Inuyasha | Rhapsody in Eight Movements

[luxken27fics]

Title: Rhapsody in Eight Movements
Author: LuxKen27
Fandom: Inuyasha
Universe: Alternate (modern day Japan)
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Rating: T
Warning(s): Mentions of death, the treatment of mental illnesses
Summary: When a mysterious man washes ashore on Halloween night, it becomes a race against time to uncover his identity – and the circumstances that left him there.

Author’s Note: Further author's notes for this story can be found here.


“Hey, Sango, we’ve got a fresh one for ya!”

Sango looked up from her paperwork, unable to resist rolling her eyes heavenward when she realized who had called out to her.

“Just put it right there,” she directed, pointing to the table behind her as her gaze fell back to her desk. She shuffled through the mountains of paperwork that littered its surface, deliberately keeping her eyes lowered, hoping against hope that the EMTs would just follow orders, for once. It was always – trying – to deal with the more immature members of the medical staff, of which these two were prime examples. As the junior medical examiner on staff at the hospital, she usually worked days, which mercifully meant missing the adrenaline junkies who populated the graveyard shifts.

Not tonight, however.

It appeared her avoidance tactic was all for naught; when she chanced to look up again, she noticed one of the paramedics gazing back at her attentively – so focused, in fact, that his partner was grousing about having to do all the work himself.

“Come on, Miroku,” his comrade whined, opening the long zipper and peeling back the black vinyl that covered their latest victim. “This dude isn’t just going to take himself out of the bag.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Miroku replied, waving his hand dismissively. “In a second.”

Sango’s eyes dropped back to her papers, annoyance and irritation building in the pit of her stomach as she heard his footsteps draw closer. He’d been after her for months, hanging around between shifts, always trying to angle some way to score a date with her. She had little patience for his flirty tactics, but couldn’t seem to dissuade his pursuit.

“It’s the first one of the night, yeah?” Miroku asked, by way of salutation. “How many do you suppose you’ll get, what with it being Halloween and all?”

Hopefully none, Sango thought, working to contain her aggravation. I don’t think I could stand having the “pleasure” of your company more than once tonight. “I don’t know,” she managed to answer, her tone cool and noncommittal, as she scratched a few notes at the bottom of the chart in front of her.

“Hey, thanks for all your help there, Miroku,” his partner called sarcastically from across the room.

Miroku shot him a winning smile. “That’s what all those hours at the gym are for, right, man?” he returned cheerfully, for which he earned a dark look in response.

“Anyway,” he redirected, turning back to Sango, leaning forward and planting a hand on her desk. “What are the chances that we could stick around and watch you cut this one up?”

Sango cut an unimpressed, dismissive glare up at him. “Not good,” she informed him pointedly. “I probably won’t even get to him tonight,” she added, indicating the mounds of paperwork strewn across her desk. Her colleague, five years her senior on the job, had some long-held, unnatural fear of working on the last days of October. He was so loud and rabid about it – claiming that supernatural forces came out to play on All Hallow’s Eve and wreaked havoc and destruction in their wake – that he was automatically granted two days’ vacation just to shut him up.

Every. Year.

And, of course, he let their monthly paperwork pile up, knowing she’d be stuck with it the night before it was due. For as brilliant a medical examiner as he was – and there was none better in the city, perhaps even the country – he was lousy with the living, and even worse as a manager.

“That’s too bad,” Miroku chided, clucking his tongue, bringing her back to the present.

Sango furrowed her brow, narrowing an assessing stare at him. “Why are you suddenly so interested in this guy?” she asked, feeling very wary of any possible ulterior motives. It would be just like him to try to set up some situation in which he could swoop in and play hero, even knowing that was about the last thing she’d ever find impressive about him.

He shrugged. “Idle curiosity, I suppose,” he replied. “I guess all these suicides start to look the same to you after a while. What is it about Halloween that brings out the crazies and compels them to kill themselves, or each other?”

Hell if I know, Sango thought, but before she could respond, the other paramedic cut into the conversation.

“Come on, man, its creepy down here,” he said with a slight shudder, eyeing their surroundings dubiously. “Besides, we might get another call soon, maybe something live this time.”

Yes, please, Sango hoped, a wave of relief washing over her as the cheeky medic was swept out of her lab. If I never have to deal with you again, it’ll be too soon. He was charming enough, she supposed, but he really wasn’t her type – loud, boisterous, always wanting to be the life of the party. She much preferred the peace and quiet that came with working by herself in the morgue, with no one to answer to but the body on the slab.

As the heavy door swung back into place behind the departing paramedics, Sango turned back to her paperwork with a reluctant sigh. The dead could wait – administrative deadlines couldn’t.

It was a shame, too; because she was merely the junior examiner, she didn’t often have the chance to do a full autopsy by herself. It was something she missed, the feel of the instruments in her hands, making the delicate – or not so delicate – cuts, revealing the secrets of the body in order to puzzle out how or where or why that person died. Most of the time, on the day shift, she received the terminally ill who’d been convalescing upstairs in the hospital, or those who’d died in the ER, or in the OR. It had been ages since she’d had a DOA – and the thought of leaving it to her lazy senior colleague really stuck in her craw.

Oh, screw this, she decided resolutely, closing the chart in front of her with a satisfying slam. I’m the examiner on duty right now, and by God, I’m going to do this one!

Before her guilty conscience could change her mind, she was on the floor and suiting up. The hospital had finally caved and invested in a state-of-the-art recording system for their use, replete with real-time video feed, digital cameras, and wireless technology. The entire process could now be documented for use as evidence, and to back up the findings reported in their official documents.

Alongside her sterile scrubs, gloves, and mask, she donned a microphone for dictation, and checked over the equipment before finally approaching the corpse. She took a slow turn around the table, taking in her first impression of the victim, trying to gauge how easy – or difficult – this case might be. She noted the date and time in her recording, adjusting the lamps overhead as she took a closer look.

The body was still fully clothed, minus shoes, though neither paramedic had bothered to stick a tag on the toe. “Thanks, guys,” she muttered under her breath, picking up the chart they’d left nearby. It contained only the most cursory information – date, time, location of the pickup, and procedures performed in the field, with a ‘John Doe’ scribbled at the top. “A drowning victim,” she noted, sparing the body a sympathetic glance.

Poor guy, she thought with a shake of the head, putting the chart aside. You don’t even have a name. As a medical examiner, she knew better than to start associating the richness of a person’s life with what was left of their body – going down that garden path was treacherous indeed, where emotion and bias had a dangerous habit of getting in the way of scientific objectivity.

Still, it was a little sad to think that all of her work might be for naught.

“All right, then,” she said softly, reaching for the forensic camera. “I suppose the first order of business is to figure out who you are.”

She took a series of pictures to start, careful to keep everything absolutely intact. “Subject is male, approximately twenty-five to thirty years old,” she dictated. “Apparent drowning victim; estimated time in the water before discovery – less than twenty-four hours. The decedent is dressed in what appears to be a full tuxedo and tails, minus socks, shoes, and gloves.” Delicately, she reached for the material of the suit, running her fingers under the lapel of the coat.

That’s odd, she thought, furrowing her brow. The material was completely waterlogged, still damp to the touch, but even under such degradation, the quality of the material was obvious. Even the bowtie, a thin strip of material held in place only by virtue of a buttoned collar on the once-white shirt, was finely tailored.

On a whim, Sango ran her fingers along the inside of the shirt collar, before doing the same on the inside of the jacket. “Clothing appears altered,” she observed, withdrawing her hand. “Tags have been removed from shirt, jacket…” A quick check of the waistband of the pants confirmed her suspicions. “…and trousers.”

She took a step back, turning her attention to the next table over, where the paramedics had left the bag of personal effects. With great care, she lay out what few items had been recovered, and took pictures of them. “Subject was found without wallet or personal jewelry,” she noted.

It seems he doesn’t want to be identified easily, she mused. Well, if it comes down to it, there are always dental records and DNA…

Setting aside the camera, she began to undress the body with meticulous precision. It’d be such a shame to cut these clothes, she thought, tugging the buttons of the shirt free. I haven’t seen such finery in a very long time. Normally, she wasn’t one to really care how a body was dressed at the point of death, but it seemed more important now: these were some of the only clues immediately on hand for identification. Records and tests could take months to confirm.

With some delicate wrangling, she managed to pull the clothing from the body without having to take the scissors to it. She took another careful turn around the table with her camera. “Subject is a white male, with silvery or grayish hair,” she noted with interest. A quick check of his scalp only further roused her curiosity. “It appears this is the natural hair color, in spite of his age of appearance.”

She carefully opened his eyes, struggling with the camera in order to take a picture. “The eyes are – golden in color, the whites bloodshot but not jaundiced,” she murmured. A shudder swept through her as she closed the eyes once more – how very unusual! Along with his pale, nearly translucent skin, this body was definitely on the creepier side – and she’d cut up her fair share of cadavers.

“Noted lacerations on the face: temples, cheekbones, and jaw, as well as the neck and shoulders,” she dictated, carefully turning the body up on one side to determine the extent of his injuries. “Bruising around the neck and shoulders, consistent with a struggle.”

She laid the body supine once more, continuing her notation as she moved down the length of it and back. “Subject has no apparent body modifications or healed scars.”

Satisfied that she had examined everything thoroughly thus far into the procedure, she traded her camera for a scalpel, garnered from her nearby table of tools. “First incision will be lengthwise along the torso,” she stated into her mic, positioning the knife at the apex of the chest. She was two millimeters from the skin when it happened.

The corpse breathed.

“Holy shit,” she gasped, pulling back. She stared at the body for a long moment, her heart pounding in her ears as she blinked rapidly in a desperate attempt to clear her field of vision. Goddammit, get a hold of yourself, she chastised. Obviously it’s been way too long since you’ve done this by yourself…fucking Halloween…

Convinced that it had been only a nervous hallucination, she once again stepped forward, raising her hand, knife aloft, ready to commit to the cut.

Not only did the body on the table breathe, but it tried to speak.

Sango dropped the blade and backed away slowly. If this is somebody’s idea of a sick joke – she thought wildly, eyes widening as the supposedly-dead body moved again, twisting to one side and attempting to hoist himself upright.

“Who are you?” she blurted out, backing into the tiled wall of the morgue. Perhaps identifying him would go a long way in catching whoever set this up. If that stupid fucking Miroku is behind all this, I’ll –

The man didn’t look at her, much less answer. After a moment, she steeled her spine and pressed herself forward once more. “Tell me who you are, and who put you up to this,” she demanded, reaching for his shoulder.

His hand met her wrist before she could touch him, but still, he didn’t look at her. His grip was weak and defensive, his fingers cold and clammy against her skin.

After a moment, Sango began to pull away. “Come on, this isn’t funny,” she huffed, struggling to control the panic that was rising fast within her. His hold on her only strengthened with each passing second. Finally, she balled her hand into a fist and tugged with all her might, breaking free of his grasp.

She screamed as he fell back, landing on the metal table with a sickening thud.