InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Cobalt Skies and Too Blue Eyes ❯ Chapter Two: Shuubun ( Chapter 2 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, etc. This story is for entertainment purposes only.

COBALT SKIES AND TOO-BLUE EYES

Summary: A dream haunts Sango in the eyes of her newborn son. As the veils between this world and the next are drawn back on the night of seasonal equinox, she must consider that the ghost of the father might come seeking both her and her son… (“after Naraku” canon cont., SangoXBankotsu, some InuyashaXKagome)

WORDS

Shuubun - autumnal equinox, celebrated September 23rd on the Gregorian calendar

A/N: Thank you for the reviews. Keeps me typing. n_n

WARNING! ADULT SITUATIONS AND ISSUES, NO ONE UNDER 17, PLEASE!

CHAPTER TWO (SHUUBUN)

“You think you’ll be okay?” Inuyasha shifted from foot to foot, anxious to be back on the road home to his village and his mate, who was due to give birth to their first pup any day now.

“Yes,” Sango smiled at him, understanding both his anxiety and his indecision. He hated to leave her alone in the abandoned demon slayers’ village with only her tiny son for company and her pet neko to play guard. But she was now fit and strong, more than recovered from Mikomi’s birth, and she could take care of herself, thank you.

“Inuyasha, go home,” she advised with a warm smile for his touching concern. “I’ll be fine. It’s Kagome who needs you right now.”

He growled, irritated with the soft look in her deep brown eyes. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” He hedged, his claws curling over the tattered hilt of the sword at his hip.

“I’ll be fine,” Sango emphasized the last word. “Kirara is here to protect me, should I need it.”

The small neko mewed, her eyes glowing crimson assurance.

Inuyasha growled back at her, his eyes narrowed.

The small neko gave him a disdainful sniff, her twin tails lashing in thinly veiled irritation.

“What did you just say to her?” Sango demanded, now irritated with the brusque hanyou.

“Feh.” Inuyasha’s mouth quirked. “I only reminded her that she better protect the both of you, or else.”

“Inuyasha!” Sango protested the insult to her own abilities. The hanyou only rolled his eyes, fisting his arms into his sleeves and fixing her with a gimlet glare.

“Tell the Little Hentai goodbye for me, and tell him I’ll be back in a couple of weeks to check up on his stubborn goat of a mother.”

It was Sango’s turn to scowl. Inuyasha insisted on calling her darling little baby boy by that odious title. Never mind the goat insult, she wanted to smack him into oblivion. There were times, like now, that she wished she had Kagome’s ability to sit that damn mutt…

A flash of a fanged grin, and he gathered her stiff body to his for a quick, hard hug before vaulting up on the creaking roof of her chosen hut. Taking a striding leap, he vanished over the recently-repaired timbered palisade that surrounded the small village in protection. Sango glared after him before shrugging helplessly as Kirara grinned up at her.

Inuyasha, as usual, had just had the last word.

An angry cry behind her made Sango turn, all thoughts of the irritating hanyou fleeing before the needs of her son. Gathering him up in her arms, she soothed him. He smiled at her, babbling as he made a grab for the simple thong necklace she wore. The plain brass rings she had purloined from Miroku’s staff were one of his favorite toys.

He was teething, and liked the feel of the cool metal on his aching gums. Sango put him back in the small, oddly built “crib” Inuyasha had made from something Kagome had drawn out on paper. He fretted, unusual for such a happy babe, until she was able to loosen the knot on her simple, leather necklace and pull off a ring to give to him. He gurgled happily and promptly stuffed the metal ring as far into his mouth as he could manage, which was really not that far. He chomped and drooled and nibbled and drooled and smiled and drooled, and was happy as a clam with the simple ring to play with. Sango spent a few minutes ruffling the silky black strands of his dark head before the need to unpack her bags had her drawing away with a regretful sigh.

Inuyasha and Kagome, along with a few of the other villagers, had come and spent some time in her old village, once Sango had made known her intent was to eventually return to the home of her happy childhood. It was remote enough that most demons and daimyo would take little interest in it, and safe enough for her to raise her son in the ways that she wished. For he would be the heart of her clan someday, and she could not think of training him amidst any other surroundings except here, where the spirits of her forefathers might keep a protective eye on him.

Her friends had spent quite a bit of time while she recovered her strength in repairing the stout palisade that surrounded the village, in fixing up a few of the outbuildings for her use, and in furnishing the cot she had chosen, as well as the gardens that would supply her few needs. Kaede had given her seedlings, carefully wrapped and planted by Kagome in the late spring, mere weeks after Mikomi’s birth. The old priestess had known, even as Sango had not, that the slayer would want to return and raise her son there, in her own village, with her own people’s graves to surround her with both love and resolution.

Mikomi had become the most important thing in her life, and Sango was determined to raise him as best she could, in the best way she knew how. It might mean a bit of loneliness, but she had felt right in coming home, and between Inuyasha and Kirara, traveling back and forth between the demon slayer’s village and Kaede’s was not the long ordeal it normally would have been for the barefoot peasant.

Kirara mewed at her feet, rubbing her cheek across her ankle and wrapping her twin tails around her lower calf. Sango bent to scratch her sweet little friend behind her black-tipped ears. Her caressing fingers smoothed over the oddly-crossed, inky shape on the neko’s creamy forehead, and Kirara’s purr rumbled up in counterpoint to her repetitive motions.

“With you, Kirara, and little Mikomi, what else could I ever need?” Sango said with a soft smile. The youkai blinked up at her, her expression smug, and batted her leg with her twin tails before literally turning tail and stalking out the door, tails flagging lazily as she sauntered forth into the autumnal sunshine.

In a few weeks, Sango’s life had settled into a simple routine. Mikomi took up much of it, though he was eating some soft, solid foods now to supplement the milk he still suckled from her own breast. She had actually managed to rig her old blue shawl into a rough, if secure, baby sling as Kagome had suggested, so that she could carry him with both hands free to do whatever task she needed to. He was already trying to sit up, though he often rolled sideways, laughing as his mother laughed, enjoying the new game immensely. In next to no time, he would be crawling about and then she would be in for it, trying to keep up with the energetic little minx.

Gathering late herbs in the thick forest just outside the village, her baby soundly asleep in his sling at her side, Sango was surprised to find how much the shadows had lengthened around her. Putting a hand to her back, she straightened her spine as her father had taught her, one vertebrae at a time, and felt one of them pop with released tension. Stooping to gather her woven basket---which was somewhat heavy due to her copious labors---she called to Kirara.

The neko appeared in her larger form, a brace of rabbits dangling from her mouth. Her eyes glowed at the success of her hunt, and Sango smiled, thinking how tasty they would be, stewed with some of the herbs she had managed to collect. The neko kept pace with her slower tread. She had worked for far longer than she had realized, and she was glad to turn her weary steps toward home. The sky was a blaze of crimson glory, the puffy clouds that scuttled across the horizon touched with tints of vermillion and ocher. The sun was a fat drop of blood on the edge as it slowly descended. The moon, at three-quarters full, was a luminescent sphere gaining strength in the sky as it slowly rippled into the long, blue and purple shadows of twilight.

Mikomi awoke not long after she returned to their hut, and she fed him idly at the breast as she gutted and cleaned one of the wild rabbits Kirara had hunted up. The neko sat on the other side of the fire, still in her larger size, carefully licking her paws clean after having made a good meal of the other one. Sango cooked her own supper, leaving the rest to simmer overnight with a handful of rice to thicken into a good soup. Wild onions and tawny roots provided a satisfying repast with the skewered meat, and she offered Mikomi a taste of each. He made a face at the thin slice of onion she gave him, and gnawed on the small bits of rabbit, sucking the juice from them, but spitting out the rejected, dry chunks with fussy disdain. Sango laughed, and cleaned him up, changing his soiled swaddling cloths for new and draping a strange kimono Kagome had brought back from her time---a solid tee-shirt, as she called it, with fuzzy rabbits dancing across the front.

Mikomi was not pleased with the tee-shirt kimono, and fussed until she finally took it off of him. Happiest when naked, he sat in his cradle (which had become more of a convenient pen to keep him tucked in and out of the way), and babbled at her as he clanged two of his beloved rings together before ignoring one to put the other in his mouth.

Sango busied herself around the hut, tidying up the small space and sweeping out the thin layer of dust that always seemed to accumulate through the bamboo curtain strung across the doorway. The night was unusually warm for this time of year, and so she left the shutters off of the window, not even bothering to draw the netting that she used in spring and summer to keep the flying insects out. She could hear crickets singing in the darkness, and she felt a cozy sense of peace descend upon her as she took the time to separate the herbs she had gathered earlier, hanging some to dry in the back of her chest and bundling others to be pounded into various ointments, medicines and spices. She hummed softly under her breath as she worked, making Mikomi babble in his pen. Her voice was not flawless, but there was a clear, sweet tone to it that he liked to hear, smiling sleepily up at her before finally closing his eyes and settling down to sleep.

Sango banked the fire, kindling a single rush-light from the flames. The night was warm and still, so she actually pinned back the bamboo curtain to let a little more air in to pull out the smoke inside the hut from the banked coals. Kirara stretched her long form out before curling up to sleep, leaving Sango to work on her herbs in cozy silence as the mid-autumn night unfolded, her tiny hut a welcoming beacon in the darkness to weary souls who might wander on the long night of fall’s solstice.

She lost track of time in the simple act of pounding herbs. With pestle and mortar, she mashed and hummed beneath her breath the old songs her mother had taught her oh-so-very long ago. The memory didn’t hurt as it used to, and she was caught up in her own happy recollections of a warm and fairly care-free childhood…

A sudden chill in the air made her look up with uneasy surprise, the simple song dying on her lips as she shivered. She listened intently to the night, which had stilled into silence, even the crickets having fallen abruptly still. Kirara opened her eyes and raised her head. The neko blinked, whiskers twitching, before glancing back over her shoulder at Sango, who shrugged slightly.

Kirara yawned, stretched, and immediately tucked herself into a tight ball---or as tight a ball as her larger frame would allow her. Sango smiled at the large cat’s blatant unconcern, and shrugged her uneasiness aside. She heard the particular sounds of Mikomi waking, irritably wanting to be fed his late night meal. Wiping her hands on her simple green skirt, Sango hurried over to his pen, tugging at the ties to loosen her simple yukata as she did so.

Mikomi let out a thin cry, fussing for her to hurry. Picking him up in her arms, she cradled him to her, struggling with the knot that had formed on the last of her ties, made awkward with one hand. Impatient, her son let out a loud wail, fretting over how long she was taking about feeding him when he was positively starving. Sango cuddled him to her, making soothing sounds as the damn knot was finally freed so she could shrug one shoulder aside and bare her swollen breast.

Mikomi promptly latched on to her nipple with a glad cry, as if afraid she would hide it away again behind that offensive fabric that always got in his way. He clamped down on her breast with unexpected ferocity, for he had been very hungry, and the sharp pain made Sango wince and let out a startled gasp as he suckled fiercely.

Mikomi calmed down once he realized she was not about to take away his dinner, and she felt the familiar tug and strange, rushing sensation as her milk responded to her child’s demands. Cradling him to her breast, she made soothing circles along his back to relax him even more. A small fist came to curl along the curve of her breast, and he looked up at her, his eyes so brilliant and sparkling a blue with the forgotten tears of frustration adding tiny beads of light in the yellow-orange glow of the single rush-light.

She sat down on the raised dais that separated one side of the small hut from the other, tucking one foot under her and allowing the other to dangle freely over the edge. She softly kissed the top of his silky head, and sang softly to him, a mother’s lullaby she remembered from her own, as he blinked up at her, the soft bud of his mouth busy against her heavier breast, which had grown over the course of her pregnancy to accommodate his continual appetite.

Peace settled over her, and she smiled, her voice soft on the quiet warmth of the night…

It was the cry that had called to him, though he did not know why. He had walked this path before, though he did not know the why of that, either. Tonight, of all nights, the veils between the living world and the next were thinned, and his restless wandering had taken him through the misty veil that separated the two, until his feet had slipped over the grass and graveled paths with easy familiarity.

Her light had drawn him, a warmth in the darkness he had come to expect from this abandoned village, where no ghosts stirred but he. There should have been more like him, there were enough graves to tell tales of tragedy in the not-so-distant past, but they were quiescent, the ones buried therein at peace.

Unlike him, who could never be truly at peace, for he felt vaguely that something had been left unfinished in this, the living world now denied him, and he wandered idly on the nights when he could, when the veils thinned at each of the seasonal solstices, and he could slip through the misty veils at his choosing.

His feet made no impression on the ground, though he could feel it solid beneath him. Everything felt solid and real to him, though he knew from experience that the living beings of this world would not feel him or even see him unless he so chose. Sometimes, he liked to play tricks on the living, driving them mad with his teasing, but tonight he felt oddly apprehensive, his spirit restless.

*Something left undone…*

The thought plagued him, ever driving him to wander, and somehow, his restless soul felt comforted by the small, flickering glow in the distance. He was drawn to it as a moth to flame, but ignored the uneasy prickle of warning that crept down his spine. The physical things of this world could not hurt him, unless he should stumble across something more supernatural or demonic, like a gaki---a demon who lived off of the souls of others---and they would have to be far stronger of will than he, if they were ever so stupid as to actually try and attack him.

The thin cry of a fretful child had made him pause as something within him answered it, recognizing it as something important to him. Curiosity piqued by the unusual stirring, he had quickened his pace in time to see a young woman, her creamy skin shadowed by the oil’s light to a dusky, flickering peach as the rush-lamp behind her sputtered in the faint chill of his approach.

He watched in silent fascination as she picked up the child, and cradled him against her. One hand was busy at her yukata, the babe fussing at her to hurry up. She finally managed to loosen the constrictive fabric, and shrugged it down off of her shoulder to expose a breast. He admired the smooth expanse of her skin thus exposed, until she shifted the babe and winced as he clamped down on her nipple, a soft gasp of surprise escaping her lips.

And that was when he recognized her.

That gasp was all too familiar. It whispered to him of a balmy night in midsummer, when he had come across a young peasant-woman lying naked and just abandoned by her casual lover beneath the intertwining fir trees of a remote forest. A forest that had crept below the distant, rocky heights of now-rubbled Mount Hakurei…

He had been resurrected back into life with the gift of a Jewel shard, him and his brothers, and he had been heady with it, exhilarating in living once more with no worries save following his own idle inclination and in taking down the oni’s enemies, the Jewel shard a good exchange for what should have been an easy task.

He had taken advantage of the delightful opportunity presented him that night, and had lain with the girl, who had thought perhaps that he was but her returned lover, for she kept calling him by strange titles and names, and welcomed him with little restraint. He remembered her, for she had been particularly memorial, her body responding so freely to his, but he had soon forgotten her as other things distracted him, the news of two of his brothers’ deaths coming as a hard blow to him on the next morning’s dawn. He had thought of her, occasionally, with a fond smile that he would have felt for any beautiful woman who had caught his passing fancy, but then he had become more and more absorbed with the problems of taking out that damn hanyou and his pesky little band of misfit followers---who had proved more difficult to kill than he could have ever expected.

He had been a bit taken aback to learn that she, his enchanting little tennyo in the woods on the whimsical night of a midsummer’s fancy, had been one of the inu-gumi. She was a taijiya, a demon slayer, and he had learned that it was her brother, Kohaku, who he had teasingly called ninja and who had been a rather strange messenger for their benefactor, Naraku. He had idly taken note of her before, even thought that she was perhaps a bit too beautiful to be very effective as a true warrior. He had thought that the others merely humored her strange whims, as he had humored Jakotsu and his strange penchant for wearing women‘s kimono. He had seen stranger things than that in his time, and why should he begrudge any other what they might want to do? So long as they never interfered with what he wanted…

He had always been distracted by that infuriating hanyou, and his eagerness to take on the dog-eared braggart and make him eat his brash words on the sharp edge of his beloved Banryuu. He had paid little attention to her until that day on the island, when that other girl---passably pretty in her own way but no match for the studied grace of the taijiya---Kagome, had wounded him in the arm with her miko arrow of purification.

He had almost managed to take down that aggravating half-dog. He was about to strike the hanyou a final blow when she, the taijiya, had abruptly interfered. She had thrown her giant, bone boomerang between them with a careless maneuver that had surprised the shit out of him. He had seen her by then in action, and knew that she was deadly accurate with that strange weapon of hers. Why she had spared him, when she could have at least knocked him aside for a moment or two, had caused him to stare at her in utter astonishment as the dust had slowly cleared. He had recognized her then, recognized her as his little wood-nymph, and she had flushed, in knowing and shame, for they were enemies.

Her shame had infuriated him, for some strange reason. He had not liked finding out that she was his enemy. He had not liked finding out that she was one of the ones he had been contracted to kill…

But he had not killed her, or any of them, for that matter. It should have pissed him off, that none of them had suffered anything more than passing wounds, when all of he and his lay dead, but none of that shit hardly mattered anymore. Naraku was dead, as he was dead, and the living world went on as if they had never even existed within it. His brothers’ spirits did not wander as he did. He was uncertain what, exactly, had happened to all of them. He knew Jakotsu, at least, now lay in eternal peace, for his loyal friend had come to him once, not long after his own second death, and told him that his troubled soul had found it, and that he should, as well.

But Bankotsu could not find peace, for there was something that continually nagged at him, something left yet undone. He had once believed in nothing, that the living world was the only world, and he slept away the first ten years of death---of his first death, not his second---in oblivion of what lay beyond. He now knew of the next world, knew it familiarly, and knew that his restless soul might have finally found peace if he had but allowed it. But he was not done with this world yet, there was that which called to him, making him wonder and wander, and maybe, just maybe, he had just found the reason why…

He watched her silently as she seated herself, cradling the child to her breast. The round head, dark of hair, perfectly matched the roundness of her hidden breast and the rush-light behind them had lent an almost ethereal glow around the homey scene. His heart ached suddenly, for something he could not name, and irritation made his eyes glow. Why the hell was he wasting what little time granted him on this night in watching her? She had been but a passing fancy, an unexpected opportunity he could not resist on a night more than a year gone…

Her soft voice came to him then, singing a silly little lullaby to her child, who clutched her breast with greedy intent before she casually switched him to the other. The babe now lay facing him, and the little bugger was nothing special, fat and round and full of plump little wrinkles with a cap full of silky black hair and bright cobalt eyes that blinked sleepily up at his mother, who continued to croon to him as if it might help to relax the brat.

His gaze kept resting on the child, however, and he felt strung as tight as a bow as he stared at those too-blue eyes---eyes that were all too familiar to him, for they had stared back at him every single day of his life, whenever he had happened to look into the shiny reflection of his beloved Banryuu and found them there, squinting back at him.

It was impossible. The babe couldn’t be more than six months old---he had been dead for over a year. He suddenly reckoned up the passing months, as he had not before, and realized with a start that it could very well be true, impossible and improbable as it was…

His son. She held his son. His son.

Dawning realization held him enthralled, as he finally comprehended what it was, exactly, that he had left undone on this earth. It was his son who called to him, who kept him from seeking the peace of the grave. It was she who had given him such an unexpected gift, and he was suddenly furious at the thought that his son was left to this harsh world with nothing and no one but a haunting ghost who was filled with aching awareness that there was not much he could do to protect the only thing on this earth that he could claim to be part of him. His son…his son…

He remembered, suddenly, the casual promise he had made her, there in the darkness of a midsummer’s night, as if he had actually meant to keep it. He had, perhaps, meant to keep it---at least, at that time, and in the heat of the moment---though he had forgotten all about it later, believing there was no way their paths would ever cross again. He had thought of it with disgruntlement when he had learned just who she was---taijiya, and enemy---and had thought with irritation that it might be, perhaps, the first promise he had never kept.

“I will return, one day. I promise…”

Casual words, empty words made in the quiet darkness of the night. He rather thought the gods of fate must be laughing at him right now, caught in his own trap. For he was a ghost, a restless spirit who wandered the night seeking that which would make him whole…

Though perhaps he had just found it.

*My son.*

He continued to watch them, as the babe finally fell asleep and the woman shrugged her simple yukata back into place. She wrapped the child in warm blankets before laying him carefully on her own sleeping pallet. He watched as she then went to the bamboo curtain to hook it back into place, though she left the shutters off of the slatted windows, the night warm enough to do without, and bent down to scratch at the large neko that draped itself so casually beneath one window.

He watched, blue eyes glowing faintly, as she undressed herself, pulling the simple garments from her and casually draping them across a small stool to one side of the banked fire. Blowing out the rush-light, she casually stretched, her body glowing in an umber outline of shadowed darkness, backlit by the banked embers of her fire. Her breasts rose as she arched her spine, her arms held up above her head in an unconsciously erotic pose that had him remembering other aspects of a distant midsummer’s night, and his groin tightened in healthy response to the alluring memories. He grimaced, all too aware that there was not much he could do about it. There were not many handy female specters hanging about who might be interested in sharing sex with a handsome, unattached male ghost. Female specters who wandered the earth were usually too caught up in their own despair, weeping and sniffling and driving him insane with their mournful moans, their unceasing complaints or their cringing regret…

Having stretched herself to his distracted annoyance, she was quick to cover her lithe frame with a simple white yukata that did little to hide her generous breasts as the firelight turned the thin, cotton fabric to a gauzy whisper. She knelt and disappeared from the window frame as she lay herself down beside his son to sleep.

Bankotsu would have crept closer---perhaps even dared to step inside the darkened hut where his son and the taijiya lay sleeping---but a sudden shiver of the bamboo curtain gave him pause. The neko youkai, her red eyes glowing, shoved her head through the woven reeds to bare an impressive row of fangs at him in silent warning. She had known all along that he was there. Cats of all kinds had eyes to see the truth that lay beyond the obvious, and neko youkai particularly so. She had not cared if he had stood and watched, but she would never allow him to enter her home.

Bankotsu scowled at the cat, who wrinkled her nose at him in disdain, a faint whisper of a growl showing her determination to bar his way and keep him out. The neko did not wish to rouse her human companions, though, for so little did she think him a threat, and was content to let him wander as he will on this special night, when spirits were able to walk unhindered between the worlds.

*He’s my son.* He said stubbornly, for the neko’s benefit and his own. He could not speak, he had no voice left him to speak, but the cat fully understood him, for she bared her fangs again, the growl slightly louder.

*You would keep me away from him?* He demanded, pissed as all hell and knowing there was not much he could do about it. He wished furiously for his lost Banryuu. He could have taken that damn cat’s head off with one casual swipe of the giant halberd.

His fury lent a glow to his physical manifestation, highlighting him in a ghostly, flickering aura of pale blue and ethereally white light. His blue eyes burned, as did the strange, lavender tattoo that graced his forehead above the hard, cobalt gaze.

The neko’s eyes glowed as well, in bloody promise, the crossed black markings on her own forehead flaring with a pallid strength. Bankotsu was surprised to see his own symbol on the great cat’s fur, and the ghostly anger slowly died as he contemplated the meaning of it.

:It is not yet time…:

The voice was strange, somehow in his head and yet coming from all around him at the same time, as if a deeper voice spoke to him across the veiled planes of this reality and into his own subconscious. It was not the neko, who still silently snarled at him, and not any other that he could see.

*Time for what?* He demanded irritably to that unknown voice that echoed all around him in mellow tones of irrefutability.

:It is not yet time for you to return...not yet time for you to keep your promise…not yet time for you to accept your fate…not yet time for you to learn to live again…not yet time for you to learn to love again…not yet time for you to---:

*I heard you the first time, damn it!* He snarled to that incessantly droning and increasingly aggravating voice, and it abruptly disappeared, leaving him alone with the cat who watched him with bloody eyes.

*FINE!* He withdrew with ill grace, the fury tightening his shoulders and stiffening his spine in stubborn denial and grim determination as the misty veils between this world and the next slowly enfolded him in growing obscurity, calling his spirit back from this world to his. *Damn you…damn you all…I will return…when it is time, I will return…that I promise…*

And then all was silence, as the ghostly presence withdrew, and the neko’s faint growl rumbled uneasily in the back of her throat. For Kirara believed him.

He would return, one day. And the neko knew not what then her mistress would do, for he would come to claim his son, his own…