I'd like to clear up a mild misconception.
Technically, Akemi is not wild. Wild youkai are a different breed altogether. She's just Feral. The main difference is that Wild youkai can be tamed (sort of) and are inherently curious. They're the ones who epitimize curiousity killed the cat (or dog or what have you).
Ferals are not curious. They are wary of everything. their experiences with pain leave them very closed to the idea of trying new things that might hurt, their past teaching them that might means will and pain is to be avoided.
Therein lies Sesshoumaru's greatest despair. Akemi cannot, to anyone's knowledge, be brought back to society and regular life. Once Feral, always Feral. Even if Akemi ever began to behave normally again, it's like being admitted into a psycho ward in real life. Once you are declared crazy (something that can't really be proven medically or definitively) how are you to prove you no longer are? If a Feral like a Akemi were to stumble back into Society, people would react to her like they would a rabid animal, Hunt her down and put her to sleep so to speak.
Nobody bothers to find out if it is possible for someone to come back from being Feral. Widespread fear and popular superstition prevent curiosity. There are not even legends about it.
The next two chapters are kind of twisted and seriously dark. This one is from Akemi's point of view and she's borderline crazy and succumbing to a rather violent form of despair. I guess this would be the place to put in my WARNING. I believe at this point, Akemi's mind would be repeating images of the things that actually drove her to this critical point, and as such it is actually in this chapter. I stress again WARNING: There is discussion of Rape in here. Three seperate cases, the pivotal ones. The first two have been discussed by observers. The last Akemi kept to herself. I tried to explore the reactions of a victim while incorporating her personal strength.
It does not make for a comfortable topic. It is probably why Rumiko Takahashi never attempted to explore this aspect of the era in which she placed her work. I mean there was the one or two attempts on Kagome during the latter half of the anime, but she never attempted to bring in an outside character who had already suffered it.
I cannot stress enough how DARK this chapter is, but it is you who must make the decision to read or not. whatever you decide I hope you enjoy.
ah, I've gone on terribly haven't I?
Breaking Free
In a little-used, unsteady shed left forlornly in the middle of what used to be a field of hay, Akemi drifted jerkily in and out of sleep. Every creak the old wood made, shifting in the wind, set her blood jumping through her veins and god forbid a small, hidden animal rustle through the dampened straw anywhere in the enclosure. She would be on full alert before the tiny thing had a chance to squeak properly at her.
She knew she was overly jumpy, but she couldn't seem to help it.
Yesterday, for it was already past midnight, Akemi had leapt from the train she had paid to ride less than a few hours down the track. She couldn't rationally explain why, for she had no solid reasoning behind her action. She simply had felt the urgent need to be free of the train and its passengers the minute warning bells had started going off in her head.
Free of the train, she had started to run.
Nearly any youkai could outrun a train the way she had, that wasn't why youkai took the train. Youkai traveled by train because running was illegal under the joint courtesy laws created to prevent the more lethal humans from going back to hunting their youkai fellows. The only youkai allowed to run were officials during emergency situations, which she wasn't. But then, Ferals never obeyed the law so it didn't much matter.
Akemi had quickly outstripped the train on its own tracks. Her goal was to avoid discovery and the tracks were laid down strategically across the country to avoid disturbing youkai communities by the noise of its passing. Only youkai would likely care about her running cross-country as Humans most likely wouldn't be able to see her if she moved fast enough. Thus the tracks provided her safest route between station towns.
She had to slow down around the towns and abandon the tracks to avoid drawing attention. As soon as she got around them though, she went right back to the tracks.
Akemi ran until nightfall, when the rain forced her to seek shelter in this leaky, old, creaking shack. She was finding that being Feral made her absolutely practical. She couldn't afford to become ill by sitting stationary in damp clothing. She wanted to evade pursuit and she was absolutely certain she was being pursued. In order to keep ahead of the hunt, she had to be physically well. So she stripped down and laid out her clothes before bedding down in the hay. And jumped at every sound she heard after that, her nudity making her feel vulnerable in ways unexplainable.
It struck her as odd how something so flimsy as clothing could make her feel less vulnerable when she knew it couldn't save her from anything but the cold. Still it did. Still she couldn't sleep restfully naked. With every close of her eyes she relived another night of torment and pain.
The first night he came to her was almost a fond dream. The horror and shame of it so much less than all that came after because she had been innocent. Her body had reacted innocently to stimulus while he subjugated her will at the root of it. Her physical body had merely reacted while he blocked the pain of reality from her. She'd almost thought it a dream. A dream of her future with the one youkai who would work to please her. Inu were always taken from behind the first time to prove instinctive ownership and dominance and she gentled under the hand she believed belonged to the only youkai she would have allowed such liberty.
It wasn't until he left her burning with the frigid chill of his seed in the light of day that she realized it wasn't a dream of her future mating, but a nightmare that would prevent it ever happening. She'd felt ill for weeks after ward, had borne the beatings and the ruthless shortening of her hair because none of it could touch on the fear she harbored inside.
She and Sesshoumaru were promised to each other, had been since she was six and she had betrayed him. Akemi hadn't heard from in five years at that point, she couldn't be certain if he would allow her to explain or not. She did not know if he would repudiate her out of hand, for there was more than just this for him to feel betrayed about.
Just before they had separated they had made promises to each other, made them in secret, made them in earnest. So many promises, but the one that mattered most to her was the one she'd been forced to break.
When they had been betrothed, gifts had been exchanged, as was custom. She had given him a box with a small cutting of her hair and her baby fangs, recently come out. It was to symbolize that she placed herself in his care, the fangs a symbol giving over defense of her self, her hair a symbol of care and trust. They had merely been gestures to a little girl incapable of understanding what they really meant. When she was old enough to understand she had regifted him with her hair at ten before being sent away. There had been tears in his eyes as he accepter her gift, he'd claimed to be so honored.
The gift he'd given her she had loved from the start, a little silver locket on a thin but sturdy chain. Supposedly it was a symbol of ownership, but neither of them had taken it that way.
Before their last parting he'd taken it from her and put something in it, blocking her so she couldn't see. Then Sesshoumaru had raised it over her head to put it on her. She'd known it was his instinctual desire to see her marked as his and she let it slide. She was inu too, so she could understand. He'd made her promise to keep it and she'd readily agreed. She would hold onto it with all her might, no matter what.
It wasn't until she was on the train bound away from him that she'd found out what he'd added to his gift. Inside the tiny locket that had lain barren for so long, was a piece of his hair. He had placed himself into her care as well. Oh she'd wanted to leap off the train and run back to him. He could do anything to her and she wouldn't have minded. But she had staid on the train.
Akemi forever cursed herself for not doing it. Within two years of her promise she was forced to break it.
Oh she'd fought tooth and nail to keep it. She'd had nothing else of him and they still hadn't taken her honor. The beatings she received for that bit of defiance had kept her from classes for a week.
Still she had the courage to face him, to brave him with her broken promise and her violated body because she'd had hope.
Akemi snarled at the word, hating it for everything it stood for. Of what use was hope when she'd miscarried on the wall.
The pain of that life giving up was horrific. She hadn't wanted it, hadn't even realized it was there, but she burned with sorrow for her young, even if it was the progeny of an evil encounter. She'd mourned that tiny soul's passing through that first night and the day that followed in which she was sentenced to a second night. She hadn't cared about being alone on the wall or her blood that ran down it. Only the life that stained her legs drew her attention, held her sadness. She couldn't help thinking if she'd also fail to properly carry Sesshoumaru's young if she was ever blessed with it.
Then her attention was drawn outward when suddenly there was a tongue lapping at the blood on her inner thigh. She'd wanted to fight him, she'd wanted to throw him away from her, but she was too weak, too tired and she was twisted to face the wrong way. She didn't want him to touch her pup even if it was dead, even if it wasn't quite developed into a recognizable pup yet. Akemi still wanted to protect it and so she struggled, though her struggles were weak. She struggled until he pulled back from his task his mouth too near a region she had no desire for him to trespass upon again.
"Relax inu bitch," his voice was too low for recognition but the pitch was just right to twist things warm and moist inside her. "I'll soon have you filled with more, but first we must clean this one out of the way." He abruptly thrust a finger inside her hitting a mark that set her to flowing over his hand. He thrust again and she yelped involuntarily as her body jerked away from the wall.
He chuckled darkly, his teeth grazing over her ass where she was startled to realize her skirt should have been. Vaguely she wondered what had happened to her undergarment as he added another finger and continued to thrust them against her until she came in a flush of her body's natural lubricant and the last of her child's blood.
He devoured all of it, dragging pleasure out of her body twice more to be certain of receiving it all before he stood. He'd thrust his invading fingers in front of her mouth and with a forceful roll of his hips stabbed her previously invaded flesh with a decidedly more painful intrusion. Her immediate gasp found his fingers in her mouth, painting her tongue with the taste of her deceased pup and the pleasure he'd wrung from her to get it.
She knew what he was doing that night, knew how he was playing with her instinct every time he proved to her how helplessly she was forced to allow him to take her from behind in the way of an inu dominating his bitch. But he wasn't inu. IT was the only defense she'd had against him even on that night.
He hadn't bothered to invade her mind while she hung on the wall. He didn't bother to block the pain from her. He'd wanted her to know that even as painful as holding his seed was (and it was excruciating) she still took pleasure in being filled by him.
He left his seed in her three times before dawn finally set her free of her torment.
She'd resolved to write Kagome the minute she had the chance. Then they broke her arm. Ten times in Thirteen days. On the fourteenth as she lay recovering in her bed he came to her again. He bent her over the edge of the mattress and forced her to present herself as she would to an inu mate. And in the morning they broke her arm again.
She'd still held hope until she'd finally been able to set pen to paper. Her efforts were worse than the first scrawlings she had attempted as a child. And they'd beaten her for that too.
Still she held on to her hope for Sesshoumaru as her body was abused daily, as her rapist sought her out almost bimonthly. Akemi held out hope even through the first extension of her school stay. And through the second as well. But the third…
Any dog will learn something if you kick it enough times. It may not learn what you want it to, but it will learn something and Akemi learned to bury the last of who she was as the rest of her broke with this last evidence of how misplaced her faith had been. She was unwanted. Perhaps her tormentors had followed through on the threat to inform her guardian of her whorish behavior, her worthlessness as a female. Perhaps they had been believed without even a chance to defend herself. It didn't matter anymore.
Akemi had finally relinquished her hope. It no longer mattered if Sesshoumaru would accept her, would forgive her because Akemi was beyond redemption, beyond the point of wanting him to. She could never present herself to him without the memory of the other who had forced her before him. She could never let him touch her without being tainted by the one who had touched her against her will until her will had all but broken enough to beg for it.
She was damaged beyond repair. There was only enough of the old Akemi left to wish all the people she cared about would remember her as she had been rather than how she now was.
All she wanted was freedom from it all. Freedom from the pain, from the memory, from the reality of how others would perceive her. She didn't know if she could make it to the wilds before she completely lost herself to being Feral. She hoped she did. The one hope she allowed herself because it was a hope for others instead of herself.
It was why she had leapt from the train. The pressure of keeping in company had become too much to handle. That and she could sense the hunter. Krell had begun the hunt. She knew the minute he'd heard of her escape. She had never been certain how she could always tell when her rapist joined the hunt when she'd made her attempts to escape. She'd just known. And her body had learned to react the minute she knew because whenever he found her, he would force her down into the appropriate submissive receiving position and forge his way inside her without a worry as to whether he damaged her or not.
It never kept her from running or slowed her down, so her body had learned to prepare for it, loosening her inner muscles, coating the interior flesh with her cream until she was moist and slick.
He'd laughed the first time he'd found her that way. Told her it was evidence of how much she'd wanted him to catch her. He'd even told her she ran just for him to catch her, that she must really enjoy how fiercely he took her at the end of the hunt, when he caught her.
She'd remained silent as his frozen fire had eaten at her inside and dribbled out between her thighs as he forced her to walk back towards the school bare of the clothing he'd ripped from her and kept in his hand. She'd run far enough that time that he'd taken her again before they'd made it back to the wall she'd broken free of the night before.
For a long time she didn't let her body's reactions get to her. Her body worked the way it was supposed to, it was only her abuser that made those reactions perverse. He kept trying to use her body's attempts to minimize the damage he caused against her, claiming the moisture was evidence of arousal, that the amount of it signified her anticipation of his abuse.
If a person flinched before being struck they were never accused of wanting it. Expecting it yes, but wanting it no. She'd held to that logic as long as she could, as long as her sanity could stand to cling to a thought that became increasingly less convincing and provided no comfort or release from the situation.
Akemi shook her head before shrugging into her still damp clothes. Her nerves couldn't stand the uneasiness much longer and the rain was letting up. She had to get a move on because there was no way Krell had held still for the rain. He was on the hunt for the female that conceived. An Arctic Cobra wouldn't simply give up if things seemed difficult.
He would hunt her down, take her repeatedly and punish her severely until she capitulated and presented herself to rut anytime, any place he so chose.
Akemi didn't want that. Even as Feral as she was she knew she didn't want her whole purpose in life to be nothing more than a breeder for her constant abuser. A Feral recognized pain, avoided pain, and in avoiding pain she would avoid those who caused it.
She didn't know how she would change the outcome of this hunt, but there was no way she was going to let Krell win. There was no way she would ever again allow him the honored position of her alpha, her dominant. She doubted if she would ever allow anybody that place but she knew that she would never give Krell that position as long as there was breath in her body.
Which was why she was heading for the wilds. She had, in her foggy almost Feral brain, devised half a plan in which several unknown Feral males had part. The last lingering rational corner of her mind realized that this would be exceedingly dangerous, and if it succeeded she would find herself firmly wedged under a feral male before the end of this, but if it would save her from Krell she would risk it.
Besides, Feral males could be notoriously violent. Perhaps she'd get lucky and fail to live through the experience, however things turned out. She didn't necessarily want to die, but given the alternative, death certainly seemed preferable to having to live through another rapist.
