Sorry update took so long, fanfiction being a ^&*$* -_- Anyways, thanks for your enthusiastic responses so far! I'm glad that I could FINALLY get this chapter out!
::Chapter Four:: Footprints
Sango didn't even know where she was going. Blurring tears rushed in to fill her vision, and all she saw was a bleary mess. Somehow, it seemed appropriate. This was how the world was now. A mess.
As she stumbled around she felt like her heart had been crushed into a thousand bloody pieces.
She couldn't stop her tears. Sango was enraged that he had made her cry like this. The sobs wrenching out of her body wracked her ribs and turned her stomach over. She had left the town behind long ago, and found herself crying into the forest floor.
"Hate, hate hate, I hate you Miroku!" She yelled, her voice ringing in the wood, tortured and shrill. She enjoyed the sound of her yelling. "Bastard! I hate you!"
She gave herself into the sobs that were combating her words.
After a while, she seemed to have cried herself dry.
"Every guy I've ever, ever cared about has gone away and left me," she said softly to herself, tasting the salt of her own tears. "First Papa, than Kohaku. And now, you."
Naraku turned away from Kanna's mirror to the small boy standing before him.
"Your sister," he said. The glazed, doll-like expression on his face didn't lift.
"Your sister can be useful to me," he continued, placing a clawed finger on Kohaku's forehead.
"I give you…your memories. But you are still mine."
In a minute the boy's eyes looked more alert. He glanced into the mirror and spotted the huddled form on the forest floor.
"Onee chan? What is she doing there, Naraku sama?"
Instead of answering, Naraku locked gazes with him. "You will go to that girl and fetch her. You are her brother. If you get her, the two of you will never be separated again. But you are not to tell her about me. Do you understand?"
"I will…get her….never….again…wakateru. Now I will go, Naraku sama." He bowed to his master and left the room.
Naraku smirked. It was good to be in control.
In the extreme midst of her sorrow, she felt a pair ot this arms slip around her shoulders. She jumped because she hadn't heard anyone approaching her. Mentally Sango chided herself. You could have been attacked by a youkai, letting your guard down like that.
Little did she know that she was about to be faced with something much, much worse.
Whipping around, she saw none other than her own dear Kohaku.
"Kohaku?"
"Yes, it's me, onee chan.!"
"Kohaku!" She threw her arms around her little brother, and just when she thought she couldn't cry any more, more tears rushed back, but these were tears of joy.
"You're back! You're finally back!" She held him at an arm's length and studied his face.
Last time, he'd been free for a short while, but he'd had no memory of her whatsoever.
She could barely believe it.
"I'm back, and I remember everything. I finally escaped Naraku, and I'm back!"
"I'm so happy, Kohaku chan!" She exclaimed, her previous sorrows pushed aside.
"Come with me, Sango. I have a place for us, just for us. And if we go there, we'll never have to fight youkai again."
She considered this. As long as she'd been on this earth, youkai- hunting had been a part of her life. But that was also the same thing which had brought their near downfall. Maybe…maybe giving it up would be better for bother of them.
"Okay, then," She heard herself saying, "Take me there. Take me there, Kohaku."
"Where is she?" Was the first thing Kagome asked Miroku when he showed up hours later, disheveled and tired-looking.
His face grew serious, more serious than she had ever seen him look before.
"I don't know," he said gravely.
She just stared at him in disbelief for a moment. "You don't know. I thought she went to see you. At least, that's what I figured when she went off on her own."
"She did."
It took a moment for this to sink in, but when it did, Kagome's mouth dropped open.
"You didn't. You didn't…"
"I…"
"Miroku! What were you doing, exactly?"
"I was reading palms."
"Besides that? Did you go off and impregnate some girl?"
"No, I did not." He answered this with an air of indignance. "Have you so little faith in me?"
Kagome looked at him. "In a word, yes."
He shook his head at her. "I didn't do anything."
But she felt like he wasn't telling the whole truth.
"Well then we'd better go looking for her." She turned and walked through the streets, calling out Sango's name.
Miroku hesitated for a second, staring at his hand. "Kuso," he muttered, "Now you really messed things up, houshi. Gomen, Sango," he whispered softly. But gods, the look on her face.. It was enough to melt all his anger immediately. He'd wanted to take his mind off of Sango, because he could not bear his anger for her anymore. Miroku did feel a faint smugness at making her as angry as she had made him, but the largest emotion present was guilt.
He didn't think that she would react strongly. Well, what did you expect, then? Did you think she would say, "sure, Miroku! Go ahead and go off with another girl! I don't mind!" She wasn't the type of girl that would wait faithfully while the man she loved went off with some other girl.
He sighed and turned to follow Kagome, worry crowding into his mind for the first time that evening.
The place that Kohaku had brought her to was beautiful. She was surprised that he knew his way through the forest so well.
"Kohaku, have you been living in the forest? You seem to know exactly where you're going."
"Yes," he said vaguely, "I guess so." She didn't know what that meant, but she didn't care. The whole walk there she had been talking excitedly to Kohaku, overjoyed to have her little brother back. And he seemed perfectly normal. It was as if nothing had ever happened to him.
Ha to Miroku, she thought with satisfaction. Let him go off with his woman-slut and I'll disappear just like he wanted and return to my old life before him with my brother.
She didn't know that such a place had existed. They'd walked for hours, and the sun was sinking low in the sky.
The ground grew increasingly hilly, and soon they reached two huge hills spouting out of the ground like trees. Kohaku led her through these hills, and inside them was a small valley with a stream bubbling across it. The land was covered in trees and draping vines, and the hills were rocky on the back end with water dripping down in a small waterfall.
"Ohhh…" she breathed. "This is so beautiful. When did you find this? Have you been living here for a long time?"
"Yes." He said, not looking at her. "Come on, there's a cottage here." Taking her by the hand, he tugged her towards it.
And when she saw this, she felt happiness for the first time since her father. Thanking the gods that her Kohaku was still alive, she entered the cottage. Now, she thought, now maybe I'll really be happy forever. She tried to ignore the pain somewhere inside where Miroku had left footprints across her heart.
The next morning, the youkai exterminator group seemed to have reached an all time low.
Miroku, eying Kagome and Inuyasha's straight, stiff backs, knew that they blamed him fully for Sango's dissapearance. The fateful night's efforts had borne no fruit.
When Miroku and Kagome's eyes failed them in searching for Sango, they relied upon Inuyasha's keen sense of smell. Much like, as Kagome had said with a giggle, a tracking dog. At this Inuyasha grew indignant and refused to use his nose any more. "Besides," he'd added, "there's too much human here. There's no way I could find one of them."
So the next morning they'd set out with saddened hearts. Sango was gone, and she would have come back had she wanted to. No one, not even Miroku, had considered the possibility of Sango, the fighter, to be ensnared in something that was beyond her control.
Now they'd been on the road for nearly two weeks without Sango.
Miroku had endured many kinds of pain before. He'd lost his father, and he'd experienced loneliness. His young heart had been abandoned. He'd experienced physical pain that cut through him so sharply that he thought his life might end at that very instant. The constant fear of his life ending every day coupled all of this. But this...
Every time he glanced next to him to see an empty space, a searing ache shot up from somewhere inside. And it hurt. Hurt seemed to be too insignificant a word to describe this.
Torture, that's what it was.
His thoughts nearly constantly consisted of Sango. It hurt to think about her, but it hurt even worse to push her away in his mind.
It was that evening after she'd disappeared that he'd realized how stupid he'd been. Pushing her away won't do anything, you moron, he'd chided himself. But it did not matter now. Now it was too late for regrets.
He vowed to himself then that if he ever saw her again, he would clutch onto her and hold her to him forever, so they would never be apart again.
Suddenly, a girl with light brown hair and dark eyes ran up to the group, breathless.
"You are the youkai extermination group, sou da?" Kagome nodded. They had been getting quite a bit of fame throughout the area now, and now everyone wanted their help.
Miroku felt a smile creeping up onto his face. She was cute, and what the hell, maybe it would make him feel better.
Approaching the girl, he grasped her hands and took a deep breath. "Will you bear my child?"
She snatched her hands away and eyed him warily. He thought she would have slapped him; she had that Sango-ish expression on her face.
"No thank you. I'm married." Ignoring him, she turned to KAgome and Inuyasha with pleading eyes. "Will you please help us? We have a youkai near our village that has been hoarding the water and eating the farmers, and a lot of people have died trying to kill it."
Looking at the girl, she did indeed appear too thin.
"Keh!" Inuyasha spat, "We don't have time to be helping every person who comes along wanting us the kill a youkai. There are millions of them in the world, but we're only after one!"
Kagome froze, her eyes glancing about from side to side.
"Sango chan?" Miroku ventured, feeling adrenaline pump into his veins. She had that familiar expression that told him there was either the presence of the Shikon no Tama nearby or a youkai about to slice their heads off.
"Shikon no Kake..." she whispered, "I think this youkai has one."
Suddenly Inuyasha's sour attitude dissapeared. "Where? Let's go! I'm ready to kill that bastard! come on!"
Miroku watched Kagome and Inuyasha head towards the village together, talking excitedly. Glancing sadly next to him once more, he slowly trailed in their footsteps.
Ah, and the angst and drama continues. I love writing angst and drama and romance. It fun. Anyways, honestly, I didn' t like this chapter. I think it kinda sucked. But there's always THE next chapter. The next chapter is THE chapter that I've been looking foreword to writing forever. (^^whee) Hopefully I should have it posted soon since I have more time to write during summer break. Ja ne, and take care everyone!
x~Aurora chan