This fanfiction comes back from 2003. I hope you enjoy it, and I plan on putting the original author's notes from now on uninterupted.
This came to me only a few hours after posting the end of Just Write, and I hope that you enjoy this S/M fic as much as you enjoyed Music from Another Room, Last of the Summer's Wine, A Memory from Faraway, Portal, and Moonlit. (Which are definitely not in chronological order…)
I don't own ANYTHING!
Anyway, I just can't think of writing fanfiction without having a SangoxMiroku fic floating about, so…
Uozumi
Guilt Case #1
The rain was splattering everywhere; it's intoxicatingly droning sound
washing over her like its drops. She was running, faster, faster --she had to
get there! She had to! Looking around as though she could lose her way on a straight path, she
abruptly slowed at the sight of a boy's jeans jacket. 'Kohaku!' Turning towards the jacket, she caught the railing of a wooden bridge, her hair
swirling towards the water as a chilly gust brought her eyes downward towards
the form falling. "KOHAKU!"
She woke, sweating. Burying her head in her hands, she knew that there would be a nurse somewhere saying, "There she goes again. Damn girl, always in the middle of the night."
Sure, they never said those things to her face, but she knew they were thinking that.
They were always saying something like that about all the girls in the ward.
Looking around, she felt a pull at her chest, tears still streaming. What did she keep seeing? It seemed so real, but so surreal at the same time. It was like watching a dream, but that was all her memories were now…dreams. Shaking her head, she leaned back against the wall of her room, her cell, and looked out the barred window at the lighted hall towards the nurses' office.
It would be such an easy walk….
Yet, they locked the doors from the outside so only they could get in…
Eyeing the button by her bedside, she wondered if they would allow Kagome, that girl who was in for attempting to cut herself every two seconds of her life, to come into her room. Kagome was her only friend right now. All the nurses were scared by "that 'look' in her eyes," but Kagome…
Kagome was different. Kagome saw people for who they were on the inside, she understood. She still had a family who visited her, she wasn't jaded, she had a boyfriend…
Sango shook her head. 'She's so lucky…' Glancing to the clock, she allowed herself to ease back down on the bed. Tomorrow would be here - no, it was here. She only had to wait out four more hours before they unlocked her door so she could move about at six that morning.
Rolling over so she faced the wall, she heard screaming and smelled something awful.
Someone had gone insane.
Someone's room would have to be cleaned.
---
"I heard you last night," Kagome sat beside Sango on a bench that was in a sunroom that had bars on all the windows. Yet, it was still pretty, once you had been there long enough that the bars were just there, and you couldn't remember a time when there had never been bars on any window.
"Yeah…" Sango blinked, then looked to the younger girl, "I heard someone get taken away for going senile again."
"Kikyô was in the room," Kagome shrugged, "it was her roommate, the new one."
"Ah," Sango nodded.
"Sango?"
"Yeah?"
"I never asked, and I know this will sound like a 'newbie' question, but…" Kagome's voice trailed, then she looked at the seventeen-year-old who looked to be much older, "Why are you here?"
Sango took in a breath, the vision of the figure falling away from her on the bridge flashing before her eyes. Closing her eyes, she bowed her head, "I'm not here because I'm crazy, suicidal, or anything…
"Everyone just thinks I'm lying."
Kagome turned away, "I'm sorry."
"It's all right," Sango began to rock the swing slightly. "You deserve to know. You've told me everything about you anyway."
"But, that doesn't mean -"
"Tanuki?"
Sango looked over her shoulder lazily, "Yes?"
The nurse gestured her thumb towards the hall behind her, "You're needed."
"Why?"
"Don't sass me, get your ass over there."
Sango sighed, then got up, looking down to Kagome, "See you later."
"Good luck," Kagome smiled, waving as Sango disappeared from sight.
---
The nurse had waited patiently, instructing Sango to wear one of her best dresses. They were going past the normal restrictions of the ward, and didn't want people to think ill of the girl. She probably really shouldn't be in the ward, but no one said so. She was treated like any other OCDer, suicide addict, etc…
Relaying the patient to another nurse, Sango soon found herself sans the first nurse and on a trip out into the "world," if you could call a few halls from the confinements of the ward the "world."
The nurse knocked on a wooden door, breaking Sango from her thoughts about this new area she had never seen. She'd been here a whole year, but this was the first time since then that she had seen this part of the hospital. It was like going from Boise to Paris in a few seconds. It was so new, so different…
So clean….
"Come in," a muffled voice bade entrance.
The nurse opened the door first, "I'm Nurse Wenschwieger," she spoke with her heavy German accent, "I've brought you the patient."
Sango glanced over the taller woman's shoulder, but couldn't see into the room. Whoever was in there sounded young…Who was it? He didn't sound like a typical doctor, or that horrid psychologist Dr. Aku Naraku, who no one could really respect, even if he scared every living thing on the planet.
"Well, let her in," the man instructed.
"Yes, sir," Nurse Wenschwieger nodded, then stepped back, Sango stepping back with her. "You silly girl, go in."
Sango glanced from the nurse to the open door, to her nurse again. Her throat was paralyzed. Why was she scared? It was new; it was different. Why was she scared? A year ago, she would have bypassed Nurse Wenschwieger with no qualms, just walking in, and offering a hand, confidence in every moment.
That was gone now. The ward, the other patients had taken that from her. Now she was unsure, insecure. Did she really want to find out who was the owner of that voice?
"Come now," Nurse Wenschwieger pushed her, "you are supposed to love these kinds of things, right? Don't tell me you've lost that spark I saw long ago? Get in there!"
Shoved literally through the door, Sango blinked, then felt the color drain from her face as she met two concerned purple eyes. She felt like a mouse in a cage before a hungry cat, she felt as though she was onstage for American Idol or Star Search in her underwear and not a memory of any song so she could sing. Wanting to bolt, she turned, but there was Nurse Wenschwieger in the way, taking up the entire doorframe.
"Be afraid," the voice was gentle, "I won't tell you not to. If you want to feel fear, then feel it."
Sango turned to the man with the violet eyes. He had to be barely older than her, twenty-four at the oldest, with dark hair, a dark, professional-looking suit, white shirt, dark tie…. He had corporate America written all over him.
Yet, he wouldn't be here if he represented corporate America, right?
Her mind raced. How could she get out of this? Where was her pragmatism when she needed it?!
"I won't ask you to do anything until you decide. If you want to leave now, you can, but we'll be seeing each other at two each afternoon every day except for the weekend."
Sango felt intimidation grow inside her. It grew from her heart, up into her throat, down into her stomach… What was this feeling?
"I - I -" she went to speak, but only sputtered.
"Would it help if you knew who I was?"
She nodded, without even consciously thinking to do so.
"I'm Miroku Arisugawa, Psychologist," he rose from his chair, stretching his hand across the table to her, an offering for her to step farther into the room. Smiling, he inquired, "Who are you?"
"S - Sango Tanuki," she shyly took it, amazed at how soft it felt compared to her callused hands. They weren't girlish soft, but his hands definitely hadn't done the hard labor that hers had so many times on her uncle's farm each summer for years.
"That's a pretty name," he smiled. "A coral fox -"
"Raccoon," she cut in, then blushed, retracting her hand, and stepping back, "Uh…I shouldn't have interrupted…."
Her mind was racing. By now Dr. Naraku would have been cursing and putting her on a guilt trip. So many guilt trips…
She felt them all weigh on her now.
"I'm sorry," Miroku let his hand drop. "I can't keep the little Japanese I know straight."
She nodded, looking down at her feet. It would come any time now. There had to be something wrong with her, right? She would be belittled. Nurse Wenschwieger would be sent from the room, and she would be here, all alone…
"Do you wish to proceed?"
The question caught her off-guard.
He saw it in her eyes. Blinking a moment, he smiled, "Don't worry. Dr. Naraku won't be coming back.
"He resigned just last week, so now you'll be seeing me."
To be continued….