InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Cobalt Skies and Too Blue Eyes ❯ Interval Three: Hinoiri ( Chapter 6 )

[ 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

Hinoiri - sunset

A/N: I have always loved the saying, “Never let the sun go down on your anger.” It was what sparked this “interval” section of the story, and the various titles for these three “chapters.” One of my favorite aspects of Sango and Bankotsu’s relationship is that they are both fighters, and can be rather opinionated and strong-willed (not to mention stubborn!) about it. Mule, anyone? LOL. (Fate)

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

INTERVAL III (HINOIRI)

The winter was a hard one, for all of them. Snow continued to bury the lonely village for the next two months. The woodpile which had seemed so large to Sango at winter’s start had dwindled so much that Bankotsu finally took the small axe out and chopped down more. She was grateful, then, to have him, for she didn’t know if she would have had the strength to do it. She barely had the strength to do the minor tasks around the hut and tend Mikomi over those months, for the cough and chills and fevers would strike her off and on, though they were never as fierce as those first few times.

Mikomi suffered a cold now and then, grew fussy with his emerging teeth, and once took a tummy ache that made his howl for days as his clouts came away loose and full. Bankotsu remained disgustingly healthy and took everything in stride with a surprising show of stoicism. Sango would never have believed such a brat of a man would ever have the patience to endure taking care of a sick child, let alone a sick woman, but the man’s stolid strength continued to startle her.

She didn’t like him, she couldn’t let herself. He had betrayed her memory and love for Miroku---though that wasn’t completely true, for it had been she as well who had betrayed the houshi. She should have known, damn it, and done something, anything, to stop it all from even happening that midsummer‘s night…

She couldn’t think about it---that way lay stinging tears and burning eyes and a deep aching in her chest as her heart tightened in knowledge at the betrayal of her dearest love. She ignored it, as she had learned to ignore much, for Bankotsu’s presence was so overwhelming, so damn compelling, and she couldn’t allow herself to think along those lines either, for heartache lay there too, and betrayal anew of the houshi’s memory.

Miroku deserved that much from her, at least.

She buried her mixed up feelings in Mikomi, whom she could love without regret or worrying about betraying Miroku’s ghost, because he was himself, his sweet little self. He was a holy terror now that he was crawling, and getting into everything not nailed down or up out of his reach. He was quick, too, and she had had to snatch him up once or twice from nearly tumbling head-first into the fire. Her heart had been in her mouth both times, and he had cried because she had held him so tightly to her, the fear etching icy images too horrible to contemplate on her mind’s eye.

Bankotsu had been rather nonchalant about it. “Kids bounce,” he said, airily dismissing her fright. Sango wanted to shout that he was an idiot, that Mikomi could have hurt himself badly, or even been killed, but she kept her anger tightly lidded, not wishing to break the fragile peace that had settled between them. It was as thin as an eggshell, and Bankotsu seemed less and less to care if he stepped all over it, the jerk. They were closed up in this one tiny hut, and for Mikomi’s sake, she must keep the peace with his insensitive boor of a father.

Even if it killed her.

“You coddle him too much,” Bankotsu had gone on to criticize. Her eyes had blazed, her lips thinning. “How can he ever grow up to become a man if you baby him so damn much?”

*A man like you?* She wanted to snap at him, the unfeeling clod. She kept silent, and coddled her son with marked disdain. Wiping Mikomi’s tears with the edge of her sleeve, she turned her back on the jerk, and soothed her son and her own frayed nerves in the doing.

Her own weakness often betrayed her, and she hated it, and the helplessness of it. He was often there without comment to take over a task she was too weary to finish, or to casually pick her up like he would little Mikomi when she stumbled. She was constantly pushing her strength to the limits, hating every damn minute of weakness. She was a warrior, damn it, a taijiya, and she didn’t need a man to do what she had always done.

Except she did. Damn it all, anyway!

Worse than her continual lethargy was the dry cough that would start out as a little tickle and then erupt into shivering chills or sweaty fevers. She hated that most of all, and worried when the illness would not abate. She must have been far weaker than she thought, and kami knew she had never gained back the weight she had lost from those first few times when she had been wracked by violent fevers and too close to death. Bankotsu’s silence on the matter got on her nerves, and he had come to know her so well that he could tell at a glance if she was growing light-headed and if that stupid cough was getting worse. He would eye her then, and she would glare at him, but neither would say anything, not wanting to give quarter and break the fragile peace established between them because of their enforced proximity. It always ended the same way, anyway---her flat on her back too weak to move and he caring for her in ways too intimate for her not to want to die in shame over.

She knew that he slept with them on her pallet when she was too sick to protest it. She said nothing, pretending not to know even as he pretended not to know she knew. He would silently wrap himself by the fire on the nights she wasn’t taken with fever, and she never voiced the lonely, abandoned feeling she had when he did. The pallet felt empty without his warmth at her back, and she felt that that was a worse betrayal of Miroku’s memory than any other…

The winter eventually spent itself, and her energy slowly returned. The dry cough that had continually haunted her finally withdrew altogether, and she no longer succumbed to the weary resignation the continual fevers had produced. She still tired easily, and her appetite remained low. Bankotsu was always nagging her to eat more, and now that she was doing the cooking, she was actually able to choke more down just to keep the uneasy peace between them. He wasn’t trying all that hard, though, to keep that peace, and her nerves were getting more frayed each passing day. He seemed to know just how to press her buttons, and he stomped all over her stiff pride with the callousness of a trampling bear youkai.

She sometimes wondered if it might be deliberate---his goading. He watched her sometimes, with a measuring expression in those twilit blue eyes---though it would abruptly vanish if she stared back or raised a questioning brow. He was cool then, pretending not to notice anything was amiss, as she pretended nothing was wrong either.

They had gotten rather good at that.

Except now he seemed not to care. Maybe it was being confined too long and too closely in the same small space. Maybe it was two strong personalities carefully trying not to get on one another’s nerves. Maybe it was the fact that they saw only each other, and Mikomi, day in and day out. Mikomi was a delight, to be sure, but he could only distract them so much. Sango even started resenting it when Bankotsu usurped the boy’s attention, though she also felt it was good that the mercenary showed so much caring for the boy. She found herself actually softening toward the man, for she could see that he loved Mikomi as much as she, and she felt oddly left out when father and son ignored her for each other.

She felt as if that were a betrayal of Miroku as well, and hardened her treacherous heart. She would learn to get along with Bankotsu because she had to. Mikomi needed his father in his life; it would be too cruel for her to deny her son that love. She treasured the memory of her father, and was actually glad that Mikomi would have that same relationship as well. She would endure the mercenary for her son’s sake, and none other.

Except---she still missed him at night. Keenly. And that knowledge hurt and rested heavily on her heart. She was such a hypocrite. Miroku had loved her, had sacrificed his life to end the nightmare of Naraku, and she had betrayed him in every way possible. She was such a traitor to that love, for she sometimes caught herself looking at the mercenary as a woman looks at a man---with desire---and she would burn with shame for it, and deliberately try to ignore the blue-eyed devil who could turn her idle thoughts so easily.

It wasn’t his fault. True, he was rather nonchalant about revealing his body. He seemed to revel in his nakedness as much as Mikomi, and flaunted his muscles too damn much. He never felt the need to wear a shirt, claiming the fire kept warm for her cough made him too hot. He was as finicky as she in keeping himself clean, and never bothered with hauling the wash tub behind the blanket hung up around the chamber pot in the corner as she carefully did. Not that he hadn’t seen her naked, too much so, actually, for her relative peace of mind. But still! The man could at least have the decency to bathe himself in some kind of privacy, scant as it was!

He had caught her looking at him, and sometimes she wondered if he deliberately flaunted himself before her, though that would be ludicrous. He had no interest in her, only her son---he had made that abundantly clear. There was tension between them, of course, for they were confined to a small space for too long. He was a healthy man in the prime of life, and she had never been truly alone before with a strong, disgustingly healthy male before. She had spent time with Inuyasha and Miroku, of course, but even then there had been others---Shippou and Kagome, her brother or old Kaede. Even when she had been with Miroku it had been for such short, sweet moments stolen from time on the journey, and not days-on-end close and uncomfortably intimate proximity.

She was careful to maintain the distance between them, and so had he---at least, he had before. Now he seemed to mock her for it, and when she deliberately turned away, he grew angry for some reason, and lashed out with a hard comment or deliberate goad.

Just yesterday she had found herself staring as Bankotsu bent over the fire, laying kindling to bring up the waning embers. The muscles had rippled along his back and shoulders, for he was bare to the waist as usual, and the long cords in his arms had stood out as he caught a small log that slipped from his grasp. His hands were quick, the fingers long and calloused. She had felt her breath catch and he must have heard her, for he turned his head sharply to look at her. She had flushed in embarrassment and turned away, deliberately picking up a pile of mending she had already sorted.

His eyes had flashed, and he smirked. She tried to act innocent, and inquired mildly, “Yes?”

“Heh.” He went back to building up the fire, and then sat back on his butt, his arms braced behind him as he bent his knees, feet flat on the floor. Deliberately stretching like a cat, he popped a bone in his spine and loosened the tension from his wide shoulders with a few rolling shrugs. Sango pretended not to notice, setting herself down on the side of the dais and carefully threading a needle. The damn thread kept slipping through her sweaty fingers, though, and she felt flushed and hot all over. Scowling at the stupid needle, she bit her lip and tried to concentrate.

She almost shrieked when his face loomed into hers, and he plucked both needle and thread from her hands. “You’re doing that all wrong,” he growled, and licked the end of her thread with his tongue, making her breath catch again.

“I can thread a needle,” Sango said sharply, her nerves on edge and her mind in turmoil.

How far could one man suck string inside his mouth? He would choke on it, and serve him right. He was deliberately wetting the white thread in a mocking show that he knew exactly what he was doing, and she wanted to kill him for it.

He neatly threaded the needle and smirked at her rather stormy expression. “One would think you never did this before, taijiya.”

The gall of him!

“I---” Sango gritted her teeth and deliberately calmed herself. Closing her eyes, she counted to ten. She mustn’t lose it. She owed him too much for caring for her so long, not to mention little Mikomi. She refused to give in to her anger, despite his deliberate poking.

Her eyes flew open in shock as a calloused thumb ran lightly over her lower lip. His blue eyes were dark as he said tauntingly, “What you need is more saliva, to dampen and warm it. Then it can slide in smoothly with no problem.”

Sango’s eyes widened as a bolt of lightning went straight to her core, where it settled itself to throb little lightnings throughout her entire body, making the fine hairs on her arms stand up at attention.

Seeking anything to distract herself from the sudden tension between them, Sango snatched the needle out of his other hand, and pricked her finger as a result. “Ow!”

“You’re too hasty,” he commented, the jerk, grabbing her hand so he could see the damage. They struggled silently for a moment, but he was stronger, and dragged her finger up for his mocking inspection. A small bead of blood welled out as he pushed, and she winced.

“I’m not hasty---” Sango gasped as the heat of his mouth abruptly enveloped her sensitive fingertip, sucking lightly. Blue eyes mocked hers as she froze in place at the strange sensation. Her mind shattered as lightning struck her anew.

“Don’t,” she said, in pain, and scooted back away from him as far as she could. Mikomi chose that moment to wake up, thank the gods, and she all but lunged for him, holding him up as a shield against the mercenary’s hideous effect on her peace of mind.

Damn him anyway.

Spring stepped in like a whispering lie of better days to come, for it was chill and damp, the sun wearily climbing over the winter-browned landscape with a wan light that did little to warm one. Anything was better than the icy breath of winter, however, and despite the splashing mud that turned the narrow paths of the village to a soupy mire, Sango fled out of the imprisoning confines of the small hut like a bird just freed from its parents’ nest.

She wasn’t the only one. Kirara, who would normally disdain getting mud on her nice clean paws (or between her clawed toes), bounded out the front door as if her twin tails truly were on fire, Bankotsu not too far behind her. The mercenary stepped out armed and armored, for he had riffled through the various weapons stored under oilcloth in the back of the storehouse and claimed an odd assortment for his own use. His beloved Banryuu lay shattered and buried beneath the rubble of Mount Hakurei, and the twin daggers he had selected resembled short-swords rather than long knives. Armed with a bow and quiver full of arrows, he cupped his hand over his eyes and peered out at the dull green line of the distant trees just outside the village palisade.

“Me and the furball are going hunting,” he said shortly, not glancing back at her.

Sango looked at Kirara’s larger form. The neko merely shrugged, her red eyes crinkling up at the corners. “Stay safe,” she offered lamely, though Bankotsu was already sprinting over the wilted brown grass. Kirara shrugged again, and took to the air with a giant leap, fire trailing from her black paws.

Finally freed of his presence, Sango felt elation at first, but then a nagging sense of aching loneliness stole away the sweet thought. The village was so quiet and still! The wet eaves dripped into the splattered mud left by the showers earlier that morning, and her wooden clogs made obscene sucking noises as she stepped carefully along the muddy paths. Mikomi slept, oblivious as usual, and so she had time for herself for once, and meandered her way slowly toward her family’s graves. Praying over her father and brother brought peace to her troubled spirit, but she still felt a nagging ache that something was missing.

She wandered the empty village like a ghost---one who made obscene noises every time her shoes pulled out of the grip of the thick mud. She dithered here and there, and thought she should go and do something useful, but was too restless to sit down to any of the numerous tasks that always needed doing. She felt oddly abandoned, and her restless depression fed itself. Once there had been such life in this village. Perhaps it had been wrong to bring Mikomi here, where he would be so isolated from other people. She had been so happy here as a child, but it had been the other people in the tight, close-knit community that had helped to make her childhood such a rich one. Mikomi would not have that same warmth and security.

Not true. For Bankotsu had the ability to seem larger than life, just as her father had, and maybe that was what bothered her. For the ghosts of the village and the ghosts of what should have been a happy-ever-after life with her amorous monk seemed empty wisps of shadowy promises never uttered. The reality of her current situation was like a slap in the face. Bankotsu had such life about him. It was rather ironic, actually, that a twice-dead man should have such health and vigor. It was almost horrible that Sango had wished, once or twice, in her deepest and most secret heart of hearts that it had been Miroku who had been given that chance, and not the mercenary.

She couldn’t wish that now. Bankotsu had become live, and living, to her, and the more he did, the more Miroku’s memory faded by contrast. Bankotsu was life here and now, and Miroku belonged to that past life, before Mikomi, and before betrayal and heartache and treacherous thoughts filled her head and heart with such utter misery.

She had betrayed Miroku in every way she could. Even his memory, and the memory of his love.

Bowing her head, Sango sobbed, her heart shattering in the empty silence.

If anything, she grew more silent and withdrawn as the dismal end of winter drew out for what seemed forever. Bankotsu didn’t know what to make of it, but he knew he hated it and despised her for it, for her quiet depression was even affecting Mikomi. The boy was fussy and grew anxious if his mother was out of his sight. Such neediness was not normal for the boy, who was usually so easygoing it was a bit disconcerting. The boy had just started walking, and would stumble after her, sniffling and tripping over his own feet, as she crossed the room. Gods, that was pathetic.

They were all pensive, and walked on a dagger’s edge around her. Well, he didn’t bother all that much, actually, but everyone else did. It seemed as if the taijiya had grown so brittle that she might shatter if she were mishandled in some rough way. He tried at first to be solicitous of her feelings, and had absented himself at any excuse of an opportunity because she seemed to be on edge now whenever he was around her. That crap didn’t last long, though, because he grew quickly tired of such stupid games, and irritated that she had become such a mushy piece of sad-eyed dough.

Her eyes no longer flashed in ire at some callous remark of his. Her lips no longer thinned and her knuckles no longer whitened holding back some smart or snappy reply. She just sat there like a big ump, her eyes lowering if he stared hard at her or made some smart-ass remark. Worse was when she only turned away, silent, the piteous bird cradling its broken wing close to its body so that it could go off and die slowly by itself, not troubling the uncaring world around it with its poor, pitiful presence.

That was fucked up, and unworthy of her. He didn’t like it and he would be damned if he kept allowing her to act like life had just grown too wearisome to live. She was dying by inches, whether she knew it or not, and he refused to sit by and watch that happen. Somehow she had lost her will to fight for life, and it probably had to do with some stupid guilt she had over that stupid monk. That hentai’s shade was sucking all the life out of her, and Bankotsu for one refused to let her sink into a senseless mire of her own making.

The time had come to confront her about all that had happened between and betwixt them. He had been allowed life once more, when it should have been denied him, sour bastard that he was, and he was not about to let her ruin this new chance at happiness.

For as she had needed him during that long winter of weakness, he now needed her for his own true completion. For he missed her fire, now that it was gone, and he missed her, damn it, now that she had deliberately withdrawn herself from him. He deserved more from her than silent resignation, as did Mikomi, and he was damned if he wouldn’t fight all heaven and earth to make her give up that stupid ghost and see what was right there before her.

The time had come to confront the shared demons of their past, will she or nil she.

His smile was slow and wicked, his cobalt eyes gleaming. He had always loved a good fight, and now was as good a time as any…