(11/22/04)

A/N: Messed up sentences care of Quick edit now eating my dashes and hyphens. That will also explain the ugly (&)'s in their place. Thank you very much you lovely website you. I have phases and this is not a good one.

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L'Espoir Faux

Chapitre Trois: Enseignez-Moi les Manières de Peiné

A fanfiction by May

Previous disclaimers apply.

Pour Wendy

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He pulled his gloves over his hands with unnecessary force.

In truth, he was inwardly seething. Sango had been back here, trampling over their past and crushing the remains of their future.

A few second hand textbooks, clothes and her coat, and she had vanished.

The ghost of her roamed through their little space, trailing delicate fingers across the pictures, the bed sheets, his body as he lay there alone, or with someone who couldn't take her place.

At those times he felt slightly sickened, and unable to find sleep, no matter how long he chased it for. It always found a way to evade him; the bliss in unconsciousness.

Even then he would dream, of lying alongside a river with his arms chained behind his back. Dust settled over the ground around him, and in the distance, he could smell the smoke of something burning, causing his eyes to water.

Then he awoke in a cold sweat, and whoever was beside him would offer their practised comfort. And her ghost remained, watching him, creeping across his body and chilling him to the core with guilt.

He was left with nothing but a strange sense of emptiness, that covered him like a blanket he wrapped around himself.

Outside the window, snow blanketed the city and the delicate flakes melted on eyelashes.

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The Snow Festival . . .

"Come out with me tonight, Sango-chan!"

"I don't feel like it this year," Sango replied with a weak smile. "I'll have to take a rain check for next."

Her arm was nearly torn off her shoulders as her friend tugged on it errantly.

Snow is purity. Until someone steps in it.

"We always go! You're going to ruin the tradition!" Kagome exclaimed, still trying to pull her to her feet within her room.

"Since when was it a tradition?"

They only went when it was convenient that's all.

The Snow Festival was held every year in early February. Beautiful sculptures crafted from ice and snow filled the park, bringing depictions of fantasy, imagination and an alternate reality to life. Transparent and frosted, cold and enchanting. At night, the statues would be lighted and the atmosphere was one of warm romance and kinship within an chilly enclosure.

Sango went every year since she had been comfortable enough on her own to revel in leisure time. She enjoyed marvelling at the craft of the artists, coupled with spending time with loved ones.

Every evening she spent walking away from the statues, she knew that come sun and warmth, they would be nothing more but puddles.

"Please, Sango-chan?" her friend was now begging. "I missed it last year, remember? Please, just come and have some fun. You need it."

Yes, Kagome missed it last year. Sango had gone with him in her absence.

With an uncanny burst of strength, Kagome successfully pulled Sango to her feet and was now circling her with a critical eye.

"It will be cold. Put on another sweater, and then your coat." She topped it off by rewrapping her scarf loosely around her neck.

"Ready?"

Sango gave her a weak smile in defeat.

Too late; might as well give up.

"As I'll ever be."

Why fight it?

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Fairy lights sifted through the carved blocks of ice as Kagome and Sango meandered through the paths, avoiding tourists, couples, and visitors to the festival. Stands lined the streets, merchants and potential buyers haggling for souvenirs.

"Look at that one!" Kagome exclaimed. She blew onto her mittened hands, rubbing them together, then pointing to the object of her awe.

"It's beautiful," Sango agreed truthfully. An ice mermaid on a rock, pensively staring out onto the sea of snow around her. Coloured lights beneath the base of ice reflected in a shimmering glow over the smooth and chiselled form.

"Isn't it?" A third voice fell upon her ears. Slowly, Sango turned.

White teeth so resplendent that they put the snow to shame peeked out from beneath cherry lips. "I knew that was you," she grinned, bowing, a steaming cup of coffee in her hands. "The sweet girl from yesterday."

Sango ignored Kagome's curious look. "I remember you," she said in forced politeness. Her cold, bare hands met the woman's suede gloved one in a handshake.

"It's funny how people meet one another sometimes."

"Are you enjoying the festival "

"Sango," she provided. Somehow, she felt as though she should know her as Sango. Only Sango. "And I am, I usually go every year since I've lived here. It's quite a sight, isn't it?"

The woman repeated her Sango's name, slowly. "Sango . . . that is, Shen, in my language. Coral, right?" She tilted her head, a few fibres of hair falling in front of her eyes.

Sango nodded in the affirmative. "Then you are - "

"Yu Zie," she told her, and smiled. Strange how only once Sango had heard the name had she begun to notice her Chinese accent. "I am here doing a bit of promotional work."

"Really," Sango's eyes focused on the string of lanterns just above Yu Zie's head. "You speak our language very well."

"I've been studying it, and why not practice while I'm in the country?" Her laughter rippled over them in soft, resplendent chimes.

"Forgive me for asking, but what kind of promotional work are you here for?" Kagome's interested voice sounded over Sango's shoulder.

"Photos," Yu Zie said quickly, flushing. "Promotional photos."

Her curiousity piqued. "Like, modelling?" she asked, unable to contain an excited grin.

"I don't like to call it that, but . . . " she hesitated. "I guess you might."

Kagome was ecstatic. "Of course! You're so pretty!" she said in awe. "Can I have your autograph?"

Sango took a few steps to the side so that Kagome could closely examine every inch of the woman's perfect face. Shivering, she nudged her friend. "I'm going to see if I can buy something to eat at a stand," she said cheerily. "You don't mind, do you?" she asked them both.

"Not at all," her warm voice resounded. "We'll wait."

As soon as her back was to them, an unbecoming scowl painted Sango's lips. So this was her superior. A tall, exotic beauty with modelling prospects and an aurora of a smile. She held no resemblance, no similarities to Sango.

What perhaps angered her the most, was that she could find nothing to hate about this woman.

Was she wrong to say that that simply wasn't fair?

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The people around them seemed to disappear when they saw one another.

For him, there was an empty numbness that he was left with, and as she approached, cheeks rosy with the cold, something bubbled inside of him.

She was holding a paper cup of hot tea when she looked up, expecting to see Kagome and Yu Zie, standing beside the sculpture of a ruminating mermaid. Maybe Kagome would be chattering excitedly, maybe a friend from school might have come over to say hello. Not him, though. Not him.

Kagome whirled around quickly, black hair flying, while Yu Zie smiled pleasantly and Miroku stared.

"Sango-chan! You're . . . you're back."

Kagome didn't know what to do; no one knew what to do. She looked between Miroku and Sango furiously, contemplating politeness, surprise, giving Miroku his comeuppance on Sango's behalf . . . She was about to, but seeing the pain in his face as he saw her she could not bring herself to further hurt a friend.

There isn't always a black and white.

There is always a grey.

Which side do I want to stand on?

Or do I want to wander where the shades bleed together?

Coloured lights under ice. They wanted to escape, wanted to be free, wanted to know more than the cold that encased them. Like the mermaid, everything would melt away, and become part of a mass of liquid doomed to fall and rise in a cycle.

Just say hello. Say hello.

"Hello, Sango," he said, sounding much more confident than she'd thought he would. Always an actor the world is his stage.

He turned to perhaps "formally" introduce her to his new lady friend, it seemed.

"Oh, I've met Sango before," Yu Zie was chiming, smiling at her. "She's such a sweetheart. She's so cute!"

Sango's eyes darted from Miroku's hands to Yu Zie's earrings to Kagome's unsure posture.

Miroku smiled a very lucid smile. "That she is

She took a deep breath and he looked straight at her.

"She is a lot of things. Everything."

He looked straight at her.

And in her head, his voice echoed words he didn't speak.

To me.

"Everything."

To me.

Steam rose rapidly from the ground as the heated liquid dissolved in the snow, pouring out of a fallen cup.

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"Wait!"

He was calling her, calling her as she fitted herself around the throng of spectators with ease. Miroku was not so graceful with his larger frame, bumping shoulders with some and hurriedly apologizing.

"Excuse me, you dropped this!" another man yelled from behind. She paid him no heed. All she wanted was a nice, pregnant distance between them where she could cultivate alone. Air left her in vapourous white puffs, hugging against her body as they dissipated into the air.

"Don't follow me," she snapped sharply as she felt him gaining ground on her. Panic gave way to caution as her feet skidded slightly in the snow.

They were now along the outskirts of the park where few people were scattered, mostly couples and newlyweds with young children, looking to take comfort in seclusion. Now they were joined by the lonely.

The fools.

She regarded him with eyes as cold as the air around them.

"What's wrong with us?" she said angrily. "What are we doing?"

Did he know? She didn't want to find out. Perhaps it was a rhetorical question in the sense that yes, something is wrong with us and we have no idea what we are doing. Not a clue.

Give him a question. Give him the question of what to do next. And wait for his answer.

The wind on tree branches muted. The snow still fell softly onto every surface of the earth. Each flake, floating solitary on it's own path, chosen by the wind.

"What are we now, Miroku? What are we, and what do you want to be?"

This is where it ends.

If it ends.

Everything has to come to an end.