Disclaimer: See previous chapters.
A/N: Don't kill me! -cringes-
Akimi: Ooh! Let me do the title!
Corisu: -- If you so desire...
Akimi: -types-
Chapter 14: Hey, Look, It's the Plot! Wait... Never Mind... It Ran Away...
Corisu: -seethes- Akiiiiii...
Akimi: -runs-
Corisu: Here's the real title. Sheesh. -takes out dart gun and hunts Aki-
Chapter 14: Meetings and Suspicions
Kouga was obviously on sentry duty for the night; he plopped into a rickety-looking metal chair beside the door. He reached for the MP3 player beside his chair and put on the headphones. As the loud thrum of rock music filled the air, Sango raised an eyebrow at Miroku.
"What kind of a watchman listens to loud music?" she asked.
Miroku shrugged and took a few steps down the hallway, trusting Sango to follow. "He has exceptional hearing."
"Then why does he need to listen to his music so loud?" Sango replied bemusedly. She wasn't at all interested in Kouga's taste in music. The questions that she was asking were merely a diversionary tactic - her own brand of distraction that was serving to deflect her thoughts from the fact that she was about to enter a room full of unfamiliar, possibly hostile faces whilst being unarmed.
After a short walk down the unlit hallway, Miroku stopped short at a black curtain. "Welcome," he said, "to our hideaway." He stepped out of his shoes and took the step up, shoving the curtain aside and stepping through, leaving an uncertain Sango standing in the darkness.
For a split-second, she considered turning around, retrieving her gun from Kouga, and taking off. Her life had been so much more simple before she had met Miroku. Right and wrong were as easy to tell apart as black and white. Now, everything was in shades of gray, and Sango was practically colorblind.
The only thing that persuaded her to step through that curtain was the knowledge that Miroku was on the other side.
She removed her shoes and slipped into the adjacent room, squinting a bit in the sudden light. Blinking, she kept her eyes half-hooded until they adjusted to the brightness. Once they did, she noticed that one thing really stood out about the room -
- it was utterly normal.
It was set up like a living room. There was a large television against one wall, and in front of it, a woman with her hair in a bun was arguing with someone who looked vaguely familiar to Sango, tugging the remote back and forth. There was also a large blue couch that was covered with expensive-looking embroidery. This couch stretched around the perimeter of the room; on one corner, Inuyasha was splayed, snoring. A girl who couldn't have been more than seventeen was sitting on the other side of the couch, sewing. Her hair was a shocking hue: The same pale color as Inuyasha's.
Two men were playing cards over a coffee table in the middle of the room. They looked up as Miroku and Sango entered. "Hey, Miroku!" the one with a mohawk called. "Up for a game of poker? Beating Ginta's no fun when I'm the only one kicking his butt."
Ginta spluttered indignantly as Miroku laughed. "Not now, Hakkaku. There's someone I'd like everybody to meet."
'Ginta? Hakkaku? Now, where have I heard those names before...' Sango racked her brain for a moment, then the memory slid into place. They had been at the modeling class. And they had seen her in the hellishly revealing bikini. Sango flushed and tried to disappear. After a tortuous moment of blushing, she was stirred out of her temporary embarrassment by Miroku's voice.
"Everyone, this is Sango."
As everyone turned to look at her, Sango took an involuntary step back. The faces that she saw were the same ones on numerous unsolved cases in Naraku's files. She couldn't help cataloguing everyone in the room. Perturbed, she realized that she must have been much too preoccupied with the fact that she was revealing herself to strangers during that modeling class to recognize the two card-playing men. Names and crimes jumped out at her like 3-D pictures:
Ginta and Hakkaku: Alleged bank robbers who collected more than four million dollars.
The sewing girl - Kanna - and the woman with a bun - Kagura: The Imachi sisters, who had allegedly killed their parents.
Yura (the name jumped out at Sango; she had heard it during the outing to Chateau Chantre, but the woman's demeanor simply hadn't fit her crime): A woman who fancied herself a witch and 'ritually sacrificed' her neighbors.
Forcing herself to speak, Sango finally managed to say, "Hello."
Kanna's dark eyes, which had returned to her sewing after her initial glance at the newcomer, snapped back up and regarded Sango briefly. She waved a needle at her by way of greeting and went back to her work.
"Heya, Sango!" Ginta greeted brightly, waving. Unbeknownst to him, Hakkaku leaned over, glancing at the other man's cards, then slipped three cards from the top of the deck into his own lap.
"Yeah, heya," he echoed, grinning evilly. He then blinked. "Wait. Sango?" A slow grin crept across his face. "Hey, you're the modeling chick!"
Sango glared. "What did you call me?"
Hakkaku fidgeted. "Uh... an immensely pretty young woman deserving of respect?"
"That's what I thought."
The woman who had been arguing with Kagura spoke up next. "Hello. I'm Yura!" she said, releasing the remote. "How are ya?"
Kagura momentarily ignored Sango in favor of changing the channel. The show that she stopped on featured an interview between a balding old man in a pinstriped suit and 'an FBI agent', as the subtitle proclaimed. Only the agent's profile was shown, but it was easy to determine that the person was male, judging by the set of the shoulders and his concise gestures.
Sango bowed to those in the room, and, much to her surprise, they went right back to what they had been doing. She had expected to be singled out, treated with suspicion, but instead, she was welcomed and treated no differently than anyone else there. It was an odd feeling, but a good one nonetheless.
Turning back around to the television, Yura groaned. "Kagura! Not this again! You've seen it about ten times by now!"
Kagura sniffed, dropped the remote down her shirt and folded her arms. "What can I say? Sesshoumaru's a sexah biatch."
Everyone except Sango rolled their eyes and Inuyasha jerked awake. "Sesshoumaru? Where?"
Kagura glanced at him. "Down, boy."
Ignoring her, Inuyasha sat up, stretched, yawned, saw Sango, and froze. "Oi!" He hopped up from the couch and pointed at Sango, his finger mere inches away from her nose. "I thought I told you to get rid of this bitch, not bring her here! Has it ever crossed your mind that she's a fed?"
Immediately, all eyes but Kagura's were on Sango. She obviously found the television more interesting than a cop in their headquarters.
"Well..." Miroku began, and Sango was sure that he was about to say something stupid. "...she is."
Yep. Stupid.
Both Yura and Hakkaku made as if to stand. Since Hakkaku was closest to Sango, she could see his hand reach for his ankle, most likely searching out a weapon hidden there.
"Whoa, wait!" Miroku said quickly. "She's defected from Naraku. She's here to help us!"
'I am?' Sango thought, and immediately, insecurity swelled within her. She had thought that Miroku's only motive for bringing her to this hideout was to protect her from Naraku's influence. What if he had just brought her there for his own gain, and not because he actually cared? 'I know better than that,' she argued with herself, though not convincingly.
"How are you so sure?" This question came from Kagura, who had muted the television in favor of more real entertainment. Sango stared at her for a moment, wondering if the woman was a mind-reader. A second later, she realized that the question was directed at Miroku.
Miroku put a hand on Sango's shoulder. "She has my full confidence, Kagura. If you don't trust my judgment, that's your loss."
Kagura shrugged. "If she gets us all killed, I'm not promising that I won't say 'I told you so'."
Sango spied a door at the far end of the room. Mentally charting the place in her head, she deduced where it must lead. Throwing Miroku's hand from her shoulder, she began to stalk toward that door, an opening to the kitchens.
Miroku stared after her for a moment. 'She seems angry...' "Sango, wait!" He followed her from the room, leaving the others to stare after them curiously.
Finally, Inuyasha shrugged and plopped back down on the sofa with a yawn. "Wake me up if the bitch starts shooting up the place." Yura tossed a pillow at him, Kanna remained detached, Kagura renewed the sound on the television, and Ginta put Hakkaku into a headlock after discovering that the latter had five aces.
---
Sango burst into the kitchen, tears already shimmering in her eyes. It was all too much, just too much. She felt like hitting something, or more specifically, someone, but she settled for marching to the other side of the restaurant's spacious kitchen. She pulled herself up to sit on a countertop between a sink and a cluster of hanging pots and buried her face in her hands.
In such a position, she couldn't see Miroku following her trail, but she felt it, as if he were parting the air in front of him like a deviously sexy knife through butter. "Sango, what's wr-"
"What's wrong?" Sango murmured into her hands. The sound was soft, just loud enough to stop Miroku's voice mid-sentence. She raised her head, showing that the tears had begun to make their way down her cheeks. "What's wrong?" she repeated, her voice strained and slightly cracked with anger and other, less definable emotions.
Miroku took a step back, holding his hands in front of him as if blocking a true torrent of Sango's ire. "Was it... something I said?" he asked finally, rather ineffectively.
"Yes and no," she answered petulantly, knowing that she sounded like a bratty child and not caring.
Reaching for her shoulder, Miroku retook the step that he'd lost, moving forward. Sango leaned back in response, away from his touch. "Sango, if you don't tell me what it is, I can't reassure you that I mean no harm."
Sango took a shuddering breath. "Miroku, I've just found out that the man that I've been crediting with my parents' deaths is innocent, that I've been surrounded by convicted felons of questionable morals while wearing a bathing suit, and-" She paused, and blinked slowly. Something that Kagura had said stood out in her mind.
"Sesshoumaru's a sexah biatch."
'An FBI Agent'
"Damn it," she muttered. "Sesshoumaru was Naraku's man. He was tracking me." By the look on Miroku's face, she could tell that this was not news to him. "You knew," she accused.
"I knew," he confirmed. "But I thought that he was after me. He showed up at the class just a couple of days ago. The only reason that I knew his name was because I was the professor for the week. I had a few of my contacts look himup, follow him, and they discovered that the seemingly mild-mannered art student by day was a Naraku-lackey by night."
Sango's mind tottered somewhere between incredulity, irritation, and hurt. "You could have told me."
"No, I couldn't have," Miroku replied, and there was a cool edge to his voice that hadn't been there before. "Pretty hard to confide in someone who doesn't even admit who she is until she has a gun to your head."
"Don't you get self-righteous on me," she spat. "I had no reason to trust you-"
"I gave you every reason to trust me!" he shot back, his voice rising.
"Secret conversations in the corner? Having Inuyasha do research on me, and break into my house?"
Miroku slammed his palm down on the counter beside Sango. It must have stung, but his face showed nothing as he leaned closer to her. "It sounds to me like you're the one that's untrustworthy."
Sango returned his glare for a seemingly endless moment. Though her brown eyes seemed to darken with her anger, the centers of Miroku's eyes, around the pupils, seemed to pale. This phenomenon made it difficult for her to meet his eyes for long. She averted her gaze, staring down at the sparkling sink. "Well, if I'm so untrustworthy, why do you assume that I'll help you?" With her eyes turned away, her anger returned full-force. "After all, the only reason that you brought me here was for your own good."
Miroku was silent for a long while, and the only thing that could be heard was the distant hum of the television in the adjacent room.
"If you really believe that," Miroku said quietly, all of the bitter emotion gone from his voice, "then maybe you should leave. But I want you to know, Sango, that I care deeply for you, no matter what you decide."
He leaned in as if to kiss her, but Sango turned her head aside, causing his lips to make the merest of brushes against her cheek. Miroku didn't seem to notice her movement; he just crossed the kitchen to the door and disappeared through it.
Sango stared after him for a long moment.
Once that moment ended, her face crumpled and she began to cry bitterly.
---
-reiterates- Don't kill me. Finals are over, and I have my life back. -commences working on next chapter-