A/N: For Chie's 2023 12 Days of Promptmas event!
Day 5 Dec 18th: Warm Sake
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Sesshomaru lifts the cup of warm sake to his lips, draining the entire cup in one mouthful. It burns its way down, but he does not care.
It is the only way he can feel warm now that she's gone.
It is the closest he has to the reminder of the warmth her embraces have given him.
Human, far too human, far too fleeting, and now gone, yet human is also the one thing that most endeared him to her. Her humanity is what attracted him, even now as it is the biggest source of his sorrow.
The moment the warmth leaves him, Sesshomaru pours another glass of sake, repeating the process until he's down several bottles, but he does not care.
"You drink too much."
He turns, eyes wide at the familiar voice, expecting to find his mate standing there, ready to rebuke him as she snatches the sake bottle from his hands.
Instead, he finds their daughter, Ichika.
He expects a familiar lecture of how drinking won't bring his mate back to him, but instead, Ichika sighs as she settles down beside him in the garden. "Mom really loved this garden, you know," she says, reaching for the bottle of sake and the spare cup Sesshomaru had brought with him out of habit.
"Hnn." Sesshomaru stares off into the garden, memories coursing through him at how his mate had carefully selected and cultivated the garden around their home.
"And yet," Ichika says, taking a sip of her sake, "for all the beautiful flowers here, do you know which ones were her favorites? Knotwood." Ichika laughs, though there's a tear running down her own face. "She was always saying how useful they were and how they got a bad rep for no reason."
A hint of a smile appears on Sesshomaru's face as he recalls a similar conversation with his mate long ago. "She almost named you after them."
"She did not." Ichika huffs loudly as Sesshomaru refills his own glass of sake.
The small smile remains on Sesshomaru's face, a first since he'd lost his mate. "How would you know?" he returned, amusement gripping him for a moment, however fleeting. "You had not yet been born, Ichika."
His daughter huffs again and, for a few minutes, neither of them say anything as they sit and drink in the garden Kagome had prepared.
And then Ichika suddenly nudges him. "I bet you didn't know," she says then, "that the day your office was set on fire was all because Mom wanted to surprise you with a candlelit picnic."
Tears are slowly falling down both their faces as he recalls that memory as well. "She claimed the wind knocked over the candle."
Ichika shakes her head, smiling right through her tears. "Nope. Mom knocked the candles right over as she was preparing everything and then swore us all to secrecy."
He chuckles, unsurprised by the revelation. His mate had no doubt been horrified yet another of her date plans had ended up not as she had planned.
Warmth slowly spreads through Sesshomaru as he shares another memory with his daughter, and this time, it is not the sake's doing. As one memory turns into another of his mate, Sesshomaru does not drink another drop of sake.
Not that night, at least.