InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bats and Butterflies ❯ Beneath the Floors ( Chapter 1 )

Chapter One

Beneath the Floors

 

`Bats are the butterflies that have lost their innocence' -Anonymous

 

 

Cold, desperate hands pull frantically at mesh walls, metal thorns piercing tender flesh and giving way to a spill of red tears. Ink black coupled with pallid peach duck into the darkness of night. No merry moon to greet them, the stars stretch out endlessly above. Bare feet leave clues in the snow and only the soft whisper of the crunching ice between their toes to alert others of their escape.

A shout startles and panic, so sharp, pierces and makes night seem like day. Frightened, they dash and disappear into trees and underbrush. Though they are swift, they are found and their frantic need to leave is subdued. Loud whines of protest and cries of helpless hopelessness permeate the air. Pulled back to where they had been so strenuously trying to leave. Wrapped in despair, they return by force of calloused hands.

But, when they are returned, they are put in a place worse than before. They keep their eyes closed. They don't want to see where they are going or how they are getting there. Lowered into the depths of nothingness that smelt of dirt and wood, they are chilled. Upon opening their eyes, they find that they are surrounded by blackness darker than night. The sky above them stopping abruptly, void of stars, and footsteps resound above their heads. Muffled laughter seemed to echo on and on in the void around them.

 

 

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo 00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

 

 

They were on the move. They had to leave. They had to keep going. Change locations. Couldn't stay in one place for more than a few hours. Had to gain ground between them. And they did. A little bit of ground. Not much, but it was still significant due to the situation that they were in. They had to keep moving. To not was to die. Staying in one place for too long was too dangerous. Too risky. And they wouldn't risk it. They couldn't. There was already too few of them.

They had to keep going. Naraku and company was on the move. Constantly. And every time they stopped to rest, to catch their breath, he would gain ground. He would get closer to them. Closer to killing them. They would get closer to death. And they couldn't have that. They were determined to survive. Determined to live. To beat him. And that determination kept them going.

Kept them from sleep. Quieted their complaining muscles. Evened their breaths. Slowed their hearts. Sated their stomach. Brought them together. They may hate each other, but coming together was a key element in staying alive. Even Sesshoumaru had succumbed to joining up with what he thought to be scum in order to remain among the living.

They were on the move. They had to leave. They had to keep going. Change locations. Couldn't stay in one place for more than a few hours. Had to gain ground between them and Naraku… They needed each other. Wouldn't leave anyone behind. Couldn't.

 

 

oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo 00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

 

 

Sesshoumaru pressed close to the cottage door. They were on the excruciatingly rural countryside. It made it hard to find food. To find shelter. They had a rendezvous set for this location with a group of rebels. It had been marked on their map by an ally. The place was supposedly abandoned. But he felt as though it had been in use barely a few days ago. It had set them on edge. So they opted for caution.

He held his pistol tightly in his right hand, the barrel pointed towards the sky, as he slowly turned the knob. He gently pushed open the door and let himself in. It was dark in the cottage. The shutters on the majority of the windows closed and blotching out the remaining sunlight of the late afternoon. A block of weak, gold light stretched across the foyer. Silent as the dead, his footfalls mute upon the carpet, he made his way farther into the house.

No one.

He motioned with his pistol and Inuyasha came up on his right, Kouga on his left. Ginta, Hakkaku, and Jaken right behind them. Walking backwards. The last having closed the door, they waited for their eyes to adjust to the dimness. They traveled in a tight, slowly rotating circle with their backs to the center, shoulders touching. Then they stopped. Broke off into three grounps. One for the right, one for the left and one for the back of the cottage.

They rendezvoused in the kitchen. No one had found anything of interest besides a few pieces of still good food in the cabinets. Scoffing, Inuyasha opened a window and peeked through a broken slat in the shutter. The backyard was void of life. Clear of threes. The grass was surely dead and patches of dirt here and there were visible beneath the snow. Then there was a shack. Run down, dirty, broken shack about six yards away.

Sesshoumaru came into the room a moment later. “Find anything?” he asked, voice deep and smooth. Almost a whisper.

Kouga and Inuyasha both shook their heads. “But,” Inuyasha said, after a moment of silence, “there is a run-down shack in the backyard. I didn't see anything else. There might be something of use in it.”

“What about a door to a cellar?” Sesshoumaru checked the clip in his pistol while he waited for an answer.

“No.” Kouga shook his head again.

Hakkaku interjected, “The water level in this area is too high. They'd hit water before they got three feet under.”

Ginta nodded. “That's why the burials in this region are namely mounds and cremation.”

“Makes enough sense to me,” Inuyasha said.

“Jakken?” Two sets of golden eyes settled themselves upon the toad of a man.

The other three, Ginta, Hakkaku, and Kouga, ignored the new conversation to instead search through the cabinets. Hungry. Feeling starved. Tired. Weary.

“Nothing of interest, Sesshoumaru. Just some clothing. Seems that a group of men had been here… left some stuff behind. Soldiers, I think.” Jakken squawked. “I'll go look through the wardrobes and see if there is anything useful to us.”

Sesshoumaru nodded. “That is acceptable.” He turned to face his half-brother, a thin, elegant brow raised in question. “What of this shed you mentioned?”

“It's out back.” Inuyasha holstered his gun, finally, and folded his arms loosely across his chest. “Want to take a look?”

“Indeed.”

The two half-brothers exited the back door of the cottage, following a dirt path that led to the severely run-down hovel of a shed. Both of them had holstered their pistols, thinking it unlikely that anything of danger would be hiding in the poorly constructed shack. Dimly, Sesshoumaru wondered how it was possible that the ratty structure was still standing. It didn't look as though it had the means to support itself.

The doors were wood and noticeably rotted, wet. The building was falling into itself. Gripping the dam, rusted hand, Sesshoumaru glanced back at his half-brother. “Stay out here.”

Inuyasha glared at him for a long moment before sighing. “Fine.”

He pulled the door open. It was awkwardly heave. Much, much heavier than it should have been. He pause and turned to face the inside of the door, tapped it with his knuckles. He looked around himself, the minimal light shining in from the slight ajar door. Metal. The inside of the shed was reinforced with metal. Rusted and damp.

It was bigger inside than it looked and the day's dying light wasn't doing much to help him see. The fact was that it was too oddly lighted for his eyes to adjust correctly. Too dark in some places, too light in others. Refraining the urge to sigh, he opted to just shut the door. There wasn't enough sunlight left outside to light up the entire inside. It made more sense to just let it be dark.

Not bothering to wait for his eyes to fully adjust, he advanced further into the room slowly. The farther into the shack he go, the more it smelt like mold and rust and sickness and death. A soft shifting sound that he had not made caused him to flinch, grabbing his pistol. Paranoid? Maybe. But living on the run for the past five years did that to a person. He couldn't afford to be careless. None of them could.

If he so had the luxury, he would hate his half-brother. If he had the security, he wouldn't constantly be in the company of people that, if he had the luxury, he found to be superiorly inferior to him. If he had the luxury. But he didn't. None of them did. And he wasn't so stupid as to think that he would be find on his own. He didn't have the luxury.

And then he walked into something. Something taller than him, flat as a wall, and painful. Spiky and damp and painful. He just barely stopped himself from taking in a sharp breath as he jerked back from the pliable, needily wall. His hand flew up to his hairline, raking his fingertips through his ridiculously long hair. The same hand reached out once it finished its journey through his hair to tentatively touch the weird wall he had just encountered.

Barbed wire.

`Odd', He thought distractedly. `What is in here?'

He couldn't tell if the smell of sickness and death was from rodents or something else. Ignoring it, he ran his fingertips over the barbed wire carefully, carefully. Trying to find a way past it. A hole. A flap. A door. He almost gave up when he found it. A chain link fence. Held close by chain and a lock. `Peculiar.'

Pressing the barrel of his pistol to the lock, he contemplated whether he should shoot it. But it didn't strike him as the brightest of ideas. Sure, he'd seen it done effectively in a movie or two, but those were strictly fictional cases. In all reality, he figured that it would simply ricochet back into his gun and only hinder him in his endeavor. So, putting his pistol in the holster, he glanced around him. After all, it was a shed. There had to be something of use around, right? Tools. Something.

And there was nothing. Nothing to be even remotely helpful to him. So he inspected the hinges instead. No good. Sure, it was badly rusted. But he wasn't stupid. Chain link fences simply weren't made like doors, even though that would be awfully helpful in his current position. He decided to test out brute strength. After all, he couldn't think of anything else at the moment. Reaching up, he grabbed the top of the door, the barbed wire, which truly did form a wall, scratching the backs of his fingers lightly. Then he pulled. He pulled down as hard as he could, putting all his body weight into it… which didn't prove to do much of anything, really. It bent the top of the door downward, bowing it. But it didn't do anything else, much to his chagrin. He had hoped that he wouldn't have to put too much effort into getting onto the other side of this annoying barbed wire wall. So he continued to carefully feel his way down the barbed wire until it met a part of the actual wall that wasn't covered in metal. Stapled into the rotting wood. It made him small victoriously for having beat the stupid wall into submission… but then came about the task of pulling it off of the wall.

Which involved him grabbing the barbed wire to do so.

… Which wasn't something that he particularly wanted to do.

But he did it anyway, trying to push away any thoughts of the high possibilities of receiving a nasty infection of one sort or another from it. They couldn't afford one of them falling ill. Didn't have the resources. Reluctantly, he gripped the barbed wire as close to the wall as possible with both hands, ignoring the fact that it was tearing into his palms. Bleeding him. And he pried the wire away from the wall, pulling out the staples. Pulling down the wire. He had to crouch down and step on the wire near his hands and yank them away from it to pull them off the barbs. His hands were torn and would be rendered useless if he received an infection from it.

Through clenched teeth, he ignored the pain as best he could and ventured further into the shack. There wasn't much further to go before he reached the back wall, which had a rotted wooden table situated against it. Beneath the table were two large cages that looked as though they were for dogs. They looked big enough for even his half-brother to crawl in. He crouched down and looked into the cages, nothing of interest were in them. They were very rusted and very empty. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed wooden floorboards, torn up as if something had come out from the inside. He stood and looked down at them. A pool of blackness floated in the hole beyond the section of cracked and splintered wood. It seemed odd that it was there. The rest of the floor was concrete.

Then he heard it. The shuffling that hadn't come from him, for he had been standing completely still. Again. A shaky breath. A soft scraping. He felt as though he was in a horror movie... well, he always pretty much felt like he was in a horror movie. But this was worse. He suddenly felt the urge to leave. The very human fight-or-flight response was trying to kick in. But he never had quite gotten used to it. He ignored the instinct to run and stood very still.

Again with the oh-so-light shuffling noise, only it was closer now. A labored intake of breath that told of someone lifting something heavier than usual. He turned then, abruptly.

There it was. Or... was it- there she was? He wasn't sure what he had expected to find in this godforsaken hovel. But it certainly wasn't this.

He caught the small clay pot as it came down towards his head, smelling of urine and shit. He tossed it to the side and grabbed the little tatter of a human before him. He wasn't even completely sure that it was a woman. But how frail it was said that it was. At least in his mind it said so.

She smelt of mold and sickness and rust and tears and... stench. Basically. And he found it amazing that she wasn't dead. Barely conscious as she was. But she was still alive. He pulled her into his arms, intent on taking her back to the house. But she wouldn't have anything of it. She thrashed with freakish strength against him. Squirming and pushing and pulling and hitting with tiny closed fists of bone and skin. Then she just stopped. Stopped moving. Sudden dead weight in his arms. Which wasn't much weight at all.

A click reached his ears and he froze, holding the barely alive girl against him and held his breath. “Oy!” Came Inuyasha's voice, obviously annoyed. “How long you gonna be, Ses... shou... ma...ru...”

Sesshoumaru had picked up the girl bridal style in his arms and was heading for the hole in the barbed wire wall that he had made. Both of the doors of the shack had been opened wide and Inuyasha was holding a flashlight up, shining it into the humble shack. He watched his younger half-brother in disinterest as he made to step through the hole. Stopping dead in his tracks when a pistol was suddenly in Inuyasha's hand and seemingly pointed directly at him.

“Stop there!” He yelled, slowly stepping through the threshold of the shed. “Don't move.”

Sesshoumaru resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Desist, brother. We haven't the time for this.”

He didn't respond, merely jerked his head back a touch, as if signaling to something behind him with his chin. It was then that Sesshoumaru realized that his brother wasn't even looking at him, nor had the flashlight pointed at him, but behind him. Flinching, he spun around to face another excruciatingly gaunt figure of a scrap of a girl. Though, a bit less malnourished looking, she was just as barely alive as the girl in his arms. She just happened to be more awake then her, that's all.

“Desist.” Sesshoumaru said to the girl. She had a rather pointy shard of wood in her raised hand, not unlike a makeshift stake. Poised to strike. And at that moment, Sesshoumaru was thankful for Inuyasha's impatience.

She just stared at him with hallow brown eyes that spoke volumes, though she did not move.

“Inuyasha, disarm and bring her.” Sesshoumaru turned away from the girl and proceeded through the hole in the spiky wall. His half-brother did as he was told.

Once he reached the cottage, he quickly made his way to the couch and laid the skin-and-bones girl upon it. Kouga and the others had followed him when he came in the door, not failing to notice the girl in his arms. “What's this?” Kouga had said.

It was a stupid question, so he didn't answer the man. Instead he went about getting a dish filled with room temperature water and a rag. He lightly wiped her down with the cloth. She was bruised and sickly and dirty. Her jet-black hair fell down around her to her waist in thick, dingy waves of frizzy tangled knots. Even if she weren't starved within an inch of her life, she would have been petite. Very petite. The second woman, whom had been within an inch of his brother's height, wouldn't be so small. They were both starved. Thin, pallid skin clinging to aching bones. He closed his eyes and he saw skeletons draped in filthy white dresses staring at him with their cracked black glass eyes. He shook the image from his mind and looked down at her.

She looked so frail. So breakable. So damaged. Like glass. Like tarnished silver. Something that had been valuable, beautiful, and priceless now seemed worthless.

She was a young woman, not even to her twenties yet. Her features over exaggerated and sharp as a result of her starvation. Her nose, a would-be cute somewhat button in a would-be pretty, oval face. Her lips were the only bit of color that he could see on her, besides the colorful bruises that were seemingly sprinkled over her. They were full and pink and...

Then suddenly her eyes were open, long black lashes no longer resting on her cheeks, but softly brushing her brow, as her red-rimmed eyes grew wide at the sight of him. She fixed him with a steady, stormy blue gaze that was brimming with such frightening pain that he couldn't hold her eyes. He had to look away, as if to be witness to the suffering and helplessness that was screaming in her eyes was a crime that he couldn't bare to commit. He couldn't even begin to comprehend what she had endured.

Settling for focusing on wiping her down again, his baritone cutting through the silence. “Jakken. You mentioned women's clothing. Bring what you think would fit her and a woman nearly as tall as Inuyasha. Kouga, Hakkaku, Ginta... Scour the cottage. The shed. Anywhere on these grounds. I suspect a child. Find it. Quickly.”

No one moved. He looked up from his task, clearly irritated, and stated in a clipped tone “Do. It. Now.”

Then the cottage was a sudden explosion of movement. Jakken gathering clothes. The other three frantically searching for a child. Inuyasha was laying the taller girl on the plush rug that covered the wood floor in the living room after noisily kicking the coffee table out of the way. He refreshed Sesshoumaru's pot of water and rag while getting such for himself also. He joined in with his elder half-brother, wiping down the taller girl.

Then they found the child. Two of them. A boy and a girl. Both horribly malnourished and skinny. Kouga had began tearing up floorboards, starting with the entranceway. They had started hearing soft noises, almost like the scuttling of rats. They had been baffled when they couldn't find the source of the noise. Then Ginta pressed his ear to the floor. He heard it. The soft mewling noises. A soft scritch-scratching at wood. He paled visibly and simply stood and pointed at the floor, eyes locked on Kouga, until the man knelt and listened for himself.

They were there. Too weak to stay awake for long. In two separate cages. A hole dug beneath the floorboards where they were being kept. Bugs and worms in their hair. Hakkaku held his breath as he pulled the little boy from his cage as if he were afraid to hurt him. As if he thought that just breathing would break the little boy in half. He felt like he was holding thin glass. Holding him gingerly in his arms. So careful. So careful. As if to press him to close would cause him to shatter.

Ginta refused to look at the children. The horror that was bones pushing painfully at papaya like skin. Instead he went to the kitchen to prepare a bath in the sink for the little ones.

Kouga and Hakkaku carefully washed the two in the sink while Ginta went to help Jakken pack clothes for the women and children that they had found. Packing only things that they thought necessary. Any food that they found. A few pieces of clothing. A couple boxes of matches and candles that they had found. Some bullets and a pistol.

They didn't speak to one another; the horror that filled the cottage at the moment was too great. Was too devastating to them for any of them to find words. And if they did, they didn't dare utter them. Each of them inconsolable. Each of them doing what they knew needed done. Each knowing that to breathe even the smallest word at the moment might break the glass. Push them over the edge. Drive them insane. So the only thing to comfort them was the hush of breathing, the shifting of clothing, the quiet splash of water, the soft click of cabinets, the whisper of scraping wood from drawers and doors being opened and closed. And the ringing in their ears from something that seemed similar to the after effects of being near a loud explosion.

They felt like they were breaking inside.

In the backs of their heads they could hear the screaming of the women, the crying of the children, the slamming of rotten doors. The click of locks on cages. The bang of wood floors being replaced. The scratching of fingernails. The endless grumble of hunger. They could hear them starving, weeping, dying. They remained quietly solemn. Painfully sober.

They felt as broken as the four humans that they had just found looked.


oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo 00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo


The jeep came half an hour late. Bad. Naraku had gained thirty minutes of ground on them. Thirty minutes that they weren't sure that they could regain quickly enough for it not to matter. Sesshoumaru seriously contemplated killing the driver of the jeep for his tardiness. Unfortunately the only one who knew the way to the encampment that they were headed for was the driver, so killing him was simply out of the question. He decided that being overly cold and giving him many harsh and long calculating looks would have to do for the time being.

He had Jakken and Ginta load everything that they had packed, three boxes and a suitcase, into the back of the jeep. Kouga and Hakkaku held the two children, which were wrapped in blankets, as they got into the back of the jeep.

“Wait.” The driver, voice like sand, eyed the suspiciously, “What's with the kids?'

“Found them,” Sesshoumaru answered coolly.

The driver didn't seem satisfied. Then again, he didn't look too particularly smart either. Most likely a lot of muscle and very little brain. “Where?” he demanded in his gravel voice.

Sesshoumaru fixed the obviously inept man with a cold glare and remained quiet for a long time.

So long, in fact, that the driver began to shift uncomfortably in his seat. He was a bigger man than Sesshoumaru, but his prolonged glare was making him extremely uneasy. He might have the upper hand in brute strength, but brute strength wasn't all there was to fighting. Sesshoumaru might not still have the status of the Great War Lord of the West, but he sure as hell still played the part. It was his rightful place in society and he let it be known.

Sesshoumaru turned and started back towards the cottage, leaving the driver with the distinct impression that he wasn't going to get an answer. Then he heard the Western War Lord. His voice carrying so well that it seemed as though he were still standing right next to him.

“Beneath the floor.”

Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha disappeared into the cottage for a few moments before emerging carrying two extremely frail looking women wrapped in blankets like the children had been. Without a word they climbed into the jeep and situated themselves. Jakken rode comfortably in the very back with the luggage and Ginta in the passenger seat. The driver thought better of asking them about them women and waited for them to settle before taking off.

Inuyasha couldn't help but think about all the comic books that he used to read when he was a child. The hero always winning and saving the damsels in distress. Escaping the impossible. Gaining a sidekick. Admirers. Living in huge houses with secret laboratories and such in the basements. Walking out of burning buildings with absolutely drop-dead-gorgeous women in their arms, whom they easily won the heart of. The hero always describing how great it was to be heroic and good. Full of pride at their accomplishments and at the people he had risked himself to save.

But he didn't feel any of that. Dimly, he registered the fact that he felt rather numb. And, through all of that aching numbness that had enfolded him, he felt scared. Sad. Angry. Pained. Lost. Insecure... Felt like he was beginning to become more hallow than the brown eyes of the girl in his arms. The thought left him slightly shocked. Frightened. Sober. Mortified.


~FIN <3