InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Heart Within ❯ Prologue ( Chapter 1 )

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

THE HEART WITHIN

Summary: She has carried vengeance in her shadowed heart for 500 years, sacrificing her self for that dream. Now, Sango just might get her chance… (IY/YYH crossover)

A/N: This is my first venture into a crossover fic. I was inspired by watching amv’s of Kurama and Hiei, and went hunting YYH videos. Boy did that start my plot bunnies hopping…hope you like, and let me know if anyone is too out of character---I’m still exploring the “yuyuverse” and any critique is welcome. Thanks, Fate

WORD DEFINITIONS

Chirugeon - surgeon, what is known as a “bone” doctor

Prologue

The demonic energy that surrounded the chirugeon’s home in a sullen haze reminded her faintly of the dark miasma that had always surrounded Naraku’s castle. Lightning pierced the sky, flashing across her blurry vision, as the wind circled with a hiss through the trees that surrounded the demon’s lair. Leaves torn from the swaying branches scattered around her as she stumbled on, out from under the trees. The heavy weight of her Hiraikotsu dragged at her shoulders as her arms tightened around the swaddled urn she held to her breast. Everything about her spoke of defeat, from the dried blood on her tattered black armor to the weary stumble of her steps, but her eyes---her eyes held a fierce determination almost ugly in its single-minded intensity as she drove herself on across the scant clearing and up the stone steps to his door.

Knocking with the butt of a drawn dagger, the sounds boomed out with the hollowness of a death knell as she waited. She instinctively drew back when the door swept open, the hinges protesting with a loud squeal as she was suddenly confronted by the demon she had come seeking.

“A human?” He seemed surprised by that, but amused, his dark eyes glinting as he stared down at her with a smirk. He wore a human’s face, but the aura she felt from him was both powerful and demonic. He wore his iron-grey hair swept up and tied back in a long tail and his body was swathed in a sleeveless kimono of sky blue with scarlet edging. Three gold rings pierced his jaw on the left, a wider one with a broken chain hanging off of it on the right. Another was set into his right temple, a second chain dangling from it.

“Are you Shigure?” she asked, her voice scratchy from abuse as her knuckles whitened around the awkward bundle she held.

“I am,” he replied with all the arrogance of the typical demon male. “Who asks?”

“My name is Sango, and I have come seeking your services as a surgeon.” Her voice was calm, as if she spoke of nothing more than the weather.

He laughed, breaking the tense silence with the mockery of it. His fangs gleamed as he grinned down at her. “You? A human woman? Come seeking me, a demon doctor? For what?”

“For this,” she said, eyes narrowing dangerously as she tore the covering from the urn held in the curl of her left arm. A reddish glow rose up from the exposed jar, and the bloody flesh inside shuddered with a distinctive, rhythmic beat.

“A demon heart?” A thin brow rose and he looked slightly intrigued.

“This heart belonged to a wind youkai who was created by another I seek to kill. Kagura is dead now, but he separated her heart from her body long before he killed her. Naraku has escaped to the demon world and taken my brother with him. I cannot follow, as a human, and I have vowed my vengeance, by any means necessary. I knew a girl---she told me of heart transplants that had been done on humans, by doctors skilled in the way of such things. I want this heart implanted inside me so that I can find my brother and kill Naraku. I know I cannot live much longer with the wounds I have sustained in the last battle, but everyone I know and loved has been taken from me by that bastard, and I will have my revenge.” The look in her eyes was wild, almost crazed, and there was a wealth of pain and horror in her whispered snarl. It piqued his interest, and he tapped a forefinger to his pursed lips as he leaned against the door jam with a thoughtful look in his eye.

“A truly intriguing reason, I must admit, and the thought of experimenting on a willing human has some merit of its own. Come inside, then, Sango, and tell me more of your story. If it proves worthy to hold my interest, than I will consider taking you up on your challenge.” He stood back to allow her entrance, and she stepped unhesitatingly across the threshold, the red glow of the beating heart held in her arms bathing her pale face with a bloody light of resolution.


Examining the neat row of precise tools in front of him, Shigure selected the one he wanted with a slight smile. Testing the tip of the razor-sharp scalpel, he turned to stare down at the half-naked girl who lay strapped to the wooden table with a rather fond look. “You know, this is proving almost too delightful. A willing patient, a taiji-ya even, who seeks the aid of a demon to become a demon so that she can go kill yet another one. It’s just too deliciously ironic.”

Her brown eyes were dark pools of glittering repugnance, but she said nothing, her determination to see this through winning out over her hatred of his kind. That in itself was delightful, as was the thought of her pain to come. Humans felt so keenly---and he didn’t know if her fierce determination to live would outlast the agony of the operation that was to come. It would be an interesting experiment. Could she last through the terrible pain or would she succumb to the weakness of her flesh?

So fine a flesh it was---so pale, so delicate and soft. He ran an idle finger down her arm, savoring the feel of it, and she grit her teeth and turned her head away. Her black hair fanned across her cheek, and he lightly touched her jaw, calling her attention back to him.

“If you survive this, Sango, then you will be like one reborn. That I can promise you. Your survival, however, depends entirely on you.”

With those gently acidic words, he plunged the knife into her chest and began his work with meticulous precision and a delicacy and artistry few could appreciate. She was certainly in no position to appreciate it, for like all the rest, she soon succumbed to the pain as her conscious mind folded in upon itself into a crazed world of blood and terror, reaching new heights of agony her innocently human mind had yet to encounter. She had vowed, as they all did, to make no sound, but her screams soon rose to fill his ears with their beautiful music as her sweet little heart and the darker bloody one she chose to supplant it rose in a staccato frenzy of beating desperation as he continued his dark ministrations throughout the long night.


Her recovery was a slow one. There had been many times when he thought she would die, wasting all his energy and effort on what appeared to be a hopeless enterprise. Her frail human body had at first rejected the demon heart that beat inside her scarred chest, and she had succumbed to the prevalent fevers and infection that plagued so many of her kind in these times. Her mind had wandered in maddened nightmares as he left her to fight it out on her own, for not only was there the meshing of another’s flesh into hers, there was also the joining of a demon’s energy with her own human chi for her to deal with.

It was her will, in the end, that proved the stronger, for she clung to life with a tenacity he had seen in few demons, let alone humans. He watched her, keeping meticulous notes as any good doctor would, of how many times her life’s candle had almost been snuffed out until her will had flared the spark of it alight once more, although it flickered feebly for many weeks, and burned low for many more. But it stayed lit, as did the fevered glint of determination in her dark, haunted eyes in the few moments of rare lucidity she had.

She stayed abed for weeks, and stayed as frail and weak as a newborn babe for quite a few more, but there finally came a time when she was able to stand upon her own two feet and walk without stumbling, and eventually, to run without gasping in pain. Once she was up, her recovery grew surprisingly swift, and Shigure attributed it to her new heart, for a demon’s blood now pumped through her human veins, and she was what one might consider a hanyou of his own creation. He was fond of her, almost, and thought that if he had ever created anything in this world like a child of his own, it would be her, and so he indulged her slow recovery with a distant, almost paternal pride at his own stunning accomplishment.

He insisted she take her time to recover and regain her strength. It would have been a pure waste to have spent so much of his efforts on her for her to then die at the first attack by a demon or marauding human to cross her path. He was pleased to see her exercise with her weapons, straining each day to grow a little more stronger. He liked her giant boomerang, one made out of nearly indestructible demon-bone, and something she could send spinning out to take down more than one enemy from a distance. He demanded the secrets of its manufacture as the price for his taking care of her after the surgery. She showed him, and he, of course, improved upon it, creating a better weapon for himself in the circular blade of his phosphorous oxen-bone sword.

She would, perhaps, develop some rather unique abilities in time as the demonic heart meshed better with her own human body. She already had a faster pace and quicker recovery than before, and he would have been pleased just to watch the progress of her new potential, but once she had recovered sufficiently enough to survive on her own, she disappeared. His last price sat sour in her stomach, for he had told her that she could not reveal her true self to anyone she had ever known, in past or in the future, for she had told him that two of her friends had escaped that last battle with Naraku through the time-spanning Bone-Eater’s Well in the village of the priestess Kaede, and were, perhaps, somehow alive in some distant future. She now had the ability, if she survived, to live centuries, and one day meet them again. She might also, perhaps, save her brother if she was ever able to free him from the hanyou’s control.

He liked to give an interesting story an ironic twist at the end, and found the thought incredibly delightful that even if she did kill Naraku, she could never tell him who it was who had, that if she did free her brother, she could never reveal to him who she was, and that if she ever did meet her friends again, this Inuyasha and Kagome, than she could never reveal to them that she was alive. It was a sweet price to savor for his help in securing her chance for revenge, and he would wonder, from time to time, if she would succeed, and if so, what would be hers in the end but an empty vengeance she could never lay claim to.

How sad. And yet so utterly delicious.


There had been no barrier between the human and demon worlds when first she had gone to Shigure to have Kagura’s heart implanted inside her body. By the time she had recovered her strength, and sought to journey through to the other realm, Spirit World had taken a decisive hand in the centuries-long war that had existed between the other two realms and snapped the confining kakai net into place. She was trapped on this side, in the human world, with no way to cross easily over to the other side, though she spent long years searching for one.

She spent that time improving her skill and learning her new abilities by testing them against the opponents she always had. She loathed the demon-kin, seeing Naraku’s face in every demon she attacked and killed. She stayed in the shadows, keeping her word to the evil doctor even more than she had promised, revealing her true self to no one. She grew, eventually, to prefer the shadows, as the lonely years of her wandering grew long, and she watched humans she had once known perish to time. The bitter memory of her loss---her beloved houshi and her beloved companion, the fire-neko Kirara, not to mention, her friends, Inuyasha and Kagome, who had disappeared down the well in that last, horrific battle---kept her from ever wanting to feel that loss with another, and so she kept her heart frozen, even when others she knew in light passing over the years made known their wish to allow more. She separated herself even more then, not even wanting the burden of possibility, for her traitorous heart yearned for more than the lonely emptiness she wrapped herself in, protecting herself from the pain and sadness that haunted her every step. In time, she became as cold as the blade she held in her hand, a weapon of thwarted revenge who killed the evil oppressors of this world with a vicious vengeance that was as deadly as it was precise.

Her vengeful shadow became legendary, even to those who were legends themselves, and it was many centuries before they finally found her actual existence to be truth. Over the long years, Spirit World had consolidated their power, and taken their role of defending the human world from the demon one as their standard. With no demons to hinder their growth, the humans flourished and fought among themselves, transforming the remote islands of her birth into a single nation unified with purpose as other human nations expanded their borders and influence across the seas that surrounded them. The SDF, the Spirit Defense Force, grew lax in hiding their true identity with the once-zealous secrecy that they had cloaked themselves in before. Stumbling across the knowledge of their existence had been by mistake, discovering more had been by calculation until she had finally emerged to request audience with King Yama himself, hoping that he would allow her to pass through the kakai barrier once he had heard her story, and finally allow her the vengeance she had so long sought.

But her own shadowy legend, built over the years by her own unceasing vengeance against the youkai who preyed on humans, had proved her own downfall. King Yama, seeing so able a weapon to his hand, would not let her go on such a foolish quest, where she would probably die, and might only provoke the more restless demons of Makai into rebelling more than they were now, even as his armies were pressing further into demon territory, seeking to expand the borders of Reikai control. As an undying human with the heart of a demon and the skills of a taiji-ya honed over centuries into the deadliest strength of both, she was too valuable a weapon not to use, and yet too loose a cannon to let roam free.

So he offered the bait while holding the chain, demanding her acquiescence. She would be added to his own special force, but not as one of the SDF police or Reikai troops, but as what she was so skilled at, the hiding in the shadows until she moved out to make the kill. Part of an elite group of assassins under his direct jurisdiction, her hatred of all things demon would be given official sanction, and her skills used to the Reikai’s benefit. The reward for her cooperation? She would be allowed to go to Makai---eventually, one day, perhaps, if she proved herself worthy---to seek out her vengeance against Naraku---a demon none knew of now but as the merest scrap of doubtful legend. In the meantime, he assured her that he would have his own son, the perennial toddler Koenma, seek out any information they could find on the demon’s whereabouts in the shadowy depths of demon world, and when they did, they would let her go.

Reluctantly, she agreed, knowing there was no other true choice for her now that they knew of her existence, and so she had come during the Meiji period to join King Yama’s most secret arsenal against a demonic resurgence. It was a small group, only a select few, and she might have made friends with some of them, if she had let herself, but the habit of long centuries of a shadowy half-existence proved too hard to break, even with them, and eventually they left her to withdraw alone inside her silent shadows, calling her Sango Anei, and keeping their distance as she seemed to wish. They found her uncanny, and her deadly skill and cold smile as she dispatched even the most fearsome demon innately disturbing. She let them think what they would, and kept to herself, and although she was respected, she was also feared, and left alone to her shadows as the others whispered behind their hands that the heart of the demon that beat within her had frozen her blood in more ways than one, and who knew if she even had a soul anymore?

So the years passed, with her world one of death when called upon and waiting for the next call when not. She fought, even in training, with an unbridled ferocity that was almost inconsistent with her withdrawn silence when she wasn’t, and her legend grew even more among the Reikai than it had when she wandered the human world unhindered. Her requests to cross the kakai net eventually grew silent as King Yama found one excuse or another to delay what he would never give her, and he thought that she had finally given into the inevitable, and quit her impossible quest to find her brother, who was probably dead after five centuries, and kill a demon who none even now knew of. But he was wrong, for the fierce desire that had seen her live through a demonic transplant burned still within her icy soul, undimmed by time, and growing stronger for the long denial of her wish to see an end to it and the creeping knowledge that she was now in Kagome’s time, and she could not, by Shigure’s demand, even reveal herself to her old friends, or ease the long burden of her lonely, bitter soul with the healing warmth of their shared understanding.

And so she waited, seething in the shadows, for her chance to sneak through the border, and finally found it, when an assassin was ordered by a furious Yama to go and kill an ex-Spirit Detective by the name of Yusuke Urameshi, who had disappeared into the tunnel created by the dark anger of another named Sensui. Sensui had formed a passage between the human and demon worlds in his hatred for his own kind, and although the barrier had stood firm to hold back the highest classes of demons, it was ripped open by the psychic sword of a brash boy named Kuwabara, who had chased the former Spirit Detective Sensui through the tunnel after he had supposedly killed his friend Yusuke.

But Yusuke had had a secret, one unknown to him, and even unfamiliar to Koenma, Yama’s son and Yusuke’s sometime boss. He was the descendant of a hanyou born of a demon and a woman centuries before, and his demon blood asserted itself after Sensui killed him, though only the SDF had been there to see the resurrection as the detective’s spirit guide Puu came to shield him from their attack. Koenma had interfered, in defiance of the King’s direct order, and the pair of them had disappeared into the tunnel after a fleeing Sensui and the avenging teammates who had followed.

An assassin was sent to do what the SDF could not, and although she had not been the one ordered to go, none of the others knew that, and so she was able to take out the one who had---an assassin by the name of Shi---with a casual strike to the back of the head to render him unconscious even as she ripped the written order sending him out of his hand.

Folding herself into the long, black cloak she had taken to wearing to hide herself from the world, she had summoned one of the death-maidens, who escorted ghosts down the River Stix to their place in heaven or hell, to take her immediately to the tunnel at Demon’s Gate. The black-haired maiden had been doubtful, but taken her, and although the SDF captain had his own doubts as to Yama’s choosing her to be the one to go after the Mazoku boy, he had let her pass. As she ran through the dark grid between the living world and the demon, her heartbeat quickened at finally having realized her long dream of crossing through the barrier. Finally, after five long centuries, she had a chance at her revenge…