InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Heart Within ❯ Chapter Eleven ( Chapter 12 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: YoukaiFate 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 12.06.2008 | Pages: 5 | Words: 7.9K | Visits: 489 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 12.06.2008 | Pages: 5 | Words: 7.9K | Visits: 489 | Status: Completed
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, etc., of Inuyasha or Yu Yu Hakusho. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and not for profit.
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: Wow, it’s been a while. My apologies for the long wait, but I was busy taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which was a blast, though writing 50,000 words in one month was truly a challenge. Totally worth the late nights and mindless days, though. =) If anyone would like a link to the website, please drop me a note with your email address and I will send it to you. (Fate)
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR YYH BLACK AND THE THREE KINGS SAGA!
Chapter Eleven
Sango closed her eyes, fighting back the tears of fright and remorse that threatened to spill over as her heart tightened inside her chest. Her fingers trembled on the bloodied hilt of her katana and she had the sudden desire to throw it away, as if it was tainted by the evil she herself was corrupted with.
*It was me---my rage, my anger, my hate, seeping out to infect everything and everyone around me. Just like Naraku’s poisonous miasma…oh, kami…what if it’s his influence which---oh, god.* She wanted to fall to her knees at the utter horror of it, that the evil oni might somehow be reaching out through Kagura’s heart buried inside her chest to control her very actions. Even, perhaps, to make her betray all those around her as she had once betrayed her friends by stealing the Tetsusaiga from Inuyasha. She had led them all into a trap in the hopes of freeing her poor brother from under Naraku’s mindless control.
Worse was the haunting thought that this evil infecting her very blood had been going on for countless centuries, that she had been all but unaware even as she had fought countless youkai, her anger and bitterness growing as they continued to attack her, their very existence an affront to her who had always stood between her people and their despised kind.
The hands curving over her shoulders tightened. “Anei---please, say something. You are holding too much inside. You must---”
“Oh, come off it, Kurama.” The fire apparition’s voice was biting. “She’s just wallowing in her own self-pity. How nauseating.”
Sango’s head jerked up and she shot the blood-splattered demon a look of utter anguish. “Damn you, demon, how could you even know what I’m thinking? Or what I’ve done!”
That last word was said with such agony and heartache, ripped straight out of the very depths of her tormented soul that even Yususke was taken aback. Staring around him at the bloody carnage unleashed around the clearing, he could only bite his lip and shrug helplessly when Kurama looked to him for support over the top of the girl’s black head.
“This lamentation is entirely pointless,” Hiei sneered.
“Hiei---” Kurama cautioned, but the fire demon was having none of it.
“You stupid human---it’s because you’ve refused to accept the demon inside you that any of this has happened. Your self-loathing for what you are has allowed your demon energy to go out of control, and how many times has that happened in the past?”
“Too many,” she whispered hoarsely, turning her head aside in shame and closing her eyes tight to hold back the tears his words caused, for he was right. How many times had she gone into battle, her rage fueling her strength even as it must have reached out to madden the youkai she fought against? How many of those youkai had been influenced by her own madness so that they were caught as helplessly by it as these poor demons who had just died had been? How many times? How many? Countless battles she had fought and won against youkai over the centuries, the legend of her shadowy vengeance growing with each and every fight, and who knew now which battles might never have occurred if it hadn’t been for her madness reaching out to suck her demonic opponents in, as the evil Naraku had once done, over and over again, pulling them into an insidious rage that could only boil over into pointless bloodshed.
Hiei was relentless, his scorn evident as he growled, “Fool! What has your self-hatred cost not only you but others? You despise youkai---when you only truly despise yourself.”
Sango flinched, as if struck, for his sharp words rang truth.
Kurama pitied her but could say nothing, for Hiei was right. He met the fire demon’s gaze over the girl’s bowed head, the scent of her tears sharp in the air.
Hearing a slight sound behind him, the fire demon turned and casually thrust his katana into the wounded body at his feet. The youkai shuddered and then lay still as Hiei grimly drew his sword back out, having given mercy to one too wounded to ever rise again. His expression was chilling, his eyes hard as he snarled, “Your regret is meaningless to the dead. Sniveling about it won’t help them.”
Yusuke raised his hands, palms out and fingers spread as his mouth pantomimed a “Woah!” of dumbfounded agreement as he realized that Hiei had a damn good point.
She stiffened, her head shooting up as her mouth fell open. Her eyes were wide with shock, the brown depths glittering with the tears that had not yet fallen, her cheeks damp with the ones that had. Kurama stared down at her, his green eyes dark with pity for the harsh reality she had to now acknowledge.
Neither looked as they heard the fire demon’s sword strike again, the slight noise as the wounded was given mercy loud in the heavy tension.
Her nostrils flared slightly as she took a deep breath, and the flash of pain in her eyes was quickly covered by a look of grim resignation. Her fingers tightened on her sword’s hilt, and Kurama nodded slightly in silent understanding. She was a warrior, and although it was little to offer in the way of restitution, still he must let her go to do what she felt she must.
Her expression was wooden, her eyes blank as she set about the grim task of going through the bloody battlefield and dealing the mercy-stroke to the fallen. Hiei did not acknowledge her, only working his way through one side of the clearing as she did the other. Yusuke made a gesture as if to go help them, but Kurama only shook his head. This was for them to do. Hiei would not welcome their interference, and there were few enough of the poor wretches who needed to be put out of their misery. The fighting had been particularly vicious.
He was surprised, though, when Hiei stepped to the center of the bloody field and gestured for them to get back. Kurama gave him a questioning look, but the fire demon only glared. Clearing his throat, Kurama got both the detective’s and Anei’s attention, and waved them over to his side. With a quick look around to make sure there were no others needing mercy, Anei reluctantly walked back towards him. She was quiet, her expression unfathomable as she rejoined them. She turned her head to watch as Hiei struck his sword point-first into the earth and touched his fists together, his eyes closing as he gathered his concentration.
“Ah.” Kurama nodded, understanding now. Yusuke quirked a brow in his direction, but the fox was too busy watching the fire demon as he summoned his jyaki around him to explain. The wind seemed to stir, pulled in by the black-haired youkai’s summons, and the sodden fabric of Hiei’s black pants stirred in rippling waves even as the spiky bangs swirled in the rising vortex of energy he now stood in. The Jagan eye was glowing, green fire shimmering in its depths as Hiei suddenly flung up his head, his joined fists springing free so that his open palms arced out in a sharp half-circle around him. A ghostly green fire spread out from his splayed fingers, igniting those bodies closest to him, but not touching the grass or forest they rested upon. Sparks flew from one body to the next, the flesh igniting and then vanishing along with the eerie flames as each was consumed in turn by the otherworldly blaze.
“Well, that’s convenient,” Yusuke noted wryly, his eyes resting on the fire demon, who stood in the center of the ghostly blaze, his whole body tensed with fierce concentration as he held the flames steady with only his own energy and control. Sweat glistened along the corded muscles that stood out in sharp relief across the demon’s shoulders and arms, turning the dried blood pink as it dripped off of him in splatters that then went up in tiny green wisps of reactive flame and smoke.
Anei stepped forward to watch with a straight back and stiff manner as the green fire swept across the battlefield, leaving nothing behind except the slashed earth and churned turf to mark that anything had ever happened there. She was a silent sentinel to the eerie funeral pyre, and her head bowed as Hiei finally let the flames go with a last flick of his splayed fingers. The last spark died in a wisp of ghostly luminance as the glow finally dissolved from his third eye as the tension was slowly relaxed from his taut shoulders and rigid muscles.
The demon looked tired, and Kurama stepped gingerly across the now empty meadow to assess his condition. But Hiei just shook his head when the red-haired fox would have offered his assistance, wrapping both hands around his earth-bound sword and pulling it free with a jerk. The blade was still filthy with blood, so the demon knelt to wipe it off in the grass before sheathing it.
Anei silently did the same, her eyes dark and expression unreadable as Yusuke scruffed the back of his shaggy head with a rueful look. He shrugged when the two demons looked at them, but Sango straightened. Abruptly walking across the churned grass, she paused a moment as she met Hiei’s stolid stare with her own before drawing herself up and bowing deeply.
“Thank you,” was all she said, the words soft and yet firm.
“Hn.” The red eyes only narrowed as the demon’s lips thinned. His voice was cold as he said sharply, “That will not happen again.”
“No,” she affirmed, raising her brown eyes to his as she straightened. Her face was resolute, her shoulders squared as if she knew the personal struggle ahead to make it so. Kurama wondered if she really did.
“Well, guys, now what?” Yusuke deliberately broke the silent tension as he joined them, his brown eyes meeting Kurama’s for a quick instant, showing that he understood fully the strange exchange between the girl and his three-eyed friend.
“A bath,” Kurama said firmly, looking down at his splattered over-robe with acute distaste, and he was hardly as sullied as the others.
Sango nodded sharp agreement as Hiei looked sour and Yusuke shuddered. “Yeah, that would be nice, fox-boy. But I don’t see any convenient bath-houses around here, do you?”
“You’re about to learn another lesson in living rough, my friend,” Kurama said with a chuckle of amusement as Yusuke groaned.
“Let me guess---that ice-cold spring?”
“Better than that,” Kurama said almost cheerfully as he turned away from the field and started walking back to the cave.
Hiei snorted. “Not by much.”
Sango silently followed them as Yusuke gave the kitsune a suspicious glance.
“I found a creek.” Kurama smiled, and the ex-detective slapped a dirty hand to his forehead, leaving a smear of blood behind.
“Ain’t that just great. I bet it’s cold as all hell.”
“At least it will get you clean, Yusuke.”
“It’ll probably shrink my balls right off, Kurama.”
“If you had any,” came the tired aside as the fire demon plucked his abandoned coat from off a tree limb. He didn’t don it, having no wish to soil his only clean clothing.
“If you weren’t so covered in blood, three-eyes, I’d---”
Sango gingerly followed the three friends, slightly taken aback that their attention could turn so quickly from the bloody battle that had just occurred. She cast a last glance over her shoulder as they exited the field, which now stood empty. A light breeze played across the torn earth and trampled grass, the only signs left that anything had even happened. She frowned, promising herself that she would not ignore Hiei’s sharp rebuke. She could not regret what had happened, but now must find a way so that it would never happen again. She had to---it was the only way to make up for the terrible things she had done.
“Anei?”
She turned her head as Kurama paused to look back at her, suddenly realizing she no longer followed, and she hurried her steps to catch up with them.
*~*~*~*~*
The water was cool, but not as chilly as the mountain-fed streams of her home village. Still, it had been some time since she had had to resort to washing herself in a creek, but the small, secluded bend where she stood up to her thighs in splashing water was not so bad on the whole. The sharp turn in the water’s course was surrounded by more of the willow-like trees that had shaded the small spring she had used that morning, and Sango idly wondered if the spring came from the same source as the creek, which was rather narrow and swift through the rocky outcrop she waded into from the grassy bank.
The water was surprisingly clear in the still pools between the piled stones that pulled the creek into almost an L-shaped change of direction. She knew that the three demons were bathing some length down from her, but was certain that any mess she made in the water would be cleared by the rocky gravel that cleaned the water both above and below her chosen spot. She had gingerly shucked off her jeans and shirt, wincing as some of the bruises and deeper lacerations from the battle earlier returned to throbbing life. She still wore her underwear and sports bra as she pulled her hair free from the ponytail tie she had bound it back with. Claiming the scrap of soap she had retained for herself after offering the rest of the trial-sized bar to the three men to use, she hastily knelt in the rushing water until she could duck her head under enough to wash her hair.
Scrubbing herself head to toe with a rather abrasive hand, Sango winced as she reopened a few of the deeper cuts, but watched with grim resignation as they closed right before her eyes, scarring over until only a faint line appeared. Even that would disappear in a few hours. Her body, with the help of Kagura’s heart, was quick to heal.
Her wet hair was heavy against her back as she stood up to retrieve her clothing. She had thought to keep them dry, but the stiffened bloodstains on her black jeans and sleeveless turtleneck made her change her mind. Using the last of her soap, she worked over the sturdy fabric as much as could, squeezing the pinkish water out of both until it ran clear. Her expression was troubled as she laid her clothes flat on the bank to dry and hopped up on the grass beside them to comb out her damp hair. Her thoughts remained pensive and unable to really focus on anything as she avoided thinking of the one thing she should---which was how the madness had seeped out of her to infect the youkai of Makai into what was, essentially, a mindless frenzy of blood-lust and slaughter.
The problem was, she just didn’t know how to approach the problem, or how she should even feel about it. Certainly, she felt regret and remorse to a sharp degree, and a certain haunting sense of horror, that she had possibly been the cause of how many senseless deaths over how many years that it was unbearable to think about. She could have sunk herself into despair just thinking of the past, but Hiei had already sneered at her that regret was useless to the dead.
He was right, damn him. And Sango knew it. She also knew how futile it would be to constantly beat herself up over what she had not known---though she was particularly good at that---beating herself up, rather. But that was as unworthy an action for the youkai she had just drawn to their deaths as was crying over the fact that she had. Her tears could not help them now---only her determination to see that it would never, ever, happen again.
She just didn’t know how she might go about that. She had absolutely no idea. Both Hiei and Kurama had said that it was her failure to accept herself as a demon---a thought that still made her draw her knees up to her chest and shiver as she wrapped her arms around them---that was causing her rejected aura to reach out to influence those around her with the anger she felt for what she now was.
Hanyou is what Hiei had called her, and he was right, dang it. She was a hanyou, of a sorts, though the idea still appalled her, even with the terrible knowledge of what that rejection could mean. She knew she had to find a way to accept herself for what she now was, but it just felt so wrong.
She had gone against everything her family stood for in taking a demon’s heart as her own. Her very humanity, something so precious to her kith and kin that they chose to protect their own kind against the demons who plagued them, was forsaken for the chance to take revenge on the evil hanyou who had taken away everything and everyone that had ever mattered to her. Abandoning that humanity, small as it was, and accepting the demon side of her just seemed---wrong.
But accept it she must.
So how could she do that?
Well, for one, she could start facing the reality that was.
Sango’s eyes widened, as the thought hit her with sudden clarity. She had not accepted reality, because she just didn’t want to. She didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, something different than what her family would have ever wanted her to be. But she had chosen to take Kagura’s heart as her own, had chosen revenge over death, and had done so with her eyes wide open to the fact that that was the choice she was making. She hadn’t been forced to it. In fact, she had begged for it, begged and suffered and promised to never reveal herself to anyone she had ever known for the chance to live and gain the ability and strength to finally see an end to all of it.
She had to be brutally honest with herself. She had welcomed and even relished the benefits that had come with Kagura’s heart. Strength of arm and sharper perception, quick healing and some use of the wind if she fed her energy to it---those were welcome assets to herself as a warrior. Even Kagura’s influence---the influence she had been so afraid of, worrying that Naraku’s madness was twined within what was essentially a creation out of his own essence---she had used that influence, embraced it and taken it for her own. Although she did not welcome all of it---the constant yearning for freedom, for one, was something she had to fight with her own determination to stay her chosen path---but wait, that was all wrong. For she had had that yearning before she had ever gained the wind demon’s heart---she had always just felt guilty for the thoughts that would come to her now and again that she wished things had come out differently than how they had, that she could be someone other than who she was.
But that was merely being human. Or even youkai, really. One did wish they could be someone else, or somewhere else, from time to time. Any rational being with any spark of imagination had that kind of secret yearning, which could either bring about change in one’s life or the resolution to deal with what one had and was.
Something she had not been doing.
Well, then it was high time to start.
Now decided and rather itchy for action, Sango uncurled herself to reach out and touch one leg of her jeans. They were still damp, but not so wet that she couldn’t wear them. They’d been more wet today than dry, actually, what with her dunking in the spring by the unicorn foal that morning, and then the blood---she quickly shifted her thoughts from that, silently thanking Kagura’s influence which allowed her to do just that. The kaze youkai had been rather good at shutting her emotions off when needed to do what she must.
Struggling into the damp fabric wasn’t easy and she had to dig the clingy denim out of her rear end before buttoning them closed. Her shirt was drier, at least, though stiff. Sango frowned at her socks and boots, which she had at least wiped clean, though she couldn’t wash the black faux leather. Wiggling her toes in the lush grass of the creek’s bank, she shrugged. Shoving the damp socks and laces into her boot-tops, she picked them up instead of putting them on. Gathering her sword belt and draping it over her shoulder, she checked that she had taken everything before leaving the small bend behind to make her way back to the cave and their sometime camp-site.
There was no one there to greet her, save the abandoned ruins of their unfinished meal. Frowning, Sango dropped her burdens atop her folded cloak, adding her dual knife-belts to the pile after plucking the sharpest blade to sheath at the small of her back. It was a reflexive action---she was never one to be caught without some kind of weapon near to hand. She then went about cleaning up the litter of their lunch and tidying up a bit. She rose sharply upon hearing a distinctive whisper, and was greeted with a lifted brow of sardonic appraisal as the short fire demon suddenly appeared on the rocks above her.
He was bare to the waist, his cloak-like coat slung negligently over one shoulder with the tied laces of his boots, his sword held by the sheath in his right hand, the belt-straps dangling. He was still dripping wet, his hair rather flat to his head, though the ends were already curling. He frowned as she continued to stare, and Sango flushed.
“Hn.” He jumped down beside her to dump his stuff even as Sango turned her attention to the others, who were returning at much more leisurely pace to their campsite, though Yusuke was complaining, as usual.
“A towel would be nice right about now. As would a comb. Some clean clothes. Hell, some dry clothes.” The ex-detective was plucking at his raggedy jeans with a scowl as he shook his head, shaking water off the curling ends of his dark hair and trying to get it out of his eyes. “God, what I wouldn’t give for some fricking hair gel.”
“You’ll survive, Yusuke.” Kurama indulged his temperamental friend with a smile. He was bare to the waist, having donned only his pants. His shirt and over-robe were draped over his bent arm as he gestured toward the hilly prominence of the cave’s entrance, where Sango and Hiei waited. “Perhaps you can ask Anei if you could borrow her comb.”
“Hey, yeah---Anei---you got a comb?” Yusuke looked too hopeful as he bound up the hill like an eager puppy, brown eyes lit with eagerness.
Sango couldn’t help but laugh as he nearly tripped over a rock in his zeal to get up the hill and barely saved himself by wind-milling his arms to keep his balance. Hiei snorted, jumping up to his preferred perch above the cave as Kurama followed the unabashed heir to the Mazoku with far more grace.
Sango retrieved her comb from among atop her cloak and handed it to the shaggy-headed boy. Yusuke kissed the comb like it was a gift from the gods, than sat himself down to attack his hair with sharp yanks and not a few searing curses.
“Don’t break it, Yusuke,” Kurama chided with a low chuckle as he finally reached the hill’s summit. “I’ll need to use it next---if I may, Anei?”
Sango nodded, rather distracted by the display of firm muscles that flexed across the kitsune’s lightly tanned chest. Studiously turning her attention back to the loose pile of her belongings, she hoped to find something else that they could use, but knew there was not much else she had to offer than what she already had.
“Thank you,” Kurama said, a little too politely, and then inquired after her bath.
“It was fine, thank you,” Sango replied just as politely, though she blushed.
“That water was butt-ass cold, actually.” Yusuke convulsively shivered.
“Hn.”
Sango turned to look up at the short demon, who was finger-combing his spiky hair back into shape. It was already dry---possibly from his higher body temperature. He ignored her to smirk at the red-haired fox, who only gave him a flat look in return.
The eerie way they could hold entire conversations with just their eyes made Sango’s shoulders twitch uncomfortably, so she ignored them to spread her own cloak out so that she could sit on it. Her hair, left loose to dry, brushed the small of her back where her shirt rode up as she sat down Indian-style. She wanted to braid it up out of the way but would have to wait her turn for the only comb she had brought, never having expected that she might have to share her few supplies with anyone.
Loathed to sit idle while her thoughts continued to be so restless, Sango pulled her knife-belt to her, fishing out her whet stone to run across the duller blades. The first scrape of the rock on the bared steel made the others jump, and she blushed. She was doing quite a bit of that, but her mind was whirling with how to just come out and ask them what she wanted to know. They were carefully dancing around the subject, talking of the inane and inconsequential, but it hung over them like a tense cloud that needed to be emptied before it burst.
*~*~*~*~*
It was Yusuke, of course, who was blunt enough to start the conversation going, once he had combed out his hair and scowled as it fell back across his eyes. Tossing the comb to Kurama, who had seated himself on one of the moss-covered ledges by the cave’s opening after carefully draping his robe and kimono on other rocks to dry with the least wrinkling he could manage without the benefit of a dryer or ironing board at hand, the detective looked around for something to do, and ended up staring at Sango’s bare toes.
“They’re pink.”
“What?” The whet stone nearly slipped from her hand as she looked up in bewilderment.
“Your toenails.”
Sango frowned, still confused.
Yusuke grinned as Kurama parted his hair to comb out a single section with long, careful strokes, patiently separating the tangles. Hiei rolled his eyes and fell back on his cloak to close his eyes with an impatient sigh.
“I just couldn’t picture you as being a girly-girl. I mean, they’re pink.”
“I like pink,” Sango said, still baffled by his preoccupation with what color she painted her toes. Kagome had been the one to show her how one idle afternoon long ago, and she had been happy to see the fashion start in Spirit World a few years after it had taken hold in the living world, who invented the polish in little glass bottles like Kagome had brought back with her from time to time to the Sengoku Jidai.
“So you like pink. What else do you like?” Yusuke casually dropped himself beside her, drawing his knees up so he could play with the ragged strings hanging from his holey knees. There was more hole than denim left in his ruined jeans actually, but he didn’t have anything else to wear, having gone commando. Next time, he’d be sure to bring along some underwear. And a change of clothes. And some gel. And some food. He’d be hungry soon, and he didn’t fancy having to wait for dinner like he had had for lunch.
Sango blinked, taken aback by the detective’s simple query. “What do you mean?”
“Wow, you have spent a lot of time alone, haven’t you?” Yusuke looked innocent as she frowned, but there was a wicked gleam in his brown eyes. He liked twitting her, her reactions were so refreshingly honest.
“What has that to do---”
“Well, I’m trying to get to know you. I thought I might start with something simple, like what you like, before I ask about your past.”
Sango dropped her eyes, her hand convulsively clenching around the whet stone.
“Hmph.” Hiei suddenly dropped beside them to lean against the cave’s wall by the sitting detective. His red eyes were narrowed on the slayer, though his folded arms and indolent posture spoke complete indifference. The fact that he had even bothered to descend from his chosen rock was enough of an indication of his interest in her answer.
“Yusuke---” Kurama cautioned, pausing in his meticulous combing to cast a significant look in the half-demon’s direction, but his friend ignored him.
Sango looked up at them, her dark eyes suddenly intent as she stared at each of them in turn, as if making up her mind. Man, she was a suspicious one. Yusuke kept his posture relaxed and easy, though he cocked a black brow as her gaze weighed him as it had the others. She seemed to come to some kind of a decision, for she nodded slightly, as if to herself, and then laid aside her knife and stone to knit her fingers together in her lap. He noticed that her knuckles were white, but forbore to comment, instead keeping his expression rather mild, for she looked as tightly wound as a Slinky.
“It’s a long story,” she said quietly, her expression rather serious, her voice a bit remote, as if she were trying to get her thoughts in order.
Yusuke shrugged that off as negligible. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
She didn’t reply, only biting her lip before looking somewhere off in the distance, unable to meet any of their eyes lest she falter in her tale. None of them stirred, as if sensing the tension within her and not wishing to push it.
“I---” She stopped, then abruptly looked at Hiei, who regarded her rather coolly. “I don’t know how to---to stop what happened earlier. I’m not sure---what to do. To control my---my jyaki. My---demon energy.”
It was clearly difficult for her to say that, and just as clearly difficult for her to admit her need for help.
Hiei just raised a brow, waiting for her to just come out and say it. Kurama took pity on her, though, and drew their attention by standing up. Pushing his long hair back over his shoulders, he walked across the small distance with the grace of a cat, his slightly tilted green eyes accentuating the likeness. “We are willing to help you, Anei.”
“I---thank you.” She was stiff, and made an abortive gesture, as if she might bow, but stopped the motion as Hiei grunted.
“You’ll have to feel your aura first, hanyou.”
She didn’t like that poignant reminder of her nature, but did not flinch, only meeting his solid red stare with her own. She was the first to look away, but it was because Kurama cleared his throat.
“I sense that your heart came from a wind apparition. Do you know who it was? That might help us to consider how to go about teaching you to accept and even use your energy.” He kept his voice low and gentle, as if she were fine china and needed delicate handling. Perhaps she did.
“Yes, I knew her.” She was staring off into the distance again and Yusuke rolled his eyes. He was impatient with how long it was taking for her to just spill the beans and get to the point, and so quickly got the conversation back on track.
“So why don’t you just tell us how you knew her, and how about adding in that ugly little roach-monkey you’re looking for, hmm?”
She didn’t smile at the reference to Naraku, only tensed up even stiffer than before, if that were possible. Kurama sighed to himself, mentally chiding Yusuke even as he purposely distracted her by taking a seat across from her. He kept his posture easy as he prompted, “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
*~*~*~*~*
*The beginning.*
To begin at the beginning would be to speak of ones dead to her for so long she could barely remember most of their faces. That hurt, but she carefully separated herself from the pain, sending it away as Kagura would have, and spoke briefly. “I was born in the Warring States Era. I’m not sure of the year---they were not counted then as the Westerners taught us. I know Kagome came through the well in the late 1500’s, and I was a few years older than her, and she was fifteen then, so I was either sixteen or seventeen.”
“Kagome?” Kurama prompted. His green eyes were intent, as if he would take in everything she said and remember it. His curiosity was rather obvious, and she could almost picture the kitsune ears pricked forward to catch her every word, if he had had them in his human form.
“She---well, it’s rather complicated. You see, I was born to a village of demon slayers. My father---” Her voice caught on his memory, though she hated that they heard that. “---was the headman, and I had a younger brother, Kohaku.” Her voice caught there, too, but she dropped that rock into the deep pool of old pain and let it go.
“We were both trained to slay demons, to defend our kind against the monsters who fed on them.” There was a growl from the fire youkai’s direction and she quickly hurried past that. “Both of us went on the mission where Kohaku---where Kohaku---”
She hadn’t spoken of it in so long, had never needed to but for the once with Shigure, actually, for her friends had known all of it from the beginning, for they had been there. They had pieced together what she had not spoken of, filled in by Kagome, who she had told amid the terrible tears that had followed when she realized her bother had been resurrected from the dead to serve as Naraku’s slave.
She wasn’t the young girl she had been. She had seen much, done much, since that terrible time, some of it more horrific than what had actually happened back then, though it still left her heart raw as she opened the painful memory of it. But she was able to wrap herself in the icy calm she had come to depend upon over the last centuries to withdraw form the terrible emotion of it. So she raised her head and met Kurama’s eyes, for he was able to keep his expression still as she spoke of the battle in terse sentences.
“A daimyo summoned us to slay a spider demon who kept attacking his castle. We did not know the lord himself was possessed by another demon, under the control of an evil hanyou named Naraku. We killed the spider demon easily---too easily. But in the battle, my brother Kohaku was also possessed, and was made to turn his weapon against us. He killed our father and the men with us.”
She was interrupted by their indrawn breaths and shocked expressions, but ignored it, continuing with dogged persistence to get the hard task over with. “I saw the spider’s thread that was controlling my brother, and realized it came from the daimyo---that he was dead, possessed by a demon to the seeming of life. I tried to kill him, but Kohaku attacked me. That action broke the demon’s control over my brother, but it was too late. We were both attacked by the daimyo’s men, to protect their lord, and---Kohaku died.”
“But you didn’t?” Kurama interrupted.
She stared off into the distance, her mind wrapped in memories. “They thought I had---we were buried together, by the daimyo’s son, Kagewake. He killed the demon possessing his father. I thought he was---ah---well, I learned later that he was possessed himself, by Naraku, who had plotted all of it from the beginning.
“You see, Naraku was after the Shikon no Tama, the Jewel of Four Souls, which Kagome had brought to the past with her and then shattered into hundreds of shards with her sacred arrow. We had five of those shards in our village, shards we had collected from demons we had slain.”
“Wait---what?” Yusuke shook his head, his confusion shared by the others by how her story was twisting in upon itself.
“The Jewel of Four Souls.” Kurama’s fingers tightened around his knees, recognizing the name and its significance. He had hunted---or rather, Youko had hunted---those shards once.
“I thought the Jewel was only a legend,” Hiei growled, expression dark.
“So are the taiji-ya, my friend,” Kurama said softly.
“Wait---you’ve mentioned this Kagome chick twice but haven’t exactly explained who she is.” Yusuke grasped on the name, drowning in the complications of her disjointed story.
“Kagome---she was a friend.” Her rough voice betrayed the fact that Kagome had been much more than just a friend to her, more like the sister she had never had. Sango closed her eyes, taking a moment to calm her raw emotions and push them away. She hadn’t realized how hard this would be, just to speak of the ones she would never see again, thanks to the dark promise Shigure had wrested from her.
Steadying her voice, Sango finally opened her eyes and explained. “Kagome was not from the Sengoku Jidai. She was actually born in the modern era, but was able to travel to the past, to my time, through a well on her family’s shrine. She was the reincarnation of a priestess, Kikyou, who was cremated with the Shikon no Tama, sending it out of the living world to the Spirit World until she was reborn as Kagome. The Jewel was inside her body, and she never knew it. She came to the past, and a demon pulled it out of her. She shattered the Jewel with a sacred arrow---she has the spiritual powers of a miko, but was never trained.”
Sango paused, not sure how much to explain. Yusuke was looking a little glassy-eyed, Hiei rather impatient. So she hurried over Inuyasha and Miroku, saying only, “Kagome met a half-demon, Inuyasha, and a monk, Miroku. Houshi-sama. He---his bloodline had been cursed by Naraku with a Wind Tunnel in his right hand that would eventually---did, eventually---kill him.” Her voice broke there, too.
“Inuyasha---he had loved Kikyou. Naraku plotted for them to betray each other, and Kikyou was killed and Inuyasha sent to sleep for fifty years, until Kagome came to the past and freed him.”
“This Naraku guy sure gets around.” Yusuke rubbed his temples. He had a pounding headache trying to follow all of this.
“Why?” Kurama asked. “Why did he do all this?”
“For the Jewel. He wanted its power for his own. It can be turned to evil, if influenced by the darkest emotions. Naraku’s plots were only for two things---to obtain the Jewel, and to darken its power to utter evil.”
“Naraku was the one behind the whole plot to lure the best warriors away from my village and to have one of us turn on the others. While we were at the daimyo’s castle, he sent demons to the village---and my people were slaughtered, one and all, for the Jewel shards we possessed.”
*~*~*~*~*
“The whole village?” Yusuke’s mouth fell open.
Kurama’s heart twisted, but she remained as closed and expressionless as Hiei, whose tension was only displayed by how still he had become as the slayer’s story unfolded. Kurama felt immeasurable pity for the girl who had survived so much death and pain. He asked her quietly, “Is that why you seek this Naraku? But you also seek your brother---but if he died at the castle---”
“He’s not dead. Naraku resurrected him, with a shard of the Jewel. Kohaku lives---as his slave, controlled by the shard and not knowing who he is, but he lives. I know it. Naraku took him with him when he fled to Makai---”
“Damn.” Yusuke summed their feelings up rather succinctly.
“These others---your friends? How did you meet them?”
“Naraku---disguised as Lord Kagewake, which I did not know was him---told me it was Inuyasha who had slaughtered my people. I went to kill him---and only learned the truth later.” There was a lot of bitterness in her voice, and Kurama wondered at the vileness that had been a demon who could twist things in so many directions of betrayal.
“We spent three years tracking down shards of the Jewel and trying to kill Naraku. In the last battle---my friends died. Naraku disappeared into Makai, badly wounded, but managing to escape and take my brother with him. I---was wounded myself, and knew I could not survive. I found Kagura’s heart, and---became as I am now.”
Kurama knew that she was not telling the whole truth, but her eyes were so dark with suppressed pain that he forbore to press her, instead asking, “Kagura? She was a wind demon?”
“She was Naraku’s creation. She was one of his incarnations.”
“Incarnation?” Kurama’s voice sharpened on the word, one he had not heard in a long time.
“Naraku had the ability to devour demons and take their bodies and powers for his own use. He was never a true demon---rather, he was once a man, who sold his soul to demon-kind to become a demon himself.”
“Ugh.” Yusuke grimaced. “Sounds too much like that brute Toguro.”
“Not quite, Yusuke,” Kurama said distractedly, glancing back at Hiei, who still leaned against the cave wall with a rather cold expression on his face. His red eyes remained on the girl, though, and there was a measuring calculation in the intensity of his gaze.
“Naraku was able to separate parts of himself---some of these he used to create his incarnations, with the help of the Jewel. He made several. Kagura was one of them. She was a full youkai, though Naraku was not, and used a fan to control the winds. She---she wasn’t like the rest of his incarnations. Most were loyal to Naraku---she was not. She was only held to his bidding by the fact that he had somehow separated her heart from her body when he first created her, and kept it as insurance to keep her obedient.”
“That guy’s a twisted fucker, isn’t he?” Yusuke shuddered, his wide shoulders moving as if he would shrug off the taint.
That observation actually caused Anei’s lips to twitch in a faint smile.
“Hn.” It was Kurama’s turn to smile faintly as the fire demon added his two cents with a flash of his red eyes.
*I’m of the same opinion, my friend,* he spoke to the apparition alone, and was rewarded with a sour glare.
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: Wow, it’s been a while. My apologies for the long wait, but I was busy taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which was a blast, though writing 50,000 words in one month was truly a challenge. Totally worth the late nights and mindless days, though. =) If anyone would like a link to the website, please drop me a note with your email address and I will send it to you. (Fate)
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR YYH BLACK AND THE THREE KINGS SAGA!
Chapter Eleven
Sango closed her eyes, fighting back the tears of fright and remorse that threatened to spill over as her heart tightened inside her chest. Her fingers trembled on the bloodied hilt of her katana and she had the sudden desire to throw it away, as if it was tainted by the evil she herself was corrupted with.
*It was me---my rage, my anger, my hate, seeping out to infect everything and everyone around me. Just like Naraku’s poisonous miasma…oh, kami…what if it’s his influence which---oh, god.* She wanted to fall to her knees at the utter horror of it, that the evil oni might somehow be reaching out through Kagura’s heart buried inside her chest to control her very actions. Even, perhaps, to make her betray all those around her as she had once betrayed her friends by stealing the Tetsusaiga from Inuyasha. She had led them all into a trap in the hopes of freeing her poor brother from under Naraku’s mindless control.
Worse was the haunting thought that this evil infecting her very blood had been going on for countless centuries, that she had been all but unaware even as she had fought countless youkai, her anger and bitterness growing as they continued to attack her, their very existence an affront to her who had always stood between her people and their despised kind.
The hands curving over her shoulders tightened. “Anei---please, say something. You are holding too much inside. You must---”
“Oh, come off it, Kurama.” The fire apparition’s voice was biting. “She’s just wallowing in her own self-pity. How nauseating.”
Sango’s head jerked up and she shot the blood-splattered demon a look of utter anguish. “Damn you, demon, how could you even know what I’m thinking? Or what I’ve done!”
That last word was said with such agony and heartache, ripped straight out of the very depths of her tormented soul that even Yususke was taken aback. Staring around him at the bloody carnage unleashed around the clearing, he could only bite his lip and shrug helplessly when Kurama looked to him for support over the top of the girl’s black head.
“This lamentation is entirely pointless,” Hiei sneered.
“Hiei---” Kurama cautioned, but the fire demon was having none of it.
“You stupid human---it’s because you’ve refused to accept the demon inside you that any of this has happened. Your self-loathing for what you are has allowed your demon energy to go out of control, and how many times has that happened in the past?”
“Too many,” she whispered hoarsely, turning her head aside in shame and closing her eyes tight to hold back the tears his words caused, for he was right. How many times had she gone into battle, her rage fueling her strength even as it must have reached out to madden the youkai she fought against? How many of those youkai had been influenced by her own madness so that they were caught as helplessly by it as these poor demons who had just died had been? How many times? How many? Countless battles she had fought and won against youkai over the centuries, the legend of her shadowy vengeance growing with each and every fight, and who knew now which battles might never have occurred if it hadn’t been for her madness reaching out to suck her demonic opponents in, as the evil Naraku had once done, over and over again, pulling them into an insidious rage that could only boil over into pointless bloodshed.
Hiei was relentless, his scorn evident as he growled, “Fool! What has your self-hatred cost not only you but others? You despise youkai---when you only truly despise yourself.”
Sango flinched, as if struck, for his sharp words rang truth.
Kurama pitied her but could say nothing, for Hiei was right. He met the fire demon’s gaze over the girl’s bowed head, the scent of her tears sharp in the air.
Hearing a slight sound behind him, the fire demon turned and casually thrust his katana into the wounded body at his feet. The youkai shuddered and then lay still as Hiei grimly drew his sword back out, having given mercy to one too wounded to ever rise again. His expression was chilling, his eyes hard as he snarled, “Your regret is meaningless to the dead. Sniveling about it won’t help them.”
Yusuke raised his hands, palms out and fingers spread as his mouth pantomimed a “Woah!” of dumbfounded agreement as he realized that Hiei had a damn good point.
She stiffened, her head shooting up as her mouth fell open. Her eyes were wide with shock, the brown depths glittering with the tears that had not yet fallen, her cheeks damp with the ones that had. Kurama stared down at her, his green eyes dark with pity for the harsh reality she had to now acknowledge.
Neither looked as they heard the fire demon’s sword strike again, the slight noise as the wounded was given mercy loud in the heavy tension.
Her nostrils flared slightly as she took a deep breath, and the flash of pain in her eyes was quickly covered by a look of grim resignation. Her fingers tightened on her sword’s hilt, and Kurama nodded slightly in silent understanding. She was a warrior, and although it was little to offer in the way of restitution, still he must let her go to do what she felt she must.
Her expression was wooden, her eyes blank as she set about the grim task of going through the bloody battlefield and dealing the mercy-stroke to the fallen. Hiei did not acknowledge her, only working his way through one side of the clearing as she did the other. Yusuke made a gesture as if to go help them, but Kurama only shook his head. This was for them to do. Hiei would not welcome their interference, and there were few enough of the poor wretches who needed to be put out of their misery. The fighting had been particularly vicious.
He was surprised, though, when Hiei stepped to the center of the bloody field and gestured for them to get back. Kurama gave him a questioning look, but the fire demon only glared. Clearing his throat, Kurama got both the detective’s and Anei’s attention, and waved them over to his side. With a quick look around to make sure there were no others needing mercy, Anei reluctantly walked back towards him. She was quiet, her expression unfathomable as she rejoined them. She turned her head to watch as Hiei struck his sword point-first into the earth and touched his fists together, his eyes closing as he gathered his concentration.
“Ah.” Kurama nodded, understanding now. Yusuke quirked a brow in his direction, but the fox was too busy watching the fire demon as he summoned his jyaki around him to explain. The wind seemed to stir, pulled in by the black-haired youkai’s summons, and the sodden fabric of Hiei’s black pants stirred in rippling waves even as the spiky bangs swirled in the rising vortex of energy he now stood in. The Jagan eye was glowing, green fire shimmering in its depths as Hiei suddenly flung up his head, his joined fists springing free so that his open palms arced out in a sharp half-circle around him. A ghostly green fire spread out from his splayed fingers, igniting those bodies closest to him, but not touching the grass or forest they rested upon. Sparks flew from one body to the next, the flesh igniting and then vanishing along with the eerie flames as each was consumed in turn by the otherworldly blaze.
“Well, that’s convenient,” Yusuke noted wryly, his eyes resting on the fire demon, who stood in the center of the ghostly blaze, his whole body tensed with fierce concentration as he held the flames steady with only his own energy and control. Sweat glistened along the corded muscles that stood out in sharp relief across the demon’s shoulders and arms, turning the dried blood pink as it dripped off of him in splatters that then went up in tiny green wisps of reactive flame and smoke.
Anei stepped forward to watch with a straight back and stiff manner as the green fire swept across the battlefield, leaving nothing behind except the slashed earth and churned turf to mark that anything had ever happened there. She was a silent sentinel to the eerie funeral pyre, and her head bowed as Hiei finally let the flames go with a last flick of his splayed fingers. The last spark died in a wisp of ghostly luminance as the glow finally dissolved from his third eye as the tension was slowly relaxed from his taut shoulders and rigid muscles.
The demon looked tired, and Kurama stepped gingerly across the now empty meadow to assess his condition. But Hiei just shook his head when the red-haired fox would have offered his assistance, wrapping both hands around his earth-bound sword and pulling it free with a jerk. The blade was still filthy with blood, so the demon knelt to wipe it off in the grass before sheathing it.
Anei silently did the same, her eyes dark and expression unreadable as Yusuke scruffed the back of his shaggy head with a rueful look. He shrugged when the two demons looked at them, but Sango straightened. Abruptly walking across the churned grass, she paused a moment as she met Hiei’s stolid stare with her own before drawing herself up and bowing deeply.
“Thank you,” was all she said, the words soft and yet firm.
“Hn.” The red eyes only narrowed as the demon’s lips thinned. His voice was cold as he said sharply, “That will not happen again.”
“No,” she affirmed, raising her brown eyes to his as she straightened. Her face was resolute, her shoulders squared as if she knew the personal struggle ahead to make it so. Kurama wondered if she really did.
“Well, guys, now what?” Yusuke deliberately broke the silent tension as he joined them, his brown eyes meeting Kurama’s for a quick instant, showing that he understood fully the strange exchange between the girl and his three-eyed friend.
“A bath,” Kurama said firmly, looking down at his splattered over-robe with acute distaste, and he was hardly as sullied as the others.
Sango nodded sharp agreement as Hiei looked sour and Yusuke shuddered. “Yeah, that would be nice, fox-boy. But I don’t see any convenient bath-houses around here, do you?”
“You’re about to learn another lesson in living rough, my friend,” Kurama said with a chuckle of amusement as Yusuke groaned.
“Let me guess---that ice-cold spring?”
“Better than that,” Kurama said almost cheerfully as he turned away from the field and started walking back to the cave.
Hiei snorted. “Not by much.”
Sango silently followed them as Yusuke gave the kitsune a suspicious glance.
“I found a creek.” Kurama smiled, and the ex-detective slapped a dirty hand to his forehead, leaving a smear of blood behind.
“Ain’t that just great. I bet it’s cold as all hell.”
“At least it will get you clean, Yusuke.”
“It’ll probably shrink my balls right off, Kurama.”
“If you had any,” came the tired aside as the fire demon plucked his abandoned coat from off a tree limb. He didn’t don it, having no wish to soil his only clean clothing.
“If you weren’t so covered in blood, three-eyes, I’d---”
Sango gingerly followed the three friends, slightly taken aback that their attention could turn so quickly from the bloody battle that had just occurred. She cast a last glance over her shoulder as they exited the field, which now stood empty. A light breeze played across the torn earth and trampled grass, the only signs left that anything had even happened. She frowned, promising herself that she would not ignore Hiei’s sharp rebuke. She could not regret what had happened, but now must find a way so that it would never happen again. She had to---it was the only way to make up for the terrible things she had done.
“Anei?”
She turned her head as Kurama paused to look back at her, suddenly realizing she no longer followed, and she hurried her steps to catch up with them.
*~*~*~*~*
The water was cool, but not as chilly as the mountain-fed streams of her home village. Still, it had been some time since she had had to resort to washing herself in a creek, but the small, secluded bend where she stood up to her thighs in splashing water was not so bad on the whole. The sharp turn in the water’s course was surrounded by more of the willow-like trees that had shaded the small spring she had used that morning, and Sango idly wondered if the spring came from the same source as the creek, which was rather narrow and swift through the rocky outcrop she waded into from the grassy bank.
The water was surprisingly clear in the still pools between the piled stones that pulled the creek into almost an L-shaped change of direction. She knew that the three demons were bathing some length down from her, but was certain that any mess she made in the water would be cleared by the rocky gravel that cleaned the water both above and below her chosen spot. She had gingerly shucked off her jeans and shirt, wincing as some of the bruises and deeper lacerations from the battle earlier returned to throbbing life. She still wore her underwear and sports bra as she pulled her hair free from the ponytail tie she had bound it back with. Claiming the scrap of soap she had retained for herself after offering the rest of the trial-sized bar to the three men to use, she hastily knelt in the rushing water until she could duck her head under enough to wash her hair.
Scrubbing herself head to toe with a rather abrasive hand, Sango winced as she reopened a few of the deeper cuts, but watched with grim resignation as they closed right before her eyes, scarring over until only a faint line appeared. Even that would disappear in a few hours. Her body, with the help of Kagura’s heart, was quick to heal.
Her wet hair was heavy against her back as she stood up to retrieve her clothing. She had thought to keep them dry, but the stiffened bloodstains on her black jeans and sleeveless turtleneck made her change her mind. Using the last of her soap, she worked over the sturdy fabric as much as could, squeezing the pinkish water out of both until it ran clear. Her expression was troubled as she laid her clothes flat on the bank to dry and hopped up on the grass beside them to comb out her damp hair. Her thoughts remained pensive and unable to really focus on anything as she avoided thinking of the one thing she should---which was how the madness had seeped out of her to infect the youkai of Makai into what was, essentially, a mindless frenzy of blood-lust and slaughter.
The problem was, she just didn’t know how to approach the problem, or how she should even feel about it. Certainly, she felt regret and remorse to a sharp degree, and a certain haunting sense of horror, that she had possibly been the cause of how many senseless deaths over how many years that it was unbearable to think about. She could have sunk herself into despair just thinking of the past, but Hiei had already sneered at her that regret was useless to the dead.
He was right, damn him. And Sango knew it. She also knew how futile it would be to constantly beat herself up over what she had not known---though she was particularly good at that---beating herself up, rather. But that was as unworthy an action for the youkai she had just drawn to their deaths as was crying over the fact that she had. Her tears could not help them now---only her determination to see that it would never, ever, happen again.
She just didn’t know how she might go about that. She had absolutely no idea. Both Hiei and Kurama had said that it was her failure to accept herself as a demon---a thought that still made her draw her knees up to her chest and shiver as she wrapped her arms around them---that was causing her rejected aura to reach out to influence those around her with the anger she felt for what she now was.
Hanyou is what Hiei had called her, and he was right, dang it. She was a hanyou, of a sorts, though the idea still appalled her, even with the terrible knowledge of what that rejection could mean. She knew she had to find a way to accept herself for what she now was, but it just felt so wrong.
She had gone against everything her family stood for in taking a demon’s heart as her own. Her very humanity, something so precious to her kith and kin that they chose to protect their own kind against the demons who plagued them, was forsaken for the chance to take revenge on the evil hanyou who had taken away everything and everyone that had ever mattered to her. Abandoning that humanity, small as it was, and accepting the demon side of her just seemed---wrong.
But accept it she must.
So how could she do that?
Well, for one, she could start facing the reality that was.
Sango’s eyes widened, as the thought hit her with sudden clarity. She had not accepted reality, because she just didn’t want to. She didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, something different than what her family would have ever wanted her to be. But she had chosen to take Kagura’s heart as her own, had chosen revenge over death, and had done so with her eyes wide open to the fact that that was the choice she was making. She hadn’t been forced to it. In fact, she had begged for it, begged and suffered and promised to never reveal herself to anyone she had ever known for the chance to live and gain the ability and strength to finally see an end to all of it.
She had to be brutally honest with herself. She had welcomed and even relished the benefits that had come with Kagura’s heart. Strength of arm and sharper perception, quick healing and some use of the wind if she fed her energy to it---those were welcome assets to herself as a warrior. Even Kagura’s influence---the influence she had been so afraid of, worrying that Naraku’s madness was twined within what was essentially a creation out of his own essence---she had used that influence, embraced it and taken it for her own. Although she did not welcome all of it---the constant yearning for freedom, for one, was something she had to fight with her own determination to stay her chosen path---but wait, that was all wrong. For she had had that yearning before she had ever gained the wind demon’s heart---she had always just felt guilty for the thoughts that would come to her now and again that she wished things had come out differently than how they had, that she could be someone other than who she was.
But that was merely being human. Or even youkai, really. One did wish they could be someone else, or somewhere else, from time to time. Any rational being with any spark of imagination had that kind of secret yearning, which could either bring about change in one’s life or the resolution to deal with what one had and was.
Something she had not been doing.
Well, then it was high time to start.
Now decided and rather itchy for action, Sango uncurled herself to reach out and touch one leg of her jeans. They were still damp, but not so wet that she couldn’t wear them. They’d been more wet today than dry, actually, what with her dunking in the spring by the unicorn foal that morning, and then the blood---she quickly shifted her thoughts from that, silently thanking Kagura’s influence which allowed her to do just that. The kaze youkai had been rather good at shutting her emotions off when needed to do what she must.
Struggling into the damp fabric wasn’t easy and she had to dig the clingy denim out of her rear end before buttoning them closed. Her shirt was drier, at least, though stiff. Sango frowned at her socks and boots, which she had at least wiped clean, though she couldn’t wash the black faux leather. Wiggling her toes in the lush grass of the creek’s bank, she shrugged. Shoving the damp socks and laces into her boot-tops, she picked them up instead of putting them on. Gathering her sword belt and draping it over her shoulder, she checked that she had taken everything before leaving the small bend behind to make her way back to the cave and their sometime camp-site.
There was no one there to greet her, save the abandoned ruins of their unfinished meal. Frowning, Sango dropped her burdens atop her folded cloak, adding her dual knife-belts to the pile after plucking the sharpest blade to sheath at the small of her back. It was a reflexive action---she was never one to be caught without some kind of weapon near to hand. She then went about cleaning up the litter of their lunch and tidying up a bit. She rose sharply upon hearing a distinctive whisper, and was greeted with a lifted brow of sardonic appraisal as the short fire demon suddenly appeared on the rocks above her.
He was bare to the waist, his cloak-like coat slung negligently over one shoulder with the tied laces of his boots, his sword held by the sheath in his right hand, the belt-straps dangling. He was still dripping wet, his hair rather flat to his head, though the ends were already curling. He frowned as she continued to stare, and Sango flushed.
“Hn.” He jumped down beside her to dump his stuff even as Sango turned her attention to the others, who were returning at much more leisurely pace to their campsite, though Yusuke was complaining, as usual.
“A towel would be nice right about now. As would a comb. Some clean clothes. Hell, some dry clothes.” The ex-detective was plucking at his raggedy jeans with a scowl as he shook his head, shaking water off the curling ends of his dark hair and trying to get it out of his eyes. “God, what I wouldn’t give for some fricking hair gel.”
“You’ll survive, Yusuke.” Kurama indulged his temperamental friend with a smile. He was bare to the waist, having donned only his pants. His shirt and over-robe were draped over his bent arm as he gestured toward the hilly prominence of the cave’s entrance, where Sango and Hiei waited. “Perhaps you can ask Anei if you could borrow her comb.”
“Hey, yeah---Anei---you got a comb?” Yusuke looked too hopeful as he bound up the hill like an eager puppy, brown eyes lit with eagerness.
Sango couldn’t help but laugh as he nearly tripped over a rock in his zeal to get up the hill and barely saved himself by wind-milling his arms to keep his balance. Hiei snorted, jumping up to his preferred perch above the cave as Kurama followed the unabashed heir to the Mazoku with far more grace.
Sango retrieved her comb from among atop her cloak and handed it to the shaggy-headed boy. Yusuke kissed the comb like it was a gift from the gods, than sat himself down to attack his hair with sharp yanks and not a few searing curses.
“Don’t break it, Yusuke,” Kurama chided with a low chuckle as he finally reached the hill’s summit. “I’ll need to use it next---if I may, Anei?”
Sango nodded, rather distracted by the display of firm muscles that flexed across the kitsune’s lightly tanned chest. Studiously turning her attention back to the loose pile of her belongings, she hoped to find something else that they could use, but knew there was not much else she had to offer than what she already had.
“Thank you,” Kurama said, a little too politely, and then inquired after her bath.
“It was fine, thank you,” Sango replied just as politely, though she blushed.
“That water was butt-ass cold, actually.” Yusuke convulsively shivered.
“Hn.”
Sango turned to look up at the short demon, who was finger-combing his spiky hair back into shape. It was already dry---possibly from his higher body temperature. He ignored her to smirk at the red-haired fox, who only gave him a flat look in return.
The eerie way they could hold entire conversations with just their eyes made Sango’s shoulders twitch uncomfortably, so she ignored them to spread her own cloak out so that she could sit on it. Her hair, left loose to dry, brushed the small of her back where her shirt rode up as she sat down Indian-style. She wanted to braid it up out of the way but would have to wait her turn for the only comb she had brought, never having expected that she might have to share her few supplies with anyone.
Loathed to sit idle while her thoughts continued to be so restless, Sango pulled her knife-belt to her, fishing out her whet stone to run across the duller blades. The first scrape of the rock on the bared steel made the others jump, and she blushed. She was doing quite a bit of that, but her mind was whirling with how to just come out and ask them what she wanted to know. They were carefully dancing around the subject, talking of the inane and inconsequential, but it hung over them like a tense cloud that needed to be emptied before it burst.
*~*~*~*~*
It was Yusuke, of course, who was blunt enough to start the conversation going, once he had combed out his hair and scowled as it fell back across his eyes. Tossing the comb to Kurama, who had seated himself on one of the moss-covered ledges by the cave’s opening after carefully draping his robe and kimono on other rocks to dry with the least wrinkling he could manage without the benefit of a dryer or ironing board at hand, the detective looked around for something to do, and ended up staring at Sango’s bare toes.
“They’re pink.”
“What?” The whet stone nearly slipped from her hand as she looked up in bewilderment.
“Your toenails.”
Sango frowned, still confused.
Yusuke grinned as Kurama parted his hair to comb out a single section with long, careful strokes, patiently separating the tangles. Hiei rolled his eyes and fell back on his cloak to close his eyes with an impatient sigh.
“I just couldn’t picture you as being a girly-girl. I mean, they’re pink.”
“I like pink,” Sango said, still baffled by his preoccupation with what color she painted her toes. Kagome had been the one to show her how one idle afternoon long ago, and she had been happy to see the fashion start in Spirit World a few years after it had taken hold in the living world, who invented the polish in little glass bottles like Kagome had brought back with her from time to time to the Sengoku Jidai.
“So you like pink. What else do you like?” Yusuke casually dropped himself beside her, drawing his knees up so he could play with the ragged strings hanging from his holey knees. There was more hole than denim left in his ruined jeans actually, but he didn’t have anything else to wear, having gone commando. Next time, he’d be sure to bring along some underwear. And a change of clothes. And some gel. And some food. He’d be hungry soon, and he didn’t fancy having to wait for dinner like he had had for lunch.
Sango blinked, taken aback by the detective’s simple query. “What do you mean?”
“Wow, you have spent a lot of time alone, haven’t you?” Yusuke looked innocent as she frowned, but there was a wicked gleam in his brown eyes. He liked twitting her, her reactions were so refreshingly honest.
“What has that to do---”
“Well, I’m trying to get to know you. I thought I might start with something simple, like what you like, before I ask about your past.”
Sango dropped her eyes, her hand convulsively clenching around the whet stone.
“Hmph.” Hiei suddenly dropped beside them to lean against the cave’s wall by the sitting detective. His red eyes were narrowed on the slayer, though his folded arms and indolent posture spoke complete indifference. The fact that he had even bothered to descend from his chosen rock was enough of an indication of his interest in her answer.
“Yusuke---” Kurama cautioned, pausing in his meticulous combing to cast a significant look in the half-demon’s direction, but his friend ignored him.
Sango looked up at them, her dark eyes suddenly intent as she stared at each of them in turn, as if making up her mind. Man, she was a suspicious one. Yusuke kept his posture relaxed and easy, though he cocked a black brow as her gaze weighed him as it had the others. She seemed to come to some kind of a decision, for she nodded slightly, as if to herself, and then laid aside her knife and stone to knit her fingers together in her lap. He noticed that her knuckles were white, but forbore to comment, instead keeping his expression rather mild, for she looked as tightly wound as a Slinky.
“It’s a long story,” she said quietly, her expression rather serious, her voice a bit remote, as if she were trying to get her thoughts in order.
Yusuke shrugged that off as negligible. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
She didn’t reply, only biting her lip before looking somewhere off in the distance, unable to meet any of their eyes lest she falter in her tale. None of them stirred, as if sensing the tension within her and not wishing to push it.
“I---” She stopped, then abruptly looked at Hiei, who regarded her rather coolly. “I don’t know how to---to stop what happened earlier. I’m not sure---what to do. To control my---my jyaki. My---demon energy.”
It was clearly difficult for her to say that, and just as clearly difficult for her to admit her need for help.
Hiei just raised a brow, waiting for her to just come out and say it. Kurama took pity on her, though, and drew their attention by standing up. Pushing his long hair back over his shoulders, he walked across the small distance with the grace of a cat, his slightly tilted green eyes accentuating the likeness. “We are willing to help you, Anei.”
“I---thank you.” She was stiff, and made an abortive gesture, as if she might bow, but stopped the motion as Hiei grunted.
“You’ll have to feel your aura first, hanyou.”
She didn’t like that poignant reminder of her nature, but did not flinch, only meeting his solid red stare with her own. She was the first to look away, but it was because Kurama cleared his throat.
“I sense that your heart came from a wind apparition. Do you know who it was? That might help us to consider how to go about teaching you to accept and even use your energy.” He kept his voice low and gentle, as if she were fine china and needed delicate handling. Perhaps she did.
“Yes, I knew her.” She was staring off into the distance again and Yusuke rolled his eyes. He was impatient with how long it was taking for her to just spill the beans and get to the point, and so quickly got the conversation back on track.
“So why don’t you just tell us how you knew her, and how about adding in that ugly little roach-monkey you’re looking for, hmm?”
She didn’t smile at the reference to Naraku, only tensed up even stiffer than before, if that were possible. Kurama sighed to himself, mentally chiding Yusuke even as he purposely distracted her by taking a seat across from her. He kept his posture easy as he prompted, “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
*~*~*~*~*
*The beginning.*
To begin at the beginning would be to speak of ones dead to her for so long she could barely remember most of their faces. That hurt, but she carefully separated herself from the pain, sending it away as Kagura would have, and spoke briefly. “I was born in the Warring States Era. I’m not sure of the year---they were not counted then as the Westerners taught us. I know Kagome came through the well in the late 1500’s, and I was a few years older than her, and she was fifteen then, so I was either sixteen or seventeen.”
“Kagome?” Kurama prompted. His green eyes were intent, as if he would take in everything she said and remember it. His curiosity was rather obvious, and she could almost picture the kitsune ears pricked forward to catch her every word, if he had had them in his human form.
“She---well, it’s rather complicated. You see, I was born to a village of demon slayers. My father---” Her voice caught on his memory, though she hated that they heard that. “---was the headman, and I had a younger brother, Kohaku.” Her voice caught there, too, but she dropped that rock into the deep pool of old pain and let it go.
“We were both trained to slay demons, to defend our kind against the monsters who fed on them.” There was a growl from the fire youkai’s direction and she quickly hurried past that. “Both of us went on the mission where Kohaku---where Kohaku---”
She hadn’t spoken of it in so long, had never needed to but for the once with Shigure, actually, for her friends had known all of it from the beginning, for they had been there. They had pieced together what she had not spoken of, filled in by Kagome, who she had told amid the terrible tears that had followed when she realized her bother had been resurrected from the dead to serve as Naraku’s slave.
She wasn’t the young girl she had been. She had seen much, done much, since that terrible time, some of it more horrific than what had actually happened back then, though it still left her heart raw as she opened the painful memory of it. But she was able to wrap herself in the icy calm she had come to depend upon over the last centuries to withdraw form the terrible emotion of it. So she raised her head and met Kurama’s eyes, for he was able to keep his expression still as she spoke of the battle in terse sentences.
“A daimyo summoned us to slay a spider demon who kept attacking his castle. We did not know the lord himself was possessed by another demon, under the control of an evil hanyou named Naraku. We killed the spider demon easily---too easily. But in the battle, my brother Kohaku was also possessed, and was made to turn his weapon against us. He killed our father and the men with us.”
She was interrupted by their indrawn breaths and shocked expressions, but ignored it, continuing with dogged persistence to get the hard task over with. “I saw the spider’s thread that was controlling my brother, and realized it came from the daimyo---that he was dead, possessed by a demon to the seeming of life. I tried to kill him, but Kohaku attacked me. That action broke the demon’s control over my brother, but it was too late. We were both attacked by the daimyo’s men, to protect their lord, and---Kohaku died.”
“But you didn’t?” Kurama interrupted.
She stared off into the distance, her mind wrapped in memories. “They thought I had---we were buried together, by the daimyo’s son, Kagewake. He killed the demon possessing his father. I thought he was---ah---well, I learned later that he was possessed himself, by Naraku, who had plotted all of it from the beginning.
“You see, Naraku was after the Shikon no Tama, the Jewel of Four Souls, which Kagome had brought to the past with her and then shattered into hundreds of shards with her sacred arrow. We had five of those shards in our village, shards we had collected from demons we had slain.”
“Wait---what?” Yusuke shook his head, his confusion shared by the others by how her story was twisting in upon itself.
“The Jewel of Four Souls.” Kurama’s fingers tightened around his knees, recognizing the name and its significance. He had hunted---or rather, Youko had hunted---those shards once.
“I thought the Jewel was only a legend,” Hiei growled, expression dark.
“So are the taiji-ya, my friend,” Kurama said softly.
“Wait---you’ve mentioned this Kagome chick twice but haven’t exactly explained who she is.” Yusuke grasped on the name, drowning in the complications of her disjointed story.
“Kagome---she was a friend.” Her rough voice betrayed the fact that Kagome had been much more than just a friend to her, more like the sister she had never had. Sango closed her eyes, taking a moment to calm her raw emotions and push them away. She hadn’t realized how hard this would be, just to speak of the ones she would never see again, thanks to the dark promise Shigure had wrested from her.
Steadying her voice, Sango finally opened her eyes and explained. “Kagome was not from the Sengoku Jidai. She was actually born in the modern era, but was able to travel to the past, to my time, through a well on her family’s shrine. She was the reincarnation of a priestess, Kikyou, who was cremated with the Shikon no Tama, sending it out of the living world to the Spirit World until she was reborn as Kagome. The Jewel was inside her body, and she never knew it. She came to the past, and a demon pulled it out of her. She shattered the Jewel with a sacred arrow---she has the spiritual powers of a miko, but was never trained.”
Sango paused, not sure how much to explain. Yusuke was looking a little glassy-eyed, Hiei rather impatient. So she hurried over Inuyasha and Miroku, saying only, “Kagome met a half-demon, Inuyasha, and a monk, Miroku. Houshi-sama. He---his bloodline had been cursed by Naraku with a Wind Tunnel in his right hand that would eventually---did, eventually---kill him.” Her voice broke there, too.
“Inuyasha---he had loved Kikyou. Naraku plotted for them to betray each other, and Kikyou was killed and Inuyasha sent to sleep for fifty years, until Kagome came to the past and freed him.”
“This Naraku guy sure gets around.” Yusuke rubbed his temples. He had a pounding headache trying to follow all of this.
“Why?” Kurama asked. “Why did he do all this?”
“For the Jewel. He wanted its power for his own. It can be turned to evil, if influenced by the darkest emotions. Naraku’s plots were only for two things---to obtain the Jewel, and to darken its power to utter evil.”
“Naraku was the one behind the whole plot to lure the best warriors away from my village and to have one of us turn on the others. While we were at the daimyo’s castle, he sent demons to the village---and my people were slaughtered, one and all, for the Jewel shards we possessed.”
*~*~*~*~*
“The whole village?” Yusuke’s mouth fell open.
Kurama’s heart twisted, but she remained as closed and expressionless as Hiei, whose tension was only displayed by how still he had become as the slayer’s story unfolded. Kurama felt immeasurable pity for the girl who had survived so much death and pain. He asked her quietly, “Is that why you seek this Naraku? But you also seek your brother---but if he died at the castle---”
“He’s not dead. Naraku resurrected him, with a shard of the Jewel. Kohaku lives---as his slave, controlled by the shard and not knowing who he is, but he lives. I know it. Naraku took him with him when he fled to Makai---”
“Damn.” Yusuke summed their feelings up rather succinctly.
“These others---your friends? How did you meet them?”
“Naraku---disguised as Lord Kagewake, which I did not know was him---told me it was Inuyasha who had slaughtered my people. I went to kill him---and only learned the truth later.” There was a lot of bitterness in her voice, and Kurama wondered at the vileness that had been a demon who could twist things in so many directions of betrayal.
“We spent three years tracking down shards of the Jewel and trying to kill Naraku. In the last battle---my friends died. Naraku disappeared into Makai, badly wounded, but managing to escape and take my brother with him. I---was wounded myself, and knew I could not survive. I found Kagura’s heart, and---became as I am now.”
Kurama knew that she was not telling the whole truth, but her eyes were so dark with suppressed pain that he forbore to press her, instead asking, “Kagura? She was a wind demon?”
“She was Naraku’s creation. She was one of his incarnations.”
“Incarnation?” Kurama’s voice sharpened on the word, one he had not heard in a long time.
“Naraku had the ability to devour demons and take their bodies and powers for his own use. He was never a true demon---rather, he was once a man, who sold his soul to demon-kind to become a demon himself.”
“Ugh.” Yusuke grimaced. “Sounds too much like that brute Toguro.”
“Not quite, Yusuke,” Kurama said distractedly, glancing back at Hiei, who still leaned against the cave wall with a rather cold expression on his face. His red eyes remained on the girl, though, and there was a measuring calculation in the intensity of his gaze.
“Naraku was able to separate parts of himself---some of these he used to create his incarnations, with the help of the Jewel. He made several. Kagura was one of them. She was a full youkai, though Naraku was not, and used a fan to control the winds. She---she wasn’t like the rest of his incarnations. Most were loyal to Naraku---she was not. She was only held to his bidding by the fact that he had somehow separated her heart from her body when he first created her, and kept it as insurance to keep her obedient.”
“That guy’s a twisted fucker, isn’t he?” Yusuke shuddered, his wide shoulders moving as if he would shrug off the taint.
That observation actually caused Anei’s lips to twitch in a faint smile.
“Hn.” It was Kurama’s turn to smile faintly as the fire demon added his two cents with a flash of his red eyes.
*I’m of the same opinion, my friend,* he spoke to the apparition alone, and was rewarded with a sour glare.