Disclaimer: Saiyuki in all it's forms belongs to Kazuya Minekura. No monetery profit is being made in this fiction.
Kanan.
"Oh. Is the woman dead then?" Something is coming down the stairs, but I can only watch my sister in a growing pool of her own blood. She has left me. I was too late to save her. I killed her. She took my knife, the knife that I had killed so many others with, and added her life to it. I can only watch as her life drains away.
My despised skin told me with these fingers...
"How very kind," I hear the voice, mocking me. I turn slowly, wrenching my gaze away from the corpse that is beyond the prison bars.
"She wasn't forced to see her monster child. You are one that loved her, yes?" It is a youkai. Another one.
"I've heard of you. From what I understand, you are her brother," he continues. His arms are folded inside his sleeves, and he stands there, smiling. That smile does not reach those blank eyes.
"To think that your first woman was your older sister." What does he know, this smirking beast? "Is it really healthy to be doing such things?" It is nothing to him. Sister, lover, both are gone.
The ringing in my ears is too much. I turn, rushing the long-haired youkai. He blocks me easily with a long sword. He laughs, looking into my eyes.
That soon will be the day we kill the gods.
"How is it possible you're even human?" he asks in mock amazement. Suddenly, I feel a searing pain across my stomach, and blood gushes out, a fountain of it. I fall backwards, gasping.
"Unless the legend happens to be true..." Who is he? What does he want? I try to get up but the pain is too much. The youkai walks up to me, smirking at my weakness. He is licking his claws clean of the blood. My blood.
"That a human who bathes in the blood of a thousand youkai..." He bends down and tilts my head, forcing my eyes to look at him.
"Can become a youkai himself."
God, please violate me.
"Oh my," he comments, after shoving my head bavk into the floor, "I seem to have gone a bit deep." Hatred fills me, takes me over - what else do I have left? Once again, I try to stand, but I can only crouch on my hands and knees, hacking and coughing blood. He tells me not to die so fast - humans are so fragile.
He slits his wrist and holds it over my crouched body. The blood covers my already red clothes.
You always said you liked my hands. Now I've gone and stained them with blood.
I feel something changing inside me. My blood, my flesh is being torn away. And the pain - oh, never again will I feel that without death.
When it finishes I know I am not human. Something inside of me is not the same, irrevocably changed. The other laughs hauntingly. The adrenaline rushes through my body and I charge at him, reaching my sharp claws intent on vengance.
I pull my hand out of the shoulder blade of the youkai, one of the bastards who raped and impregnated Kanan. He laughs to the last, trying to catch my eyes again.
I can never protect the ones I love.
I killed them all. Every one. Child, mother, father, brother, sister. They all died in my desperate search for my lover. Yet though I would do anything and everything for her, still I could not save her.
My vision is blurred, and my hands stained with blood. The demon's words echo in my mind.
Kanan.
I should have let him kill me. I have become my own enemy - a youkai.
His body falls against a metal container, clanging and rolling about. My instincts take over and I jump back into a defensive position.
-How is't with me, when every noise appals me?-
I can stand it here no longer. Blindly, I fling myself up the stairs and away. All the while my bloody hands are an accusation against me, I shall not sleep for guilt.
-What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes.-
My right eye is blind, I can see nothing from it. Penance, no doubt, for the lives I have taken.
-Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood...-
Then I see a face. I realize that I am lying on the forest floor. The person bends down. The gods are laughing at me, for this man's hair and eyes are crimson. Can they not let me die? Everything has already been taken from me. Kill me, I try to say. Even my lips are sealed. The gods must truly hate me. I am desperate. Every cell in my body cries for release from this hateful existence.
The rain falls, and I hear the man muttering. But the falling water cannot cleanse the sins of my soul. No, my hands are still stained red.
-...clean from my hand? No: this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
