InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Invitations to Trouble ❯ Suffering ( Chapter 22 )

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ginta was terrified.

Huddled closely against the craggy wall of wind-smoothed rock for any fleeting traces of heat it might retain, the ookami youth bit deeply into his parched lips to cease the chattering of his teeth.

He was cold. So very, very cold.

He tugged futilely at the ragged end of his meager furs, which had done little to combat the deathly chill that was a staple of the mountain night. Giving up the attempt to make the ragged scraps be more than they were, he resorted to hugging his knees tightly to his chest in order to keep from growing colder still.

Normally, he would have been nestled deep within the companionable warmth generated by the press of numerous wolfen bodies inside the den.

Sucking in a short breath that hitched in the rawness of his throat, Ginta buried his face in his folded arms.

Normalcy had become something far too rare among the wolf tribes since that day they had gathered in the Valley of the Moon. In his heart, he thought it might never return.

Less than three feet from the shadows where he sat hunched over and shivering, the pale rays of the sun called to him to come and warm himself.

Ginta ignored it. Sunlight meant warmth, aye. However, it also meant something else.

It meant his death.

}

Following his fight with Hakkaku, the younger youkai had gone in search of their friend Kouga.

Still reeling from the uncaring words of the spiky-haired youth, Ginta made his way up the mountainside only to learn that Kouga had not returned yet. The news worried him because that meant that his friend had not been back all night.

Glancing up at Tsuki where the larger man lounged against the wall, Ginta frowned softly. "Do you know where he could be?"

A strangely faded eye of charcoal gray glanced right back. "What do you want with Kouga anyway?" Tsuki appeared to resume his task of cleaning his nails with a jagged piece of bone but he still saw the way the other man shuffled nervously out the corner of his eye. "Well Ginta?"

Where the first question had been almost lackadaisical in its tone, its reiteration was more stressed.

Tsuki really wanted to know.

Once upon a time, Ginta would have told him and been glad of the chance to share his woes, but not now. Had Mimo or Intu been standing at the entrance, he wouldn't have hesitated to confess his concerns to either one, but not Tsuki. Ginta could never put into words exactly when or why he had stopped trusting the brawny man because the gathering in the valley had nothing to do with it.

Thin lips drew back as Tsuki sucked noisily on a sharp tooth while awaiting a response.

No, he couldn't place a finger on the cause of his feelings at all. Ginta just didn't trust anything about Tsuki.

Not anymore.

}

A loose stone clattered nearby, making the muscles beneath Ginta's skin twitch and jump as he fought the conflicting urges to flee and stay hidden.

A crisp wind whistled by him but it brought no conclusive scents to tell him if what had dislodged the gravel was just an animal.

Or something else entirely.

The staccato chattering of his teeth had ceased a while ago but he was sure that the heavy pounding of his heart was audible even to ningens. He knew he'd eventually have to risk the unforgiving exposure of daylight in order to find a new hiding place.

But his aching limbs called for a few more moments of rest and he gave them gladly. He knew that nowadays no one in his pack would look for a lost member.

Mostly because they never did.

There had been wolves and youkai disappearing left and right ever since the meeting in the valley but no one had seemed concerned about them. When anyone broached the subject, they were told to be quiet or threatened with physical violence if they refused.

Ginta remembered one such time when a slimly built red ookami had asked about his cousin who had vanished. By the end of the day the boy had disappeared as well.

After that, Ginta had been careful to keep his mouth shut.

Shifting position carefully, he tried to shield his face from the stinging wind that blew.

He'd been careful around everyone except…

Smoky-gray hair shook ruefully, making a blur of the darker tuft in the front.

No. It didn't matter anymore.

When the red ookami boy had vanished, Ginta began to notice that after a while, even those who had initially questioned the losses of f their brethren had become just as uncaring as all the others youkai. It was that rapid change in demeanor that had started to unnerve Ginta more than anything else.

But the last incident had been the worst.

Whimpering softly in his throat, Ginta swallowed thickly and squeezed his eyes shut against the memory.

}

The silence stretched out to an uncomfortable point between them but Tsuki waited through it patiently.

Unwilling to answer truthfully, Ginta tried to edge around him and enter the cave instead. "I just need to ask him something Tsuki, that's all."

A thick arm fell across the entrance to block it off as those dirty-gray eyes stared down at him. "Just something eh?" Tsuki drawled with a tilted head.

Irritated that the man was giving him such a hard time, Ginta felt a surge of heated emotion and bared a slightly unimpressive fang.

"Yes Tsuki, I just need to ask him something! If he's not here then let me go inside or if you know where he is then tell me that. Otherwise quit wasting my time!"

It was hard to say who was more surprised by the uncharacteristic outburst because if Tsuki looked surprised then Ginta was flat out astounded!

Slapping on an innocent grin, the younger man bobbed his head in apology so that he wouldn't lose it.

"Ah gomen Tsuki, that was rude of me. I just wanted to know if he'd like to go hunting with me, that's all."

The falsehood slid out without faltering too badly. He felt a welcome sense of relief when Tsuki stepped aside to let him pass because it seemed that his lie had been believed.

As Ginta started into the musky interior of the den to search for his leader's whereabouts on his own, he heard a familiar and deeply amused voice behind him. At the dark chuckle, the blood in his veins turned to ice.

"Well then why didn't you come hunting with me, old friend?"

}

"What do I do now?" his whisper was little more than an exhalation of breath that hung mist-like in the chilled air. Ginta tried to take a steadying breath but it turned into a strangled sob. "What can I do?"

When another fit of trembling wracked his limbs, the many blood-crusted gashes that scored his entire body throbbed in horrible agony. A part of Ginta's stunned mind still couldn't accept what had been done to him by his own pack.

The rest of his mind felt sluggish under the burden of its new knowledge.

Because now Ginta knew what had happened to the others who'd gone missing.

}

The wicked laugh sounded again when Ginta whirled to face its creator. At the sight of the gangly youth he feared his heart would stop.

"H-Hakkaku?"

The last person he'd expected to show up was the one he wanted to talk to Kouga about! He tried to keep the distress out of his voice but wasn't sure how successful the attempt was. "When did you get back?"

"Does it matter?" All traces of the previously black eyes were lost in a hellish red glow as Hakkaku descended on Ginta and grabbed his arm in a bruising grip. When he spoke, his voice was unpleasantly eager. "Well what's your answer?"

"What?"

As though speaking to a difficult child, Hakkaku repeated his demand slowly. "Why didn't you come hunting with me?" Although the question was asked as softly as before, there was nothing soft about the tone. It held an unforgiving edge that was as hard as his eyes.

By this time a thin sheen of perspiration had broken out across Ginta's brow, making his nostrils sting with its sourness. He could clearly see that the light from the noonday sun was being cut off as more youkai filled the archway. The dense gathering not only blocked out the sunlight, but any means of escape for him as well.

Ginta recognized many of them immediately. Nearly all of them had been present when someone had gone missing.

As they observed the conversation, each of them wore the same chillingly feral smile.

His stomach plummeted down to join his heart.

A sudden and painful constriction on his arm drew Ginta's attention back to the one causing it. He cried out involuntarily when a sharp jerk pulled him right up against the icy-cold armor Hakkaku wore.

Hakkaku's claw drew beads of blood along the slack jaw of the shivering boy before him. There was something at once threatening and sensuous in the act that petrified Ginta even more.

"Well old friend?" The claw made another line. Moist breath stung the shallow cuts when Hakkaku lowered his head a fraction. "Don't you want to hunt?"

"N-no. I-I've changed my mind." Brighter than live coals, Hakkaku's eyes blazed anew at the stammering refusal. A third line was etched into living canvas. The smiles around Ginta grew wider and more malicious.

"Too bad old friend" came a throaty whisper, "because we do."

With a suddenness that slammed Ginta's heart up into his throat, a brutal hand fisted in the front of his hair and dragged him roughly through the throng towards the entrance. Only convulsive swallowing made it settle back in his chest where it shook wildly like a caged beast.

Unable to see clearly with the searing pain dancing across his abused scalp, the boy stumbled along as best as he could. Through the tumultuous storm of shame and disbelief that was building inside of him, Ginta choked down the whimper that was trying so hard to escape.

Because he knew the sound would not buy him pardon.

He knew that it would not be recognized as the acquiescence it stood for.

As a wolf spirit who only wore the form of humanity, he understood intrinsically that any plaintive noise could excite the others to the point where they would gleefully rip him apart.

Catching sight of a mouth packed with gleaming canines aimed lethally at him, he knew that they might do it anyway.

'Where is Kouga?' he wondered frantically. 'Why are they doing this?' Making one last attempt to reach some shred of mercy that might still reside inside his friend, he whispered softly, "Hakkaku don't do this. Let me go."

"Let you go?" Hakkaku repeated the words mockingly, making them ring disturbingly by intoning a nasal inflection. "Oh let me go, let me go! I'm so scared." The other ookami laughed riotously in high unnatural voices.

Never loosening his grip on the object of his ridicule, Hakkaku glanced over at the small group and flashed them an amazed grin.

"You hear him begging? Actually begging me to let him go. Pitiful." Now his conversational tone grew rough, lowering to a snarl of barely checked rage. "I am so sick and fucking tired of babying him, you know that?" Another line was made but this time it was on the opposite cheek. Ginta couldn't stop the flinch that touch caused.

Luckily his tormentor didn't seem to notice it. Hakkaku was too wrapped up in spitting forth his contempt before the others. "Always having to tell you that everything's going to be okay when the bid bad world hurts your little feelings." Around them the scathing laughter rose louder with each word that fell.

Dry before, Ginta's eyes burned dully in their sockets with the unforgivable pressure of tears as he stared up into a visage made foreign to him by hate.

'Is that how Hakkaku really feels about me or is it whatever that's been effecting the rest of the pack speaking?'

At that moment, he would have given anything to know for sure.

Before he could open his mouth to deny the claim a sharp wrench tore out part of the dark tuft of hair at the front of his head. He managed to stifle most of pained outcry but not enough.

The others heard it and laughed even more.

Hakkaku let the coarse strands float down through the air, watching with another gruesome laugh as a thin trickle of blood ran between Ginta's eyes and dripped off the end of his nose.

"The Lord Gorotsuki was right. It is pathetic little runts like you that are bringing this pack down." Chorused murmurs of agreement met the derisive words.

Ginta prayed not to die.

In a movement that was all the more cruel for its mockery of kinship, Hakkaku dragged his tongue over the path which the blood had traveled, flicking the pinkened tip over Ginta's wound until the flow was staunched.

That contradictory act broke something inside Ginta that he would only be able to identify later.

The derisive voice practically purred. "Mustn't leave the baby dirty. It would never do."

"Hakkaku why are you doing this?!" Anything else he would have asked was cut off with a gasp by the force of being shoved partially down the slight slope outside the entranceway. There wasn't even a moment to right himself before Ginta's face was immediately pressed into the scrub grass and dirt by a leaden weight on his neck.

Scrambling for relief from the crushing force allowed him to see that the source was a single bandaged foot.

The weight increased monumentally as Hakkaku leaned forward to look down at the pinned boy. Each word that issued forth from his lips was hard and flat like his eyes.

"Well old friend. Do you still wish to hunt?"

For one insane moment, Ginta imagined that if he agreed, if he just played along and humored the madness surrounding him, they might go away and leave him in peace.

Coiling puffs of dust billowed up as he coughed out a response, "Yes Hakkaku! I want to go hunting!"

That immovable weight increased again and this time Ginta could hear the sickly, dry crackle of vertebrae rubbing up against one another.

Hakkaku's voice was the very picture of perfect conviviality. "Say that again?"

By this time, Ginta was nearly blind with pain and the inability to suck in air through his flattening trachea so he shouted in helpless desperation. "I want to hunt! I want to go hunting with you! I want to chase and kill something beside you!!"

Hating his own weakness, he all but screamed as the crackle in his ears became a deafening roar, "I want to go!!"

Almost as if it had never been, the pressure was instantly gone. Rough hands pulled Ginta up to his feet before vigorously patting his shoulders to the point where the arms went numb and hung limply at his sides.

Sauntering over with a smirk stealing across his features, Hakkaku enveloped him in an encompassing hug.

Up close, his voice rang with an odd emotion, "I knew that you would grow up someday my friend."

Ginta was aware that the watery smile he was giving the rest of the youkai wouldn't last much longer but he didn't care.

For the time being, he was alive!

"T-thanks for including me Hakkaku." Believing himself secure once more, Ginta vowed to work on the timidity in his voice that had rendered him a target so that it would never happen again. He would need to stay sharp to keep ahead of his new 'friends'.

All of his plans crumbled into bitter dust at the next words.

"Including you?" The disbelief might have been comical if the circumstances had not been so dire. "I never said we would hunt with you old friend."

Pulling his face away, Hakkaku still wore that frightening smile. Hypnotized by the feral gleam of the fangs being bared at him, Ginta found it difficult to look away.

"Whu-what? But you said-"

"That my old friend had grown up? Aye." With dawning horror, Ginta realized that the smile held the same unforgiving scorn as before. "Imagine my surprise when you turned out to be a liar as well as useless. You didn't honestly think it would be that easy to prove your loyalties did you?"

Ginta had secretly hoped that it would be except now he understood that nothing had changed between the two of them.

It was only his own foolish desires that made him believe that it had.

The embrace changed subtly, entrapping Ginta's arms so that they were pinned completely to his sides. Calculating snickers drifted around him and widened the sliver of hopelessness in his heart into a yawning pit that sucked up the fleeting light that had remained.

'The pats on my shoulders. They did it on purpose so that my arms would be useless!'

Hakkaku leaned forward and purred again as he nuzzled a clammy cheek. "Hey." All traces of any imagined mercy was gone from his face entirely. He angled his head a bit and gave his petrified prey a slight nip on the chin.

"Don't worry man," he whispered smoothly in a disturbing echo of a promise made long ago. "I'll be right by your side. When we finally catch you and tear out your heart, I'll be by your side to watch you as you die!"

Ginta tried to move away from the madness he saw before him but was held fast so he could not. Hakkaku threw back his head with a thunderous howl.

"After all, what are friends for!?"

Lengthened fangs glinted briefly in the harsh sunlight as they descended.

Unable to stop himself, Ginta screamed.

}

From that moment on the hunt had begun. The last 24 hours had been nothing but a desperate flight throughout the day followed by a night of unending torment for him.

The fiery tang of his spilled blood had allowed the hunting party to trail him all over the mountainside. He'd been forced to travel expanses of flatland that were worthless for cover because of his arms. Had he been able to utilize them, he could have easily escaped up the jagged cliff sides and gone deeper into the mountain where pursuit would have been rendered difficult if not impossible.

But he couldn't. In fact, the prickly, unpleasant sensation of pins and needles that signaled the return of feeling had only happened shortly after dawn.

Sometimes when he thought that he'd gotten away, the pack had surged forward and caught him. They had jostled him cruelly and then beat him senseless before melting silently into the trees to watch him scramble onto his feet and flee.

Once he'd gotten up, they had followed closely behind him.

Sometimes they had transformed into their alter selves, nipping and biting at his legs until his blood ran freely and splattered the ground with crimson rain. Often they would trip him up, giving soundless laughs with wolfen mouths as he fell.

Each time he would climb back up and run.

Each time they would follow.

However, it was always Hakkaku who hung back when the others sported with him at their leisure.

It was always Hakkaku that they looked to for a sign of whether the hunt would be finished and done or continued.

It was always Hakkaku who made Ginta want to run and keep running.

Hakkaku, who wore that ghastly smile that taunted him for running.

Hakkaku, with those hollow eyes that brimmed with crimson-hued abhorrence for him alone.

Hakkaku, who he had once loved enough to die for and who now sought his death.

For Ginta the exhausting run had been more about escaping that soulless gaze as saving himself.

After three hours his chest had been burning, doing little more than automatically sucking down the next breath that would keep him moving.

An hour after that a horrible cramp twisted in his side, nearly pitching him to the ground. He had fought through it because he could hear his pursuers closing in during the tiny lag.

Twelve hours after the nightmare began, Ginta had barely been able to see as he'd hobbled on. Spots danced freely before his eyes as overworked muscles knotted and unknotted themselves in his thighs, sending phantom signals of daggers throughout his lower back.

The ragged sound of his own raspy breath had rung loudly in his head, pushing out the flecks of foam that encrusted the corners of his cracked lips.

Just as he'd been reconciling himself to the certainty of death, Ginta had heard the sound of his salvation.

The haunting howl of the black wolf Yami.

His heart had nearly burst with the knowledge that his fogged brain couldn't process until later.

Lord Gorotsuki had called the ookami home.

There had been just enough of his fevered mind left to sense an opportunity to put more miles between him and his pursuers.

Previously tapped reserves had been ruthlessly mined yet again. Trembling from exhaustion of every kind, Ginta had gone straight down the mountain until his agonized feet and knees held less feeling than his throbbing shoulders. Just as the moon had descended beyond the horizon, he'd stumbled across the small conclave where he currently rested.

}

Any hope that had survived the night was washed away by the waves of pain buffeting his body.

His belief in his friends was similarly dashed by one's betray and the other's absence which had allowed the atrocity to happen at all.

Ginta had felt that his world was in effect lying buried in the rank and befouling dust that is made up of the remains of those damned and bereft of the mercy of the gods.

Even when he'd succumbed to unconsciousness in the wee hours of dawn, he'd done so plagued by the image of watchful red eyes.

}

Now one particularly deep and irregular laceration beneath Ginta's eyes stung as cold tears seeped into it. He fingered it gingerly with a shaking hand as he climbed to his feet. After all, it had been a parting gift from the one who led the pack chasing him.

The tension had edged slowly out of his body when no other rocks had fallen. He guessed that it must have been the wind that had knocked it loose in the first place.

It was a risk he was going to have to take.

Weary or not, he'd stayed too long in one place and he knew it. Whatever business Gorotsuki had with his subjects should have long been concluded which meant that Hakkaku's bunch would be resuming their game at anytime.

Ginta corrected himself.

No, they'd be resuming their hunt.

A scratchy cough seared his parched throat, reminding him that there wasn't even a bit of water nearby to slake his thirst. Ginta's voice hung lifelessly in the air. "What can I do?"

"For one thing, you can stop asking that question over and over again."

Ginta gave a start and muffled cry at the mellow voice. Spinning to get away, he swayed unsteadily on his feet instead. Strong arms caught him before he could topple over.

When the world stopped spinning drunkenly, he found himself staring up into a pair of tired gray eyes.

The sob that had been suppressed before in the face of Hakkaku's cruelty burst out of Ginta at the welcome sight of the apprehensive and familiar face.

"H-Hoken?"

"Hey cub." Scanning the bedraggled form he held, the healer's voice took on a fatherly concern. "What demon did you tangle with to get all cut up like that?" Not waiting for an answer, Hoken's training took over before his curiosity. Even before the last words had left his lips, the golden ookami had his bag open and ready, cleaning the more severe wounds with a bit of cloth that smelled of herbs.

Ginta's limbs felt leaden and oddly detached but he managed to make them reach out for the slender shoulders before him. He might be done for since the pack had his blood-scent, but he's be damned if his cowardice made the healer suffer the same fate!

"Leave me!! You've got to get out of here now!" Talking through the fire in his throat was nearly killing him but he had to make the other man understand the danger they were in. "Leave now! There is something wrong with the tribes! All the youkai and wolves are insane!"

"What?" Pressing together the halves of the gaping wound beneath the young man's eye, Hoken frowned over the news. "What do you mean by insane?"

Snatching up a fistful of flaxen fur, Ginta pointed to his legs, grimacing as he straightened them out. "They've been hunting the missing youkai and they're hunting me down now! Even Hakkaku..." his heated words trailed off in obvious heartache.

How do you tell someone that your best friend had lost his mind and tried to rip your face off with his bare teeth?

Ginta didn't know where to begin.

Still, something in the kindly face told him that Hoken might understand such a betrayal of love. Ginta wasn't exactly sure how he knew that, only that he did.

Unable to face that pitying gaze, he cast his eyes to the rocky floor beneath him.

"I'm warning you Hoken, run while you still can."

"But Ginta you can't possibly keep running.. I can tell just by looking at you that you've got nothing left to use!" Ignoring the healer's protests, the boy hauled himself onto his feet with the clear intention of fleeing once his legs steadied.

"Go away Hoken. If they find you, they will kill you! They're all mad, every last one of them."

"What of Kouga?"

Ginta paused and wondered what could possibly place such urgency in the healer's voice when warnings of feral youkai had not. The restraining hand that fell upon his shoulder shook slightly.

"Please tell me Ginta. Has he been affected as well?"

"Yes." Those pleading gray eyes closed with some unnamable pain. Ginta flushed guiltily. "Maybe, no, I'm not sure." Now those old eyes stared at him in an open bewilderment that made him angry for no reason that he could name.

"I don't know because I couldn't find him and he-" The anger was draining away as fast as it had come, "He didn't try to find me!"

This time there was no disguising the frustrated hurt and confusion that had been bottled within his battered frame and came rushing out of Ginta like a flood.

"I don't care where Kouga is! He said he was my friend! They both swore they were my friends!" When his face screwed up in anguish the hole beneath his eye tore open and wept tears of blood that mingled with his own.

Already shaky, his knees gave way as though that stoppered bitterness alone had been keeping him going. Perhaps it had. Without its sustenance, he collapsed once more into the other's arms and gave himself over fully to his despair.

"They both...he didn't...I don't understand. What did I do wrong?"

Unable to heal this grievous wound with any herb or physician's skill, Hoken enveloped the lost cub in his arms and fell back on the restorative of simple comfort.

}

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A/N: …Oh God…

I'm so sorry Ginta.

You don't know how sorry I am.

For what is done and what there is still left to do, all I can ask is your forgiveness.