Hunter's Heart (Prologue: Why?)
by IronRaven
Disclaimer: Kagome, her honey, and their extended family aren't mine. They belong to Rumiko Takahashi-sama. However, any original characters are mine.
Rated R for language, sexual innuendo, and violence. You may want a hanky for this opening.
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"Put the sword down, my love, or I will snap her pretty little neck. You know I can." The voice of the man Sango once loved burned at her ears. The voice, once smooth, like honey over ice, grated in her mind. Its owner was holding Kagome's head in his hands, ready to break the miko's neck with a single twist.
"Sango, stop him, please. Don't worry about me, he can't have the Jewel." Kagome's neck felt filled with ice, strained past the point she had ever turned her head. The rich, thick, musky scent of masculinity, soaked by time into the black cloth, filled her nose, nauseating her. Her eyes darted from Sango, holding her sword in her left hand, the right hanging useless, dislocated at the shoulder, to Inuyasha, laying face down, a crimson stain spreading through his snowy locks.
"She won't, my pet, she's a hunter, a taijya. That means she can't kill people, only demons." Pausing to kiss his hostage's temple in mocking tenderness, his voice became low, seductive, gentle. "Sango, dear, put the sword down, or I will kill her. My tanuki already has the shards. Kirara might be able to keep up with him, but not for long. And she won't be able to beat him"
The spring sun soaked into the hunter's back, the bitter, coppery smell of human and hanyou blood mixing with the gentle sweetness of new grass and cherry blossoms in her nose. She had willed the pain in her strong arm into the back of her mind, along with the pain in her heart. She balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to lunge, praying that a beneficent kami would guide her hand, watching his strong, slender, beautiful body for any signs of action. "I will kill you, if you hurt her. You might even kill me if we battle. But Inuyasha will hunt you till the end of time. You know this."
His handsome face blanked in concentration for a moment as he considered he words, his eyes studying her as a mongoose would a serpent. Breathing deeply, drinking in the wonderful scent of Kagome's hair, feeling the girl's wonderfully bare legs against his own, he weighed the odds. "Sango-love, you are right. Kill the mongrel- take his head; you and I both know about hanyou healing. If you don't," his pause was marked by tightening his grip, the tension bringing an unwilling whimper of pain and terror from Kagome's throat.
"Ppleease, Sango, stop him. It isn't your fault, it will be his, please, don't worry about me." Tears sliding silently down her cheek's, Kagome's eye's met her friend's, pleadingly, before she shut them, not wanting Sango to see her fear, the fear that robbed the warrior of her will. I'll be all right, Sango. Maybe it was supposed to happen this way. "Take care of Shippou for me."
"How touching, a mother's love. Go, Sango, kill the halfbreed and tend to the child. Let him remind you of the child you never gave me. I will miss your lovely bottom, I truly will." Starting to back towards the edge of the clearing, the wild young man moved slowly enough for the girl in his arms to stumble back with him. Kagome couldn't talk, not how her head was being held, could barely breath, whimpering as she silently said good bye to those closest to her. "Don't worry, I'll let her go, when I'm safe, and done with her. She will come to no harm."
He lifted his head, his long hair slithering under Kagome's collar like a serpent as he called to the unconscious form of Inuyasha. "Don't worry about your bitch, dog-boy, I'll take good care of her. Better than you ever could." Smiling, his eyes locked with Sango's, taunting her.
"Let her go, and face me. You do yourself no honor with a hostage. You beat the Jewel's first guardian, and it's second. Fight me, alone, and take it as the spoils of war." Sango edged forward, following the handsome rouge she once would have died for, and now was convincing herself that she could kill.
"'Honor' is an empty shell that the nobles use to hide their decadence, love, you know that. I'm a thief, a liar and a cheat. Don't waste your air on honor." His lips curled back, sneering at thoughts of honor. "Now, kill the fucking mutt, or I will kill her."
Oh, please, kami, don't make me do this. I can not be sure of not killing Kagome. If there is no other way, let my thrust take her quickly, painlessly. And let him suffer for it. Sango shifted her weight slightly, her senses at their highest, nearly rivaling Inuyasha's. Her ears guided her eyes to a rustling bush, for less than a heartbeat, but long enough to be seen by the normally charming man who had changed to a villain.
"Oh, please, not that old trick. Really, Sango, what do you take me for? A child?" His voice mocked her, lashed at her soul with it's gentleness and cruelty, rending her shattered heart further.
Silently as a deer, albeit an old one, Keade's shoulders and head parted the bushes, her bow strung, ready. Shippou clung to her leg, a thin stream of blood oozing from his lower lip, where his young fang had pierced it, trying to silence his hammering heart. He bit harder to keep from gasping as he saw his adopted mother, her life hostage to one he had come to trust, while his claws dug into his palms. No, not again. She can't die again.
Breathing out slowly, ignoring the mocking voice of the young man, Kaede stretched her miko abilities out, laying the path of her arrow. Slowly, creeping it up on him, knowing that if she moved too fast his senses might feel her presence. Between the beat of her heart, and that of her now-enemy, the ash shaft slipped free of it's own will, it's steel head sinking into the shoulder of the boy, biting into the joint, feeding on the bone. With a bellow of pain and rage, he released his hostage, whirling to face the attack from behind.
"You, old woman, how dare you. I will be as a kami when I have the Shikon no Ta...." His stormy eyes blazed in their madness, as he raised his hand to the elderly miko and the young kitsune, when his back flared in agony, causing the grey orbs to bulge and widen.
Using the opening, Sango had leapt, nearly landing on her friend as she brought her sword down. The edge, which she had spent so much time tending to, split her past love's flesh like a bird through air. Her back seared her mind when she felt his blood, spilling like her's had when Kohaku had nearly killed her, from the very spot she had been wounded. The gasp of pain from her enemy's strong lips echoed in her ears, mixing with those of her brother when the lord's guards had released their arrows.
Dropping her sword, letting it clatter, Sango dug her working hand into the heavy black fabric at her foe's back, catching him. She fell to her knees, kneeling beside the coughing and choking form of Kagome, cradling their assailant in her arms, facing him. Her eyes followed the arrow to his flesh, that night of her past melding and mixing with the waking nightmare of the moment. She was holding her brother, and the man she could have spent her life with, both at once, feeling both of their blood on her skin.
"Why? Why did you do it?"
Gasping, gapping like a landed fish, his eyes hardened for one last storm. "Revenge... revenge of a broken heart..." Coughing, once, twice, his blood splashing past his lips, to paint her face. "You broke..." Closing his eyes, his face drained of the malice it was never meant to hold, returning to the innocence it had shown only in his sleep, his last breath pure, kind, gentle. "love..."
Holding his head in her lap, Sango pressed her forehead to his, the tears of the past day's horror ripping out of her soul, racking her body with sobs. She couldn't feel a thing, but she knew that Kagome had wrapped her arms about her, the younger girl holding her friend as their tears mixed, washing the dirt, desperation, blood, pain, sweat and hate from his handsome face.
"Why?"
No one could answer that, not even the wind as it shook the new leaves and batted at Inuyasha's slowly twitching ears. The blossoms landed on the fallen and the lost, like a soft, scented snow.
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Author's notes:
*holding Sango's hand in mine, running a cool, damp cloth over her forehead
while her eyes stare blankly at the ceiling, seemingly dead but for a painfully
slow and shallow flexing of her nostrils*
Don't you want to know how this happened? Then await the beginning of this tale in peace. Until we return to this point in time, lay your spears and swords aside, I beg of you. *bowing, before pulling the white fur higher over Sango, trying to hide the baboon's head at the edge of it*
Tanuki: A raccoon youkai, like Hachi, Miroku's buddy. (Actually, from what I've learned, the real tanuki aren't 'coons at all, but directly tied to canines, and a wonderfully appropriate companion for the hentai houshi. Check it out: .)
Major side note: Does ANYONE know the date that Highlander was released to theatres in Japan? A thanks in the appropriate fic to the person who can answer that question. *thinks about Sesshomaru singing "Princes of the Universe" as a lullaby to Rin to put her to sleep*