A/N: For convenience's sake I'll be changing the structure of my A/N's, which also means most of my A/N's will be at the end of a chapter unless there's a particularly important matter I want to talk about.
Disclaimer: The only thing I own is my OC. Everything else belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi-sensei. -x-
Cacophony
Prologue: Softly Say Goodbye
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It's the grave sitting in the corner of a shit-sprayed city, behind the garbage dump and by the old, abandoned building.
The silence beyond the rain is the monster that hums in her ears. Her hands strain against the ground, clutching at some imaginary piece of stardust that mama has always told her to find, but no matter how far or deep she searches all she grasps is broken flower stems and dainty shards of glass. They cut and nip at her hands until she bleeds red and feels pain, but still. It's not right - it doesn't feel right. She is cold and wet and tired and she feels hollow emptiness swallowing her whole and it doesn't. Feel. Right.
The soil is drenched with acid rain and wilted flowers and tears, and deep down, a few feet under the makeshift dirt gathered by four year old hands, is mama. Mama, who sleeps eternally with her arms and legs sprawled open, a welcome invitation to wanting men and greedy eyes and the culmination of loneliness and desperation.
Inari's never minded that. Mama shouted and swung and cursed as if her life depended on it, Mama whipped her hands across her face like there was nothing to lose and drank like she was trying to forget, and Mama cried and begged and bared her legs for money to trickle onto her thighs and Inari remembers.
"Ina-chan! Look - look, bread."
It's a stale memory pieced together by a child's hope and sweet disillusionment, stitched into a messy patchwork blanket of safety. It's love and hate and loneliness all combined in one, and Inari Natsume is never more sure of anything else than she is of mama, because mama loved and hated and despaired and loved and loved and loved-
But it's not her that she really wants. Inari knows because she's a product of it. She mentions 'him' on drunken nights when she's filled to the brim. There are delusional giggles and sunken in eyes, butterflies in the stomach and "oh, he had brown eyes and promised to take me away". Her mother is blissfully young while the bottle stays half full, lazy smiles trailing lines down Inari's face because "you have his eyes, darling." It ends with mournful glances towards the lamplight of stars illuminating the sky, starry-eyed and filled with wanderlust and love. It dies with hateful word, broken bottles and severed dreams and "IhateyouIloveyouIhateIloveII-I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry-"
Inari stares at the place where dreams end, eyes glazing over as she looks at the dirt mound, old with azian corruption and the stench of rot and piss, and realizes that the acid rain is opening up the lines on her arms and legs. It flows onto her, traces the topography of her skin before dripping down her fingertips, outlining the cracks and crevices where bone meets bone and skin meets muscle. The marks-the fresh ones- will scar, like any other reminder from mama has.
"If you find him for me, bring him back, will you?"
Inari Natsume levels her gaze at the grave, fingers cold and eyes burning, burning hot. Mama is gone, and the only thing she stares at is a body below the ground, worn and torn by the disillusionment of a man who gave her hope and promise and left when she gave him Inari.
(And mama loved and loved and loved and loved-)
Inari raises her foot and grits her teeth, eyes filling with hot tears and broken nostalgia and the remnants of the emptiness threatening to swallow her whole if she doesn't do something. Her leg whips hard and her foot slams into the ground and she scatters dirt and flower petals and ravages the soil and screams "Mama, I was here this whole time."
When she retracts her foot Inari's eyes are wet, and bright - burning, burning bright, heart pounding and eyes unwavering and she is alive-
She leaves with dry eyes and a stone heart and tells herself that love was not this. Mama loved her like a broken fragment of a dream she's been stuck in. She loved the children she conjured up as much as she loved the idea of the man she shared her soul with, and Mama was not love.
Mama was pitiful.
-x- I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Leave a review if you have any constructive criticism. Oh, and also, if you guys know of any good HxH fanfics I would love to read them! HxH has sucked me into its fandom and now I can't get out. Send help. Til next time~
A/N: To be honest I'm really not satisfied with the prologue. I planned to make this a part of chapter one, where I actually add some nice 5k word bulk in there instead of giving you guys this, but eh.