Ever After
Summary: Inuyasha can no longer see the stars over Tokyo. Sesshoumaru is a creature entirely displaced.
1.
Inuyasha can no longer see the stars over Tokyo.
Multi-coloured lights illuminate the sky until all he can see is a blurring haze, and the constellations, life-long companions, are entirely obscured by the monstrous City and its twenty million inhabitants. More than five hundred years have passed since Kagome first came through the well; the seasons turned and turned again, years becoming decades and then centuries, until here he stands, out of time and out of place.
He had never thought to survive so long, or to find himself so impossibly far from home. But Inuyasha has always been an outcast, a misfit; he has learned to adapt and change. He has made some sort of life for himself – here in this modern world where youkai are no more than children's tales, and hair dye and coloured contacts cover a multitude of sins.
2.
In the pumping neon heart of Tokyo, fireworks bloom to mark the beginning of a new year. Sesshoumaru watches, crouched against the sky-line, his white and crimson robes spread about him.
He is a creature entirely displaced. Centuries have come and gone, leaving him a poor shadow of what he once was, but even so he is still Sesshoumaru; he refuses to use concealment spells, refuses to pander to mortal fears and the cowardice of the youkai 'council'.
In the distance, the fireworks explode in flowers of brilliant blue, green and crimson. His eyes narrow against the cascade of brightly coloured sparks: the light catches them, and they glow unashamed, inhuman amber.
3.
The wind shifts, carrying the traces of a long-familiar scent. Inuyasha's nose twitches: it has been at least five years since Inuyasha last felt his brother's presence. Their enmity had long since burned itself to ashes; hatred and ambition died in Sesshoumaru long ago, leaving nothing but apathy.
He is a shadow of his former self, now, and Inuyasha cannot bear to see it.
Instinct pricks at him; he lifts his head to see the silent, pensive creature who was once Sesshoumaru of the West, alternately illuminated by the brilliant fireworks and plunged into shadow. Their eyes meet, a long, timeless moment, inhuman amber and Inuyasha's human-brown contact-lenses. With a last, triumphant barrage, the sky bursts into brilliant radiance, bright enough to send blurred afterimages dancing across Inuyasha's vision. He blinks rapidly, shaking his head to clear it, and when he looks up again, Sesshoumaru is –
Gone.
