Chapter 6: Day 28
Sango felt his glare like a sunburn on her back. The girl she was trying to coax into conversation flicked her eyes nervously behind Sango, made a hasty bow and an apology, and scurried away before Sango could call out to stop her. The taijya sighed sharply, anger simmering beneath her skin, before giving a sharp look over her shoulder. The hanyou, leaning against a fence several feet away with his arms folded over his chest, only turned up the intensity of his own glare. Sango's temperature spiked at his proximity. Yesterday, he'd kept his distance. Today, he wasn't even attempting to hide it; he was outright following her now.
Sango grit her teeth, staring at the row of huts along the road and wrestling with herself. She did not want to admit defeat, but any more attempts at collecting information were going to backfire on her. Inuyasha was being aggravatingly persistent. She hadn't been surprised that he was angry at playing the decoy during the battle with the water god, but it had been two days now and he needed to let it go. His constant scrutiny and hovering made the townsfolk nervous. It made her nervous.
But he didn't need to know that. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. She straightened her yukata, patted the dust on her knees, smoothed her hair. When she turned to Inuyasha, there was only a serene expression on her face.
"Did you want something?" she asked. She was tired of beating around the bush.
Inuyasha merely sneered at her, then turned to stare into the crop fields like he couldn't be bothered with stupid questions. Sango stifled the impulse to throw something at him. Despite his adamant insistence he was fine, he was in fact still noticeably injured, bruises peppering his body in sickening colors. The angle of his head right now particularily highlighted the bruise around his neck, where the water god had tried to strangle the life out of him. Even after two days, it was still a sickly purple. She thought it odd that it was taking so long to heal when normally by now it would be gone, but no one seemed to think anything of it so she kept it to herself.
She made to pass him when he suddenly stepped in her path. She stared at his chest, far too close, then slowly lifted her eyes. He was a head taller than her, but somehow he made it seem vastly larger. He was scowling fiercely.
"I want to get one thing straight," he said, and the mottled yellow finger mark bruises on his left cheek were hard to ignore. "I don't need your help."
Two days of brooding and this was what he wanted to say? He needn't have bothered. He'd been saying it with his looks for days.
Sango didn't say anything for two minutes, just surveyed him carefully. He had his hands fisted in his sleeve, but last she'd seen they had looked enflamed, the cuts along the knuckles bloodless. Fortunately, Kagome had convinced Inuyasha to at least bandage them but she wondered if infection had set in by now. He had been elbow deep in snake guts by the end.
Inuyasha shifted to his other foot, stilled half way, then deliberately continued though with the motion. She wasn't sure if it was coincidence or the beginnings of a pattern, but Inuyasha was only absolutely still when he was in a great deal of pain.
"You should get that looked at," she said quietly, ignoring his statement.
That threw him off momentarily. He squinted at her. "What?"
"Your leg."
His eyebrows drew down. He scoffed. "It doesn't matter. It'll heal soon enough." Oddly, that last part sounded quite bitter. She filed that away to think about later.
Sango crossed her arms. "Of course it matters. You take really poor care of yourself. If you were a human, I can't imagine how you'd have survived till now."
He sneered, shoulders tense. "What do you care?"
Her first impulse was to roll her eyes, but then she stopped and looked at him and realized he was serious. She ground her teeth together, annoyed. Certainly she wanted to throw him over a bridge every other day and traveling together didn't make her like him, never mind trust him. But did she look like the kind of person who wished for his pain? Besides, it was entirely inefficient.
"How can I not care when you have my life in your hands?" she said, and felt something like success when he seemed to actually digest her words for once. "No matter if we like it, we're a team now."
At his snort, she gave him a warning look. "You and the others were a team before I was ever around. You should know this. Even a team of necessity, like ours, should be greater than the sum of its parts. Everyone helps. Everyone needs help."
His face pinched. "I don't fight with others. And I don't want your help."
Sango pressed her lips together, breathing sharply through her nose. He was so juvenile sometimes she wanted to slap him. "Fine. You've said your piece, and it was unnecessary because I don't really care what you want. But just so you know, it wasn't really help. It was repayment."
That seemed to surprise him. His ears flattened on his head and then he looked at her suspiciously. "—For what?"
"For the herbs. They helped a great deal." She flexed her shoulders, feeling the skin pull taut with pain but it didn't break and it made her happy. Then she cleared her throat. "And also—for helping me when I almost drowned."
He stared at her. Slowly, the ears on his head righted themselves again. It struck Sango as oddly endearing, especially coming from him. She didn't know what to make of it.
"I still don't want your help."
Sango rolled her eyes and pushed past him. This time he let her.
It was sundown and she was almost to the camp after a wash in the stream when she heard voices. She paused against a tree, a breeze playing across her face. The opportunity of being downwind and immune to scent-sensitive youkai was too hard to ignore.
"Just leave it be." That was Inuyasha. Furious was a normal state for him, but the quiet menace in his voice was new and it immediately set her teeth on edge.
"But Inuyasha, nobody is here to judge you, you don't have to—"
"I said no, Kagome. And don't you dare go back on your promise."
Sango's eyes narrowed, intrigued, but Kagome merely made an offended sound. "Of course I won't, I just—"
"Then shut up already," Inuyasha snapped. "It's not your problem, you don't have to fix it and you don't have a say in how I do things."
Kagome sputtered incomprehensibly for a moment, then made noise of frustration. Sango imagined she was pulling her hair. "Miroku! Say something to him!"
That heavy sigh was distinctly, characteristically the monk. "I'm not getting into this—"
"Damn straight you're not." Inuyasha interrupted heatedly.
Feeling like enough was enough, Sango pushed through the trees to see Inuyasha and Kagome staring each other down. They didn't acknowledge her, though the conversation had clearly died prematurely. She looked around and saw that Miroku had his back to them, rifling through one of the packs. When she looked back, it was to see Inuyasha bound up into the trees and disappear. Kagome had turned her glare at the ground, scuffing her shoe at the rocks.
She approached cautiously. "You all right?"
Kagome whirled around. Her smile was painfully bright. "Oh yeah. I'm fine, Sango. Why don't we start dinner?" She began to walk away quickly.
Sango's gaze drifted to the direction Inuyasha went. "What about him?"
If that conversation hadn't been about her, she'd eat her sandal.
"I wouldn't worry about him," Kagome snapped, and Sango raised an eyebrow. "I'm certainly not going to."
"Okay," she said, because honestly she wanted to laugh. Kagome was always entertaining when she was mad, like a ferocious kitten. She muttered all through out dinner, talking to herself and jabbing her meat with vicious little stabs. Sango found herself exchanging amused glances with Miroku, then aiding Shippou in his attempts to cajole giggles out of Kagome.
For the first time, it felt like things were beginning to click. She wondered what would happen when Inuyasha finally showed his face, but he didn't show up for dinner. In fact he didn't show up the entire night. Frankly, Sango was just fine with that.
When Sango finally retired into the warmth of Kirara's back, she stared up into the pitch black sky with a sense of relief. It was the new moon. She loved the new moon. The real moon was too much like an eye, a silent watcher, a witness to her nightmares.
That night, with no moon and no eyes watching her, she slept better than she had in a very long time.
Day 29
She should have known it was too good to last.
Perhaps it was because her back was healing well. She was getting close to passable fighting capacity again, and no longer had to engage from afar on the side lines. Perhaps it was also because the success of her last battle had given her a little expectation. Mostly, though, it was because now that she was actually paying attention, evaluating the pace and flow of a battle like had once been her job, she wanted to kick herself over and over again. How had she gone a month—a month—without seeing things clearly?
She watched with something like resentment as Inuyasha sliced through the air without conscious thought to where his team mates were and just—ripped the earth apart. Trees toppled like twigs. There was a thunderous boom, the ground quaking beneath their feet, and she watched Kagome tumble to the ground. The wave of energy from his sword, spinning and coalescing like a living hungry thing, rushed forward in a mad frenzy and even from this distance Sango felt thick fear rush down her throat and spine. The demon, eyes glassy and hypnotized by the oncoming attack, didn't stand a chance.
None of them did, Sango realized, as she was nearly tossed to her knees when the wind whipped wildly to fill the vacuum the windscar had made. None of them stood a candle to him. She wanted to curse the world at the unfairness of it.
Oh, he wasn't a team player all right. In all honesty, he had warned her. She just didn't think he had meant it quite like this.
In the aftermath, Inuyasha stood from his crouch, cocked a hip, swung his sword over his shoulder, and fucking grinned. And with that, the battle was over.
Sango lost it.
She slammed Hiraikotsu into the ground so hard that Shippou squeaked and scrambled away from her. She left her weapon tilted there and stalked toward the corpse, past Miroku who was wiping blood from his forehead, past Kagome who was still sitting shell shocked on the ground. Inuyasha, the bastard, was still grinning with manic delight at the dead demon like it was his name day and not at all like he had over did it—
He turned to look at her, his eyes dark with battle lust, his hair a silver cascade. His bruises were entirely gone like they had never been and he seemed fairly glowing with health. His grin made him look positively wicked but none of it could make her pause. Her heart was already pounding. Sango clenched her fist as she approached, but he didn't seem to notice. He'd started laughing. "See? I told you I don't need—"
She punched him with a crack. The backlash instantly travelled through her arm making it numb all the way to the shoulder, and she spat a curse. As punches went, it was the most unsatisfying thing she had ever done. Inuyasha's face hardly moved under her fist but something had to give and when she drew back, shaking her hand, she knew without looking that her knuckle had split almost to the wrist. His expression flickered into bewilderment—damn it how dare he not feel it—and so she twisted seamlessly, driving her other fist into his gut.
She must have nicked a rib, because she felt something sharp cave and pop and she heard him grunt painfully—and then it was her turn to smile, a rictus of perverse pleasure.
Kagome gasped behind her. "Sango!—"
Inuyasha snarled. She heard his sword drop with a clatter and threw herself back in time to miss his fist flying over her head—and great fucking gods that probably would have decapitated her. She almost drew her blade at that point but forced herself to stop, because she had started this after all and there was actually a point to it. She wasn't going to pummel him because it'd make her feel better, although it certainly would.
Inuyasha flexed his claws, eyes a molten lava. "You bitch."
Sango's bared her teeth. Forget it. She was going to hurt him and it was going to feel wonderful.
Sango drew in a breath. Like her father had taught her, she wrapped her growing fury into a tiny pinprick of focus, folding it over and over and over until it was a bright hot spot in her mind that eclipsed all pain. Her trembling ceased. Her breathing eased. All sound became a background lull except the shift of his clothes against his skin, his ragged breath, and the pound of her own heartbeat as it tapered into a slow tempo. She exhaled through her nose and as she did so shifted her stance along with it: straightening, hands raised to chest height and open palmed, her legs bent and loose.
Of all the styles of fighting the Taijya had been trained in, hand-to-hand was perhaps the least used and least practiced. One did not grapple bare handed regularly with ogres unless they had a death wish. But she had been the headman's daughter, one of the best, and a woman. That had changed things. Changed what she had to take, what she had to prove, and who she had to prove it to, over and over again.
She was no longer smiling, but she raised an eyebrow and then beckoned him with a finger.
"You are going to regret that," he spat, and then launched at her, a clawed hand aimed for her throat.
She tilted her cheek, feeling a line of fire along her skin, brushing his arm askew with the back of her hand and moved into his exposed side. She could have killed him right there, youkai or no, with a blade to the heart. Instead, she brought her fist to the very same spot she had before and gave two sharp jabs. She felt him gasp, crumpling for a brief second, but knew it wouldn't last. So she crouched low, wrapped both fists in his shirt, pivoted on her feet and used the momentum to throw him into the nearest tree. And because he weighed nothing to Hiraikotsu, his back broke the branch beneath him and he skidded, tumbling, into a pile of leaves several feet away.
Sango's thoughts were racing, her eyes evaluating their surroundings, cataloguing what she could use against him. She was at the clear disadvantage, so she'd have to be fast, catch him in his blindspots. She took a deep breath, then turned her focus to his prostrate form. She took two quick steps forward.
She ran straight into a body. Soft black hair filled her face and her mouth, a pair of hands gripped her arms. She barely tamped down on the instinct to lash out, and the effort left her slightly disoriented. She glanced down to see Kagome, fear tight in her expression, mouth open in distress. It was enough to throw her concentration and with a rush sound returned to her ears.
"—Sango, stop, please. Just stop."
She looked at the girl—her face was smudged with dirt, the corner of her lip red and bleeding, her eyes wide and liquid—and knew it was over before it began. Sango bit back a curse, feeling the loss of the fight keenly, her adrenaline puddling uselessly in her veins. She looked up to see that Miroku was now standing between her and Inuyasha, his staff brandished. His back was to her and for a moment it bewildered her. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
It took her a moment to realize what that meant, but rather than feel a rush of pleasure at how fast things had changed, she only felt a deep annoyance. They weren't trying to stop her because they thought she could hurt Inuyasha. They were stopping her because they were afraid Inuyasha would hurt her. She bit back a scowl.
There was a rustle of movement and Sango looked up to see Inuyasha raising slowly to his feet, leaves falling from his body in a tumult, his eyes so dark amber they were almost black. Her adrenaline spiked again, warmth spreading through her limbs at the thought that she had gotten the jump on him and they both knew it. She watched with satisfaction as he spat dirt from his mouth, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "I am going to kill you—" he gritted, stepping forward.
"Why?" she interrupted coldly, because satisfaction aside, this had been the real point. When Kagome made a sound of distress, she put a hand on her arm. Inuyasha saw it and he hesitated, confused. Sango continued, "Why should you? These are my skills, one of many. I have spent years honing them to be what they are against men like you and despite your insulting assumptions I assure you, I can do more than just toss you into a tree."
Miroku was shooting her disapproving looks, still facing Inuyasha in a defensive stance, but Sango didn't care. She didn't understand why she was the one that had to say these things—surely the monk was the one that suffered the worst from Inuyasha's total disregard.
More calmly, she said, "I am good at what I do, when I am allowed to do it. We all are, when given the right roles to play." She gestured at Miroku, then at Kagome who was staring at her wide eyed. Then her eyes narrowed. "It is you that seems to think we have no role at all."
Inuyasha stood up straight. He turned his gaze to Miroku and the two men stared at each other for a long time. Inuyasha was the first to break, turning his eyes on Kagome, but the girl was now clutching Sango's taijya suit, staring resolutely at nothing. Begrudgingly, his eyes looked back at her.
"I told you," he was saying, and he was still angry but it was a simmer compared to before. "I don't fight with others. Never have—"
"Then why are you even here?" she asked, and really it was the one thing that she kept coming back to over and over again.
His eyes snapped again, temper in full force, and it was almost shocking how fast it could be turned on. "I don't have to explain myself to you. Why the fuck are you here? You're the one that doesn't belong."
"Inuyasha." It was Miroku this time, and if he'd been disapproving before, he was downright scathing with it now.
"It's fine," she said grimly. She was really tired of how they seemed to mince about her like she was going break if they said the wrong thing. "He has the right to ask. You all do."
With gentleness that defied her tone, she took Kagome's hands and carefully loosened them from her shirt. Kagome was staring at her again, lower lip trembling and Sango felt a pang of deep regret. Why? When had she allowed herself to feel this way at all, when she'd known from the start that this was only a temporary means to an end?
She squeezed Kagome's hands, then dropped them and carefully stepped away to look straight at Inuyasha.
"I am here because I took a risk, same as you. I don't trust you, but I can trust your commitment to doing what needs to be done, because we all want to destroy Naraku in the end. I thought the entire point of any of this was that it will be achieved faster if we work together."
He sneered but said nothing, which was good because she wasn't finished.
"But from what I saw today, I can tell you that this—" she gestured at all of them "—isn't going to work. I will not work with someone who lets his own reckless power get to his head and endangers us all. I don't now what your problem is today, but you've been itching to fight since I saw you this morning, and whatever power trip you're on could have gotten all of us killed."
Then, to everyone's surprise, she pointed a finger at the monk. Her voice was cold. "Did you even notice? Miroku was about to engage the demon when you decided to toss around your wind scar. If he hadn't been able to stop himself, you would have ripped him apart in the process."
Inuyasha whipped to look at Miroku again, but the monk had finally lowered his staff and put a hand to his temple. The briefest hints of frustration escaped his normally rigid control of his emotions, but she only saw it because she was looking really hard.
"Sango, I can speak for myself," he said tiredly.
"Except you don't," she retorted. "You never do. And I can't imagine that this is the first time its happened. How much time do you spend making sure Inuyasha doesn't kill you? Because its an absolute waste."
Unlike the others, she couldn't read the monk at all. When his blue eyes met hers, there was only a wall, and behind it a churning calculation. He had the look of someone who was invested in the long term, and her respect for him rose. But she wasn't going to play his game, whatever it was. She didn't have the time.
"Something has to change," she said, turning back to Inuyasha who was glaring balefully at her now. "You don't need me to fight? Fine. There are plenty of other things that I can do to contribute. I work better alone. With Kirara, I can find out rumors, scout out leads, tie up loose ends. But I need to know that I can rely on you long enough for me to do my job."
She paused, then with a louder voice. "Can I?"
Inuyasha flexed his claws. He cast his gaze about, a maelstrom of emotions filling his face that were too messy to define but were all permutations of anger. Finally, he spat on the ground.
"Do whatever the fuck you want," he said, and then his figure blurred and disappeared. Alarmed, Sango whirled around behind her to see him pick up Tetsusaiga where he had dropped it, dusting off its sheath and thrusting it into his belt. Then, without looking at her, he blurred again and the trees in the distance rustled.
Sango felt a chill run down her spine. She had never seen him move so fast. How was that even fair?
"Sango?"
She tore her gaze from the tree line to look at Kagome. The girl was biting her lip.
"You're not—you're not leaving are you?"
She threw a look at Miroku but he was only studying her contemplatively. Lot of help he was. Sango forced the resignation out of her face and turned back to the girl with a reassuring smile.
"I'm not leaving," she said, but then raised a hand when Kagome opened her mouth. "I'm not leaving, but it might not be best that I stay." She exhaled slowly, rolling the bitterness in her next words in her mouth before she grudgingly added, "It's true what he said, you know. I don't really fit here, at least not in the way I've been trying. I'm a good fighter but today it was made even more clear to me that you don't really need that. What you need is someone who can search in parallel with you, who can chase the leads that you won't see. I can do that. I was born to do that."
"But is this what you want?" Trust Kagome to ask the hard questions.
Sango debated telling the lie, because it was easier, but she didn't because Kagome deserved more than that. "Honestly? It is."
She felt a pang at the hurt that flashed through Kagome's eyes. Damn. She almost ran her hand through her hair, but stopped when she remembered her split knuckles, then the cut on her cheek. They were starting to burn fiercely. "We can discuss the details later, but I think it might be best if I periodically leave the group to do investigations. There is too much land to travel on foot at a reasonable pace. With Kirara, I am the best candidate to pick up the slack." She turned and gave Kagome a small smile. "I would only ever be a short flight away."
Kagome startled her by hugging her, her fingers gripping her back tightly. It was warm, the soft hair gentle against her cheek, and before she thought better of it she returned the embrace.
For a moment Sango closed her eyes and pretended. That this was a different time and a different world and they had met under different circumstances. Under those circumstances, she would have called her a close friend. But just thinking about 'what if's inevitably lead her to think about all the other regrets in her life, and then she wished she was hugging someone else, the only one she had ever really hugged this tight, and she had to draw away, trying to stifle the lump in her throat.
She heard Miroku walk towards her and put a hand on her shoulder. When she looked up, he was smiling warmly—and even with all those layers of walls, she knew it was genuine.
"You maybe right," he was saying. "But let's not worry about that for now. Kagome, do you think you could grab your first aid kit? Sango looks like she's going to need it."
Flushing the girl muttered apologies and dashed away. They both stared after her in silence.
"It needed to be done," she said finally, feeling his curiosity like a physical sensation.
"I know." He dropped his hand but didn't move away. "I'm only sorry you had to be the one to do it."
She snorted. "Why not me? It doesn't matter whether he likes me or not."
He looked at her, and those calculating eyes were as blue as the bottomless sky. "I feel obligated to warn you," he said solemnly. "You made a reckless gamble today. Inuyasha is not like other humans. He does not know how far to take something, doesn't know when or even how to stop, and he doesn't have compunction about killing people that piss him off. If you are not careful, you will make him an enemy. And I assure you, you will regret it."
It wasn't a threat. Just pure, unbiased observation. She didn't say anything for a long moment and with a friendly clap to the shoulder, he moved to follow Kagome.
"Inuyasha's not my enemy," she called out. It was even true—at least, he wasn't her enemy anymore. She wouldn't ever forget those feverish nights, her thoughts twisted around him like a sickness, the shard in her back pulsing and keeping death at arms reach. But that was the past. "He's not my friend either. I don't need a friend like that."
"And that," Miroku called over his shoulder, "is where we will have to agree to disagree. Because I for one think he will be a powerful friend to have one day."
He left her to puzzle over that one.