Two Colour Palette by thirteenxwishes

Beginning: Visiting/Revisiting

The daylight filters through the glass of his shop-front, creeping inch by inch across the wooden flooring like a reluctant predator. Even now, late in the afternoon, it continues its futile hunt, straining to reach him where he sits straight-backed behind the counter. 

He watches it with a smile that probably doesn't scream 'I'm a convincing human'.  Though he isn't remotely concerned about that little slip. 

No-one's looking closely enough to see, so he lets his nature have its way, giving the leash a little slack. He can rarely afford to do so in public, but the gallery is empty and in the waning light, people are too concerned with getting home before the winter evening starts to bite.  He can see them through the window, heads down and feet scurrying, chasing the shadows along the pavements. They are all the same - monotonous, fleeting. Human. 
But it is the group of school girls in uniform, talking animatedly across the road that makes him clench his teeth and look away. They are the same, humans like the rest, but memories of raven hair and laughing blue eyes still stab through him with exactly the same intensity as nearly five hundred years previous.

'... It hasn't become any easier. An achievement and a credit to her after such a prolonged... absence from my life.'

He turns without thinking towards his favourite corner of the gallery, where the paintings hang sparse but full of meaning. He was unsure about displaying this particular collection, but his 'agent' nagged and nagged and nagged to the point of extortion until he gave his consent simply to shut him up. 

'Irritating kitsune.'

And now there they are - images of the past poured on to canvas di rectly from his thoughts. The largest is a sprawling oil painting of the Western Palace as he saw it on the night of his ascension, bathed in moonlight at the height of its power. And yet more smaller pictures, of inuyoukai running through clouds and forests, of two swords crossed and locked in brotherhood, of a battered old well surrounded by wispy grass...

On and on they go, large like life and long like the years.

The collection is his best-selling set - prints walked from the gallery on its opening viewing - and still more people come, searching out originals and copies and, sometimes, the tales behind the paintings. 

He keeps these closer to his chest than the art itself. 

Despite his early misgivings, the 'Feudal Myth Series' stays, stretching across the corner in direct view of the windows. And, conveniently, his desk. He often looks at it when he isn't working, examining the newly made relics and remembering how it felt to touch the past through the movement of a brush.
It was close. Probably the closest he's ever managed to get since the past was actually the present, and he was a Lord able to roam his lands.  But still not close enough. Never close enough, because the one vital component is missing, and without it, things don't work. 

Life in general doesn't work. 

He hates that, with all the considerable power at his disposal, because he can't change it. He can't change time, and he definitely, definitely can't change the past.  It isn't a matter of not having the strength, but rather of preserving the time he has already had with her, because he is a fool if he doesn't admit that he cherishes it.

And he doesn't suffer fools gladly.

Before he can burrow his way into bleakness, the chimes above the door jingle. He looks up.  For a single moment, he sees something other than reality, because there she is, standing in the frame of the door, the same as she was when he first met her properly, when he found the respect to put a name to his half-brother's wench. 

But it isn't her, and his mind is playing tricks in its old age.

"Excuse me... Nishimoto-san?"

It may not be the woman he is waiting for, but she is wearing a sailor fuku, so maybe he hasn't totally lost his mind. He schools his expression into something resembling interest, glancing up at her from behind the glasses he doesn't need.

"Can I help you?"

His voice is polite, helpful - a tone he has spent much time working on, one more befitting of a servant than a lord. On bad days, it burns in his throat like his strongest poison, and makes his claws itch for blood beneath the spell. 

Not entirely human yet, then.

"Yes - I'm looking for a present, for my mother. It's her birthday, and I was wondering... if you have any suggestions?"

The girl is fidgeting, a blush painting her cheeks red. It doesn't suit her. He sighs silently and ignores it.

'Humans. Well, most of them.'

"The collection in the corner - they are the most popular paintings, and there are prints available on the table with prices."

She stands in front of the counter for a few seconds longer, but when he says nothing more she nods, thanks him and goes over to inspect his past. He turns back to watching life pass by his window, unconcerned.  There are more people gathered around the display outside, their faces obscured by the backs of the canvases. In the gap between the props, he sees a flash of green and white. 

Clearly, the girl brought back-up. Wonderful. More schoolgirls.

The skirts disappear, moving left, and the door opens. This time he doesn't look, keeping his eyes on the red spreading across the sky from the sunset like blood from an open wound.

Her scent hits him at the same time as his newest customer calls her over.

"Kagome! Ayumi, Yuka, come and see these! Don't you think okaa-san would love this picture of the dogs? They're so beautiful! And the fur, it's so real! Nishimoto-san really is as talented as Rin-chan said!"

He almost doesn't register the words, and when they catch up with him, he simply files them away for later inspection. They don't matter now - nothing matters, except her.  Her friends have already gone over, cooing over the picture of his youkai form, but she stands still in the doorway, eyes wide and just as blue as he remembers. She looks at the paintings, but then swings her gaze over to him.

He can see the shock there, the questions hidden inside her thoughts.

'Because why would I of all people, a simple human artist, know what an inuyoukai looks like in its true form?'

The urge to drop his concealment and stride out from behind the desk is overwhelming, but he digs his blunt human nails into the wood and stays where he is. Because she's still in high school, which means she hasn't met him in the past yet, and god, he hates temporal mechanics.

She's still staring, so he raises his eyes to hers, flat and disinterested.  The look seems to bring her to her senses, and she shakes her head in the smallest movement, hair following her like an inky shadow. And now, she smiles, strained, bows halfway from the waist, and walks over to her friends.

It is very hard to look away, back outside the window, but he does. Barely.

They stay for a while, murmuring quietly, and he tunes out his hearing, numb until he puts the money from her friend's purchase into the till.  The bell above the door rings distantly, and she slips out of his life again as quietly as she arrived. 

After she leaves, her scent lingers. He takes as many breaths as he can without panting, because it's been so, so long.

It feels a little like a beginning.

Beneath his human disguise, Sesshoumaru makes a decision, and that smile that isn't quite human enough curls across his lips again.  He isn't going to let her go. His rationality is screaming at him to wait, wait a while longer until her time in the past is over, and he can meet her again as Sesshoumaru, youkai Lord of the West, instead of Nishimoto Shu, human artist of some repute.

He doesn't listen. The time spent with her in the past isn't enough, will never be enough. He's found her, now - or, more accurately, she's found him. Which means he can use the opportunity to his advantage, as any good Lord should.

She's his, and he's waited long enough. 

'Game start.'

&&&

Written for Set 1, Prompt 1, Beginning.  Un-beta'd.  Thanks for reading!