times she had made a comment to Jaken that left him frowning and scratching his head as she pranced off snickering evilly. Inuyasha had once told him that she had kept so many suitors at bay by talking them out of their decision to marry her. Even he couldn't say that he was immune to her charms, though he was definitely aware of them. Watching her walk up to him with an impish smile on her lips and a spark of mischief in her eyes had quickly become one of the many highlights of his day, wondering what she had planned.
Sesshomaru had not been ready for her. Not in the least. He had not been prepared for the way she would tear through his life, happily rending every practiced habit to shreds under her careful, loving fingers. He had not understood the pain he would feel in his chest when he would find her crying; the equal parts rage and helplessness of seeing tears on her cheeks, and wanting to comfort her and end whatever did this to her in the same breath. He had not even begun to understand how, even though he didn't sleep, he had become almost embarrassingly dependent on the practiced routine of sliding into bed with her. Of holding her close to him as she slept, his heart twisting in his chest when her fingers would curl into him unknowingly. The way his heart would thumb painfully when she would trip over things and then straighten up and look over at him with an embarrassed grin, when she would run her fingers through his hair, when he had seen her holding their children.
She had always been important to him, but it had become something more than even that. Important was not enough to describe what he felt. She was everything . On the rare occasion that she would find herself in danger, the way a cold rush of disbelief would leave him nothing except the memory of her lifeless body in his arms, had him feeling the closest thing to fear he ever would. She could not die. She couldn't. There was still so much that she needed to see and do, so much he wanted to experience with her.
"M'lord?"
Sesshomaru looked down at Jaken, shaken from his thoughts by the little toad. Even with the blue pallor of light casting over the two, Sesshomaru could see the reluctance on his face. He obviously had something on his mind, but Sesshomaru very much did not want to hear him. Jaken, astute as always, closed his mouth and backed away.
Sesshomaru returned to watching his wife. Floating suspended before him, surrounded, lifeless, and untouchable, she remained. The sight never got easier for him to bear but he forced himself to see her. She would not be here alone, for being alone was the one thing she hated more than anything else. He wouldn't have been able to leave her even if he had wanted to. He couldn't.
In this empty place, devoid of everything, he would watch her for hours. Or days. Time meant nothing to him, after all, and it wasn’t any easier spent away from her. He found that if he watched her for long enough, memories of their time together would come back to him. He could lose himself in the warmth of those memories and, truthfully, he threw himself into them desperately. She was herself in his memories and he much preferred that to the expressionless, untouchable, imprisoned woman before him.
She had been right. It was the smaller moments he relied on most for comfort. The moments that were so mundane in their time that they were at their most authentic. The most precious memories were those ones that had no reason to exist other than that they had been together .
And so, this demon lord who was friends with death and untouched by time, stood and thought back on memories of slow touches and laughter with the wife he could see but could not reach.
And he waited.
This was always the ending that I had planned for this; the story itself being a bunch happier moments that Rin dreamed about while sleeping/Sesshomaru remembered while watching her but that still didn't stop me from being all misty-eyed while I posted it. I really hope in season two we get to see her out of the tree, I'm dying for this.
Thank you to everyone that stuck with me for all 25 chapters and I hope this story continues to be one that you come back to just for fun :)
Goodbye!