Ephemera by Drosselmeyer
Chapter 1
TRIGGER WARNING: This fic deals with suicidal thoughts and a suicide attempt. As well it alludes to spousal and child loss. Please be aware of this before deciding whether or not to proceed reading.
For elevenharbor. Thank you for all you are, your friendship, and just being an overall beautiful human being. I appreciate you wholly. And I appreciate also how you just get and share a love for the angsty stuff. Love you, my friend. <3
___________________________________________________________________________________________
There is a memory in his water.
Sesshoumaru looks into his glass, a reflection absent of time staring back. It ripples and wavers while he is lost to its pull, breath that is too even and too quiet stirring up things he would rather forget.
Hail flecks his windows. The kettle on his stove whistles.
Lips, harder and colder now that centuries have passed, turn down in a frown, and he tilts his head to the side, bits of blue churning through that memory. It is a blue, not like the sky, but like midnight and stars. Hope and wonder.
A miko smiles back.
Something white-hot and feverish sears through his chest. The glass falls into the sink, clattering and splashing pain onto his counter. His hands shake, and he sinks to his knees, head bowed as that kettle still whistles.
A miko and a child. A home and a hearth. Blood and rage.
Memory drips down the drain.
The tile is cold where he kneels, and he doesn’t remember crying. But when he finally stands, his cheeks are wet, salt lingering on his lips, and his eyes drift to the window as lightning flashes outside and thunder chases its fury.
A storm—simply another in a lifetime of them that came without his request. It seethes its power, inflicts its vengeance, and he feels its frenzy like the hot rush of blood in his veins.
He jerks the kettle from the stove.
Boiling water sloshes over his hand, his eyes still on that window. He pours blindly over a sachet waiting in ceramic, not letting it steep nor cool before slugging it back.
It scorches his throat; he does not care.
A heavy wind flings his door open. Rain and hail gust inside, soaking wooden floors and sputtering ire, and Sesshoumaru stares through its portal at grey countryside and cliffs.
He runs.
Ice skitters onto cobblestone and warmth disappears. He sprints into the storm, the chaos of nature a gentler warden than the emptiness he flees. Fine leather digs into mud, and he kicks it free from his feet, the squelching of muck between his toes drowned out by his pulse in his ears.
It throbs. Pounds.
Never beats.
His yell is lost to the tempest.
Ahead, the cliff looms, the boundary between earth and air blurred by precipitation. He dives straight over, wind and rain pelting his skin as the churning depths below grow hastily closer.
Rocks. Surf. A narrow opening.
He plunges into darkness.
Salty brine stings his nose, waves sucking him under as the deep roils like serpents. He surrenders to its coils, allowing himself to be dragged down, the rain and ice above still falling and muddling the surface.
He writhes. Allows himself to sink. Screams.
No one can hear.
Desperate pockets of air bubble, a thin trail of life in an unforgiving sea. His voice is muffled in his ears, eyes clenched shut as he rages in the cradle of creation, everything he’s lost a devastating glimpse as they flash before him.
Gone. Too soon, gone. Too soon, broken.
Don’t you dare, Sesshoumaru!
A flash of blue swirls in the obscurity of his mind. What air is left in his lungs struggles to expel. Everything inside begs for release, to be allowed to slip away so he may finally forget and take comfort in oblivion as the rest of the world moves on as he finally welcomes solace.
He drifts.
There is only darkness, no light. The undulating currents lie somewhere up above, and he is weightless in the sea’s embrace, the solitude and comfort he craves surrounding him in loving arms.
Who will remember us if you’re gone?
His eyes snap open.
Another sound is lost to the depths—one of distress and grief. Then a fraught exhalation caves in his chest and he’s kicking up, muscles straining as he pushes for the surface.
The strength that is his curse propels him from death.
His lungs burn. His limbs move as if through sludge. The corners of his vision begin to blacken.
Keep going!
Sheer grit or determination—he doesn’t know which it is. But before he can no longer choose, he musters the last vestiges of his strength and shoots into the storm, an unearthly flash of brilliance among the lightning before becoming corporeal once more.
He crashes onto the cliff, tumbles across the sodden earth. Mud splashes and cakes his limbs, and he’s a mess of a man left face down in the dirt.
You did it. Get up. Keep going.
Below, waves crash against rock, the frictional drag of winds throwing them into the cliffside. They drown out the blood pulsing in his ears, and thunder bellows, its impact jumpstarting his heart while he rolls to his back, muddied arms collapsing outstretched as he stares at the sky.
His eyes close, rain and ice falling onto his cheeks and washing away debris.
Sesshoumaru breathes.