A Midwinter Romance

A Midwinter Romance


Just after the first, heavy snowfall, Sesshoumaru finds the miko rolling large ball of snow with the fox kit. Rin runs ahead to join them, and it's her shriek of happiness that warns the priestess of his presence.

She shades her eyes against the bright sun that reflects off of the whiteness all around them. "Want to help us build the biggest snowman Edo has ever seen?" she laughs. She doesn't seem surprised when he doesn't deign to answer, and she turns instead to give the children guidance in their efforts. It's only when they have three, enormous spheres that she looks back at him. "Could you help us, Sesshoumaru-sama? The middle part is way too big for me to lift."

He's inclined to ignore her again, but when Rin announces that she will help to carry the weight of the snow, he moves closer to spare them all from that inevitable disaster. Jaken sputters, but he ignores it easily. "Where?" he asks, lifting the middle-sized snowball.

"On top of the largest one, please," the miko says, grinning broadly. "Thank you so much, Sesshoumaru-sama!"

He hovers as they finish off their project - the miko has brought some spare odds and ends, and he sees a rudimentary face take shape. "What is it?" he asks at last.

"A snowman," she answers. "You know, a man made out of snow? Kids do this all the time where I'm from."

"The future," he says, watching her eyes widen. It was a guess, but an educated one - he has seen the world and encountered no one like her. The magical well was a big hint, too.

"Yeah," she hums, almost automatically.

"Men must look very odd in the future," he mutters, his eyes sweeping down the length of the misshapen thing. "Perhaps it explains your taste in my idiot half-brother."

The priestess's surprise is gone in an instant as she rolls her eyes. "Inuyasha and I are just friends for one thing," she says. "And it's not supposed to be a perfect depiction of any person. It's sort of like abstract art."

"What is 'abstract art'?" Sesshoumaru questions.

She laughs a little at that, but he doesn't get angry, because he can see that she's not mocking him. "I don't think I can really explain it. You'll just have to be patient and find out for yourself." She pauses and brushes her hair out of her face. "Very patient."

"Something at which I excel," he retorts calmly.

The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown...

A few weeks later, she's dancing in the middle of the forest. He stops and stares, taking a moment to realize that she's also gathering firewood, although the spins and complex footwork impede her work. He also notes that she's keeping remarkably good time.

She stops short and turns to look in his direction, although it's getting far too dark for her to identify his exact location. "I know that you're out there!" she calls. He admits to himself that there's something to be admired in the steadiness in her voice, as she faces the unknown. Then, she pulls something from her ears, and he can discern a faint, metallic rhythm.

Out of pure curiosity, he steps closer - her shoulders relax as soon as the white of his haori is visible to her weaker, human eyes. "Sesshoumaru-sama! You scared me," she chides gently.

"What is making that noise?" he asks, looking to where long, thick strands of white rope are dangling from her fingers. She hesitates, and it's easy to deduce the reason. "Something else from your era?"

She nods and pulls a small box from her pocket. In spite of himself, he leans over her shoulder to watch the flickering light that comes out of it. "It plays music without musicians actually being here," she explains. "Anything that I want."

He can't quite wrap his head around that, but he doesn't say so. The illusion of understanding is far more important at the moment. "Do you intentionally hide this marvel from your companions?"

"What? No, of course not," she says. "They don't really like it though. It's a little too odd, you know?" She looks up at him, holding out the twin, white ropes that were attached to her ears. "Would you like to try it out?"

Sesshoumaru dismisses any concerns that her companions might have had about the contraption - they are cowards, he decides, if they do not have the strength to inspect what will come in their future. So, he accepts her offer, and they settle down at the base of a tree while she makes little humming noises and decides what music to play for him. He doesn't suggest anything - he's intrigued by what she might choose.

She leaves the 'headphones', as she calls them, on his bent knee out of concern for his sensitive hearing. "Here's something," she says, the little box clicking as she works. "It's from your future, but still far in my past. Classical music is as radical as we should get. How about Mozart?"

The first notes emanate from the white strings, and he listens, trying not to show his amazement. It sounds as if fifty people are inside the small, metal item that she can hold in her hand. It takes him a long time to recover from that, but when he does, his heart rate speeds up for a different reason - the melodies that intertwine seem to fill the forest with their transient beauty. It is odd. There is no denying that the musical theories that he was forced to learn as a child have little to do with what he's hearing. But Sesshoumaru has always been gifted at recognizing genius.

"Pretty, isn't it?" she asks when the song ends.

"Another," he says, eliciting a smile from her.

And although their meeting is cut short by the appearance of the demon slayer who was sent to find her and the needed firewood, he finds that he has enjoyed his time with her. She is far more intelligent than he gave her credit for in the past - she answers his questions but refuses to reveal anything of the future. He quickly learns her mantra that he must be willing to wait for answers.

Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown.

It doesn't seem to surprise her that he visits often throughout the winter days, but it horrifies her companions. "I don't think that they really get it," she says one day, when she has slipped away to meet him outside the village. There's nothing illicit in their conversations, but she prefers not to listen to the grumbling of his moron of a half-brother. "Someday, I'm going to go home. I think I should be able to spend my free time as I want. You're going to remember all of this a lot longer than most of the people in this time."

"You would choose to leave?" he asks, looking up from the newest thing she has brought back for him - a 'paperback book'. The printed words have fascinated him since the first time she showed him one of her textbooks. He can see why her schooling is so important to her.

"No," she says, not sounding entirely certain about it. "I don't know. I don't feel I'll be given a choice." She shrugs.

He has come to accept that she 'feels' things instead of breaking them down with logic. In this case, he almost feels that she could be right.

"If you are still around in my time, would you come to visit me?" she asks.

He hesitates. Meeting a human miko that is friends with the thorn in his side that is Inuyasha is one thing, but making promises is another. He knows that it's roughly five hundred years until she is alive again, and that is a long time, even for him. "Perhaps."

"Alright," she replies without any indication whether she is hurt by his answer.

"What will you do when you are home?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "That's a question even I don't know the answer to. Finish school, I guess, and then try to find something to do with my life. I'll probably help my family run the shrine."

He weighs the book in his hand, knowing that she has already read it twice. "There is much that you can do, Kagome," he says.

Her smile is bright enough to pierce the gloom of the winter morning, and he knows in that moment that he will discover what great things she will do, even if it does take five centuries.

Oh, the rising of the sun and the running of the deer...

The biting winds of midwinter start to ebb away when the final battle with Naraku suddenly becomes imminent. Every day, they wait to see when the spider will come after the last few jewel shards that they have in their possession. He finds that he doesn't mind - when Kagome tires of Inuyasha's pacing, she comes to see him instead. Her friends still disapprove, but they no longer insist that someone accompany her - they realize that he will protect her.

Still, he is aware that, if the miko is right, she will be taken back to her time soon enough. Considering how chaste their interactions remain, he is surprised by how much this bothers him - he is even more surprised by how quickly she has affected the change within him. He knows that he wouldn't have cared one way or another last autumn.

"Will we succeed?" he asks during one of her visits.

She gives him an exasperated glance. "I don't know the answer to that. Maybe the future I know would change if we failed. Maybe it wouldn't." She sighs. "You'll just have to..."

"Wait and see," he finishes for her.

She reached out and touches his sleeve - one of the few deliberate moments of physical contact between them. "I think we will," she says with that steady voice that has always impressed him. She has more faith than anyone.

He wants to tell the priestess that he believes that they will win as well, but his cold logic refuses to ignore the possibility that they might fail. And so, he cannot go on to tell her that he will take her to the great libraries and concert halls of her future world when he finds her again - that Mozart and Shakespeare will wait for her. He cannot promise anything, because he never wants to break an oath that he gives to her.

In reality, he doesn't even know if she would care one way or another if he ever found her again. He knows that he should ask, but he would rather have something to look forward to, even if it's a false hope.

The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir.

He waits. He isn't idle, but he is always waiting. Even the moment she reappears in her time, bruised and bloody from the successful battle against Naraku, is too soon. He waits for her to heal, both physically and emotionally, from the trauma of being ripped from her other life. It almost takes longer than he can bear.

It's snowing again when he finally walks up to the front door of the shrine. He can hear Christmas carols on the radio inside the house and smell the hot chocolate that's been warmed on the stove. It takes him a very long time to get up the strength to knock - he's waited for so long that it almost seems unnatural that he should stop now.

But when he does, it's her that answers the door. Although he's checked up on her since her return, she looks more beautiful that he remembers. She also looks more shocked than he's ever seen her - even when he watched her fall down the well for the very first time, back when she was fifteen. She is, for once, at a complete loss for words. The blanket that had been wrapped around her shoulders is slipping.

He gently pushes her back into the house so that he can shut the door again. "I have waited for you," he says. He's far better at expressing his emotions after spending so long in the company of humans, but he knows that it might startle her further, so he keeps it simple. "I have seen all those marvels that you showed to me five hundred years ago, and I have all of my answers."

When the blanket falls to the floor, she's purposefully let it go to fling her arms around him. "All of them?" she asks, pressing her lips to his cheekbone, where his markings are cleverly hidden underneath a spell.

"I just received the response to my last one," he says, pulling back to look into her eyes, which are shining with tears.

She's laughing and crying all at once. "Me too," she replies, just as she reaches up to kiss him at last.