Disclaimer: Don't own Inuyasha - all credit to Rumiko Takahashi, etc.
A/N: This oneshot was written for the prompt 'Memoir' at the comm iyfic_contest over at LJ. One of my favourites - may be continued, seeing as I'm turning into an AU series-writing freak. One of these days, I may actually get around to writing some canon. xD
Character: Sesshoumaru. Word count, 876.
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Tales As Old As Time
Time passed.
Fathers died, brothers were born, lost and found again. Little girls with missing teeth picked flowers, blossomed into maturity and stayed that way, stilled by mastery over life and death. Youkai stepped into the shadows while humans emerged, blinking and blinded into the light, before quickly trapping it within city skylines and the glare of technology.
Sesshoumaru, however, chose to drift through the ages like a leaf on the breeze; floating from one battle, one search, one project to another, and another and another. It was endless, and time flew by in a whirl of indeterminate colour that even his sharp eyes couldn't distinguish. So he simply called it white, and wore it like a suit of armour, splashed with red for his danger and the blood of those enemies who planned and shifted in the darkness between the seconds.
And now, sitting in the large airy study of his town house, it felt like that mad rush had slowed down and stopped, frozen around him as he looked back through the centuries. He never knew that writing an autobiography could be so… cathartic. Even if it was a lie and the name on the cover was one picked from the past, resurrected by his hand for another cycle of life until the years fell too quickly and society expected an end to him – at which point the name was dropped without ceremony, without burial, and the relentless circle began again. He smirked minutely and flexed his fingers around the hilt of a sword long turned to dust, and wondered when the Tenseiga's ability to bring life to the dead had migrated from the blade and into his hands.
The lid of his pen broke the silence with a soft click, and he glanced down at the swirls of ink spread across the fine paper in neat lines. His smirk faded into a discontented frown. It wasn't a quill in his hand, but a black biro, and sometimes it took him a few long seconds to tell the difference. Lines blurred, and so did he. Always wandering, once through the forests of Feudal Japan - and then over again in modern Tokyo, jumping from personality to personality, profession to profession until he became submerged under a barrage of different names. But always the same cold nature, untouchable and… lonely.
Admitting that one fault a number of decades ago during his tenure as a businessman had made his reality as odd and warped as the world encased behind Inuyasha's eyes - at least, for a while. Another death later, and he felt perfectly fine again, seeking out his irritating half-brother, Rin and other family in Tokyo and moving back to take his rightful place of Lord of the Western Lands. Which left him with far too much spare time on his hands - and brought back that undeniable itch beneath his skin to get up and get moving, urging him to walk the boundaries of his lands just as he walked through time, unstoppable and unshakable.
Clearly, some things remained the same, and he was one of them.
Shuffling the completed manuscript with harmless – human – hands, he set it down gently on the desk. The cover page stared back at him, a mostly meaningless title and the name 'Taisho Shu' written in flowing kanji beneath it. It was oddly reassuring to see the name of his house for the first time in many lives, even if his true title hadn't been heard in thousands of years.
Sometimes, he wondered if he forgot it. Sometimes, he almost did. But it came back, during the brief periods of sleep he snatched when he wasn't watching the world pass by, roaring up like the beast inside and consuming him, until he emerged fresh and clean and crisp and Sesshoumaru, ready to take on the world, and time, and life, and death – whatever was ready to be thrown at him – and win. Those were good mornings. Those were the days when the household staff cringed and kept close to the walls. Those were the days when it seemed like the Sengoku Jidai had moved through time and caught up with him again.
He wished they happened more often. And Lord Sesshoumaru didn't often wish for much, nor lightly. Somewhere in his infinite mind, a memory stirred - of a jewel and a miko who disappeared in a haze of white on a still summer morning. Wishes could be more powerful than he gave them credit for, he recalled, as a pair of fading blue eyes haunted him and tugged at his curiosity. Maybe a talk with Inuyasha was due…
He blinked back to reality, taking one last look at a false life imprisoned in paper. He rose in silence, moving towards the door in a flurry of pale slacks and a white dress shirt.
"Jaken, ring the publishers and tell them that the manuscript is finished."
Downstairs, through the ancient wooden floor, he heard a sudden crash and the scurrying of frightened feet. Beneath his human guise, Sesshoumaru smiled, and stepped through the door.
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Reviews and criticism appreciated. :)