Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.
A/N: This is the first part of a series of three oneshots I dub, "Something Amiss." Deals with the aftermath of Kohaku's death. First part is in Sango's point of view, second is from Miroku, and third is a shared perspective. Dark, along the lines of most of my recent oneshots. Comments loved and appreciated. -- May
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Missense
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White lies.
Black lies.
Right lies.
Wrong lies.
Tell me one thousand more, spilling from your lips in an infinite stream.
It feeds me; feeds the brushfires forming on my skin, drowns my awareness in doubt and shattered glass.
Sometimes it takes minutes, hours, even days. He is reliant and expectant and so am I, because with an effective dousing of sand my fires are extinguished.
My anger has no place in our relationship. My anger is all that there is.
I cannot recall the last time he has ever raised his voice at me, if he has at all. He has never harmed me physically, be it in lieu of his emotions or not. I cannot recall . . .
He is always gentle and patient with me, and I am everything else.
But he has his very own form of abuse, and that is his words. I gather them close to me, crush them to my breast and make them a part of me. They will haunt me in my sleep, joining memories of my brother's smile.
There is always an ember; a single glowing ember. He exhales upon it a lie, and I am alit once more.
His smile is gentle. His eyes are kind.
I fear his truths are lies.
--
Our world is stained by a fascinating palate of shades.
The mantle of my cheeks as he tells his falsities, the pellucid blue of his eyes as they convince me he is sincere. My clothing, sanguine and becoming against the torpid darkness I exude in anger, and in battle.
I hear him approach and feel the rough roundness of the beads as they press against my skin.
Tell me a lie, Houshi-sama.
"What can I do for you, Sango?"
Can you say that you are not worthy of me?
Say it, as a mere joke or as a hidden truth, " 'I'm not worthy.' "
Yet throw those words away with one fleeting twist of your hand. A twist of your hand and a contraction of your cursed fingers.
"I should have killed him." I am not speaking to him. I am speaking to the night, the air, and Kirara. For they cannot respond, and they show their opinion of my words in silence. Silence that is eerie, and comforting.
"If you kill him, you will never have a chance to revive him."
You, my voice of reason, the calm in the eye of the storm. You forget, dear holy man, that chaos surrounds you. The first breath of air you take is your saviour, the first breeze past your ears is your panic.
"Do I even want him revived?"
Mould yourself to me, let your heart become mine, and you will see, that you can never feel empathy for me. You have lived with the knowledge of your death for years -- many, many years.
And you can never forceyourself to feel.
"It was all you thought of for days, months, Sango. Not a moment passes where you wonder about him, what he is doing now, what he should be doing now."
"And if he were dead, dead like he is supposed to be, I would wonder no longer."
He falls into a lapse of silence. Sometimes I think he always knows what to say to me, but now I know, it is that he knows when not to say anything.
"Do you think that he should be revived at the expense of his sanity? It is times like these, monk, when my selfishness overrides reason."
Tell me a lie, Houshi-sama.
"Is love a selfish thing?" I didn't realize I had spoken the words aloud.
"The teaching is that love possesses four qualities." He straightened, preparing to preach. "There's loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy,andfreedom."
Crossing his legs, I ignored the way he inauspiciously neared me, becoming my shadow. "Do you not show Kohaku all four of those things?"
I didn't answer.
"It is a selfless love. You are so bound to him that you feel selfish."
Tell me a lie, Houshi-sama.
Fury and despair, pain and anguish, they are intertwined with what you say is a selfless love. Love, laced with threads of bleeding pain, is not love.
"Thank you." I say it again, a whisper.
--
His body is wrapped in his purple kesa. Tufts of his thick black hair peek out from beneath the fabric, no longer matted with blood.
Houshi-sama has his staff positioned around my waist, and I am gripping the body of my brother as close to me as possible.
"He is at peace, Sango."
Tell me a lie, a white lie.
My first steps into my village are weighted, not with Kohaku's corpse, but with the tears that will not leave my eyes, no matter how much I want them to.
There is a tear in my battle attire, and it stretches as I fall to my knees in the hardened dirt. I pull the swaddling around him, and touch his whitened face; the trail of crusted blood around his mouth; the wounds that will not bleed, can not bleed.
The feelings, laced with unbleeding pain and poison tipped arrows, engulfs me, and I hold him.
And Houshi-sama is there, holding me so softly, so gently. He is afraid that if he is too rash, I will shatter; if he is too gentle, I will crumble.
Thus, he has no choice.
--
While he is reciting the prayers, I am shamefully disrespectful.
He ignores me, the way I am tearing at my hair, drawing blood from my skin as I dig my nails into my arms painfully.
He continues his prayers unwavering, as I find myself amongst the dirt again.
Again.
There are two white flowers on his grave. My hand rests over their stems and I am lying beside him, holding the dirt close to me.
I remember my chamber of darkness and death, and I escaped it, for a breath of air and life.
Now it is my unattainable sanctuary.
He heaves me upwards around my waist, after night has long fallen and I have not moved.
"It is not your time to die."
Tell me a lie, a black lie.
--
It does not hurt while he washes my wounds.
Kohaku re-opened the scar, his last memory before death. A final memory.
And you say he is at peace?
"Sango." Rarely he talks while he is tending to me. "Would you allow me to . . . to record the history of the taijiya?"
My face is turned away from him, and he has coiled my hair and placed it over my shoulder as not to get in his way.
His fingers gently lift my chest, coming dangerously close to my breasts, and I hold myself upward, as he wraps my body with strips of cloth.
"Do what you wish, Houshi-sama."
To forget is what caused Kohaku's downfall. I will not lie. I will remember.
--
One evening, he chooses to leave me, thinking I am asleep.
I stare at the sky, so visible through the cracked roof. Why he chose this house to take shelter in, I do not know. One tremor of the earth, and it would crush us, the ruins of ruins falling upon our heads.
I wonder how he knew this was my home.
I move quietly, falling upon my brother's grave in my robe of white. It becomes dirty and moist, as I grab the cold earth with all I have, wanting to unearth him and bury ourselves together. I could not save him.
Aneue -- I'm so scared.
I could not save him.
"It is not your fault, Sango."
He is not yelling, but he is saying it harshly, gripping me tightly, and wrapping his legs around mine so I will not struggle.
I grow limp, and then I tremble.
He brings me inside, and covers me with a blanket. I tell him to go outside and reform Kohaku's grave which I have defaced in my agony. He refuses.
At that moment, I look towards it, tainted with my anger, ruined with my repudiation.
I ask him again to fix it, and he holds me and asks me to sleep.
--
The evening came when I was physically well again.
Previously, he'd spend his nights holding a brush to parchment and reading portions of his text aloud. I'd nod, I'd approve, I'd reminisce.
His words really are beautiful.
Today he pushed the unfinished manuscripts aside, instead gathering me in his arms and kissing my cheek softly.
And today I had remembered a story about a friend I had been trying to recall for some time.
Nevertheless, I respond. Without my brother, without my father, without my friends, I have but one outlet of which to draw love.
And I will feed off of his until he can no longer give.
In a strange hunger, I claw at him and demand.
The stories are scattered. The air is cold.
There is a shadow that looms over the ruins that are our sanctity.
I love you.
Our insanity.
You lie.
Your lies are so achingly beautiful.
The black is ink, and I am pristine, pure, paper.
But when the ink reaches me, it fades into grey.
And we lie.