Written at the same time as Chapter 1, so same songlist.
Happy Canada Day!
Taking Care
Kagura, December 8th
Child-services are there at the station when the siblings arrive in the back of the cruiser. There's shouting near one entrance and a fight breaks out between officers and the man in cuffs. When Kagura asks later she's told they got her father in a cell good and tight without any trouble... Well, the officer in blue doesn't say 'Good and tight', but he's the sort of scrappy-looking guy with just a little bit of a pony-tail and sharp blue eyes that made you think, 'Yeah, he's never getting out of that cage'. Toga or something, Kagura can't remember names.
But yeah, child-services. Hakudoshi almost starts another fight when the woman in the tweed suit tries to take the infant away from Kagura, but Kanna calms her big brother down. She reaches out and wraps her smothered-in-a-police-jacket arms around his waist and hugs her face against his stomach. Kanna doesn't talk a lot, she hardly ever speaks at all, but the kid is good at reading her brother; he calms down enough that Kagura is able to convince the one-eyed woman to let the three stay together.
Kagura has to come alone though, she understands that. Half-sister.
"Name?"
"Kagura... Kaze."
"Kaze?"
"Mother's name."
"Ah... And how old are you?"
"Twenty-one." Haku's fourteen, Kanna's eleven, the baby's six weeks. The same officer from before is in front of her and sitting next to a very doey-eyed young man who is probably only a few years older than Kagura herself. His hair is sort of a toffee brown, and looks sort of shiny in the harsh florescent lighting. Again, she can't remember his name after he says it, Hobo? But he looks nervous when she gives the baby's age a minute later, and he's glancing back at the large file folder at the cop's elbow as the man fills in his little worksheet. The room they're in is tiny, claustrophobic, and it has one of those fake mirrors set in one wall that probably has people standing behind it, like on TV.
"He's so young, was he crying a lot, maybe?" Hobo's asking if that's what set it off. Kagura stares at the pea-green wall for a few moments, her shoulders tense under the grey blanket one of the officers gave her back at the house. Her night-clothes really aren't the sort of thing you want to walk around in at night in a building full of men: a dirty white cami and small red shorts.
"She wasn't... losing the baby weight." If she was a little more awake, this conversation would be a lot harder. Kagura can't easily recall the last time she had to speak to the police, usually it's her step-mom who has to deal with them... But that's over. Kikyo's dead. "Money's been tight, he kept saying she was eating too much." Yeah, it sounds pretty sick to her too.
"We don't have a record of abuse." Toga says in an off-handed kinda way. "I mean we have a record but-" The officer looks up from his little boxes and fill-in-the-blank squares, opening the big file folder and pulling out identical sheets with boxes and names and dates. "-your step-mom had two mis-carriages in between your two youngest siblings. Doctor's reports say-"
"Yeah, she was a real smart one." She's tired, she'd been tired when she got home from work and hungry with no dinner left when she crawled through the front door. She'd been tired when she heard the screams in the front of the house and climbed out of bed to check on the infant and to sit with Kanna. She'd been tired when she dialled the police and she heard footsteps. She'd been exhausted when she ran out to stop Hakudoshi before he could get himself killed like his mother when the knife came out. She is tired.
So Kagura doesn't want to think about the hospital visits, or being cornered by nurses, or any of that other stuff that had happened years ago. Because tonight something has happened that's different, and tonight is going to change things. So Kagura has to think about that instead.
"What do you want me to say?" She asks, and finds the child-services guy, Bojo, pulling out a tissue and handing it to her. Fuck him, she's crying but she doesn't need his pity. She takes the tissue though. "You have the reports, you know what was happening." They don't get it- well maybe the cop does, but the other one doesn't. So she explains.
"I stuck around because I had two little siblings who didn't know what was going on or what to do about it. I stayed quiet because she wouldn't say anything, and if I said anything then I'd get the crap for it." But she should have just run away from it, should have just picked up and ran off into the wind like her mother, free. But Kagura knows she couldn't have done that, because she remembers what it was like when her mother did it. She knows the feeling of having her heart ripped in two. One piece had vanished into the wind, leaving her empty and sad, and the other had settled neatly into her father's palm.
"Miss Kaze..." Yeah, what does the cop want now? She watches him set his pen down and fold his arms slowly, then gesture over the forms spread across the table. "We all basically know what happened here tonight. What Mister Hojo needs to know is what you intend to do. You have options."
"Options." She repeated, and the toffee-haired one speaks up quickly, getting in on the conversation with his sappy words and careful smile.
"We can set up a temporary placement for the baby and maybe his sister. Or we can keep the two older ones together in a home for a few months while the infant-" Fuck this!
"Woah, no." She's tired, she's exhausted, Kagura's scared and she's done for the day, but there is no way she's going to hear this. Ever. Sitting up and gesturing sharply with her hand, fuck this, no. "You're not splitting anyone up. You're not. I'm an adult, I'll take care of them." Bobo looks at her sadly.
"The older ones have school, that's understandable, but the baby-"
"I'll manage it." She cuts him off with her words, snatching the second tissue from his hand before it's properly offered to her, the first one damp and balled up tight in her fist. "Girls get pregnant at sixteen, I can handle this." She has five years on those bimbos anyways, she doesn't have illusions about going back and finishing high school, or becoming a doctor. She had to give up going to the dance studio before she even had the chance to get a proper membership.
"Is there any other family-?"
"No, just me, and I can do this." She can do this and she will. "If you lock that bastard up then I'll take care of the rest. I can do this." They just have to lock Naraku up and throw away the key. Keep that killer away, that wife-beater, that money-stealing blood-sucking abomination that still had the legal right to call himself her father. Without him around she'll be fine with the kids. If he's locked up then Kagura will be free: bills and payments and jobs and midnight feedings don't mean anything. She'll finally be free.
She'll sell the house. She knows it before they even let her out of that tiny room. She'll sell the house and she'll move them into a smaller apartment, someplace with cheap rent where the money from the sale will keep them living for as long as possible. There are food-banks for meals and coupons for what they can't get for free- Kanna knows coupons. Coupons are something the little girl and her mother always did together; go through the colourful flyers and clip all the big red and yellow numbers.
And there are women's shelters and charity groups, there are churches and shrines and sanctuaries. There are walk-in clinics and pro-bono lawyers. There are extra shifts she can start picking up and new jobs she can find.
She can do this, even if they spend the night in the police station while the cops go through the house for evidence. They sleep in the little waiting room on the vinyl seats surrounded by the 3-am murmur of officers and detectives working the red-eye shift. The infant sleeps in her lap and Hakudoshi has Kanna sleeping on his shoulder, his head in turn resting on Kagura, who can't move her arm enough to keep writing down estimates and guesses on the paper she stole from one of the desks. But she can do this.
With Naraku gone, Kagura can do this...
Herp derp this is where chapter 1 originally ended. Combining chapters 1 and 2 gives you guys about 5 pages worth of content to read, which's still on the shorter side of things. Some chapters will be much longer and won't require a double-update like this one did.
Read and review! Let me know what you think. Sesshoumaru comes in next chapter!
