Chapter Text
The room had been darker than Heizou remembered, the air far more stale. Perhaps that was because he was temporarily without his Vision. While it hadn’t been ‘taken’ from him, his elemental control of the world around him was gone. Drugs had seen to that. The object itself was in a locked box on the outer part of the door of his room, where he could not reach it.
While the side effects weren’t pleasant, the nausea was something he could tolerate and his mental state hadn’t been altered. Years previous to the Vision Hunt Decree there had been ways that had been tested to keep Vision holders from accessing their powers without stripping them of their sanity. They had already known what it did to people, even if they refused to acknowledge it.
He was more than grateful for the testing. It would have made several of his cases more difficult to solve as well as made his situation harder to bear for the time being.
The Vision Hunt Decree hadn’t been called into effect four months previous before he wound himself up in this situation the first time.
“Shikanoin.” Madame Kujou knocked on the door. He couldn’t see her. He hadn’t seen anyone since he’d been thrown in there a week prior. ‘Insubordination’ was an annoying charge, but one they wouldn’t be able to keep him long on. “You know we have proof you have collaborators among the rebels.”
A lie. If they had proof he’d be dead by now. Heizou didn’t fall for it. Besides, even those he was helping didn’t know his name or face. “I have no such thing. I haven’t been feeling up to any of these tasks, oh fearless leader. I’m a detective, not a warrior.” It was a good enough excuse and one he’d hide behind as much as he could. There were people that needed him, even if they didn’t know they did, or if he didn’t know they were out there. There was so much need at this time that it ran so strongly both ways, and he could only give himself short term goals or lose himself in the amount of things that needed to get done.
And, funny enough, none of his plans were for assisting those he had been working for for the past few years, or the archon of this land with her asinine ambitions. A snake biting its own tail made more progress than what was going on in Inazuma right now.
Something more was happening as well, though he was having a hard time finding out what while being shut behind closed doors. Outside merchants were acting stranger than they should be. The samurai here were becoming more possessed with ideals of grandeur - for either side (it was getting hard to differentiate ‘good’ actions from ‘evil’). And, while he hated to rely on folktales and superstition, word had been getting to him about the strange goings-on of spirits that he only half believed in.
Kujou sighed from beyond the door loud enough for him to catch it. “I’ll give you another week then.”
Damn it. He didn’t have another week. At this point she was just holding him to keep an eye on him. He had no way to fight her on it and they were all but warring with their own on the other islands.
Heizou had contacts on most, knew most of what was going on on them, but there was one he was still lacking.
When he got out of here, he was requesting a vacation.
He deserved it.
…
…
“Heizou.”
Heizou was startled awake, looking at - of all people - Sango. His eyes weren’t as sharp as they should have been as they took in his surroundings and his mind quickly relayed to him the last thing he had been doing. He’d been out in the city. He’d been… doing nothing in particular as far as he remembered.
That was strange.
There hasn’t been a case in a week or so and he often faked his rounds, if he even bothered with them at all. He’d had a small drink of milk earlier while he’d been walking around but hadn’t felt tired. At some point the warm air and sun must have called him into the shade of a nearby tree, far, far too close to the detective agency.
Old habits.
“I’d have kicked you out of here if I were heartless.” Sango put a hand on her hip, frowning at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Enjoying the lovely weather.” A half-truth. The weather was nice out today. “And I’m not on the property so I don’t believe you have the authority to say where I can and cannot rest.”
The antagonizing tone that crept into his voice was so natural, so familiar. They did this kind of thing all the time. To anyone else he sounded calm and composed but he knew she heard him and he let his words have more bite to them while they were in private. He wasn’t sure why.
Clearly it made her angry and she proved so by kicking him in the shin.
“Get out of here. You look like a deadbeat.”
That wasn’t an untrue statement. He knew his appearance wasn’t what it used to be. Since the loss of his house he’d found another place to stay, though it was much smaller than he was used to. His family home wasn’t nearby and, even if it was, Heizou had become a creature of habit over the years since moving out at a young age.
There were things that made it hard to get along with one’s family and for him, that list was far too long. His personality and goals hadn’t made the simple things they disagreed on easy to overcome, let alone the vast.
So now he was living much further away at the first place that would take on such a ‘liability’, and the mora he had to pay there because he was such a threat to the location was outrageous. The wood there was old, the floors creaked, there was barely anywhere to walk around… He liked it out here better.
“Do I need to pick you up and remove you myself?”
“I heard you the first time.” Heizou sat up. He’d recovered from the worst of his injuries a month ago, fully recovered a week or two after that. Shinobu had been a big reason why it had gone so smoothly. Ryuuji housing him for that time was very annoying but it had made it so he’d healed far quicker than he would have on his own as well.
Besides being humiliating and aggravating - Heizou felt indebted to them.
That weight hadn’t left him, even if he no longer carried the burden of the pain that he had shouldered for those weeks. Sango wasn’t any more excluded from that feeling than the others were. She was there. She had helped him when he hadn’t asked her to. That act was not something he had expected from her and it left him in turn not sure how to repay it.
The least he could do was stop being a smart ass and to move when she asked him to.
“Something’s different about you.”
“Hm?” Heizou was fine leaving their conversation where it was. It was his curiosity that got the better of him. “What is?”
“I’m not sure but…” Sango wasn’t like most people. She was forthright and strong, traits that only helped her own, rather impressive, deductive reasoning. Without hesitating she closed the space between them and grabbed onto his shirt, pulling him close. With their height difference, if not for his shoes, she would have lifted him completely off the ground.
It was funny. He noticed a sakura blossom caught in her hair.
She released him.
“You’ve lost weight. I know you were healing but I don’t know how healthy that is. You’re already so small.”
Heizou smirked. He was used to being told he was small. He’d compensated by dressing in clothes that hid most of his figure and shoes that masked his height. It made people underestimate his age and his body size.
Sango had noticed something he hadn’t. His own weight wasn’t something he cared to take note of. “I have been lacking in my routine. I’ll get back to it shortly.”
“There’s another thing. That smell… I would have missed it if I hadn’t been close to you just now.” Sango frowned, a hand on her face. She didn’t finish her statement for a time, looking at him instead. Her eyes grew more and more confused and serious and she seemed to think. “Heizou, how well has your sense of smell been?”
What a keen girl. “Not great since the head injury. We’re hoping that it returns. It’s not a significant hindrance to me. I can’t say I enjoy working around it but it hasn’t been a necessity. If you’re worried it’s decreasing my appetite, you don’t need to worry about me so much. Now that you’ve pointed it out, I’ll be sure to keep it in better check.”
“No, it’s not that. I don’t care whether you lose some weight.” That personal space she gave back to him she took back without a second thought. Before that would have been something common for the both of them. They were close, they worked together. It had been a long time since Sango had felt so familiar grabbing him as she looked him over. “Hm… come here.”
Her hand was still in his as she forced him to follow her down the street.
Words of protest quickly died before they could leave his mouth. He wanted to speak. There was never a time Heizou had trouble with that particular gift unless he was terribly injured or sick. This warm, calm feeling was nice though - even if the atmosphere she was exuding was not and if his mind was trying to work around what she was seeing that he wasn’t that meant something to her strongly enough that she was forcing him away from her own place of business to go who knew where.
Sango’s grip was far tighter than it needed to be, though it didn’t hurt. Her footsteps quickly dragged them both to the edges of the city and out of it.
“Where are we going?” Heizou wasn’t going to stop her. He was too interested. This was very strange of her.
“There’s no one I know in the city that could answer my questions. I could spend all day or longer looking but I’m not an idiot. If there was someone - well, it was you, but you’re useless. So I have to go to the next best person I know who I can ask and that’s going to be someone at the shrine. The nearby ones are too small and I don’t want someone getting hurt.”
“Useless?” That shouldn’t have made him so defensive but it did. “Hardly.”
“In this case you are.” Sango kept pulling him. “You have no sense of taste so that makes you useless.”
There were pieces there now that Heizou was putting together and quickly, almost like a three dimensional puzzle inside of his head. They all seemed to fit together in strange ways before he had time to question why. “This has something to do with what you smelled on me, and thus my taste. You think I ate something strange, don’t you? But why rush me to a…”
Heizou tipped his head, walking faster to be beside her.
“You think someone poisoned me.”
“That’d be my guess. There’s a sour smell on your breath and I know you’re not one for eating healthy unless someone shoves it down your throat. Since it looked like you were working and had passed out out front without thinking about it, it really wasn’t a hard thing to guess at. Besides, there’s other indicators.” Sango’s hand tightened around his wrist. “Your pulse is fast. You’re pale. Your eyes are narrow. I’m not sure what’s going on but they don’t look like common ailments and you would have played up my pity if you were ill. You didn’t so you either didn’t realize it or it’s something worse.”
Those all sounded like common enough indicators of oncoming illness to him but Sango was right with some of her deductions. They were too blatant to overlook with the very obvious fact that he had, indeed, not eaten anything to produce any kind of aroma like that, that she would have picked up on. Rice and fried fish were his usual breakfast and he’d had nothing all afternoon except for some sweet milk.
“Fascinating theory. It would explain to me as well why I found myself sleeping there. I’ll admit more openly now that I hadn’t intended it.”
“I figured that much out, idiot.”
Heizou’s lip turned up. “You are the clever one. The more curious thing I’m wondering is, if that’s indeed how this played out, then someone would have had to have the ability to slip me something. I have been staying somewhere new but that doesn’t mean the place isn’t secure or that I wouldn’t have noticed any obvious break-ins. If it were done in public, it would be an even more brazen act. As much as I don’t think I’m well loved, I’m equally not all that hated. I don’t make many enemies on my job. I’ll have to think on this…”
“Heizou, archons, listen to yourself. I just told you I think you’re poisoned. Aren’t you more worried you might be really sick?”
That thought hadn’t crossed his mind. It did now. “Oh. I suppose I should be, shouldn’t I? I’m not dead so I hadn’t considered it.”
“Of course you hadn’t. You never do.” Sango let out a harsh breath. “Well, I guess not being dead is a good thing. It’s what makes me unsure about all this. The only reason why I’m humoring the idea myself is the smell. I know you’re eating habits too well. You’ve stunk up the office more than enough times to put me on a diet. I shouldn’t know what you do and don’t eat so well…”
Heizou chucked under his breath. “It’s the detective in you, and I do thank you for having that information. Milk doesn’t produce this smell unless it had soured and if that had happened I’d have been far more sick, far quicker, and there would have been a texture consistency as well as several very unhappy customers. If your hypothesis is correct, which I have no reason to doubt, it leaves some very troubling facts that I had stated earlier.”
“Which are? What? How they gave it to you? Anyone can slip someone poison. It’s not like it’s the most difficult thing. And you admitted to losing your sense of taste.”
“Yes, I did.” Heizou’s eyes lidded as he thought. “A fact that even you weren’t aware of, something that only Shinobu and I have spoken about, and I would never doubt her loyalty. If someone risked poisoning me, they either didn’t care if I knew about it, or somehow became aware that it would be easier to slip past me.
“Which leads into the obvious question as to how they did so.” Heizou rested a hand under his chin, his only free one. Sango still held his other hand, dragging him along. Traveling forward hadn’t stopped his mind from wandering these topics. “If it’s still on my breath and I made my food this morning, it’s likely in the sauce I use. Anything hot and it has a chance of burning away. The milk isn’t accessible enough to have been dosed with anything and it had been a impulse purchase. I’ll need someone to go over my things and check them.”
Sango didn’t say anything back.
In all honesty, Heizou hadn’t expected her to. It had been a while since they worked together on anything. They often didn’t agree and their viewpoints were inline for the most parts, but when they differed they did so greatly.
“You shouldn’t be looking into your own case. I can tell anyone at the Commission office when I get back about it, if you want.”
Heizou caught the meaning. “I’d like you to work with me on it instead, but this isn’t something I can keep to myself if the scale is large enough. I appreciate the effort but I don’t know how well I can identify a poison with just the detective office.” He could try but she was right. Lacking his own senses would be detrimental this time. He’d have to let Sango do it and he knew her own talents didn’t lend themselves well to foreign agents. The Tenryou Commission had a wider scope of knowledge at their fingertips. He appreciated Sango’s offer to keep this between them though. “Thank you.”
Again, Sango was quiet.
…
Having a companion who likes to argue with him for a long trip would have been a blessing compared to the silent trudge to the much larger and further shrine that Heizou found himself making. He’d visited Narukami shrine more than enough times to be familiar with it, because of his family and his investigations, but that didn’t make the half day’s journey pass by any quicker.
Worse, he was starting to feel ill by the time they were halfway up the mountain and the sun was high.
“I didn’t think we’d need to bring food or water. It’s a far walk but not enough to hurt anyone, let alone you.” Sango had her hand on his back, making sure he was steady as he rested. He knelt off the side of the path, in the grass, with a hand over his mouth. “Nauseous?”
Heizou nodded.
“Dizzy?”
Again, he nodded.
“Can you speak so I’m not just naming symptoms?”
Clearing his throat, he took in a few breaths of air. His chest felt heavy even though they weren’t high up. “Both those things… short breath… tired…” He didn’t think he felt much else. There was an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion that he should not have felt from this very easy climb.
Sango reached over, his hair being pushed from his eyes. “You have a fever. You should rest. This might have been pushing things for you. I could have gone about this the opposite way and had someone from the shrine come to the city.”
“Just give me a moment.” Heizou just wanted to rest.
Just… for a bit.
…
….
“Hey, wake up.”
Ah. His head hurt. Heizou wiped his eyes with his thumb and index finger. He felt like he was about to be ill.
“You passed out. I let you sleep but the sun is setting and your fever is getting worse.” Sango fidgeted with his hair again. Heizou shut his eyes, letting her. The movement was-
Was too much.
“Move. Please.”
Shoving her as politely as he could, he threw up what little was in his stomach. It burned coming back up, as it was mostly acid, and it left him shaking after a few minutes.
Heaving a few breaths that turned into coughs, Heizou realized quickly that he felt no better. Whatever he’d eaten was already in his system. When Sango had told him about her suspicions he had considered being sick on purpose but had already believed it was too late to matter. He’d had far too much time between then and breakfast that emptying his stomach wasn’t a valid option.
“Now I’m worried about you.”
Heizou had to admit, he was starting to worry too.
Sango was kind enough to grant him a few minutes to pull himself together and dry heave before she forced him to his feet. “We have to get going.”
That was a fact. There were a lot of facts true of the universe. That didn’t make walking any easier.
It was a manageable climb with her keeping him steady. He was shaky but no weaker than he would be on a day when he had no sleep the night previous. Heizou had done that plenty of times. This was nothing that he couldn’t accomplish. Sango was there to make sure he didn’t fall off the broken pieces of roadwork. He was not, in fact, unsteady enough to have fallen if the path had been taken care of the right way.
Heizou told himself those lies. They were a distraction to think on, that he knew weren’t true, but they calmed him nonetheless. He wasn’t one to wrap himself in the falsities of the world for more than a pleasurable second or two before facing reality.
It was nightfall by the time they reached the end of their climb and Sango sat him near the temple entrance.
“I’m going to go look for someone. If you’re contagious I don’t want you touching anyone. It’s bad enough you’ve touched me without washing your clothes and hands. I’ll scold you for it later. You deserve it.”
Heizou nodded. He wouldn’t deny that one. He should have thought about contamination. Why hadn’t he…?
Sango left him. Heizou stayed there, sitting half curled up on himself so he didn’t have to support his own weight - as little of it as there was. His head still throbbed.
There was too much pain and discomfort running through him for sleep but time passed. He couldn’t track it well but he wasn’t terrible at it, he just knew that his mind was making it feel as if it were longer than it was and misleading his perception. The petals fell from the trees, shrine maidens walked around, the grass shifted in the wind.
Lady Guuji herself walked back to his stationary position with Sango, the latter showing a far meeker demeanor than he was used to witnessing from her. Heizou had a feeling why but didn’t feel like questioning her.
The priestess showed no fear in her approach and crouched down beside him, her hand reaching out to touch his forehead before sliding down, lifting his face up to get a better look at him.
“Doushin Shikanoin, it’s been a while. I didn’t expect to see you again like this.”
“Nor I you. I’d have rather been investigating another strange sighting or missing item.”
Lady Guuji gave him a light smile. He had long suspected that she was behind a few of the cases that had brought him to this location but had never yet proved anything against her. Every time he had come close, the reason for his presence had either shown up mysteriously again or the client decided to withdraw their case and he’d been sent back to the city.
Besides wasting his time, he had nothing against the shrine woman. In fact, he’d only heard pleasant things from her otherwise. On top of which, he welcomed cases that brought him here. Often they discouraged the Commission from using him for jobs that were ill suited to his abilities. The strange, unsolvable, supernatural cases that sprang up here had to go to someone and they were more than happy to throw them his way. He was more than happy to take them, if only to keep those in charge like Madame Kujou to keep him from working the more menial of tasks.
“I’m hardly a doctor but I’ve seen a lot of things over the years and I know we have only basic medical professionals in the city, so most of the ill come to me when it’s something unrecognizable. Still… I don’t know if even I’ll be able to pinpoint a particular poison. Let me see.”
Without so much as a hesitation, Lady Guuji drew in close to him and licked near his lips.
Heizou drew back, falling onto his hands. “H-hey…!”
“Relax. I won’t be able to catch whatever it is you have. It’s very hard to poison someone like me.”
Lady Guuji spoke and, though she had just licked him, and almost on the lips, her eyes were no longer on him. She was looking at the floor with contemplation.
A minute passed before she spoke.
“If you hadn’t been recently ill I might be able to tell you with more certainty but what information I can give isn’t promising. May I have your hand?”
Heizou was afraid to give it to her. Still, his curiosity ran deeper than his fear and he shifted so that he could offer it to her.
The Lady of the shrine took it with both of her own hands before swiping one of her nails near the webbing of his thumb. Heizou winced but didn’t move. Blood welled up and Lady Guuji brought it close to her and licked it as well.
Another moment passed as she… tasted his blood. Of all the things Heizou had seen done to determine sickness, this had never been one of them.
“Unfortunate.” Lady Guuji released him. “Remove anything that may have that toxin still in it. If it exists, burn it. Do not let anyone else ingest it, as that is indeed how it was brought into your own body. Are you ready for the bad news, dear Doushin?”
Heizou was figuring it out on his own. Her wording had been enough. “It’s not just a poison, which means you’ve been able to narrow down its origins enough to state that. If you know that much, you likely know what it is or will do so yes, I’m ready.”
“It’s from a plant, though not one born of Inazuman soil. I don’t, in fact, recognize it. There’s a tackiness I can taste to it that is similar though that I can say with a certainty I’ve only tasted in plants before.” Lady Guuji shifted, a finger going to her lips though she didn’t try to hover over him. “The rest is conjecture so a specialist would be best. You won’t find one better than me without causing them harm or taking time you don’t have. What I tasted is your blood contains the same taste, in lower dosages. One of two things is likely going to happen. Either staying away from it is going to make it ease, or you are now the unfortunate first victim of a new strain of toxin that’s being brought into our lands. In either case I’d report this, but that’s your job.”
Lady Guuji stood up, some playfulness returning to her gaze but not enough to hide the new worry there. “Good luck, detective.”