Setsubun (The Last Day of Winter)
"Once upon a time, there was a man and woman who loved each other very much. They wanted children and because they were very good and loving people, the kamis gave them a beautiful daughter with raven hair and deep, magical blue eyes.
"Unknown to her parents, she had been chosen for a long and difficult journey. Within her, she carried a mystical crystal orb made of light and darkness, which balanced the world to the will of its wielder. When she was very young, shortly after the birth of her brother, her father died and she was left to be strong for everyone."
He could not watch him die. He could not do it for fear that he might try to save him and, by saving him, change her future and his own. The world might be so different, he never would have met her. On the same note, it might be no different at all except she would still have her father. He could never know. The risk was simply too high. Instead, he hid beneath the sill on the far side of her home and waited for the news to come.
He waited as she cried into her mother's arms. He waited until she had cried herself to sleep. And then he had slipped into her room and sat where he knew Inuyasha would sit on so many nights, years into this future but centuries into her past. He sang softly to her as he watched her sleep. She was so innocent. She was a child of light and warmth. He swore to himself then that he would protect this child that would become his love with his very life. She was his life even if she did not know it yet.
When a soft smile crept onto her pale face, he leaned down and kissed her brow before slipping back through the window and into the night.
"And so she was strong. She lived for her family and friends, but never for herself. She almost forgot what it was like to be a child, except when the snow fell. Then she became a child again and with her childish reverie came her carelessness."
She was spinning. Spinning in the snow and the two were dancing together, her midnight darkness in reverie with the pure unblemished falling white. He could not help but smile sadly as he recalled such spinning long before in the first snows of winter. His heart twisted with the memory. The innocence of spinning in the snow had been lost, then. He thought he'd never see the same kind of magic again coming from her. He was pleased and saddened to be wrong.
Her spinning moved closer to the sill and the banister on the stairs. His eyes widened as her hand hit the wooden planks and she began to fall backward in the same way that the icicles had begun to fall. He moved with a level of speed he had not used in centuries to pull her back from the brink and slip back into the trees without being seen by her or her frantic mother. He watched as she walked into the house, once again an adult in child's flesh, and comforted her distraught mother while she closed the door behind her.
Moments later he saw her at the window and heard her soft words. He could not help but smile in genuine happiness. "I will always protect you." He replied softly, knowing she would not hear nor even know for many years that he would always stand beside her, but pleased he could be her protector.
"Unknown to her, a beast came to love her throughout time. He protected her though she never was aware of it. He ensured she could complete her purpose. He was the rock beneath her feet and the tree at her back holding her straight and tall. He lived outside the realm of magic where his court and those closest to him resided, choosing a life among mortals for her sake even though he could never truly be among them. He watched as she began her quest and continued to protect her silently, knowing that he would always be beside her even if it was difficult sometimes."
It was her first day at his school. He had known, in time, she would need him. She had told him the story of her many illnesses in school. He had to wonder how any school master would allow such tardiness with so little objection or investigation. He decided not to discover how it was possible and, instead, ensured that he was said school master or principle, as they called them, so he could make sure there never was any question.
It did not take too much work to become so. He was naturally charismatic and highly intelligent. Those facts coupled with being terrifying when he wanted to be, a trait that demanded the respect of the student body, and the fact that he had cultivated many connections in the school district over the years, ensured that obtaining his position was an easy task.
He looked at the list of the incoming class with a faint smile touching his lips. Her name. Higurashi Kagome. He reached out and allowed his fingers to caress the curves and lines of her name. He read down a few more names and his smile faded. The name glared at him and he struggled not to shred the paper. Hojo Hiroshi. He'd met the boy several times before when his father had come to his home and each time he became more and more aware of the aura of the child. Each time after the first time the boy had brought a bouquet of pale lavender iris and had set them by her bedside stand. Even dedicated to his studies, he sent the flowers along with his father and, as Kagome had progressed in school, the boy had doted on her so greatly he had found it difficult not to ensure the boy's demise.
It wasn't because Hojo so obviously showed favoritism toward Sesshomaru's beloved. That fact almost amused him. It was because of who he had been and the inuyoukai knew it was so. He fought his disgust and hatred of the boy. He tried to forgive him as he knew Kagome would have wanted. Still, there was only hatred.
He looked up at the clock on his desk, then stood and settled his gaze on the school gate. It didn't take long. Perhaps this would be the only few days she would be prompt to school. Soon it would be her birthday. Soon her great adventure would begin and he would have to wait for her, enduring his brother's presence and masking his presence fully when the annoying little bastard made his way onto the grounds.
He traced along her long ebony hair lightly on the glass of the window, distanced by two stories and several hundred yards. For a moment, she paused and looked up. He could have sworn their eyes met, however, she looked away and shook her head before running to catch up with her friends. Someday she would know. Someday he would tell her. For now he would have to wait and be patient.
"She went through many trials, enduring much with little promise of success. Always she remained filled with love and devotion and, when her hope faded, the beast ensured he was there to kindle it once more. In two eras he protected her. In two times he ensured her safety until, finally, the door between times was closed and there was only the beast at her side, waiting for her to wake."
They had retreated into the shadow world, the space between the divine and earthly realms for their own protection centuries before there was a need. She was always at his side, always near him. They watched their adoptive son and daughter grow up and fall in love. They watched their birth children grow up to make them proud. They watched their immortal friends' child learn to love their friend, the ookami Kouga, so that her parents never needed to bid her farewell because of mortality. They watched as Inuyasha and Kirara joined together eternally. They watched as Ayame silently sat in vigil at the gates between worlds, allowing access to those fleeing the banality of the oncoming future. They watched and they were happy.
Time passed as it is known to do and soon it was the present. They had thought being beyond the earthly realm they would escape the paradox of her existing twice within the same time. They had been wrong. It had been his mother who, in an uncharacteristic show of kindness, had discovered the answer. If she existed in the earthly realm, but in a deep sleep where her mind and soul could be housed in the one body, the girl who would move through time, she would ensure that time did not unravel.
And so the immortal rulers of the realm between returned to the earthly realm while her prior self was still new in her mother's womb. She was put into a deep sleep and kept safe in a home that Sesshomaru had commissioned. A doctor was paid to come and tend her without asking questions about her condition. He was simply employed to keep her nourished and healthy while in her comatose state. Every day Sesshomaru would tend her youthful form and each night he would curl onto their bed next to her and tell her the story of his time protecting her. Several times, the doctor brought his young son with him. The boy carried the soul of his long dead nemesis, however he remembered his promise to his beloved and so never brought him to harm.
He waited. Waited for the day that she would descend through the well and it would close and his beloved would waken again and look at him once more with her eyes sparkling in joy. He waited, afraid the day might never come. That she would remain lost in the cycle of death and rebirth forever and he would have to walk through time alone. It was the only fear he voiced in his life and only when he was alone with his face gently pressed into her neck as she slept, almost certain she could not hear him. He was afraid, but he knew he must have hope. She had promised to always return to him.
He reached out and brushed the hair from her face. She was so deathly still. "I am still waiting, my love. I'm waiting for you to come back to me."
"Father."
"Not now, Rin." He whispered without looking to the door. They had all come. They were all waiting for her to waken. It had been nearly a month since the well had closed forever and she had not even fluttered her eyes.
"But, Father, her doctor is here…" Her pause caught his attention and he looked up to see the concern in her eyes. "And so is his son. He is going to England for college. He wanted to say goodbye to her… Father, I think he…"
"He is Onigumo, Rin. I have known for a very long time. He was always kind and respectful to Kagome in either of her vessels. I cannot dispel my hatred of him, but I do respect him." He stood and smoothed his bangs from where they had fallen when he'd run a hand through them earlier. "They may come."
Rin nodded faintly without another word. Moments later, the two gentlemen entered, one with his small black case and the other with a vase of pale lavender orchids which he, as always, set on her beside stand. He stared at her for a very long time and then turned to Sesshomaru once his father had finished his examination and retreated to the sitting room for coffee before they departed.
"I haven't ever said this to you before, but… The resemblance of your wife to a friend of mine is uncanny."
"Oh?" He asked, not particularly caring for the course of their discussion.
"Yes. Which is remarkable unto its self because both of them resemble a woman from my dreams… A kind and beautiful woman who only wished me well."
He paused and looked on her again with a kind of tenderness Sesshomaru could not place. "She told me a story about a boy who found a golden key that was a key to a magical box… It ended when he was just about to open the box. A strange story, I know. It's actually one of the Grimm's Faerie Tales. One of the few that don't end with a witty moral or the proverbial happily ever after nonsense. I always wondered why she told it to me. Why I dreamed of someone telling me that story and why, in my life, I've met two women who remind me so much of her… This dream girl. My guide."
Sesshomaru tilted his head in contemplation as silence overtook the man who had once so easily attempted to destroy the same woman who had become a sage to him in his current life. "Have you ever found your answer?"
He shook his head in response, and then smiled a sad smile. "It isn't what's inside the box that matters. The box is empty except for what we put into it with our dreams and hopes for the future. The golden key is the promise of accessing the truth we hold deep in our souls. What I've learned from the story, and from the woman who told it to me, is that life is not always a clear cut path. Sometimes it is dark and overgrown.
"Most people would just give up and stay where they were when faced with those kinds of odds… Getting lost or eaten in a wood so deep and treacherous, but it's the promise of what is on the other side that keeps us going and, sometimes, a voice in the darkness that beckons us back to the proper direction."
He turned his gaze again to the inuyoukai who was listening to him so intently. "Sometimes… All we need to find our way is a light in the darkness or a voice in the night."
Sessomaru studied the man in front of him and felt some of his hatred begin to melt away. "I wish you good luck in your education, Hojo. Please keep in touch."
The boy smiled and bowed to the taller man before exiting the room and leaving the inuyoukai with his mate. He sat on her bed slowly and carefully gathered her into his arms. He kissed her brow and her eyes softly, whispering her name like a prayer with every brush of his lips on her face.
"Come back to me," he murmured, and then captured her mouth in a deep kiss, calling to her with all he was and all she had ever meant to him.
So deep was his desperation to reach her that he barely noticed at first as her arms slipped around his neck and she tenderly returned his kiss. He did not notice her sighs, fearing they might be a dream and that he would awaken to find her limp in his embrace. It took him several moments to find the strength to pull back enough to meet her gaze.
She looked at him with sleepy but shimmering cobalt eyes and a smile filled with infinite warmth, even as tears slipped down her face. He was not entirely certain how many of them were his. She reached out and smoothed his jaw reverently and then, in a weak whisper that was not yet strong enough to reflect her usual clear tone, she spoke to him.
"Were you afraid?"
He smiled and nodded once before gathering her tightly against his chest. "I was lost."
"You found me."
To my beloved readers, I promise five other episodes to this story to fill in the gaps between chapter eighteen and chapter nineteen. As for this Kaidan, we have reached our end and all there is left to say is "and they all lived happily ever after."