InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Cobalt Skies and Too Blue Eyes ❯ Interval One: Hinode ( Chapter 4 )

[ 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

Hinode - sunrise

A/N: It’s been awhile. Thanks for your patience. This chapter is not truly a chapter, but an interval between the main ones, as the plot and certain scenes were too enticing for me not to explore. (Fate)

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

INTERVAL I (HINODE)

Had it been a dream?

Sango stirred, her eyes blearily trying to focus. She was huddled deep in a pile of blankets, which must have bunched at her waist, for there was weight there. She was curled on her side, Mikomi in her arms. He was awake, his blue eyes crinkling up at the corners as he saw that she was, too. A fist waved at her, and his little legs kicked against her encircling arm. She touched his cheek, smiling softly, happy for the moment to just lie there in the lazy warmth.

Something moved behind her. Kirara? Perhaps the neko had decided to share their pallet in her larger form. She was a firm weight of warmth at her back, and Sango turned her head to smile in grateful thanks, only to stare down at the blankets in shock.

A strong arm, a man’s arm, was circling her waist. Following the arm---the tanned, firmly muscled arm---she blinked at the wide shoulder attached to it, at the slight glimpse of an angular, stubborn jaw, a rather nicely-shaped ear, and a tumble of wavy black bangs all flowing together to make her tense right up and shriek.

Except her shriek came out as more of an ‘eep,’ which did nothing but make Mikomi giggle.

And shriek. “GHA!”

That woke the man up, with a swiftness that made Sango more than a bit suspicious. Only the rigorously-trained ever developed instincts like that---and only the hunted slept with a knife under their pillow, and ready in their fist as they crouched, wild-eyed, over her.

“Gha-gah!” Mikomi greeted the blue-eyed man with a happy smile of recognition, frantically waving his fists at him in his ‘pick me up’ gesture.

Sango had been rigorously trained. Sango had been hunted. She could be just as fast, if she wanted, and could be just as quickly armed---if the damn thief hadn’t had her knife in his hand, the one she kept under her pillow.

Still, it wasn’t that hard to pluck it out of his fist. Which she did with the right even as she scooped Mikomi up in her left and slid into a controlled dive out from under the blankets, a glare in her eye and more than a few demands on her tongue. First things first, though. She snarled, “Just who the hell are you?”

He seemed more than a bit surprised to have her awake and glaring at him, the knife abruptly pulled from his hand and now aimed at his gut. He blinked at her, his blue eyes dark as cobalt in an evening sky. “Ah…”

He seemed at a loss for words. Sango didn’t have that problem.

“I want answers, stranger, right now.” Her voice could be hard as steel when she wanted. Mikomi didn’t like it much. He stiffened in the protective circle of her arm, his little fists banging on her tightened hold as he let out a loud wail of discontent.

“Eh…” The man scratched the back of his neck, uncertain where to start. The mussed tangles of inky hair ended in a long, loosened braid that lay down his shoulder and back.

“I know you,” Sango said, her eyes narrowed in a frown. She ignored Mikomi, who continued to howl and wiggle, his arms reaching out for the man. Sango glanced down at her son with a scowl. “What did you do to my s---”

She abruptly fell silent, having just realized that he had done something rather more important with her clothing, for she wasn’t wearing any.

The strange man straightened slowly yo from his crouch, his hands held palms-open and away from his tanned, muscular frame to show that he didn’t mean her any harm. He wasn’t wearing anything, either.

A furious flush rose to stain the taijiya’s skin. Hauling her son so that he covered her exposed breasts, she started backing away from the crazy hentai just as Kirara hopped out of the rumpled pile of abandoned blankets, mewing her displeasure.

Mikomi wailed in full agreement as Sango retreated to the other side of the hut, her eyes wide with unspoken fear. “Who are you? What the hell did you do to us?”

“What the hell do you mean, what did I do to you?” The man’s blue eyes were glittering with outrage, his fists on his hips as he glared back at her, blithely unconcerned with his nakedness.

Kirara mewed in a dainty demand for her attention. Sango glared at the neko in agitated distraction, and watched in bewilderment as the small neko deliberately twined herself about the man’s ankles, her tails trailing as she wound a figure-eight between his legs.

The man scowled down at his feet with irritation. “Stupid cat.”

Sitting back on her haunches between his legs, her point made, Kirara only purred.

“Kirara? What---I don’t understand.” Sango was confused by the neko’s trusting behavior, but she let the knife drop a few inches from its aggressive position in her white-knuckled hand.

“Gha-gah! Gha-gah!” Mikomi sniffled into the sudden silence, his arms waving frantically as he reached out for the black-haired man, who studied Sango’s wary stance with a shake of his head and a sudden gamine grin that lit up his blue eyes with a gleam.

“You look a little cold, taijiya. You should cover up.” He flashed her a toothy grin, folding his arms across his chest and casually leaning against the wall behind him. “Not that I mind the view…”

Sango looked down at herself, and saw that her nipples had pebbled in the faint chill coming up from the wooden floor away from the central hearth. Flushing with angry embarrassment, she snapped back over Mikomi’s growing distress, “It might help if you told me what you did with my clothes, hentai!”

“Hentai, huh?” Another grin flashed her way as he casually tugged a white kimono off of the peg beside him and tossed it in her direction. Sango was quick to catch it out of the air across her bent elbow, keeping the knife still in hand, though his next pointed stab made her flush with fury. “I’m not the first hentai you’ve known, slayer.”

He said it was such biting bitterness, his blue eyes dark and hard as he casually pulled a pair of white hakama off the same peg he had pulled the kimono he’d tossed her way.

There was a flash of raw pain in Sango’s eyes, and she whispered, “How dare you.”

“Cover up, taijiya. We need to talk.” The man looked tired. His mouth quirked up in one corner with sardonic derision as Sango shook with suppressed fury. Slamming the knife into the wall within close reach, Sango shrugged into the white and blue kimono, which draped too wide across her arms and shoulders, the bottom coming only to her knees. It must be his haori, then, and not one of her own kimono. That fact made her even more furious, and she tried to soothe her fretful son with short patience that did not fool Mikomi in the least. He bawled, his face going red, as she tried to jiggle him on her hip, her lips a thin, white line as she tried to force her anger down so she could comfort her son.

“Gods, woman. I don’t know how you think you‘re going to quiet him down like that.” The man strode across the room, tugging the white hakama up his narrow hips as he reached for her son.

Sango hissed, whirling away from him and pulling the knife free from the wall behind her with a single, fluid motion. “Back away from my son, ass hole.”

He stopped, scowling, as she tightened her hand on the bared blade and Mikomi howled.

“You can’t keep him from me, woman. He’s my son.” He growled, eyes dark with a fury growing as great as her own.

Sango froze, her brown eyes wide as sudden comprehension smacked her in the face. “Bankotsu.”

“Huh. Glad you finally recognized me, slayer.” He crossed his arms again, smirking sardonically as she trembled in growing agitation.

“No. It can’t be.” She backed away from him, blindly retreating from a truth too painful for her to deny. *Oh, gods---Miroku! No…gods, please, no…it can’t be true…oh, gods…Miroku!*

“How…” Her voice broke on a sudden sob, her eyes closing as she clutched her sniffling son to her chest.

“How?” He raised a black brow at her direction, though there was a flash of pain in his eyes that she did not see.

“Oh, gods. Why?” Sango sank to her knees on the floor, the knife clattering forgotten from her hand. She buried her head against her son’s, rocked by the pain of bitter truth. Mikomi did not know why she held him so tightly, or why his mother was shuddering with suppressed sobs as the tears ran silently down her cheeks and fell onto his little head with a baptism of raw pain and deep regret.

Ice clutched the mercenary’s heart, and his cobalt eyes were hard with denied emotion as he ignored his own pain to suppress hers. His voice was flat, without emotion, as he said, “Don’t blame yourself for what is, woman. You’ll weaken yourself, and lose what little strength you’ve gained since the storm.”

Sango shook her head, trying to ignore him, and his intrusion into a broken reality she did not want to face. It was Mikomi, however, who once again drew her from her apathy, choking as he was on his own dismayed sobs. With slow motions, her eyes dull, she slowly stood, feeling as if she was wading through glue and standing outside herself as she once again faced the man of her cringing nightmares.

He was as vibrant and hard as ever, his strength worn with a careless arrogance that could still make her shiver in tensed reserve, for he had the careless grace of the waiting predator. He was like a stalking panther, one barely hidden by a boyishly charming manner that had disarmed many a lesser foe who underestimated the predator lying in wait beneath that cocky little smile. He wasn’t smiling now---in fact, his usually mobile face was closed, his expression stiff as he held out his arms for his son.

His son.

Sango trembled, wondering how she might not let him claim Mikomi. Maybe if she were to deny the truth, than perhaps, perhaps it might just go away…

But Mikomi was smiling now, his hands waving in delight as he sniffled. “Gha-gah!”

Her heart felt as heavy as a stone as Sango numbly handed him the child, knowing that she was abandoning Miroku for the truth of what was. Her hands shook, and she felt oddly empty as Bankotsu cradled her son to him with casual familiarity, his eyes, so much like Mikomi’s own, softening a bit as he poked the fat little belly to make the boy giggle.

“C’mon, brat. You smell like you need a changing.” Bankotsu actually made a face at the baby, who cooed and laughed and waved his little fists. Sango sank woodenly to a nearby stool as she silently watched the callous mercenary who had killed over a thousand demons and a thousand men now used those same hands to change her son’s clout for another, the movements deft and assured. She felt separated from reality, her mind numb and stupid.

Kirara meowed at her feet, jumping up on the taijiya’s lap when she didn’t respond fast enough. Purring loudly to reassure the troubled woman, the neko kneaded her lap, her claws digging a little too deep through the light silk of Bankotsu’s haori and making Sango start in surprise at the decided prick against her thighs.

Bankotsu heard her gasp, and his mouth quirked up in one corner as he wrapped Mikomi up in a small, light-blue kimono with practiced ease. “You’ve been out of it for a while, taijiya.”

Sango blinked, her fingers absently combing through Kirara’s fur as the neko settled into her lap. She had to swallow the dryness from her throat as she stumbled out hoarsely, “Wha-What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s been four days since I found you passed out in the snow.” He tickled a foot, and Mikomi squealed with delight.

“Four…” Sango could only blink, her mind too numbed with too many surprises. “You…you found me?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t elaborate, though the little neko turned an unblinkingly red-eyed stare his way.

“H-How?” She whispered, a wealth of unasked questions in that single phrase.

He shrugged, not wanting to elaborate on that either. One minute, he’d been cursing the gods with his inability to do anything to help her, and the next his curses had been answered, and he’d been sinking up to his ass in the snow. With a convulsive shudder, he picked the boy up and turned a blue stare on her as bland as Kirara’s.

“Hungry? There’s some bad miso I made up last night, or I can boil an egg over rice. I can’t fuck that dish up too much.”

Sango didn’t know what to say, so she only stared at him. He’d been here, what, four days? Four whole days to become intimately familiar with the small, tidy hut and where everything was kept. Four whole days to have learned how to care for her son---if he didn’t already know how, for she knew nothing of him, whether he came from a big family or whether he had ever had the tending of children---and have to care for her. She trembled at the thought, for there was many things a person had to do in four days of somnolence…

“I hope you have more food stored up somewhere, because we’ve gone through most of what’s here in the house.” His voice grew muffled as he bent over the woodpile, dragging up two logs under one arm as if they weighed nothing, Mikomi casually perched on his other hip.

“Uh…yes. I have additional provisions in the store-house across the way, where the wood is kept.” Sango said with some distraction, watching her son as he gah-gha’ed and smacked his fists into the mercenary’s taut stomach. Muscles ripples across the broad chest, his right arm and shoulder tightening as he dropped the wood with little ceremony beside the banked coals of the hearth.

“What stupidity made you store everything there when blizzards are dropping six feet of snow or more on the village?” His voice was caustic as he shoved tinder in the pit, coaxing the embers to catch and grow.

Sango stiffened at the accusation in his tone, and she snapped, “The snow is unusual for this area.”

Mikomi made a noise of distress at her sharp tone, and Bankotsu cocked a blue eye at her from over his shoulder in mordant appraisal. The mercenary’s eyes were slightly slanted, an almost almond tilt to them---something Sango had noted and dismissed in her son, anxious to see more of her beloved houshi in the child’s round face.

It was yet another heart-stabbing testament that Mikomi was not Miroku’s son, but Bankotsu’s. She dropped her eyes from his, her hands buried in Kirara’s fur as she closed her eyes.

Mikomi continued to fret as Bankotsu made quick work of the fire, swinging a pot of drowning rice to boil over the central tripod arrangement. Her son’s particular cries drew Sango back and she slipped from the stool with weary exhaustion, Kirara jumping from her lap with a lash of her twin tails.

“He’s hungry.” She said, holding her arms out as Bankotsu looked up at her from under an inky crop of tousled tangles. His single braid, silky wisps slithering from the loosened twine, hung down his back to his haunches where he crouched beside the hearth. Mikomi let out a glad cry of recognition, waving his arms at her.

With a quirk of his hard lips, a look Sango was becoming too familiar with, he handed the fussy kid over. Cradling her son, Sango walked with great dignity to the other side of the small hut. Climbing the dais, she sank to the abandoned pile of blankets on her pallet and deliberately turned her back on the mercenary. Dragging a blanket around her shoulders, she loosened the white haori just enough to slip her hungry son to the breast. She sighed as Mikomi settled down to business, and kept her head bowed over her son, silent tears creeping down her cheeks where the mercenary could not see and mock her for them.

Bankotsu watched her, his eyes dark, the pain there for him too, for she had done it again. She was ashamed of him, that he was the father of her son and not that perverted baka of a Buddhist monk. He remember too well that flush of shame on her cheeks, that start of pain in her deep brown eyes. He hated it, and for a moment, he hated her for even feeling it, though he hated himself more for the causing of it.

Still, the woman had to face reality, no matter what pain it caused her. Bankostu had always been one to deal with reality as it was, no matter how grim. He was never one to waste much time on yearning after something he could not have, but he had a sudden wish that that taijiya had never met that stupid monk, that she had never been a member of the inu-gumi, that she had been the simple peasant-wench he’d taken her for that night in the forest, that she might be free of her regret and her pain that it was he who was little Mikomi’s father and not that fucking pervert…

Might as well wish for the moon, or for rice to boil faster in a pot watched too impatiently, or too intently, for he didn’t want to look at her bowed form, hiding herself from him as if she could pretend he was not there and turn her back on the truth.

He stirred the rice with a savage hand, causing water to slosh over the side of the pot to land in the fire, which protested with hissing complaint. The small sounds his son made while nursing were not soothing as they had been before, mainly because it signified her pointed withdrawal from him. Why the hell he even cared what she thought or felt about him, when what was truly important---or should be---was his son, and only his son, had Bankotsu’s jaw hardening in stubborn anger. He had hoped---what? That she would welcome him with open arms, glad that he had saved her, that he was a living man once more? That she might be able to embrace him, a stranger, and an enemy, and welcome him into her home and heart with no qualm or question?

He was a bigger fool than he had ever known to have believed any of that might have been remotely possible. His mouth quirked in self-derision, an expression he was wearing far too often of late. Damn it all to fucking hell.

His son was what was important, here, not him, not her, and not what might have been if they had been other than who they were. Mikomi was the one who had drawn him back---or so he told himself, that it had been his son, not her, who called him through the barriers that divided this world from that of the dead---and it was Mikomi who truly needed him, not her.

Very well. Then he would do what he must, for Mikomi’s sake, and damned be her if she tried to stop him...