Chapter 20: Day 100
That first explosion had been behind them, where the village was. But that last one had been close…and in the direction of the shards.
"How many are there," Sango whispered, moving closer to Kagome, eyes trained on the shadows.
Kagome was silent a moment. "Three," she said, face pale. "I think. But one of them is…."
The moment Kagome said it, Sango could see it too—three strands peeling off into the trees, spreading slowly out in front of her. Two of them were as thin as gossamer, and a second later her eyes lost sight of them. One of them, however, still gleamed as fine as spider silk.
"…one of them is really bad," Kagome finished in a whisper.
Sango's hand hovered over her white tasseled sword, then hesitated. With a curse, she dropped her hand away and started to back up, extending an arm out so Kagome was behind her.
"Let's go—" she started to say.
A chain clinking. Something flying in the dark. Sango immediately lunged to the right, her Taijya blade out and slashing the air in front of Kagome. Metal hit the tip of the blade, shooting down and exploding dirt into the air. Kagome squeaked, stumbling back as Sango brought her heel down hard on the chain—and missed. Her head snapped to the side as the black metal chain slithered back into the dark.
"Go," she told Kagome, backing away with the blue sheen of the blade extended. She brought her free hand up, fingers between teeth, and whistled hard, the sound piercing through the wood. The signal to come. "Kirara will—"
Two high pitched whistles cut her off, coming from the shadows before them. One short, one held long. The signal for Kirara to hold. She faltered, dread sinking into her bones. She felt Kagome's fingers clutch the back of her suit, pressing against her shoulder blade.
"Sango," she whispered, confused. Scared. "What's going on?"
Sango reached back, hand touching the girl's elbow even as she brandished her sword with the other. "I will protect you," she said, swallowing. Where the hell was everyone? They hadn't walked that far. They should have come by now…
A voice spoke up in the dark, making both girls freeze. "Should you be making such promises?" The clinking of chains, then a sigh. Footsteps approaching. A spark in the space before them, a flint being struck. Then a flicker turned to a small torch flame, bobbing in the dark.
When the torch raised and her father's face was revealed, grim in the flickering of orange flame, Sango swallowed around a lump in her throat.
"Good evening," he said, the way strangers greeted each other in the market place and not in the middle of a forest in the dark.
"What are you doing here?" She whispered.
His eyes lingered on the blue edged sword in her hand. She lowered it instinctually before she caught herself. There was an agonizing moment where she wasn't sure what she should do. Kagome's warmth at her back, her father's eyes burning into hers. The blade wavered. Then she reluctantly raised it again.
Disdain flickered in his eyes. But there was also pride.
"Would you dare?" He said, eyes glittering and voice low. Sango tightened her grip on the hilt, palm sweating.
Sango took a breath. "If I must."
"Sango," Kagome asked, her voice loud in the silence. "Who is that? He has jewel shards. He's…" her voice trailed off. Her father had lowered the torch, revealing pearlescent armor plates and a taijya suit identical to her own. The only difference was the black chain tied around his waist in place of a sword.
A beat. "Well?" He said. His eyes turned to Kagome and the coolness of his expression made Sango tense, blade following his line of sight. "Are you going to introduce me to your friend?"
"Let her go," she said. "She has nothing to do with this."
Her father raised a slow eyebrow at her. "How presumptuous," he said. "Did you even consider that I am not here for you?"
Sango's eyes widened, Kagome's hands clenching her shoulder as she shrank back.
"Of course," her father continued conversationally. "I am not unreasonable. My Lord has given me discretion to compromise."
Sango licked her lips, edging backwards with Kagome still behind her. Her eyes flicked to the trees around them. "...Compromise?"
"Who is your Lord?" Kagome said brazenly from behind her, and though it was clear she was afraid, their was an edge of challenge that made Sango's father give her a second glance.
"Would you like to meet him?" Her father replied after a beat, eyes glinting. "He would like to meet you."
"No." Sango took another step back, edging Kagome along. She ignored the shocked, docile part of her that reeled from telling her father no. "She will not meet him. Never."
Her father stroked his beard with one hand, chain clinking in the other. "Returning to your original question…what do you think my Lord wants? What do you think he will take as a replacement for her?" He nodded at Kagome.
Sango swallowed, sword arm tensing. Compromise.
Her father settled in to a fighting stance. His face was impassive. "Be quick about it then, before the choice is made for you."
"Kagome!"
Both Sango and her father's head snapped up. Then Sango wrapped her arm around Kagome and jumped back, her father doing the same.
A flash of silver and red hit the ground like a clap of thunder, dust pluming into the air. Sango shielded her and Kagome with an arm. When the dust settled, she saw Inuyasha standing in the center, his back to them.
Blood was dripping down his arm, puddling on the dirt at his feet.
Sango felt a chill run down her spine. Her eyes flashed back in the direction of the village, afraid she would see it in flames. It was not, but a moment later, Miroku burst through the cover of trees, nearly stumbling over a tree root. He was gripping his arm with the wind tunnel, the veins on his neck tinged purple and standing out as he grit his teeth.
Kagome made a noise, tugging out of Sango's grip and running towards the monk, who slumped against her, forehead resting on her shoulder. Faintly, she could hear the familiar buzzing of the Saimyōshō coming closer.
Kirara and Shippou were no where to be seen.
"Inuyasha," she breathed, eyes tracking to his silhouette. "What happened…" Her eyes fell on her father who stood on the other side of the clearing, Inuyasha positioned between them. He too was looking in the direction of the village, a frown on his lips.
"That bastard Naraku, that's who," the hanyou was saying to her without turning around. He spit on the ground. "Sent another damn puppet after the jewel shards." In a flash of light, he pulled Testusaiga from its sheath.
"Now," Inuyasha growled, turning the blade to point at her father and causing Sango to freeze. "Who the fuck are you."
Her father had not moved as Inuyasha readied his weapon, the torch still held aloft. He turned his sharp gaze on Inuyasha now and his mouth turned down a little. "So you are the hanyou I've heard so much about."
Inuyasha stiffened, and Sango too. The lack of emotion in his voice was more terrifying then any threat.
Sango took a step forward. "Whatever Naraku has told you are lies, Chichiue—"
Inuyasha jerked, looking at her with wide eyes, but that wasn't what made her stop. It was her father, who had made a sharp gesture with his arm and her own throat closed up before she even consciously realized it. Instinct, ingrained from a life time of rigorous obedience, of a trust so deep it was carved into her nerve endings.
"Father…?" Miroku coughed from behind them, but Sango barely registered it.
Her eyes met with Inuyasha's. She couldn't tell what the look on his face was but whatever it was, she felt a sinking feeling in in her gut.
"Sango," Inuyasha's voice was so low it was almost nonexistent. "Who is this."
Sango swallowed, mouth dry.
Her father glanced at her. "Afraid to introduce your own father to your acquaintances?" he said.
Sango flinched. Inuyasha's eyes snapped furiously at him. "You shut the fuck up."
Her father ignored him entirely, still peering down at Sango with that same dispassionate expression that he'd worn since she was eight years old and struggling not to cry after disappointing him. He never said a word, he never had to.
"Come here," her father said suddenly, snapping his fingers.
Sango jerked forward a moment before catching herself. Too late did she realize that he hadn't been talking to her, and the slight lift of her father's eyebrow was the only indication he had noticed before she was distracted by the approaching footsteps from behind him.
When Kohaku came out of the shadows, Taijya mask firmly placed over his mouth and his bone sickle gleaming in the torch light, Sango closed her eyes, looking away. But even then, she could not escape the reality of the situation.
She could see the shard from the center of his back even with her eyes closed, a pulsing brilliant line stretching from him to her. She didn't have to physically see it to know how black it must be.
Her father spoke to her brother as if they were in the middle of a game of Shogi on a sunny afternoon, "What do you think, son?" and Sango was immediately thrown back to another time.
The sunset lingered on the horizon, bathing the house in shades of gold and amber. Elder Nishiyama sat on an overturned box, contemplating the board balanced on a barrel with rheumy eyes. Her father stood near the rail, staring at the outline of the village bustling below.
Kohaku lingered near the empty seat on the other side of the board, peering down at the pieces. From her perch against the wall, Sango lifted her eyes from an inventory request from the smithy and glanced at the board. Twenty pieces of cut wood arranged on a nine-by-nine grid battlefield, beautiful swirls of written kanji burned black on each piece like a brand.
As if on cue, Kagome gasped behind them. "Inuyasha, that boy has shards! They both do!"
Sango felt the world closing in on her.
"You need to go," she told Inuyasha. "Take the others and go. Let me deal with them."
His ears flattened. "Like hell I'm leaving you." The distrust in his voice was as plain as day; he might as well have said out loud, You'll do something stupid if I leave you.
She wrenched her eyes open to look at him standing there, his eyes fixed with predator stillness on the enemies in front of him. He was not going to hear her. He only listened when she didn't want him too… and he never listened when she needed it.
In the end, words failed her.
Her father was glancing between them. He had not raised his chain weapon. His eyes were piercing, assessing.
"What do you think, ane-ue?" Kohaku asked her over the Shogi board, fingers touching his chin thoughtfully, so like their father that for a moment she had to hide her smile behind the curl of rough paper in her hand.
She contemplated the board, then glanced at their father's silent profile. There were maybe two or three possible moves she could see…but none were likely the ones her father would choose. He saw the bigger picture better than she did. "We'll have to see."
Before she could say more, Inuyasha darted forward, a flash of silver barreling towards her father, his eyes determined. He wasn't going to stop.
Neither was Sango.
The screech of metal against metal echoed into the silent night. Tetsusaiga was so much heavier then she had realized, her arms burning and straining under a weight that was nearly unbearable, but her sword was made of some of the strongest material in existence and it held. A shove with the flat of the blade and Tetsusaiga sliced the air a fingers breadth to the left of her, sinking into the dirt.
Sango swung again, watched Inuyasha jerk back to evade the sharp edge just barely, Tetsusaiga dragging a furrow into the ground. A dance of slashing and dodging, before they both pulled back out of arm's reach, chests heaving. Slowly she pointed the tip of her weapon at him, jaw set.
They stared at each other across the length of blue sheen. His jaw clenched, throat working, but words didn't come.
From this angle, she could see the way Kagome clutched Miroku's arm in a white knuckled grip, the sheen of her eyes, the way she whispered, "No, no, no…."
Sango straightened, tilting her head back to the silent profiles of her family. "Father. If I go with you—" Inuyasha jerked violently at that, eyes flashing, and she raised her blade in response, "—would that be a suitable compromise?"
"It would be," her father said from behind her, voice soft. "If you had come when I first asked, we could have avoided all of this."
Sango's shoulders slumped.
Inuyasha just looked at her. She could see the exchange being turned over, the words processing in his mind in a way she couldn't stop if she tried. And oh yes, there it was, the realization like a corona in his sunset eyes. About what was happening. About what must unfold. She had never wanted to see it, not in him, not in any of them.
But she was Sango, the latest and last of a hundred generations of duty bound Taijya. She carried that burden of honor always, like her father before her. And there had only ever been one reason she was here.
"I told you," she whispered to him, and it was like they were back again at that inn when he had found her alive despite her terrible fall, his hands in her hair under the moonlight. That day she had known that they would only ever hurt each other. "I told you, that if you started to believe in me, I would only let you down."
She did not look at her father, but she did not have to.
Her father under the eaves of the porch, eyes glinting as he moved the final piece. Sango and Kohaku held their breath. Even as Elder Nishiyama groaned, his voice was low and steady. "Checkmate."
Hideous laughter suddenly echoed in the forest all around them. Everyone tensed: Sango and Kohaku crouching low to the ground, Inuyasha whirling to face the perimeter, Miroku standing straight and drawing Kagome behind him. Large shapes and shadows rose into being from the border of the trees, glinting fangs, scales, fur and claws. Red eyes suddenly opened all around them, like flowers blooming in the dark; ten, twenty, one hundred. All centered on them. No…all centered on Inuyasha.
Out of the shadows slithered a youkai, the upper body of a beautiful naked woman, the lower body all serpentine scales the color of the loveliest opal. Red slitted eyes surveyed the scene with satisfaction. Then the creature turned to the profile of her father, opened its mouth, and the voice that issued forth could have been plucked directly from Sango's most fevered, hellish dreams.
"It is time to return, Taijya," the creature said, addressing her father. Sango's heart ratcheted up, rushing blood making her lightheaded. That voice did not belong to the snake — there was someone talking through it. It was him.
Her father's mouth flattened. While he had not reacted like the rest of them, his body was taught, his shoulders stiff. He had neither known this was coming nor liked this, she realized. "The situation is well in hand, my Lord."
"I do not doubt it." Red eyes flicked to her, making her skin crawl. "But you do not know these people as I do. They'll resist until the very last, and I grow impatient of waiting. I am merely hastening along the inevitable conclusion."
Her father nodded. Then, "Come, daughter. We leave."
The jangle of the monk's staff. Miroku took a step forward. "Sango", he said, voice bleak, trying to catch her eyes. She could not look at him. "There is more to this then meets the eye. There always is. Do not give him what he wants." The youkai around them growled, but he ignored them, voice quiet. "There must be another way."
The serpent youkai turned it's sharp red gaze on him, the smile blooming on it's face a rictus of perverse pleasure. "Why monk, I am surprised at you. Railing at things you cannot change. I expected this from the hanyou, but not you." The demon drew up to its full height, body swaying hypnotically. The look in it's eyes was full of laughter and derision. "I suppose it was too much to hope that any of you would respect Sango's right to choose."
"Enough," she said, gut twisting in horror and rage. How dare he wield her name like a weapon. How dare he talk about choice. "I will come." And because her father wouldn't say it, "So back off."
The serpent turned to her and she could practically see his delight echoed from a great distance. If the creature had been within striking distance, Sango would have cut it down on the spot. She had the sinking feeling that she was playing right into his hands.
"Yes you will," said Kagewaki—Naraku— through the mouthpiece of the youkai, sibilant and delicate and filling her with dread. The demons around them rippled in response, some yowling, some gouging the earth with their claws. Saliva dripped between gaping mouths. "But it seems I must remind you of the arrangement of things. It is I who order you, not the other way around." A chilling pause. Then, "Make haste, my dear. The longer you tarry, the worse it will be for your…former companions."
Then the creature lifted it's hand and snapped it's fingers, crisp and final in the silence.
With howls and screams, the demons surged forward, lunging towards her friends.
Sango ran.
Ahead of her, Kohaku and her father were sprinting through the forest. The light from the half moon occasionally split through the branches of trees and revealed the phantom flash of an ear, sweat damp hair, the glint of steel and bone, the gleam of jade and white armor passing in and out of her sight.
The adrenaline pumping through her veins made her doubt everything. If she reached out her hand, would they be real and solid under her touch? Or would she pass through them like mist, the intangible stuff of her dreams? With the curtain of the night casting everything in evanescent shadow, she could almost believe that none of this was real, just a conjuration of madness.
Was this an impossible dream? A nightmare? She didn't know. Sango ran, gasping for breath, clinging to every pound of her pulse and stitch in her side that told her that if nothing else, she was alive. The only certainty in a world suddenly cast in indistinguishable gray.
They had been running for quite some time, though for how long it was hard to say. The sound of fighting behind them had long since faded, but Sango didn't slow her pace, didn't give herself a moment to think, because it wasn't over. It couldn't be. It would be too quick, to painless if it was. She merely ran like a hunted animal, heart in her throat, listening for the tell tale sign of pursuit.
It didn't take long.
"Sango!" A roar in the dark.
Her head snapped up. She skidded to a halt, then barely jumped back. Three crescent crimson blades sliced through the air, carving furrows into the trees and dropping branches to the ground. She saw her father and brother immediately turn around, heels dragging in wet foliage. Kohaku's hands fell to his kusarigama, the chain clinking.
No! Sango threw out a hand. "I have got this. Just go!"
The boy hesitated, then glanced to their father for guidance. She too looked at her father, who rose from his crouch, his eyes wary.
If he was questioning her loyalties, there was no need; she had made her decision and there was no going back from it now. Her mouth flattened into a line as she shook her head at him. "Go. I will catch up."
Her father hesitated only a moment longer, eyes flicking to the figure approaching them, then nodded. He quickly reached into a pouch at his hip then tossed something at her, a glinting bottle of some liquid that she caught one handed on instinct, and then he and Kohaku were fading into the trees as if they had never been.
A glance at the bottle in her hand made Sango's whole body go rigid, her stomach dropping out. But then she rose from her crouch, pulling her blade from it's sheath in one swift motion, and turned to face Inuyasha.
For it was him. It could only be him. Now that she had stopped running, he was stalking towards her and when he stepped into the moonlit path, Sango nearly staggered, blood draining from her face.
The demons had torn his clothes to pieces, deep gouges of blood and flesh. What remained was no longer any recognizable color — there was not a speck of his skin that was not covered in goulash black or scarlet red. There was a terrible yawning darkness in his stomach, a wound she could not even see the extent of, but somehow knew must extend clean through him to the other side.
If he were anyone else, he would be dead—or at least incapacitated. But despite the gravity of his injuries, Inuyasha stalked forward unfazed. His pupils were thin slits, the viscera nearly entirely crimson save for the barest sliver of gold at the irises. His sword was missing, lost somewhere far behind, and his claws gleamed from fresh red blood — his blood.
She had never seen him so close to losing control.
"Inuyasha," she breathed, afraid.
He didn't acknowledge her. They were beyond the point where words would change anything. Only actions would prove their intent. He blurred for a moment and she had only enough time to lunge to the side before he was standing where she stood, his hands grasping at thin air, snarling.
She ran, dodging between trees as he came after her in flashes of silver and red. Soon, his growls of frustration turned to guttural words, dragged from the very depths of some primitive beast that had been unleashed. "You are coming back with me," he raged, his ferocity turned to ice that burned as he chased her in the dark. She did not recognize his voice at all. "I will drag you back kicking and screaming, if I have to."
She broke through to a clearing and whirled to a stop at the center to face him, panting harshly. He walked out of the trees toward her like a demon from hell, a phantom of death, a harbinger from her nightmares, red eyes piercing her through, cracking her open like an egg to reveal her very human, very frightened soul.
He terrified her.
She uncorked the bottle and poured the contents on the blade. The blade immediately hissed, and the blue metal changed into a sickening green. Inuyasha's steps faltered as he looked at the blade, then back up at her.
"We do not have to do this," she said.
In answer—he blurred.
At the last possible second, the phantom and heat of his form like an aftershock in her senses, she twisted the blade in her hand to the reverse and cut at him. His hands were inches from her wrists when the blunt edge of the green blade slammed into his chest, pushing him back. Instinctually he jerked away, hissing, and she watched as anywhere metal touched him welted immediately into a red bar against his skin. She jumped back, gasping, as Inuyasha staggered, a hand raising to the band of blisters above his heart, nose twitching.
She shifted on her feet slowly, blade rising once more. "This toxin is potent," she told him slowly. "The metal in this blade amplifies it. If it touches your skin, it will burn you. It will seep into your blood stream. It will slow you down." She paused, then almost pleadingly, "We do not have to do this."
He dropped his hand, jaw clenched. He charged.
Afterwards, things quickly changed. It was not a fight anymore, not really. He was too injured to begin with, and each hit of her blade left him reeling, each time a little slower to recover. Though he was fast, she knew him too well now, knew his habits and the places he dropped his guard. She dodged and hit him with the flat of the blade, over and over again, one, five, ten brands into his skin. Once along his neck, him buckling slightly from the force. Another across his cheek, his head snapping to the side. And with every pass of the blade, his breath grew more labored.
But he refused to cede.
"Inuyasha, please," she said eventually, voice breaking, when he once again cut off her escape, but he merely snarled at her, eyes near entirely eclipsed in red now. The veins in his arms and his neck were starting to blacken.
He was not going to stop. Her face shuddered. She sheathed her sword, unable to continue this farce any longer.
When he swiped for her, now almost laughable clumsy compared to his earlier strikes, she flipped him over her hip, sending him painfully to the floor. She stood still as he gasped for breath, and then turned over onto his knees, struggling to rise.
When his head slumped down, a hand fisting tight in the earth, she knew it was finally over.
Sango stared down at his bowed head, numb. "I'm sorry." Stiffly, she reached up and jerked the summoning whistle from where it hung around her neck, staring at it with dry, painful eyes. Then she let it slip from her tilted palm to the ground between them.
She tried to retreat then, but then his hand snapped forward, gripping her ankle tight.
"Don't go," Inuyasha said hoarsely. When he finally looked up at her, he was himself—his eyes were golden and wide and bleak. It was all she could do not to fall to her knees. In that very moment, she had never seen him more human. "Sango, I—" His throat worked noiselessly for a moment, like he wanted to say more but couldn't. But he didn't have to.
Not you can't go. Not I won't let you.
Just…I'm sorry.
Just…please.
Sango closed her eyes. "I can't stay," she said, ignoring the way his grip on her ankle tightened, at the guttural noise in his throat. "I won't."
She took pity on them both and jerked roughly out of his grip, taking a step back. Her voice trembled. "The worst part is…I know you understand. Why I must do this." Then, tears spilling down her cheeks, "Just like I'll also understand if you can't forgive me for it."
And then she turned and left him there, on his knees in the dark, and ran.
Sango ran, harder than she ever had in her life. Til her legs burned, til her lungs screeched, til the stitch in her side was a wound radiating into her chest cavity. She ran for a long time, until there was nothing but silence under the winking stars, until her legs gave out and she stumbled, falling to her knees.
Then, she let herself cry. For being that person—for abandoning Inuyasha just like the others in his life had. For the fear in Kagome's eyes, for the resignation in Miroku's. For her cowardice in not wanting to face crushing little Shippou's heart and—she shuddered—oh, Kirara. For the goodbyes she didn't make. For the people she was losing in order to return to the family she had lost. For the fact that she couldn't stay—even if she wanted to.
She wept, until there were no more tears. Until there was nothing left to take with her, to be used against her.
Because where Sango was going now, there was no one who would understand.
Day 1
In hindsight, it was laughable, pitiful, how easy it was to find the castle.
Sango merely had to close her eyes and stretch her senses. She had to turn off her preconceived ideas of what should be and open herself to what was. And then there — there at the horizon of her awareness bloomed a brilliant source of light, unfurling like a flower in the dark, so bright she couldn't believe how she had never failed to notice it before. How she merely had to follow it's pull.
Where the greatest collection of corrupt jewel shards lay, she would find him at last.
She walked for days on tired legs and blistering feet, only peripherally aware of her body's fatigue in a detached way, like it was happening to someone else. When she did stop to rest it was only briefly, when the sun was at its highest and hottest. She would close her eyes and awaken mere hours later. She did not dream. She passed through villages merely to wordlessly point at a stack of fruit or dried hanging meats, to exchange her dwindling supply of coin over nervous stares. Otherwise, she spoke to no one.
Nothing disturbed her. Not a human or a youkai. No one came to meet her. No one followed after her. She had a feeling that this was unusual, some sane voice in the back of her mind telling her there was something wrong with all of this. But for the moment she had locked that voice behind a wall, along with all thoughts and memories and reflections, and thrown away the key. She could not. She simply could not do anything but walk and endure.
Then, finally, she crested a grassy hill and stood at the highest point of a small valley.
And there it was. A castle as familiarly etched in her mind as the very parapets of her own Taijya village, so vividly had she dreamed of it, slaved over it's image, wished feverishly to find it again.
She camped near a winding river that night, even though she could have made it to the castle gates within a few hours. She undressed and washed herself in the cold water, tended to her raw blistered flesh on her feet, scrubbed her Taijya suit until it gleamed in the moonlight. It was a full moon, bright and silver like a mirror in the sky, at the zenith of a perpetual cycle that would begin to wind down now over the coming days. That would stretch darkness across it's surface until it would disappear entirely, only to begin again, anew. She stared at the moon long into the night, the wind rippling through her unbound wet hair, her arms around her knees.
In the morning, she walked to the castle.
She didn't recognize the village at the base of the castle, nor the villagers that bustled about living their lives, snippets of laughter and whispers mixing with the normal noises of horses and crackling fires and children scampering under foot. She didn't recognize the guards that came to greet her at the gate and, without a single word, bowed and escorted her in.
She did recognize the stone raised walls that the castle sat on, the wood outer wall and the gate that provided an imposing barrier to any would be attackers, that spoke of wealth and armies and undisputed law. She did recognize the open flat space in the center of the complex, where a spider had once towered from above and dripped it's venom onto the stone. Servants bustled around with purpose, groups of soldiers running laps around the interior perimeter, horses flicking their tails idly on one end. Their activity obscured her vision of the place she remembered her father had fallen, of the place Kohaku had lain, holding her hand—and then she was being ushered down a hall.
As they walked, she noticed the screens stood open here and there in the hot afternoon, and through it she could see glimpses of the garden. The bushes with their red leaves. The maple trees. The plum tree that in the spring shed beautiful white and yellow blossoms and bore hundreds of orange plums, a few of which she had squirreled away in her room when the maids weren't looking, the flesh tender and sticky under her teeth.
They passed another set of guards and then she was being bowed into the antechamber and it was here—her breath shortened, her pulse quickening—that she had first charged into the room, weak and bandaged, to demand—beg— the name of the man who had slaughtered her people. The first time she had heard the name Inuyasha, her lips forming the syllables as they rolled off her tongue, and how she had felt only hate.
Then she passed into the main room and stilled on the threshold, staring.
There on the dais, dressed in the resplendent purple robes covered in golden embroidered ribbons, his long inky hair pulled back partially into a stylized top knot on the top of his head and the rest hanging long and loose over his shoulders...sat Hitomi Kagewaki.
He had not changed, not even a little bit. The way he held himself, back straight, his long fingered hands folded loosely in his lap. The strong nose, the soft full lips that on another man would have have made them look weak, but on him gave him fullness and breadth. The scar puckering slightly along his jaw, white and faded. His eyes, heavy lidded and the deep violet of dusk.
Kagewaki had been in the middle of speaking with an advisor, his voice low and cultivated. Then his brow furrowed a little and he looked up, spotting her lingering at the entrance of the room, and his eyebrows shot up. He did not smile—but she saw it in his eyes, a secret shared between them.
"Sango," he said, and the advisor he was talking to turned, then backed away bowing. He held out his hand to her. "Come to me."
She stared at him for a long moment, then took a step forward. Then another. Then she was striding forward, eyes locked with his and unable to pull away, ignoring the sudden murmur of noise, then the alarmed shouts, and then a single scream as she mounted the dais, pulled the Taijya blade from her hip, and slid it's sharp blue edge like a gentle kiss into the center of Kagewaki's broad chest.
The world could have been silent and empty, for all that it touched her. She stared into Kagewaki's eyes, face so close she could feel his breath on her mouth, watched in studied concentration as his eyes widened, as his gaze flicked down, as a dark red spot blossomed onto the beautiful fabric of his kimono, as blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth when she gave the hilt in his chest a vicious twist.
"I have returned, my Lord," she whispered, and then with a jerk drew away, flicking the blade from her and leaving a streak of red on the floor. She stood as guards rushed her, hands grabbed for her and drew her back, forcing her onto her knees, unable to look away from his fixed, shocked gaze.
And then….
Kagewaki smiled.
Roots exploded from his back as if released like a broken dam. They surged up and forward towards her and she braced for impact, waited for the pain.
They did not touch her. One passed over her, piercing the head of one of the guards holding her down. A fine spray of blood splattered on the side of her face, on her arms, as his hand fell limply off her and his body fell to it's knees, then folded over like a sack of flour.
Sango knelt frozen, unable to move as every person that had been in the room was summarily slaughtered. The advisor, his body cast aside like a rag doll, his chest pierced perfectly in the center and leaving a bloody smear on the wall. The maid that had been kneeling in the corner waiting for instruction, who had run past her screaming from the room, only to be abruptly silenced. The two guards that had posted on either side of the room, and the two that had escorted her to the entrance, their bodies smearing crimson all over the beautiful hard wood floors.
Kagewaki never looked away from her, not once. Violet eyes that swallowed the whole world, her whole existence. The blade in her hands rolled numbly from her fingers as Sango trembled. She watched helplessly as Kagewaki suddenly stood in a flourish, as he padded forward on socked feet that immediately soaked bright red, as he knelt before her on one knee and brought a long fingered hand to grasp her chin in a tight hold. He tilted her head up towards him.
He was so beautiful it hurt, this man with his dark, excited eyes, with blood dripping down his chin, with his smile that was all teeth. There was derision, there was marvel, there was unbridled lust in his gaze, as bright and hot as the sun hanging in the sky outside the window. She did not know the depth of its intensity—what he had shared before, what she had tasted the one night she had given him her body, seemed a pale imitation in comparison. This man…he was not the Kagewaki she remembered.
He was so much more than that, wasn't he?
"And what did you think," Naraku murmured gently, voice low and tickling over her senses, "you were going to accomplish with that little stunt?"
Sango's hands shook, the room a red blur in her periphery, the corpses around them hanging heavy in her mind. He could not have punished her more thoroughly if he tried. She swallowed, unable to speak.
"I had to do it, you know," he continued, eyes flicking over hers with languid enjoyment, watching emotion spill over her face like it was paid entertainment. "I cannot allow a single human to know what I am. You have to understand that."
Even as he spoke, there were movement in her periphery. The floor began to glow. Bodies sinking into the light. Blood evaporating into fine mist. Soon there would be no trace at all. Just a handful of more missing faces, all but erased except for the permanent fixture they would have in her heart.
Sango would pay for this. Those men and women, their lives were on her soul now. And for what? What had compelled her to act in this way, even though she had known it to be futile all along?
She lowered her dry eyes, emotion draining away until there was only emptiness in it's place. "Nothing," she said truthfully, watched his eyebrows quirk up, until she continued in a bare whisper, "Except to make me feel better."
He laughed. The sound was beautiful, lyrical, the stuff of songs and poems. He dropped her chin and drew back, amusement coloring his features in more gentle lines, and then he was Hitomi Kagewaki again, the Lord. He rose to his feet in the now pristine, clean room.
"Sango. Little bird. Little fool." His eyes danced. "I didn't realize how I missed you."
Sango said nothing. He didn't expect her to. He moved with serene grace to the nearest wall, pulling a length of braided cord sharply, a bell ringing loud and clear in the silence. By the time he had settled back on the dais, arranging his hands comfortably in his lap, it was like she had faded from his awareness entirely, as if what had transpired in this room and between them had been nothing but her imagination.
But it wasn't. Faces flashed behind her minds eyes, all frozen in looks of terror. Her soul knew better.
When her father strode in a moment later, Sango hung her head, resigned.
Her father knelt beside her, head bowed. Though his voice was careful and formal, there was an underlying tension in his tone. His eyes flicked over the room and its odd emptiness, it's pristine nature. She had a feeling that he knew something of what it meant. "You called, my Lord?"
Kagewaki's eyes flicked to her, neutral and untouchable. He could have been a stranger she had just met. "Your daughter has returned. I believe the trip has worn her out. Please escort her to her rooms. Once you have done so, I will need Jotaro to be sent for. I'm afraid advisor Kinnosuke will no longer be of service to me."
Her father stiffened ever so slightly beside her. "Of course, my Lord." Then her father was there, his face flat even as he lifted her bodily up with a hand and began to lead her briskly away in a vice grip.
They were stopped at Naraku's voice suddenly calling out, "Oh, and Sango?"
She turned her head, ever so slightly, met his eyes across the room.
He smiled at her warmly, cruelly, his eyes a handful of dusty stars, the scar on his jaw stark and illuminated in the light from the window.
"Welcome home."
This is the end of Mine Enemy. However this is not the end of Sango and Inuyasha and yes, even Naraku's story.
I thought long and hard about this decision to officially close this part of their story as opposed to continuing to post under this one fic… but in the end two things motivated me. The first was that this was always the direction the fic was going to take and I didn't want to rush the next part in a hasty bid to the conclusion — I want to flesh out and give it the exploration it deserves. The second is that for all intents and purposes, we were already at the end of Sango's character arc that I began this story with— her transition from a girl who had lost her family and trusted no one, to a young woman who recognized that people are more than what they were born as. But in the end, for Sango, blood runs thicker than water…and thus, Sango's new chapter begins.
For those of you have walked with me on this journey for so long, I hope this ending doesn't disappoint you. This is not the end for Sango, not even a little bit. But more importantly I hope you are not disappointed because you, dear readers, are the reason that I am still even writing. The reason that I have come back to these characters and this fic over and over again for the last nine years. Every kind word, every encouraging thought, every shared emotion and tear. You have touched me all. There are no words to adequately share what pure joy you have brought to me and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I promise you, I will do Sango and Inuyasha justice. This story has a conclusion, and while it certainly has its ups and downs, it was never meant to be a tragic one.
For those that wish to end the ride here, I am so appreciative for all that you have given me. For those who are willing to hang on a little longer, I'm honored to continue to share a seat with you on this journey. :) Keep a look out for the sequel, Thine Enemy, which I hope to begin posting shortly. I swear to god it will not take another nine years to get there.
Thank you again from the bottom of my heart, my friends. Until next time. :)