Chapter 4: Day 20
She lay on the floor, under a blanket smelling of clean soap. The maids had cleaned her up as best they could, but she had felt their stares like lacerations on her skin. There was a wound on her stomach that had barely missed her intestines, a deep gouge on her back where her brother's sickle had missed her spine. The doctor couldn't be sure, he told her as he stitched up the wounds, that she would be able to have children.
She had never wanted any—but now, the thought made her want to cry.
The prince, Lord Kagewaki, insisted on attending her bedside. He knelt at her head, staring passively outside while a maid peeled down the back of her chest wrap to clean away her blood. She was bleeding, always bleeding. The pain was unbearable. With each pass of the course linin against her spine, blackness surged to overwhelm her. She'd fix her eyes on the prince's silhouette, the cascade of his long wavy black hair, and breathe through her teeth. She would not die.
That first night, she barely managed it. He had murmured, How strong, as she swam in and out of consciousness. She couldn't be be sure—perhaps she had dreamed it—but she thought she had felt a hand gently touch her hair.
"Sango?"
Sango turned away from her reflection in the stream, which she had been contemplating. The skin on her back stretched painfully taut. Ignoring it, she looked at Kagome, who was kneeling beside her and viciously scrubbing at one of her many odd shirts. The girl had a peculiar desire for cleanliness but strangely, hated doing the washing. She'd started muttering about 'machines' some time ago and Sango had started drifting off.
"Yes?" Sango responded.
"Oh, well umm…" Kagome began, suddenly shy, "while we were out here, I was hoping we could talk about something…"
Sango waited patiently, but Kagome trailed off, suddenly riveted in scrubbing the color right out of her shirt. Her checks were pink. Sango looked down at her own kisode, the checkered pink material still browned with dust, and slowly began to scrub it.
Kagome took a deep breath. "So as you've probably noticed, I'm not really from around here…"
Sango glanced at Kagome's skirt. "Hmm."
A deeper flush. "Well… I don't think any of us have explained exactly how far away," she finished, folding her shirt in her lap.
"Hmm." There was a tear here. Sango frowned at the finger she had wiggled through the fabric. After a moment, she realized Kagome was staring at her, chewing her lip.
"What," Kagome began haltingly, "do you think about the future?"
"The future?" Sango sighed, wondering if she still had her patching needle. "I don't spend much time thinking about it."
"Well what if," Kagome began carefully, "I said that in 500 years, demons no longer exist?"
Sango paused. "I wouldn't believe you."
"Well its true," Kagome said, folding her shirt and turning to her pack. "In 500 years, there are no demons. The villages are so large they cut down most of the trees and replaced them with large stone structures that are hundreds of meters high."
Sango stared at her warily. "Why?"
"So many people," Kagome said. "There are millions of people in the future. And not just in Japan, but all over the world."
Now that Sango could not believe. The Taijya fortress had been fifty men and women strong, one of the largest villages in the area. The land they occupied spanned many acres. But still, it took three days travelling south by the main road before they saw another soul.
Kagome seemed to guess her expression, because she began to pull books out of her bag. Sango had seen her carrying the bound paper stacks before, but she hadn't really looked at them. They were strange, smooth objects with trim edges, unlike the fancy parchment her grandmother used to hoard in the floorboards. When Kagome held one out to her, she took it gingerly between her fingers.
When she opened it, she stared at the first page for a long time.
"Are you a witch?" she asked at last.
Kagome shook her head. She scooted forward on her knees and her hair brushed against Sango's arm, startling her. It was surprisingly soft, like the down feathers of a bird.
"That," she said softly, "is my home."
Kagome talked for a long time. Surprisingly, Sango felt compelled to listen.
It was quite crazy. Insane. Sango didn't understand half of what she said. But the girl wasn't lying either. Her eyes were clear and focused, not shifting up or away when she spoke. She didn't rub her hands or make unnecessary movements. Her grip was unwavering and firm. Sango had learned to trust her own instincts on these matters.
Whether or not it was true, Sango couldn't say. But she was sure that at least Kagome believed fully in what she was saying. For now, that would be enough.
"Okay," Sango said when they had sat silently for a long time, kicking their feet in the water bed. "Perhaps there are things I do not understand. The well, the jewel-I am not an expert on those. But some things simply don't make sense."
Kagome nodded. "Ask."
"Your meeting with Inuyasha," Sango said bluntly. "He just decided not to kill you. Even after you set the subjugation spell."
"Oh, he tried," Kagome chimed in smirking. "He just wasn't fast enough."
Sango looked at her pityingly. Obviously he had not really tried. From what she knew, subjugation was a very little practiced art, as the demon that was cast under the spell would spend the rest of their life hunting the caster down in order to rip them to pieces. If they were generous."Regardless, he stuck around. Why?"
Kagome hesitated. "There is…history between Inuyasha and the Shikon jewel." When Sango continued to look at her, Kagome flushed and looked away. "It's not my story to tell."
Ah. Sango looked back at the river.
She was getting used to these silences in conversations, the missing pieces. She and Kagome got along well on most days. They talked about a lot of day-to-day things that reminded Sango of days she'd spend swinging her legs on the porch as Kohaku practiced his throws. However, unlike Kohaku who confided everything to her, there were some topics that Kagome didn't like to talk about. One of them was Inuyasha.
From offhanded comments made by Miroku and Shippou, it seemed that Inuyasha had taken a human lover a long time ago. And it had ended badly.
It made her curious, hard as it was to admit it. Unfortunately, Kagome wouldn't say, and Sango had her pride. She wasn't about to go ask him.
There was a rustle of leaves to her left and Sango quickly whipped her head around. But it was only Shippou, peering around a tree. He seemed to be staring at Kagome with a bit of longing; he must have gotten bored playing with his toys and sought her out.
Kagome looked up too, then smiled. "Hey Shippou." She picked up one of her books. "Want to help?"
He was either really desperate to get away from the hanyou and monk or he was really missing Kagome because he nodded quickly and began to scamper over. When he passed Sango, however, he paused and frowned. She looked down at him warily.
"Sango…" he said, nose twitching, a tiny paw wringing his sleeve, "you're bleeding again."
Sango blinked, and looked at her lap, where her stomach wound still ached. Nothing. She reached around with a hand and tried to feel along her back. After some probing, her fingers touched wet fabric. She sighed.
"I see," she said tiredly, making to get up. "I'll take care of it."
When Kagome made to offer assistance, Sango waved her down and headed off in the direction of camp. There were some things Kagome did not like to talk about, but there were some things that Sango would not hear of. Helping her dress her wounds was one of them.
When she arrived back at camp, Miroku and Inuyasha seemed to be in some kind of argument. Argument was not the right word; Miroku seemed to be teasing Inuyasha and Inuyasha wasn't taking it well.
"Where is your sense of adventure?" Miroku was saying, poking Inuyasha's shoulder with his staff and irritating the hanyou. He seemed about to snap back something nasty when he spotted her. His nose twitched and his face turned solemn. Miroku turned, greeting her warmly, but she merely waved and headed to her pack. As she began rummaging through its contents, she could feel their heavy stares, likely fixed on the growing red on her robe.
She was bleeding, always bleeding. She wished it would stop. If only so they would stop staring and worse, pitying her.
As she collected her things, her conversation with Kagome flashed in her mind. She glanced under the sweep of her bangs, seeing that Miroku had returned to prodding Inuyasha's shoulder.
Inuyasha wasn't paying attention. He was still staring.
Sango narrowed her eyes.
The sun seared hot across Sango's neck as she shifted the strap of Hiraikotsu from digging deep into her collar bone. Beneath her yukata, her taijya suit clung and chaffed. She looked at Kagome strutting ahead with her large bag, skirt flapping freely, and bit back a scowl. All the walking was a waste of energy. She was used to the breath of the wind on her face as Kirara took to the air, watching the miles fall away into a stream of green and yellow leaves beneath a horizon hot and red and untouchable.
But those where also the days her back wouldn't split open like a ripe fruit from a little riding. Sango breathed shallowly, feeling the grip of her chest bandages. Her back still looked like a bloody mess, and it hadn't helped that her last change had been rather brutal. Sweat had caked into the fabric and she'd had to rip it off piece by piece, biting a leather cord the whole while. It would never heal if they kept getting into skirmishes like the one a few hours ago against ogres. Smoke bombs and iron blades only went so far with thick skinned demons. Only Hiraikotsu could cut through their hide-she'd barely managed it, much to her chagrin.
"There is a village, up ahead," Sango said abruptly from the back of their entourage. Kagome flipped around, head tilted to the side as she walked backwards. Inuyasha ignored her. Miroku stopped and leaned against his staff. His gaze was unreadable as she approached, but when she moved to pass him he smiled and stepped with her.
"Have you been there before?" he asked politely.
"A few times," Sango said, adjusting her strap. "They have a small fishery on the river." Her father had loved to stop by when they were in the area.
Miroku put his hand to his chin, squinting at the sky. "Salmon?"
Despite herself, her lips curled up. "Fresh."
He hummed, then clapped his hand. "I believe," he paused. "I believe I sense a dark cloud near by."
Sango blinked, brow wrinkling. She looked at Kagome for clarification, but the girl was just rolling her eyes, smiling. Inuyasha, however, whirled around.
"No you don't," he snapped. "We've only been on the road for a few hours and we haven't even passed through the valley yet. It's not even sun down!"
Sango grimaced, glancing at her own white knuckled grip. Miroku just shrugged, staff jingling. "Inuyasha, we can't make bad things come and go at our convince just because we wish them to."
Inuyasha's brows narrowed dangerously. "What the- you do that all the time!"
Kagome patted the strap of her strange bag. "I for one " she said, "could use the rest. This bag is killing me."
"Of course you would," Inuyasha said scathingly. Sango tensed, turning burning eyes on him. He continued, "That is what you get for packing so damn much."
"Necessities, Inuyasha!" Kagome snapped back. Then she turned to Sango, smiling. "Now where did you say the village was?"
"Over the hill if we take a left." She pointed ahead, where the path forked. In the distance, they could see the trail of smoke from many campfires.
"To the left," Miroku said and began walking. He passed Inuyasha without a glance. Kagome gave a little 'humph' and also stalked past. Inuyasha glared at their backs as if they had stabbed him, muttering curses to himself.
Sango moved to follow. As she passed the hanyou, Shippou scampered past her feet and crawled swiftly onto the hanyou's shoulder. He tugged on a lock of white hair.
"Quit your whining, Inuyasha," he said, then squeaked and jumped off as Inuyasha made a swipe at him.
"We're wasting damn time," the hanyou snarled.
Before she moved too far away to hear, she heard Shippou reply softly, "Don't be stupid…can't you smell it?"
Her grip on Hiraikotsu tightened.
She drank too much. She'd known it, but somehow chasing the liquid in her cup had seemed a far better option then setting about washing her filthy, bloody clothes- again. Instead, she had settled for kneeling at the dinner table, fingers wrapped around her cup, watching Miroku make a fool of himself in front of dancing girls. Every time he would make a grab for their waists, they would titter and twirl away. Kagome kept giggling beside her, keeping up a rolling commentary. The fox lounged far too close. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the profile of the hanyou's back as he leaned against an open door frame staring moodily into the darkness.
She'd felt a little claustrophobic, and her cup had been warm. As she drank, a cool hazy cloud had settled over her and it was damn frightening the sudden lack of care she felt about getting drunk among these people.
So she'd locked herself in a room until she came to her senses, retreating to the farthest corner and curling into a ball. Kagome had popped her head in a few times, but Sango's lack of response had sent her away. She was glad, despite herself. She just wanted to be alone, damn it. To think. If only she could actually think properly.
Sango closed her eyes, gripping her head. When she looked up again, there was a pair of gold eyes staring through the crack in the door.
She almost screamed. She almost threw a dagger at his face. At least her mind did. Her body didn't even budge.
"What?" she managed after a moment, swallowing around dry, cracked lips.
There was a rustle, then something tossed toward her. She flinched, but whatever it was it fell short, rolling near her feet with a thud.
It was a leather bag. It smelled strongly of greens.
She stared at it blearily. "What is it?"
"It will help your back," he grunted. When she made no move to touch it, he rolled his eyes. "Fine. Suffer. See if I care." He was gone.
Sango hiccuped, staring at the ground. She could barely discern the edge of the leather thong that held it closed. The leather looked polished. New.
After a moment, she snatched up the bag.
Too much to drink.
After the haze of alcohol had faded, her mind had seemed unerringly sharp. Her thoughts had returned to the river, to her dream the night before. A memory.
Slipping out into the night had been pitifully easy, her silent steps out the door punctuated by Kagome's soft noises as she dreamed in her sleeping bag. Shippou had bunked with Miroku tonight, and without the yellow eyes of Inuyasha watching her every move, she had felt a deep tension unclench in her. One she hadn't known was even there, until it was gone.
From there, it had been quick work finding the old dilapidated shack on the edge of town. After five years, it still looked like one giant pissing hole. So did its occupant.
"Haven't seen you around these parts in a long while," the man said, licking his fat lips and eyeing her silhouette. He mouthed the word 'long' in a way that made her stiffen. Stringy hair couldn't hide the grease and sweat smeared across his chin, nor the scars like finger marks on his cheek.
He was old and dirty and if he took another step towards her she would cut off his hand.
She kept her face blank. Giving openings to men like this was asking for trouble. "Information. Nothing else."
"Aww, don't be like that, girly. I-"
"Excuse me," she interrupted coldly. "Who exactly are you talking to?" She took a step forward through his door way. In the light of his fire pit, the black leather and bone armor seemed to gleam. As did the blade she was playing with in her hands. He took a step back.
"W-what do you want?" he growled.
She contemplated her blade until he began to sweat. Only then did she look at him, and what he saw in her face made him shrink back.
"…Have you heard the name Hitomi Kagewaki?"