Interlude Three
"Souta!"
"Shut up! I don't give a fuck what you tell me! It's just a lie! It's all a lie!"
The woman was crying as she watched her son tear himself away from her in his heart, destroying the only child she had left.
He glared at her, eyes pure ice as they burned accusingly into her. "Did you think we'd never find out? We'd never figure it out, they'd never tell us?"
No.
He smiled bitterly, hatred in the lines of his face. "School was interesting today. They showed us pictures of the rebels executed eight years ago. Surprised the hell outta me to see dear old dad up there," he hissed, and then laughed, a biting, hollow sound.
"But then, now I'm surprised I ever bought that story. If it was a car accident, why was there no grave? Kagome has a grave, even though there's no body---"
"STOP IT!" the woman screamed. The boy froze, eyes widening as she fell to the floor on her hands and knees, sobbing.
She never shouted. She never lost control.
What was happening? What was happening to her, to him, to all of them? He was nothing like this. Who was he becoming?
Her voice was low and ragged when she said, "Would you rather I tell you the truth? Is that it?" Empty. That's how she sounded. And he was afraid.
He did not want to know.
But she was going to tell him.
"They found out and came for him one day. He screamed for an hour as they tore him apart, and I watched. Kagome was at school and you slept through the whole thing. What was left of him they cleaned off the road with a street sweeper. They told me that there could be no grave for a traitor," she finished in an emotionless voice, dead of feeling, expression. Nothing could express what she had felt, or was feeling, so why bother?
He shook. Any bravado he had gained from his rage was gone, and he was just a little boy who did not know who to trust anymore. His mother stared at him with eyes as empty as his own, and there was nothing they could say to fill the void in the other.
And then the anger filled him again.
He welcomed it. It was real, hot, consuming. With it he could feel. He had something to sustain him, something to grasp, to cling to keep him alive. It was easier to be angry than to be nothing. He decided he did not care what he became, as long as it was anything but nothing.
His mother stared, her eyes betraying nothing as her heart wept. Both her children were lost, now.