InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Noble Burdens ❯ The Importance of Being Sango ( Chapter 2 )

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

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”
 
Henry IV part II
William Shakespeare
 
The weather had grown colder. Sango sighed and rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to generate some warmth, but all she seemed to feel this night was the cold seeping into her soul.
 
She should go back inside, inside she could be sleeping in a warm bed, but she had found sleep elusive.
 
She had been staring at the ceiling for hours, her mind a whirlwind of…confusion…and heartache. She sighed again and looked to the evening sky. Even the stars seemed dull tonight and a light fog made the air hazy and dreary.
 
Sango felt the cold mist seep into her bones but she didn't want to go back inside. She felt so lost tonight, uncertain…and her traitorous mind did the one thing that she had forbad it…it drifted to him. She laughed derisively and a night bird cawed in answer.
 
It always seemed to come back to him.
 
“Damn you, Miroku,” she whispered. The night did not whisper back.
 
Tonight was an anniversary of sorts; it was the anniversary of the day he had left them without word or explanation and in the process had shattered another piece of her fragile heart.
 
“Should've castrated him when I had the chance,” she growled, but her anger could not hold.
 
In the beginning, during those first weeks of anguish and hell, her anger sustained her, but now…now all she seemed to feel anymore was bitter hurt. To this very day she couldn't understand. How could a man profess to love her, be willing to die for her, imply that he would marry her, and then just…leave without so much as a backwards glance.
 
Frustration clawed at her gut and she cursed herself a fool. Two years and thoughts of him still tied her stomach in knots. She hated him for that.
 
Sango clenched her fist and winced when it caused the muscles in her shoulder to tighten. She had been injured today, another gift from her brother Kohaku and yet another wound on her bruised heart.
 
Thoughts of her brother sent her mind whirling into a downward spiral of recriminations and regrets. Sango wiped away the tears gathering in her eyes, refusing to allow them to fall.
 
Her thoughts drifted back and she thought of all that had changed, for good…and for bad.
 
It had started not long after Naraku's defeat and Miroku's departure. A whisper had reached Kaede's village about a powerful demon gathering followers. Kohaku had, at that time, failed to regain his lost memories and although she had been loathed to do so, she had left him under Kaede's care and accompanied InuYasha and Kagome to investigate.
 
What they had found had been something that none of them could have imagined. They had arrived to the lands in the west and on the outskirts of Sesshomaru's domain had found village after village annihilated. The fields and plains had run red with the blood of countless innocents and all the destruction had pointed to demonic forces.
 
The demons had banded together under a powerful demon Lord named Kijo. He was an ogre demon who had been dormant when Naraku's powerful aura choked the countryside but with his defeat came Kijo golden opportunity. He was the most powerful of his clan, and he had come into possession of a scared jewel shard, thus tripling his already formidable abilities. He literally declared war on humanity.
 
He would have succeeded in massacring all of Japan had not she, Kagome, InuYasha, and Shippo banded together with Sessshomaru and stopped the hoard.
 
The Demon War had raged for almost a year and with it InuYasha, Kagome, and Sango's legends had grown exponentially. The war had left many adrift and once the fighting had ended the drifters had migrated east looking for the taijiya that had fought so bravely.
 
They had found their way to Sango in small groups and she had reluctantly taken them in, trained the ones who wished to be trained, and inadvertently become the head mistress of her decimated village.
 
The village had slowly been rebuilt and with its restoration had become, something new, something that Sango was not sure she had a place in any longer.
 
She growled in frustrated. She abhorred politics with every fiber of her being and in those early dreams of rebuilding the slayers' village she had not envisioned what it would mean to be the leader of her clan, adopted or otherwise.
 
In the beginning when the people had come it had seemed only natural for her to take responsibility for the village, after all she was the last taijiya in existence and it was her people buried beneath the many mounds on what she had come to see as her mountain top.
 
Now though, there were those that had decided that perhaps a woman was not the best choice of leader for what was becoming a thriving village, especially a woman with a little brother who was prone to homicidal rages and who was torn between her duty to her people and her duty to her friends.
 
The more the village grew the less tolerant of Kohaku's outbursts of insanity many had became, and the harder it had become to run the village, care for her brother, and still have time to help Kagome and InuYasha collect shards of the scared jewel.
 
She felt torn in so many different directions that she was no longer sure of who she was any longer.
 
She sighed and started walking through the mist in the direction of the graves where her slain people lay. When she came to the first row of graves she was surprised to find someone already there. She smiled as she recognized the shape of the handsome man who had become like an older brother to her.
 
“Isamu, what are you doing out here at this time of night?” The man turned toward her and frowned deeply.
 
“I could ask you the same thing, Lady Sango.” Sango smiled.
 
“Why do you still do that? You saved my life and you still will not call me, Sango.”
 
Isamu looked away from her and flushed a deep red.
 
“It would not be proper, my Lady.”
 
Sango sighed and shook her head in bemusement. The slayer felt a deep kinship with Isamu because his past was just as profoundly rooted in heartache and pain as her own.
 
He was a very skilled warrior, trained from a young age as a samurai and from what she had come to understand, he had betrayed his lord and killed him when his master had tried to rape a servant girl in his household.
 
The servant girl had been named Arisu and they had fallen deeply in love. Soon after the Lord's family had put a bounty on his and his love's heads and although it had stung Isamu honor, he had fled to the lands of the west with his beloved and claimed her to wife.
 
Isamu had banded with her and her friends during the Demon War when his young wife, Arisu, had been murdered by Kijo's lieutenant Ryo. Sango had saved his five year old daughter, Chie, from the fate suffered by her mother and later Isamu had saved Sango from a gruesome death at Kijo's hands. He had been her right hand ever since.
 
“You are impossible, Isamu.”
 
“And you should be resting, my Lady. You have a long journey ahead of you.”
 
Sango frowned and dug into her pocket to pull out the strange coin she had received two nights ago. The iridescent metal glinted in the moonlight and it seemed to pulse in the palm of her hand.
 
The coin had come along with a note from the Shogunate of Toyotomi requesting her assistance with a monstrous demon that had been taking children from surrounding villages. The note had promised her a substantial fee in exchange for her services.
 
“I still don't think it is a good idea for me to respond to this strange summons. I have learned to trust my instincts through the years and something feels…wrong.”
 
Isamu looked to the sky and frowned. The moon was three quarters full and tinted red with the coming of fall.
 
“Lady Kagome said the time of the Hunter's Moon approaches. I am not a superstitions man but I agree that something about this request does not seem, right. I also do no like that fact that Tatsuo seems eager for you to go, and has stirred up the villagers in favor of his desire.”
 
Sango's frown deepened. Tatsuo, the current thorn lodged deeply in her side and the bane of her existence. He was the source of the discontent that swirled around her mountain top.
 
He had come to the slayer's village almost four months ago and slowly but surely he had been exerting his influence on her people. He had been a vassal for a now defunct Lord in the south and had come with his wife to join her sister and their family.
 
He had not been pleased on his arrival to find that Sango was the village leader and his displeasure had slowly spread like a poison to some of the other men. The small band of dissidents had been looking for a way to prove to the rest of the village that she was unfit to lead them by focusing mostly on her practice of assisting InuYasha and Kagome when she could with shard hunting and protecting her brother Kohaku.
 
The grumbles and the whispers had worked with some people, but those who had first settled on her mountain had remained firmly loyal to the slayer.
 
Now though, Tatsuo had some real ammunition to use in his campaign against her. He had some how found out that a few weeks ago a messenger had come to her from Lord Takeda renewing his offer of marriage.
 
She had, of course, declined and the storm of public opinion had been slowly shifting in Tatsuo favor. Many in the village could not understand why she would pass on a proposal that would not only give her legitimacy, but would also benefit those who had come to see themselves as her people.
 
Sango felt the anger stir in her belly and she embraced it. She did not enjoy being forced into a corner, but that is how she had started to feel in her role as head mistress.
 
What really stirred her ire though was knowing that the role of leader and protector had not been one of her choosing, but one that had been thrust upon her due to circumstance.
 
She had learned to embraced and even cherish her role, but that did not give anyone the right to treat her as a commodity to be auctioned off to the most powerful Lord. When and if, she married, it would be by her rules and it would be her choice, and those that had chosen to align themselves under her and with her, would have to learn to deal with it.
 
She turned towards the ronin. “I hate this Isamu. I am not suited to politics.”
 
“That is why you are such a good leader, Lady Sango. Tatsuo is a troublemaker and soon the others will realize that he does not have their best interests at heart. The ones who followed you from the battlefield know you, my Lady. They know that this village would not exist if not for you and they will not allow Tatsuo to bully you into a marriage that you do not want. This village has risen from the ashes of destruction and we do not need a Lord to protect us because, as you have taught us, we have each other.”
 
Sango looked to the moon. “Yes, but will they remember with Tatsuo buzzing constantly in their ears about how unsuitable and unwomanly I am? I admit Isamu, that I am not trained to be a great lady.”
 
“No you are a taijiya, a proud and noble warrior and there will always be those in this village that would follow you unto death. You have my sword, Lady, as long as I walk this earth and you will always have my friendship for saving my daughter.”
 
Sango smiled at him. “How is Chie?”
 
A small smile curved her friend's lips and his eyes shown.
 
“She is grounded for throwing fruit at Tatsuo's pompous little brat, Shuji. Frankly I wanted to reward her with some of Kagome's ninja snacks but figured that would send the wrong message.”
 
Sango laughed and shook her head, highly amused, but her next thought sobered her.
 
“Isamu be careful while I'm gone, all right? My gut is telling me that something is coming and that it is not a coincidence that I am being called away. I'm going to leave Kirara here and if you get into trouble send her to Kaede's village. Kagome told me that she is going to be back in her time taking exams and that InuYasha was going with her, but Lady Kaede will be there when I take Kohaku. She will let our friends know and they will come to aid you if needed.”
 
The former samurai frowned but nodded his agreement.
 
“You can rely on me, my Lady. I will protect the village.”
 
He did not have to say he would protect the village with his life, because she already knew. Sango and Isamu stood side by side at the foot of those who had died before her and the last of the taijiyas couldn't help but feel that something out there wanted her to join them.