InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Fragments ❯ A Loss of Innocence ( Chapter 9 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: LuxKen27 
Summary: "Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all." – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Angst | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 01.02.2010 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.3K | Visits: 725 | Status: Work In Progress
Summary: "Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all." – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Angst | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 01.02.2010 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.3K | Visits: 725 | Status: Work In Progress
Title: A Loss of Innocence
Author: LuxKen27
Universe: Alternate
Genre: Angst/Drama
Rating: Y
Warning: Gruesome imagery
Word Length: 2090
Summary: “Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Disclaimer: The Inuyasha concept, story, and characters are copyright Rumiko Takahashi and Viz Media.
“Are you all right, my dearest?” Karanousuke murmured, for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last five minutes. They had travelled to the morgue in silence, but ever since entering the building, he’d been hovering over her like a worried hen.
The skin on her back rippled where his fingers brushed against the soft silk of her dress, and it was all she could do not to wrench away from his grasp. Instead, she tightened the brace of her arms, her knuckles blanching white under the strain of her effort, and said nothing, giving no indication she’d even heard him.
Indeed, the words barely registered; her mind was a million miles away – lingering in the early morning hours, in the comfort of a familiar stranger, drowning in a sea of guilt and misery. As much as she wanted to push those memories out of her mind, she found she couldn’t, his last words haunting her:
“One day, you’re going to realize you deserve to be happy, Sango.”
Happiness felt like a foreign concept.
For the last five years of her life, she’d thrown herself into her quest, hanging every last shred of sanity on the hope that her beloved younger brother was still alive, waiting for her, wanting her to protect him as she always had when they were children. She gone through hell and back – watching her family collapse all around her, following every last lead on her missing brother’s possible whereabouts, finding herself at the business end of guns and knives more times than she cared to admit – and the last thing she’d ever been was happy, or peaceful, or serene.
For five years, she’d lived on the edge of terror, and for twenty-four hours, she’d been wallowing in a pit of despair.
Only, it hadn’t been all despair.
She’d allowed herself to seek comfort, and she’d found it in spades with him, as she knew she would. He was everything she’d needed in that moment, and the powerful connection they’d forged in the heat of passion would have been enough to scare her, had she been in her right mind. She’d let down her guard completely and invited him in, allowing him to see her sorrow and vulnerability and hope in the midst of tragedy.
She had allowed him to love her, when she’d deserved no such thing.
Even now, as she made her way down this stark hall, she could still feel the warmth of his embrace, cloaking her, giving rise to gooseflesh across her skin. She could feel the soft, seductive press of his lips to hers, the memory of the way their mouths slanted together burned into her brain. She could feel the whisper of his fingertips, cupping the base of her neck, splaying through her hair, sliding gently along the contour of her shoulder.
And yet, at the same time, she felt strangely disembodied, as if she was watching herself from a distance, a broken woman going through the motions, the rituals of death.
They ground to a halt in front of a double-sided window, and Sango stared ahead, trepidation blooming in her chest. Faintly, she could hear the rustling of the medical personnel on the other side of the thick glass, made aware of their presence when her fiancé pushed a small red button beside the window frame, and did her best to prepare herself, not knowing what she was about to face.
Karanousuke slipped his hand in hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze as the curtain was pulled, revealing a metal examining table and the body that lay upon it, covered in a blue sheet. Sango let out a breath she wasn’t even aware she had been holding, surprised to feel the prickle of tears behind her eyes.
“K-Kohaku,” she breathed, her voice catching at the back of her throat.
The body that lay upon the table was the color of death – his skin, pale and ashen; his hair, a dull, lifeless brown. There was no sense of peace around him, only the absence of life.
Sango felt her knees giving way, but she fought to stay upright, dragging her eyes over the length of him, taking it all in. Only his face and neck were visible above the sheet, but even there, he bore the evidence of abuse – scars, bruises, sunken cheeks, cracked lips. Wisps of something dark and unnatural marred the skin of his shoulders and chest, curling up the side of his neck, and she found she couldn’t look away – arrested, taunted, tantalized.
“Let me see him,” she choked out, leaning forward against the glass as if she could will herself on the other side and into the room. She fisted her free hand and began to beat on the window pane. “Let me see him!”
“Sango, what are you talking about?” Karanousuke asked, his voice filled with confusion. “You can see him from here. I – ”
She broke away from him, looking up and down the wall almost desperately, spotting the door and making a beeline for it. She pushed through before the medical staff could stop her and went immediately to the table, pulling the sheet off of her brother’s body, revealing the means of his death to one and all.
The room fell silent as she looked over him. His body was battered and broken, covered with the telltale marks of someone known to continuous, physical torture. His arms were covered with sleeves of tattoos, marking him as a slave of some deadly, criminal gang. A lesser woman might have swooned under the heaviness of the pain and horror that emanated from him, but Sango stood firm, ready and willing to take it all in, to accept this gruesome sight as punishment for her ultimate failure.
“Kohaku,” she murmured, caressing his cheek, brushing the hair away from his brow. It was longer than she remembered, thinner, coarser, but all she saw as she stared down at him was the sweet, smiling, inquisitive face of her baby brother, not a day older than when he’d gone missing, his eyes wide and begging as he pleaded with her to go outside and play in the rain puddles.
“Please, sister,” echoed his sweet voice in her mind, “let me go.”
“Kohaku!” she cried again, gathering his lifeless body in her arms as tears slid down her cheeks. Emotion overwhelmed her in that moment, rolling over her in great waves, crashing against the walls she’d erected to protect her mind, her soul, her memory. No doubt, to the others in the room, she looked like a woman unhinged, aggrieved beyond all measure, but on the inside she felt –
– relief?
“Miss, please,” the coroner directed, gently pulling her away, disengaging the patient from her embrace. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss, but you mustn’t touch the body.”
“Sango,” Karanousuke said in the same breath, gathering her close, hoping to redirect the flow of her tears onto his shoulder or against his chest. “Oh, my dear, sweet, poor Sango. Let me take you away from all this, hmm?”
“No,” she choked out, straining against his hold. “I’m okay.” She lifted a hand to wipe away her tears, taking a deep, shuttering breath at the same time.
I’m okay.
It was the last thing she ever expected to feel, but somehow – standing here, seeing him, touching him – it made it all seem real, in a way it hadn’t before. For five years, she’d been haunted – by doubt, by worry, by fear – but now, all of that was strangely laid to rest. She still felt sorrow and anguish and despair, but it was no longer accompanied by an overriding sense of guilt or disappointment.
He hadn’t run away. He had been forcibly taken, stolen from her and her family, and that meant –
It wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t her fault.
“Kohaku,” she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
And it was over then – Karanousuke swept her out of the room, holding her tight to his side, rubbing his hand up and down her arm in soothing caress, mistaking the tears still falling down her cheeks for self-flagellation. He murmured calming words, of calling her family, of making the arrangements for the funeral, of leaving no stone unturned in the search for those responsible.
Grief settled heavily in Sango’s chest, and for a moment, she relaxed into his embrace, closing her eyes and finding familiar comfort, envisioning not her fiancé, but Miroku at her side – someone who understood the conflicting feelings she still faced in the wake of her brother’s death, someone who could touch and calm and soothe her turbulent soul, someone who could share in this experience, lending his strength until she regained her own.
But the fantasy was shattered when she felt her companion pull away, and she opened her eyes to find herself outside, on the stoop of the medical facility, not far from the hustle and bustle of the morning business crowd. Beside her stood not her savior, her companion in grief and tragedy, but her fiancé, looking as calm, cool, and collected as ever, straightening the cuffs of his shirt and jacket.
“When your mother comes in, perhaps we ought to run some of our plans by her, see what she thinks,” he said rather blandly, inspecting his clothing for stray hairs and invisible bits of lint.
Sango could only stare at him, dumbfounded, wondering if this was the same man who wouldn’t let her walk two steps by herself only moments before. “What?” she finally managed to say, blinking rapidly.
“Our wedding plans, my dear,” Takeda clarified, his expression perfectly pleasant as he gazed at her.
Her jaw dropped. “I just had to ID my brother’s body and you’re thinking about our wedding?!”
He furrowed his brow before drawing her into a light embrace once more. “I know, my dear, and I realize how painful this experience has been for you. I can only imagine what you’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours – grief does drive us to do strange things – ”
Sango pushed him away, interrupting the flow of his gentle reprimands, her cheeks flaming as she glared at him. “Nothing half as strange as this,” she shot back through clenched teeth. “At least he pretended to give a damn about how I was feeling, instead of talking through me!”
Karanousuke narrowed his eyes. “‘Pretended’ is right,” he declared drolly. “And then he used you for his own sake, only too happy to take advantage of a vulnerable woman.” He exhaled sharply and shook his head, indicating just what he thought of a man with such motives. “Now do you see what kind of man he is, and why I didn’t want you hanging around him in the first place?”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Sango sputtered, her skin flushing hot and cold. She felt herself losing balance, her world tilting drunkenly, the ground shifting beneath her feet.
He dared touch her again, clasping her hands in his, his expression turning pleading and patronizing. “I was worried about you,” he said, his tone softer, though his words were no less firm. “I only wanted to protect you from all of this, to spare you this horror.”
“No,” she replied, her voice preternaturally calm, her eyes lifting to meet his. “You wanted to own me. That’s why you gave me this ring – not because you loved me, but because you wished to have me.”
“Sango, – ” he started, but she wouldn’t let him finish. She wrenched away from him, yanking the engagement ring from her finger and shoving it into his hands.
“Nobody owns me,” she vowed, “no matter how indebted to them I am.”
She pushed past him, descending into the crowd, moving too fast to know if he called after her or not. She needed to get away, be alone, to work through the storm of emotions threatening to overwhelm her. Where that ultimately left her, she wasn’t sure, but for the first time in five years, she finally felt like her old self again.
Author: LuxKen27
Universe: Alternate
Genre: Angst/Drama
Rating: Y
Warning: Gruesome imagery
Word Length: 2090
Summary: “Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Disclaimer: The Inuyasha concept, story, and characters are copyright Rumiko Takahashi and Viz Media.
~*~
The light in the hallway was piercing and bright, a striking contradiction to the chill of the air that surrounded them, but Sango gave no heed to either. Silently, they walked down the corridor, the heels of her shoes clicking in cadence with the beat of her heart. She trained her eyes forward, counting each bland, square tile to come, willing her rushing thoughts to cede and her mind to numb over once more.“Are you all right, my dearest?” Karanousuke murmured, for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last five minutes. They had travelled to the morgue in silence, but ever since entering the building, he’d been hovering over her like a worried hen.
The skin on her back rippled where his fingers brushed against the soft silk of her dress, and it was all she could do not to wrench away from his grasp. Instead, she tightened the brace of her arms, her knuckles blanching white under the strain of her effort, and said nothing, giving no indication she’d even heard him.
Indeed, the words barely registered; her mind was a million miles away – lingering in the early morning hours, in the comfort of a familiar stranger, drowning in a sea of guilt and misery. As much as she wanted to push those memories out of her mind, she found she couldn’t, his last words haunting her:
“One day, you’re going to realize you deserve to be happy, Sango.”
Happiness felt like a foreign concept.
For the last five years of her life, she’d thrown herself into her quest, hanging every last shred of sanity on the hope that her beloved younger brother was still alive, waiting for her, wanting her to protect him as she always had when they were children. She gone through hell and back – watching her family collapse all around her, following every last lead on her missing brother’s possible whereabouts, finding herself at the business end of guns and knives more times than she cared to admit – and the last thing she’d ever been was happy, or peaceful, or serene.
For five years, she’d lived on the edge of terror, and for twenty-four hours, she’d been wallowing in a pit of despair.
Only, it hadn’t been all despair.
She’d allowed herself to seek comfort, and she’d found it in spades with him, as she knew she would. He was everything she’d needed in that moment, and the powerful connection they’d forged in the heat of passion would have been enough to scare her, had she been in her right mind. She’d let down her guard completely and invited him in, allowing him to see her sorrow and vulnerability and hope in the midst of tragedy.
She had allowed him to love her, when she’d deserved no such thing.
Even now, as she made her way down this stark hall, she could still feel the warmth of his embrace, cloaking her, giving rise to gooseflesh across her skin. She could feel the soft, seductive press of his lips to hers, the memory of the way their mouths slanted together burned into her brain. She could feel the whisper of his fingertips, cupping the base of her neck, splaying through her hair, sliding gently along the contour of her shoulder.
And yet, at the same time, she felt strangely disembodied, as if she was watching herself from a distance, a broken woman going through the motions, the rituals of death.
They ground to a halt in front of a double-sided window, and Sango stared ahead, trepidation blooming in her chest. Faintly, she could hear the rustling of the medical personnel on the other side of the thick glass, made aware of their presence when her fiancé pushed a small red button beside the window frame, and did her best to prepare herself, not knowing what she was about to face.
Karanousuke slipped his hand in hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze as the curtain was pulled, revealing a metal examining table and the body that lay upon it, covered in a blue sheet. Sango let out a breath she wasn’t even aware she had been holding, surprised to feel the prickle of tears behind her eyes.
“K-Kohaku,” she breathed, her voice catching at the back of her throat.
The body that lay upon the table was the color of death – his skin, pale and ashen; his hair, a dull, lifeless brown. There was no sense of peace around him, only the absence of life.
Sango felt her knees giving way, but she fought to stay upright, dragging her eyes over the length of him, taking it all in. Only his face and neck were visible above the sheet, but even there, he bore the evidence of abuse – scars, bruises, sunken cheeks, cracked lips. Wisps of something dark and unnatural marred the skin of his shoulders and chest, curling up the side of his neck, and she found she couldn’t look away – arrested, taunted, tantalized.
“Let me see him,” she choked out, leaning forward against the glass as if she could will herself on the other side and into the room. She fisted her free hand and began to beat on the window pane. “Let me see him!”
“Sango, what are you talking about?” Karanousuke asked, his voice filled with confusion. “You can see him from here. I – ”
She broke away from him, looking up and down the wall almost desperately, spotting the door and making a beeline for it. She pushed through before the medical staff could stop her and went immediately to the table, pulling the sheet off of her brother’s body, revealing the means of his death to one and all.
The room fell silent as she looked over him. His body was battered and broken, covered with the telltale marks of someone known to continuous, physical torture. His arms were covered with sleeves of tattoos, marking him as a slave of some deadly, criminal gang. A lesser woman might have swooned under the heaviness of the pain and horror that emanated from him, but Sango stood firm, ready and willing to take it all in, to accept this gruesome sight as punishment for her ultimate failure.
“Kohaku,” she murmured, caressing his cheek, brushing the hair away from his brow. It was longer than she remembered, thinner, coarser, but all she saw as she stared down at him was the sweet, smiling, inquisitive face of her baby brother, not a day older than when he’d gone missing, his eyes wide and begging as he pleaded with her to go outside and play in the rain puddles.
“Please, sister,” echoed his sweet voice in her mind, “let me go.”
“Kohaku!” she cried again, gathering his lifeless body in her arms as tears slid down her cheeks. Emotion overwhelmed her in that moment, rolling over her in great waves, crashing against the walls she’d erected to protect her mind, her soul, her memory. No doubt, to the others in the room, she looked like a woman unhinged, aggrieved beyond all measure, but on the inside she felt –
– relief?
“Miss, please,” the coroner directed, gently pulling her away, disengaging the patient from her embrace. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss, but you mustn’t touch the body.”
“Sango,” Karanousuke said in the same breath, gathering her close, hoping to redirect the flow of her tears onto his shoulder or against his chest. “Oh, my dear, sweet, poor Sango. Let me take you away from all this, hmm?”
“No,” she choked out, straining against his hold. “I’m okay.” She lifted a hand to wipe away her tears, taking a deep, shuttering breath at the same time.
I’m okay.
It was the last thing she ever expected to feel, but somehow – standing here, seeing him, touching him – it made it all seem real, in a way it hadn’t before. For five years, she’d been haunted – by doubt, by worry, by fear – but now, all of that was strangely laid to rest. She still felt sorrow and anguish and despair, but it was no longer accompanied by an overriding sense of guilt or disappointment.
He hadn’t run away. He had been forcibly taken, stolen from her and her family, and that meant –
It wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t her fault.
“Kohaku,” she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
And it was over then – Karanousuke swept her out of the room, holding her tight to his side, rubbing his hand up and down her arm in soothing caress, mistaking the tears still falling down her cheeks for self-flagellation. He murmured calming words, of calling her family, of making the arrangements for the funeral, of leaving no stone unturned in the search for those responsible.
Grief settled heavily in Sango’s chest, and for a moment, she relaxed into his embrace, closing her eyes and finding familiar comfort, envisioning not her fiancé, but Miroku at her side – someone who understood the conflicting feelings she still faced in the wake of her brother’s death, someone who could touch and calm and soothe her turbulent soul, someone who could share in this experience, lending his strength until she regained her own.
But the fantasy was shattered when she felt her companion pull away, and she opened her eyes to find herself outside, on the stoop of the medical facility, not far from the hustle and bustle of the morning business crowd. Beside her stood not her savior, her companion in grief and tragedy, but her fiancé, looking as calm, cool, and collected as ever, straightening the cuffs of his shirt and jacket.
“When your mother comes in, perhaps we ought to run some of our plans by her, see what she thinks,” he said rather blandly, inspecting his clothing for stray hairs and invisible bits of lint.
Sango could only stare at him, dumbfounded, wondering if this was the same man who wouldn’t let her walk two steps by herself only moments before. “What?” she finally managed to say, blinking rapidly.
“Our wedding plans, my dear,” Takeda clarified, his expression perfectly pleasant as he gazed at her.
Her jaw dropped. “I just had to ID my brother’s body and you’re thinking about our wedding?!”
He furrowed his brow before drawing her into a light embrace once more. “I know, my dear, and I realize how painful this experience has been for you. I can only imagine what you’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours – grief does drive us to do strange things – ”
Sango pushed him away, interrupting the flow of his gentle reprimands, her cheeks flaming as she glared at him. “Nothing half as strange as this,” she shot back through clenched teeth. “At least he pretended to give a damn about how I was feeling, instead of talking through me!”
Karanousuke narrowed his eyes. “‘Pretended’ is right,” he declared drolly. “And then he used you for his own sake, only too happy to take advantage of a vulnerable woman.” He exhaled sharply and shook his head, indicating just what he thought of a man with such motives. “Now do you see what kind of man he is, and why I didn’t want you hanging around him in the first place?”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Sango sputtered, her skin flushing hot and cold. She felt herself losing balance, her world tilting drunkenly, the ground shifting beneath her feet.
He dared touch her again, clasping her hands in his, his expression turning pleading and patronizing. “I was worried about you,” he said, his tone softer, though his words were no less firm. “I only wanted to protect you from all of this, to spare you this horror.”
“No,” she replied, her voice preternaturally calm, her eyes lifting to meet his. “You wanted to own me. That’s why you gave me this ring – not because you loved me, but because you wished to have me.”
“Sango, – ” he started, but she wouldn’t let him finish. She wrenched away from him, yanking the engagement ring from her finger and shoving it into his hands.
“Nobody owns me,” she vowed, “no matter how indebted to them I am.”
She pushed past him, descending into the crowd, moving too fast to know if he called after her or not. She needed to get away, be alone, to work through the storm of emotions threatening to overwhelm her. Where that ultimately left her, she wasn’t sure, but for the first time in five years, she finally felt like her old self again.