Chapter Text
Sesshomaru sighed and sank back into the train seat, closing his eyes against the bright, beaming sun streaming in through the window.
A stewardess walked by, offering him refreshments which he politely turned down, and then he turned away from the window and opened his computer, going over the research files and maps again to pass time.
His email alert chimed and he opened it, rolling his eyes to see a message from his brother.
He closed it without responding and pulled out a book to settle in for the rest of the journey.
Traveling by train was no longer the fastest method of travel outside of his own flying, but since he couldn’t do that anymore, he needed to make use of modern day transportation.
But he could not handle planes.
The way they made his ears ache till they felt like they would bleed, the way his yoki felt like it would burst until the entire plane capsized, so contained and vulnerable so high in the air… he shuddered to remember the few times he hadn’t been able to get out of a plane ride, which he did under almost any circumstance. He took a lot of boats out of Japan.
It made travel take longer, but longer didn’t mean worse, especially this time.
He was going far away, just like he liked, to work on a project he’d been nearly obsessing over for the better part of a year.
But he was going alone.
All the work would fall on his shoulders, which was normally just how he liked it, but this was a big job that would no doubt take him quite a long time.
A lot of time, labor and persistence, and he still might fail.
He was definitely fine relaxing in the mean time.
When they finally reached the station and he caught a cab to his hotel, he was tired and his head pounded from all the scents involved in traveling in such close proximity to other humans, and his cloaking spell was making his skin itch and his yoki throb.
Once inside he removed the little crescent shaped studs that tied his human disguise to his aura and tossed them in a table top before retreating to a hot bath.
He sank down into the water and closed his eyes, imagining he was back in time, deep in a wild forest, relaxing in a hot spring instead of a small porcelain rectangle.
A-Un would be grazing in a clearing nearby, and nimble fingers would pick seeds and stems from his hair, remnants of the flowers Rin had braided there.
And he wasn’t alone.
Gods how he wished he wasn’t so alone.
He grinned as he exited the office, all the necessary permits in hand, nothing in his way of his new task.
His brother had been skeptical he’d get this far, governments could be difficult to sway, but he could be charming when he needed to be.
He got in the rental car he’d picked up that morning and made his way out to the potential dig site he’d been scouting for months, a place that held much promise as being the location of a long lost civilization spoken of in many old texts from surrounding areas.
He wasn’t certain by any means, the whole thing could be a fabrication from an old legend spread around until it became accepted as someplace that used to exist, but there were a few old myths attributed to that city in particular that intrigued him, so he’d made it a pet project to find it.
Maybe it had become an obsession, that’s what Inuyasha and the rest of the family feared, but he didn’t really have anything else to do.
He still had more than enough clan inheritance to last for centuries, much longer with careful investing, so he didn’t really need to work, and he didn’t have a mate and children to care for.
What did it matter if this is how he passed the time?
Soon enough the city gave way to more suburban and rural areas, and Sesshomaru pulled out his phone for one last phone call before he lost service for good.
“Hello brother.” He said neutrally into the receiver, and then heard Inuyasha huff on the other end.
“Oi! I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for days!”
“I know. I am calling to let you know I will soon be losing service for the next while. My dig site far out into the country.”
Inuyasha sighed, remaining quiet for several long moments.
“Alright. Thanks for letting me know. Will you be back for Christmas?”
“Christmas is six months away.”
“Well I don’t know how long these things take!”
“Have I ever been on a site for six months at a time with no contact?”
“No, but then you’ve never done something this hairbrained all on your own, either.”
“Everyone needs a hobby.”
“This isn’t just a hobby and you know it.”
“Are hobbies not escapism?”
“Hobbies are supposed to be relaxing or engaging.”
“Half a dozen one.”
“Yeah yeah. Just hurry home, alright? The kids miss you.”
“Goodbye.”
He hung up the call and powered his phone down, driving the rest of the way out into nowhere in blessed silence.
He shouldn’t feel so relieved to end conversations with his family, but they’d taken to nagging him more and more as the centuries went by, worried he was trying to escape instead of live.
Maybe he was.
Maybe he was looking for his own Magic Well back into the past.
Gods how he wished for the past.
Dust covered every inch of his body, gathering in the folds of his clothes and clinging to his scalp, dirt and mud caked under his claws.
He’d managed to move great mounds of dirt first with the massive paws of his true form. It was rare he got to shift forms anymore, so much of the land had been overrun with humans who no longer even believed beings such as he existed, so he was forced to stay in his humanoid guise, and then further cover that with more magic.
The relief that came with the release of pent up yoki anytime he found the opportunity to shake loose his skin in favor of fur was almost painful, and he reveled in the heady freedom it brought.
When he shifted back, he didn’t bother dusting himself off, hopping right into the hole and getting his claws in the dirt. It would be easier this way to extricate any small artifacts he came across without obliterating them, and he had a feeling he’d removed most of the empty layers of dirt hiding anything that may be lost under the earth. For days he moved across the stretch of land he was permitted to upend, shifting between forms and burning glorious amounts of energy, melting great stones with poison and sleeping under the moon covered in fur.
He was nearly feral, red eyed and jagged striped with his hair tangled in knots, but he hadn’t felt so alive in years.
This was why he did this, why he chased the past through dirt and dust and mud, why he looked for shards of glory days in broken pottery and busted frescoes.
In this environment, surrounded my much more bearable ghosts, he felt like himself again, could be himself again. There were no human dwellings and human jobs and happier families to face before going home alone to a small apartment in a choked city.
And most importantly, she wasn’t here, the blue eyed specter of the happiness he’d almost had and lost.
‘Kagome…’
Once upon a time and long ago she’d brought him to his knees, the terrible demon warlord who’d sought to bring as much wrath and ruin as he could to the land under his feet.
He gave it all up and turned all his tides for her, and in return she’d handed him the biggest, warmest heart he’d ever encountered.
Upon the death of Naraku he would whisk her away to make her his, but then the jewel stepped in and she was gone.
Meeting back up the long way around had been in vain, for she never came back through the well to return to her mother.
She was gone.
Gods how he wished she wasn’t gone.
Archeology, what had once been an interesting way to pass the time and reconnect with a once magical world where he’d walked open and proud, had become an obsession as he tried to leave it all behind and just stop thinking.
It almost worked.
He summoned his poison until his claws glowed green, and then he let it spill from the tips of his fingers, dissolving a troublesome boulder. As it melted into bubbling mud all the dirt and rock behind it rushed down and up, puffing up into his face in a thick cloud.
He coughed and waved it away, sneezing out the particles in his nose, and then he gasped as he stared into a dark doorway lined by carefully carved columns. He stared into the darkness as the dust settled, and then stepped carefully forward, his eyes adjusting quickly to the nearly non existent light.
The room he entered was small, with smooth walls littered in what appeared to be carved words and images. He would get a lantern and look closer later to see if they were close enough to the surrounding ancient writing systems to translate himself, but for now, he continued through the small, narrow room, looking around until he reached the back wall.
He stopped cold, his eyes going wide as a large, intricate mosaic came into view, in front of which sat a small, marble stool holding an intricately painted clay pot.
But he ignored those, his eyes glued instead to the image on the wall as his mind spun and his heart hammered painfully.
Staring down at him, composed of colorful stones and grout, he saw a face he’d missed for 500 years.
Her body was wrapped in folds of sheer linen, and her hair was piled up and wrapped in gold chord.
She looked like a princess.
She looked just like she had all those years ago.
A sob of disbelief broke free from the weight on his chest, and before he could gather himself together and remind himself that it was impossible that it was her as this temple or grave or whatever it was he’d been buried thousands of years before even he had been born, years of pent up grief decided to burst from the damn of indifference he’d built in front of them.
He clutched his chest as his heart throbbed and cracked, bursting in his chest like a bomb and sending waves of acidic pain through all of his nerves. He dropped to his knees and fell forward, bracing himself against the marble stand, causing the clay jar to wobble.
If he’d been in his right mind he would have been horrified, hurrying to catch the vase before it shattered. This was wildly inappropriate handling of a dig site, but as his grief spilled out and forced itself to be acknowledged after so many years being stuffed down down down into the depths of his soul, he didn’t even notice when the jar tipped over and rolled off its pedestal, falling to the ground were it shattered.
A light burst from it, and a pulse of power pushed him over. In his vulnerability he curled up and covered his head, his attacks would do no good against explosives after all, but when the light cleared and the dust resettled and moved his arms from his face and peered into the room.
Laying next to him now, softly glowing and breathing steadily, emanating a scent so achingly familiar, was Kagome.
His lungs constricted in his chest as every last thought in his head screeched to a grinding hault as he stared at her, unblinking.
His eyes traveled down her form and then he slowly, tentatively reached out and grasped her shoulder.
Real.
Solid.
The thin linen of her dress crinkled under his hand and he sucked in a desperate, painful breath.
He scooped her up and cradled her close, his hands shaking as he held her for the first time in centuries, and though her breath continued to come in a steady, measured cadance, she did not wake.
“Kagome? Kagome wake up.” He said, voice cracking under the weight of his mounting emotions. “Please come back to me.”
He pulled her away from his shoulder, and looked over her face. Her expression was serene, the same sleepy peace he’d seen her wear countless times as she made her bed under the stars, around a campfire, counting the days until she would sleep in his arms instead.
It was like no time had passed at all.
He felt so very ancient.
“Kagome, please.” He urged, shaking her a little, but her eyes did not so much as flutter, and her breath did not change.
He pressed an ear to her chest, finding her heartbeat, and it thrummed slow and steady.
She was alive, that was certain, but she was not asleep.
He laid her gently back down and took off his shirt, bunching it up and slipping it under her head.
And then he scrambled to his feet and raced from the little buried shrine, snatching a flashlight from the small stash of personal items he’d bothered to bring. His eyesight was more than suitable in the dark, but small etchings in stone walls needed extra illumination to be clear, and the walls of the room below were covered.
If there was any clue to waking Kagome, it was likely written there.
He paused over Kagome’s body to double check her safety and well being, and then picked a corner and started deciphering.
His heartbeat picked up and he grinned, a feral, face splitting smile that made his fangs gleam in the harsh light from the flashlight beam.
He could read this writing.
Years and years and years he’d dedicated to studying ancient texts, learning language after language to make excavating quicker and more seamless, a task Inuyasha and the others had deemed a pointless waste of time.
He would laugh in their faces now if he could.
This language was indeed similar enough to other variants that came out of the surrounding regions, dialects he knew well and had translated before.
He moved to the other side of the room where he knew the text would start by nature of the direction the language was read, and he slowly picked his way through translating each word and statement, doing his best to fill in blanks with unknown words or symbols.
The knowledge he uncovered made his soul grow cold.
‘Beware, touch not the sealing vessel of the great Spirit of the Faith. Her body is beyond time; her will is beyond humanity; her power is beyond the mind.’
‘Let no one disturb this great resting tomb of the severer of souls.’
‘She turns her enemies to dust, her eyes glow with her hatred, leave this place and do not wake her.’
Line after line, warning after warning, Sesshomaru read voraciously across the walls and down the pillars, trying to find how to reverse what had been done to her.
He had no idea how she’d even got here.
These ruins were old, millennia had come and gone since this once thriving metropolis had fallen, and even then she’d been known as an Ancient One.
Just where had the jewel sent her, how far back in time did it shove her as punishment for defeating it?
What had she been forced to live through, what horrors had she walked through alone?
He grit his teeth in determination, his fists tightening until his claws punctured his palms.
He read faster, more warnings, more incantations of protection, more prayers for forgiveness as the builders of this prison confessed their fears and trepidations about her and her impossible powers and never ending youth.
This had to have happened before, this couldn’t be the first time a group had been the benefactors of her kindness before turning on her in fear, though it was likely the first she hadn’t escaped from.
She’d no doubt been as alone as he.
When the carved texts ran out he wanted to slam his fist into the stone and destroy it.
Not one reversal of the sealing spell that held her had been added in all the rambling things he’d read, and in an effort to avoid crushing the flashlight in his rage he set it up on the marble stand so that it shined up toward the ceiling and illuminated the entirety of the dank room.
He sighed in defeat, laying down next to her and staring up at the dark stone overhead, watching motes of dust and dirt float through the harsh beam, taking what comfort he could from finally being surrounded by her scent again.
He closed his eyes and whined as searing hope and crushing defeat collided, tearing him in two so forcefully he thought he might die there.
And most startlingly, he didn’t care if he did.
He was with her again, the only being he’d ever loved or had ever loved him, and though she seemed to be trapped in perpetual sleep, he couldn’t bring himself to leave her again, continue on pretending to live as if the missing piece of his soul wasn’t buried under ground as beautiful as she’d been the day she disappeared.
And so he would stay there.
He knew he would.
He would lay there next to her for the next eternity, breathing her in and holding her close until every star winked out and the earth crumbled.
He rolled over to look at her, her curling lashes, shining hair, rosy cheeks, and he pretended for one brutal, breaking moment that they were at home instead, that he was waking up in their bed after joining her life to his.
Rin and the kit would be running down the halls to wake them, and she would smile that smile that had disarmed so many, had disarmed him.
His claws dug into the floor and pulled himself up and over her, bracing on his hands and hovering over her body.
He stared down at her, willing her to open her eyes and leave this place with him.
But she did not.
He leaned down and brushed his mouth across hers.
It was not the kiss he’d longed for over the centuries, sweeping and consuming and burning, but it destroyed him all the same.
In the isolation he’d created for himself, he let the tears fall.
They rolled off her cheeks and into her hair, and then he pulled back to look at her once more.
More tears, more despair, more red hot rage turned his heart to ash as he tried not to transform and tear the entire world apart.
It was unfair for the universe to take her away and then return her like this.
A lover he couldn’t save was worse than never seeing her again.
He kissed her again with more force, swearing in his heart to never leave her side again.
He would seal himself in here with her; he would gather up the stones and dirt and cover the door, and would collapse the entire temple over their bodies and bury them in their shared grave where none save the destruction of time itself would sunder them again, he would-
A tentative touch brushed his ribs, trailing slowly up until it gripped his shoulder and weakly pushed.
He pulled away again, staring down with wide eyes as her brows furrowed and her hands groped blindly at his chest.
And then her lids fluttered open.
It took several moments for her to focus, wincing against the light, but when she did she gasped, and then Sesshomaru’s heart stopped and restarted with a painful throb as she opened her mouth and spoke for the first time in 500 years- in thousands of years- and he smiled through tears of agonizing relief as her hand found his cheek, and her voice found his name.
“Sesshomaru.”