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Title: Drawing on the Past
Author:
sharpeslass
Rating: R (for violence)
Pairing: none-- 85 lightly implied
Summary: Mrs. Sha gets a visitor.
Warnings: Child abuse, violence... a happy ending.
AN: I had this dream that was so strong I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and did
the drawing. One part might seem to have been inspired by “Dark Knight” but it
so totally wasn’t. In fact, I was nearly done writing this when I saw the movie
and turned to
jedishampoo and
said, “damn, they stole my idea.” Oh well. This is darker than anything I’ve
written in this fandom, but I just had to do it (Hakkai made me).
The boy held the drawing outstretched with an
expression of shy pride on his face. He thought it was maybe good. His teacher
had said it was. The woman took the slightly crumpled, smudged piece of paper
between a thumb and index finger and brought it up to her face. Moving to the
small wooden table where the family had once shared most of its meals, she set
it down and, smoothing it out, sat, chin propped on her hands. Her long fall of
dark hair swept forward as she leaned close, studying the boy’s efforts with
vacant eyes. The boy moved eagerly to stand beside her, his chin barely clearing
the table top.
“That’s you,” he explained, happy at the attention. The woman drew a finger
slowly across the figure marked “mommy.” “And that’s Jien...”
“Jien,” she repeated, stroking the second, roughly rendered, figure on the page.
Her eyes flicked to the third figure.
“And...” she trailed off. The boy had simply written “me” under the smallest of
the three depictions on the page, and now he wondered if he shouldn’t have
written his name, or colored the hair red, because his mother seemed to be
having trouble recognizing him and he knew that, sometimes, when she was
confused, she got very upset.
“It’s me, mommy,” he quickly clarified. “Gojyo.” His mother frowned and leaned
in closer to the drawing.
“Gojyo?” she whispered.
“The teacher said you were really pretty,” the boy reassured her. But the woman
didn’t hear him. She placed her right palm over the figure marked “me” and
trailed her left index finger again down the one marked “Jien.”
“Jien,” she mouthed, then, clenched both hands into tight fists, “Where is Jien?”
She wasn’t looking at the boy, but her sharp claws were drawing blood from her
palms and he was frightened for her.
“He’s coming, Mom,” he said, trying to sound grown-up and reassuring, like his
older brother. “He said he would be here soon.” The woman gave the boy a long,
considering look and he straightened, offering her a small smile. He hoped his
nose wasn’t running. Conflict played across the woman’s face for a few moments
and then, as if coming to a decision, she spoke.
“Shall I draw you a bath... Gojyo? Wouldn’t that be nice?” she managed a small
smile and the boy beamed in return. Her smiles were rarely, if ever, given to
him and he grasped this one like a treasure, his huge, starved heart expanding
in his thin chest.
“Yes, momma,” he said happily. “That would be nice.” The boy didn’t know why he
suddenly wanted to cry, but he did. His mother rose and left the room. The boy
heard the sound of water running and he pulled himself up, into the chair so
recently vacated by his mother. He studied his drawing with pride. He was eager
to tell Jien how much his mother had liked it. He knew Jien hadn’t thought she
would. Just stay away from her, Gojyo. Just go to your room and wait there
until I get home. But Gojyo had known his mother would like the drawing. His
teacher had told him she would.
Unheard by the boy, the woman reentered the room and stared at her dead
husband’s son. The dying light from the setting sun caught his hair through the
window and she blinked at the bright flash of color. It hurt her eyes and gave
her an instant headache. The boy was swinging his legs and chanting something
softly to himself, a bit of song or rhyme he’d learned at school. The small thin
creature put her in mind of a stray animal... a basket of mewling, unwanted
kittens. The family cat had spawned several litters of them when she was a
girl-- whole unbaked batches of hairless mewling things. Her father had always
known what to do...
“Time for your bath!” her voice was bright and tight, like stretched copper
wire-- like the smile that spread across her face, revealing pointed fangs. The
boy stopped swinging his legs and slid quickly from the chair, darting past her
and into the bathroom. He just as quickly shed his clothes and climbed into the
tub. The water was warm and she had filled it with bubbles. He offered his
mother a shy smile as she knelt beside him. Again his heart swelled.
“I love you, Mommy,” he tried, tentatively. She stoked a clawed hand gently
along his unblemished cheek, her hand coming to rest on the boy’s thin shoulder.
Rising up on her knees, she pressed firmly down. She barely registered the shock
or the hurt or the panic as the small, hopeful face disappeared beneath the
bubbles. The struggling was nothing. She held the creature down and began softly
to chant a small song, or rhyme that she had learned at school. Just a few
moments more, she thought. ”The mother cat can’t feed them all,” her father
explained when she cried. “This is the best thing, my love.” This was the
best thing. Her father always knew. And, after all, it was so easy a thing. She
didn’t notice the shadow as it fell across her. But she jumped at the sound of a
clear male voice.
“Good evening, Mrs. Sha.”
She released her hold on the struggling boy, turning to face the intruder,
falling back against the edge of the tub. A tall, dark-haired man (human?)
regarded her with a small, tight smile. He was very handsome and so she didn’t
notice that the smile wasn’t mirrored in his green, green eyes. Instead they
held something altogether darker and more dangerous. She barely heard the boy
spluttering and weeping behind her, but the stranger turned his glance toward
the small sounds. He took a damp towel from the floor beside the tub and,
pulling the shaking child from the water, wrapped it gently around the thin
form.
“Go to your room, Gojyo,” he said softly. “Your mother and I have some things to
discuss.” Gojyo was instantly calmed by the voice, though he didn’t know why.
With a tearful, backward glance, he fled the room. His last glimpse of the pair
showed him the man, stretching out a hand to help his stunned mother to her
feet.
“Let us talk, Mrs. Sha,” the man’s voice was smooth, cultured and seductive. The
woman let him lead her back into the family room. She let him sit her down, once
again, in the chair before the boy’s drawing. He smiled at her still-- he hadn’t
stopped smiling, and the woman felt suddenly vain. She smoothed her hair from
her eyes, batted her lashes and smiled slyly back. She’d had a man such as this
once, and didn’t see why she shouldn’t have another. The fact that he was human
bothered her slightly, but not enough to stop her from leaning forward, exposing
her ample cleavage to his too-distant gaze.
“Oh, look at this,” the man said, seeming to just notice her step-son’s drawing.
“May I?” he reached forward and took the drawing, his hand inadvertently
brushing against her bosom as he did so. The woman giggled a little, and
shrugged in acquiescence, hoping the contact had not been accidental. The man
studied the drawing a long while, long enough for the woman to begin to resent
it. His expression was unchanged and she thought maybe he was bored with
pretending interest in her assumed child. She reached a hand out, grasping his
wrist and he jerked away as if burned, his expression suddenly one of deepest
loathing. She drew back instantly, wondering what she’d done wrong, but his face
was once again calm and smooth, a small smile turning up the corners of his
lips. She thought she’d imagined the anger... it sometimes happened that she
imagined things.
“Ah haha, Look at that,” the man laughed, indicating the drawing. “Gojyo made
you so pretty. He’s like that you know?” he gave the woman a penetrating look.
“He likes to see the best in people.” The man set the drawing gently on the
table. “It would be nice to see the world that way, I think,” he sighed, a hand
straying toward his right ear. “I don’t.” He gave a light tug at the three
silver cuffs adorning that ear, and cast them gently on the table. “But why
don’t you and I work at making the world more the way he sees it? Wouldn’t that
be nice?”
The woman was confused but wanted the man to like her - the handsome man, who
was now becoming handsomer, as, what she could now see had been power limiters,
had come off, and he was transforming quickly into youkai. A beautiful,
sharp-clawed, pointy-eared and delicately vine-covered youkai. He took her
breath away.
“That would be nice,” she said, batting her eyes again.
“What a big smile he’s given you, Mrs. Sha...” There was a quick flick of his
hand and almost no pain... at first. The woman pressed her hands to her cheeks
and felt wet, hot stickiness seeping from between her fingers. She opened her
mouth to scream and felt flesh part where it had never parted before. Long,
clawed hands covered her mutilated mouth. “Let’s not disturb Gojyo, shall we?”
He leaned close, whispering into her ear. “I can remove your vocal cords,” he
said casually. “Or you can just be quiet on your own. Your choice, of course, ah
haha.” The woman was stunned into silence. Where was Jien?, she wondered.
Jien would be coming soon....
The man had moved away, gracefull and facisnating. The woman felt hypnotized as
he again picked up the drawing, dripping bright red down across the once clean
white paper.
“He’s given you a heart. Do you have one, Mrs. Sha?” She nodded frantically. It
was her heart, after all, that had led her to all of this. She loved with
intensity. Through the burning pain of her cuts she tried to tell this man her
sad, sad story, but her throat was clogged with the salty stickiness of her own
blood. Her chair fell back as she rose, panicked now. She turned and fled toward
the door but, faster than light, he was in front of her, still smiling that
smile and, the smile never flickering, he drove a clawed hand into her chest.
She clutched his shoulder, in her eyes a questioning plea.
“What did I do to you?” she gasped and burbled the words as she felt her knees
fold beneath her.
“To me?” he said lightly. “Nothing at all, Mrs. Sha. We’ve never even met.” He
stepped back and the woman fell to the floor unseeing. The dark-haired man
released the treasure he’d gone digging for and it rolled to a sloppy stop next
to the woman’s corpse. “Why, look,” he laughed, prodding the dark red organ with
a booted toe. “You do have a heart after all!” Laughter bubbled up in him and he
let it loose, gasping his mirth until he was crying with it, eyes shut, bent
double in the sad living room of this sad little excuse for a home. He felt a
hand on his shoulder, shaking him from his laughter.
Opening one eye (he suspected the other stayed open even as he slept) he took in
the bleary features of his best friend.
“Wake up, man. You’re freakin’ me out.”
“Oh, hello, Gojyo,” Hakkai said, sleepily. “Is it morning?”
“No, dude, it’s the middle of the night,” Gojyo, clearly shaken, tapped out a
cigarette, lit it and took a long drag. “You were laughing in your sleep, man.
It was scary. What’s up with that?” Hakkai was unable to stop himself from
raising a hand to his friend’s scarred cheek.
“Go back to sleep Gojyo,” he murmured. “It was nothing... just a very good
dream.”
END. Thanks for reading!
Write
to Sharpeslass!
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