---

“I have seen such a shadow in her, Sesshoumaru-sama.”

---

It was a scene of slaughter.

She remembered it in jagged fragments—the blood and the filth, the skeins of dark tangled hair and pale twisted limbs. It had hit her in a riot of abhorrent disbelief. It had deafened her to the voices that shouted at her to go away. In that eternal moment she had stood unmoved, rooted in horror at the carnage before her.

Cold and naked and still—so frightfully still.  It was that stillness which had struck her as most disturbing of all. The chest that was so rigidly fixed, as if frozen mid-breath. The waxy glazed look in those beloved eyes that now just stared and stared, seeing nothing.

She had wanted to turn her eyes away from the sight. It had felt profane to look upon her in this state. But she couldn’t help staring back, into that nothingness. Until she’d heard that scream—so hellish to her that it had torn her eyes away to the form of that gore-slicked little monster, that creature which had burrowed its way out of her mother’s lifeless flesh, and now lay, wrinkled and wriggling and wailing in the puddle of her cold, congealing blood.

It had looked so much like a demon to her that Sango had wanted to kill it, to smash it beneath her heel until it ceased its infernal howling and tormented her no more.

---

Violet eyes fall.  “I have seen it before.”

---

Why she was remembering this now as she looked upon Kagome, why she was seeing the riotous flash of it all storming before her eyes again, Sango didn’t know.

Face-down Kagome bobbed, listless and white, caught among the rocks as if she were snared in the jaws of some great unfeeling beast. Her blood tinted the foam with swirls of pink. Her hair drifted around her, a soft inky halo. It snagged in the branches that were bound up with her in this break in the rapids, that were hooking into her like so many black misshapen claws.

Staring at her, Sango found herself frozen in another hellish moment. But when it broke, the only one screaming was she.

She charged headlong into the rushing current. Desperation propelled her against its icy pull. Her own flesh sliced open on the rocks as she hauled Kagome up against her, and dragged them both back to shore.

Dripping, shivering, she lay Kagome out on the pebbled bank, cleared the hair and leaves from her mouth. Her eyes were closed. Her skin was translucent, blue-veined like the softest marble. Her frozen beauty struck Sango with the most excruciating pang.

Madly, she pressed her hands to Kagome’s sternum, pumping rivulet after rivulet through the pale, slack parting of her lips. Then at last there was nothing more to surface. Sango’s eyes roved feverishly over her still face. Covering Kagome’s mouth with her own, she breathed into her, and when she pulled away at last, and Kagome breathed a rattling breath back, Sango collapsed beside her with a keening sob.

---

“I suspect—” A shuddering breath is drawn in. “I suspect that she was violated, that night. Though Sango denies it.”

---

“Sango…”

The taijiya straightened, turned. A little behind her Miroku stood, staring with undisguised alarm at Kagome’s poor battered form. Apart from the cuts and bruises, her clothing was all but shredded—and not by rocks or by branches, that was sickeningly clear. Now that the first crisis had passed, Sango forced herself to face this second horrible shock. Even as she pitched herself forward to shield Kagome’s body with her own, she knew it was too late.

“Your outer robe, Houshi-sama—please.”

After that first startled glance, he had turned away. He was facing away still, when Sango took the robe he handed to her and wrapped Kagome up in it from head to foot. With at least this semblance of her friend’s modesty restored, Sango let herself breathe once again.

“She needs shelter,” Miroku said, turning back. “I discovered an abandoned hut, not far from here.”

Sango nodded and rose. Carefully, he bent down to collect Kagome, and the three of them set off through the woods, silent as the grave. The moment he lowered Kagome to the floor, Sango glanced pointedly toward the door.

The monk bowed and withdrew.

---

“What remained of her clothes Sango burned.”

---

Sango had been holding her breath, as she carefully undressed her friend and tended to her unconscious form. But the sight that met her eyes as she took stock of Kagome’s injuries was baffling, to say the least. Despite the claw-like slashes through Kagome’s clothes, her flesh was remarkably intact. The quick glance she stole between Kagome’s legs implied the same.

A bit of the dread stiffening Sango’s spine bled away. She dared, then, to hope that her first harrowing instincts had misled her.

---

“The few marks I saw on her body, Sango bandaged and covered.”

---

The hours of that night advanced at a loathsome crawl.

Keeping vigil beside Kagome, Sango was filled with a dread she couldn’t define. It was not her womanly intuition, but her slayer’s senses which now accosted her, as Kagome remained unconscious still. To all outward appearances, she was merely sleeping off the effects of a nasty fall. But in Sango’s eyes there was the shadow of something—

Something that lurked beneath the skin.

But perhaps it was only her own paranoia, brought on by stress and exhaustion. Closing her eyes, clearing her mind, she focused in on that nefarious sensation, and like grasping at mist, it vanished altogether into nothing.

And still, the hours dragged on.

---

“When Inuyasha returned, I told him only this: that Kagome-sama had gone off on her own and been injured, by what means we did not know.”

---

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?—you’d better get the hell out of my way…”

Sango tensed as the scanty door of reeds hissed open and Inuyasha barreled through—then halted abruptly. Beneath a thin blanket, Kagome slept deeply still. Whatever he saw in her pale, unmoving form took all the aggression from him. Padding forward, he crouched down at her side, lifted the bangs above her bandaged brow with a claw.

“What happened to her?” he gruffly asked.

“She fell into the river.” Sango swallowed, uncertain. “It seems that she struck her head on a rock.”

For a long while, Inuyasha studied Kagome’s sleeping face. His eyes were narrowed, and Sango felt her misgivings stir to life once again. Then, slowly, he nodded at last.

“This is my fault,” he said, clutching Tessaiga by the hilt. “I should have been here.”

Sango frowned, and said nothing.

---

“She slept for days.”

---

Sango’s distress was a living thing, writhing inside her.

She could feel Inuyasha’s aura flaring as he paced incessantly beyond the doorway of the hut, bickering with Miroku, or Shippou, or whoever else happened to fall within his line of sight. Kagome’s comatose state had been weighing upon them all, but when sweat began to break out across her pallid skin, Sango could endure no more. Her friend was in danger, this she sensed, and she had no sympathy for men and their wounded pride.

“I need you to leave,” she said sternly from the door. “All of you.”

“Leave?” Inuyasha shot back, affronted. “Leave and go where, with Kagome like this?”

“Go back to Edo,” Sango retorted, her patience expired. “Go back to Kikyou for all I care. Just leave Kagome-chan in peace for once in your life.”

Inuyasha glared at her, his jaw locked tight. Sango glared back just as fiercely. It might have come to blows if Miroku hadn’t placed a hand on the hanyou’s shoulder.

“Come, let us give the ladies some space to themselves,” the monk said with a slight, conciliating smile. “This area is safe, is it not? We have seen to that.”

Glaring still, Inuyasha let himself be steered away, to where Kirara stood, transformed and waiting. At her side, Kohaku hesitated, even after Miroku and Inuyasha had climbed aboard.

“Ane-ue…”

“Go with them, Kohaku,” Sango said, weary but firm.

Reluctantly, Kohaku went. It was several hours still before Kirara returned, alone, to curl up at Sango’s side.

While Kagome’s fever hadn’t worsened in the absence of all that excessive tension, it hadn’t lessened. As the days wore on, Sango grew increasingly concerned. Stripping Kagome down, she bathed her body in cool water, but it seemed to have no effect. Sango’s doubts stewed and festered. She paced, chewed at her nails. She refused to acknowledge Kirara’s unblinking, mournful stare. Placing tiny paws to Kagome’s hip, Kirara mewled at last, low and plaintive, each hair along her spine standing on end.

“No,” Sango moaned aloud, clutching at her pounding temples. “No, it cannot be…it cannot.”

Grim flashes of memory assailed her, from her earliest days as a taijiya. Memories of villages terrorized by marauding oni. Memories of ravaged women, and the curious ailments they’d evinced.

“No,” Sango said again, even as she took out a small sharp knife and lanced Kagome’s finger. “It cannot be. It is impossible—she is untouched.”

But the blood that steamed, burning bright green against the powder she’d tapped onto the floor caused Sango’s heart to stutter against her will. A miko’s blood would never cause such a virulent reaction. It was almost as if Kagome’s reiki had been suppressed altogether. As if a full-blooded demon had taken up residence within her.

Sango swept the powder away, in a spasm of disbelief. Numbly, she stepped outside the hut, drew in deep draughts of the cool, wild air. It could not be.

And yet it was.

Kagome was with child. A demon’s bastard, a child of rape. But a child nevertheless. An unborn soul.

Sango sank to the ground, her hand clamped to her mouth as tears spilled from her eyes. There was another memory that rose within her. Another memory of her mother, and the tonic she’d perfected.

It had been a mercy to so many, this tonic of hers.

But Sango knew Kagome. She knew the purity of Kagome’s heart. She knew that no matter the origin Kagome would love this child, even if it were a monster.

And it would be the destruction of them all.

In a gruesome flash Sango saw Kagome mired in shame and confusion, saw her suffering unto death or defeat, whichever came first. Sango saw Naraku victorious, Inuyasha brought to furious ruin, Miroku consumed by his curse, Kohaku forever enslaved or worse—

It would be the end of them all, this demon bastard of Kagome’s.

And so Sango made the decision for her. She made the decision for them all. She took the guilt and the shame, the secret suffering upon herself and brewed that tonic which fumed so bitterly in her lungs.

She spooned it down Kagome’s throat, sip by sip. And when Kagome began to bleed, dark and thick, Sango took the burden from her, swipe by terrible swipe, until Kagome bled no more.

It was another day still before the miko stirred, blinking slowly into the light of dawn, and the umbra of that terrible night seemed at last to finally dispel.

“Sango-chan?” Kagome asked weakly, clasping at the cup of water Sango pressed to her. “My head hurts…”

“Kagome-chan,” Sango whispered. “Oh, Kagome-chan, I’m so sorry…I’m so, so sorry…”

Eyes raw and burning, the taijiya pulled her poor friend into her arms, braced herself for a nightmarish story of violation which by some mercy never came.

---

“And when at last Kagome-sama woke, she had no recollection beyond walking along the river’s edge.”

---

To be continued…

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

One part left to tell, in time…

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