#skw2022d4

[yumanichan]

WE’RE BAAAAACK!!!!

Read the story by @kaoruhana08 here: DANCE WITH ME

@sesskag-week day 4: Dearest

And DAY 5: Let her go

[chierafied]

The Silence - Part 4 (SKW2022D4)

SessKag Week 2022, Day 4

And I've always lived like this Keeping a comfortable distance And up until now I had sworn to myself That I'm content with loneliness

- The Only Exception by Paramore

Exception

He had meant to keep his distance. Given how he’d honed his self-discipline, he should have been able to. He was not someone who gave into whims. He hardly had any of those, to begin with.

Except, of course, when it came to her.

The wind had carried her scent to him. She’d stood there, so close, with the sunlight in her hair, looking so beautiful that his heart trembled in surrender. 

How could he have stayed away?

Sesshoumaru had walked over to Kagome and greeted her. He'd basked in her presence, let her aura wash over him in a way that both soothed and settled. He had breathed in her scent, storing it in his lungs and memory. He'd gazed at her features, so luminous in the sun. Her blue eyes had had a distinct sparkle that the candlelight could not quite capture.

It had forced him to realise how much he wanted to see her like this, out in the daylight. Out in the open. Without the need to hide from anyone, as if what they shared was something shameful. 

As if he could ever be ashamed of her! How could he be anything but proud that such a powerful, courageous and caring woman had given herself to him?

The conversation they had engaged in had little meaning. It had just been an excuse to meet her, to allow himself a few more precious moments with Kagome.

Easily pleased, he’d told her, speaking of Rin. But the same description applied to him as well. He was content to simply stand next to her and exchange a few words with her.

It was getting tiresome to only visit her in secret, even though he'd chosen to do so to protect her reputation and to save her from Inuyasha’s ire. There were still two weeks before he would be able to visit her and somehow that felt like an eternity. Time had little meaning to a daiyoukai like him and yet it seemed to pass slower than ever.

Unfortunately, there was only one way out of this current predicament, and Sesshoumaru was reluctant to take it. Yet, he could sense it in himself now — that someday soon it wouldn't be enough to see her once in a moon. Yearning was already stirring within, a longing to be by her side every day. To wake up next to her. To sit together at breakfast. To talk with her in the afternoon. To love her into an exhaustion every evening, to hold her in his arms while she slept until sleep would finally find him too.

That was the life that he wanted. 

If only he didn’t need his Elders' permission to take a mate! Were he free to do how he wished, he would already be formally courting Kagome. Openly, without any thought for unnecessary secrecy.

But such was not the world. Everyone had their duties and obligations to shoulder. 

That day, even though he had spent but a few minutes in Kagome’s company, it was hard to leave the village. As he took to the skies, the further he got from that small, homely hut that Kagome had made her own, the more his heart screamed at him to turn back. To stay. And gripped with all of these impossible emotions, Sesshoumaru had already set his course before he realised it.

When his brain finally caught up with his actions and he understood where he was actually heading, he came to a stop. Staring at the mountains in the distance, Sesshoumaru hovered in the air. Hovered between the present and the future, the safe choice and the possibilities.

And that was why he had been reluctant to pursue this course of action before, he finally admitted to himself. He was was afraid that his request might be turned down and where would that leave him and Kagome then?

If he never dared try at all, would their relationship forever remain stagnant in the current limbo, never reaching the full bloom of its true potential? Now that was the risk Sesshoumaru couldn’t take. 

His jaw set, Sesshoumaru continued to travel west. He would go do what he had been avoiding for so long, what he rarely had any cause to do, to begin with. He would go to seek out his Elders. He would make his request and he wouldn’t leave until he finally would get what he wanted — the permission to take the woman he loved as his mate. 

---

Part Five