MiroSanta for Silindro.
I'm a full two hours late. I am so incredibly sorry. *bows, ducks back behind word processor*
This fic was written for a Christmas fic exchange held at the_chasms. I was assigned to write for firegod, whose original request can be found here. Hope they enjoy, and hope whoever else reads this will enjoy it too! Happy holidays and happy New Year.
Complacency
Her first thought is, “I can be happy.”
He holds her close on their wedding day. His arms are secure, his hands do not stray, and his eyes are half-closed, but the parts she can see are warm and full of love.
She feels like smiling for the first time in months.
-
Looking back, her hands tremble at the memory.
The flowers in her hands fall to the ground.
-
They move in to a small town by a river, two days’ walk from Musashi’s Domain. They have a little house, and he makes a modest living by traveling to nearby villages to heal soldiers that are still fighting in the feudal wars. The roads that extend from their village are many, and diverge as well; he is gone for days, or sometimes weeks, but he always comes back, with open arms and eyes full of love.
He always comes back, but he never stays.
-
They’ve been married for a month, and already it feels like she’s been living off of him her whole life. She makes a point to exercise daily, but her joints feel old and worn and useless. She’s out of practice; Hiraikotsu hasn’t been touched since Naraku’s fall, and she feels as if she’d shucked her armor for the last time then.
She thinks sometimes that she misses her old life, when she had a goal in mind and had the power to work toward it.
She thinks that fighting was somehow easier than standing still, reliving the same schedule, the same day, over and over again without him.
But with him, life is brighter, she thinks.
With him, she has his love, and it’s enough.
-
“Off to visit your family’s altar again?” asks Wakime, one of the village women. Wakime has a fair face, but eyes that sag at the edges and make her look older than she is. She has a husband that fights in the wars; Wakime doesn’t understand the fighting, but she supports him.
“Yes,” Sango says, fingering the slender stems of the flowers she holds.
“It’s been awhile hasn’t it?” Wakime lets the laundry in her hands drop, and she looks up at Sango from her kneeled position, her eyes raised with curiosity.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I’ve noticed… your husband…” Wakime swallows her words and, with a new breath, disgorges others. “You only visit the altar when your husband is gone.”
Sango smiles. “You’ve noticed then… I bear no grudge against Miroku, but I find it easiest to talk with my family when I’m alone.”
Miroku. It’s taken time to get used to the name. Calling him by his title had been easier for her for the longest time, and now, with their marriage, she’d been required to cast away what was simplest for her.
Then she thinks of Hiraikotsu, sitting alone in the back of their modest hut, and she recognizes (not for the first time) that sometimes things must be sacrificed for greater happiness.
“I see then, Sango-chan. Well, I won’t keep you. Please talk to your family.”
Sango nods and walks away.
She leaves behind her shadow of doubt that marriage was the best choice for her.
-
“Hello, father, Kohaku,” she says as she approaches the marker. Her hands are still, as they have always been; she can’t remember the last time she gave way to panic or worry. “How are you both today?”
There’s no answer, except for the tiny sound a trees’ leaves make when they rub against each other. Sango has a small smile on her face; her cheeks are rosy, and she’s trying not to cry.
“And mother’s well, too?”
She lays the white flowers on the altar. There is grass starting to grow on the earth above the marker. Spring is here; life is returning.
Miroku will be home tomorrow.
“Good. I’m glad.”
-
“Why do you still wear these?” She slides her hand beneath the prayer beads and runs her fingers across the cuff that separates her skin from his.
“It’s a constant reminder of what I had to lose in order to gain vengeance for my father and grandfather,” he says, easily. He closes his eyes and wraps his left arm around her waist, breathing in the scent of her hair. She smells like flowers and earth and that evening’s dinner.
“But the curse is gone,” she says, turning so that her cheek rests on his bare chest. “You have no reason not to let your hand breathe every once and a while.”
“That my father and grandfather died because of Naraku is something that will never change,” he replies as he gently slides her hand away from the cuff. He moves the now free appendage to her hair, which he strokes, idly. “Why should the status of the cuff on my hand change as well?”
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“I have an answer for that.” He leans back so that he rests fully upon the ground, and the movement brings her to rest fully on top of him. “I don’t want you to worry about me. I want you to live a relaxing life and to be happy.”
“I think I’d be happier if I saw you more often.” She can’t bring herself to meet his eyes. “And I don’t train as much as I used to, so I feel unproductive, almost lazy.”
“I won’t be leaving now for a while; there’s a lull in the wars. I can stay here for a few weeks, and I’ll spend each and every minute in your presence. We can train together; you can polish your skills with Hiraikotsu.”
There’s a pause. She’s still looking away from him.
“Sango… would that be alright?”
When she still won’t answer, he rests the fingertips of his right hand against her cheek (deliberately trying to prevent the prayer beads from touching her) and moves them slightly toward his face. She travels the rest of the distance to his lips on her own.
“I love you,” he tells her, not for the first time. “I only want you to be happy.”
She knows that she’s happiest when she’s with him. She’d known that right from the start, from the moment she’d first wedded him.
But she doesn’t say this. She tells him, “Okay,” and kisses him and says his name.
She doesn’t say that it’s moments like these when she loves him most.
-
He stays with her for three weeks. They train together, like he promised; she’d been rusty with Hiraikotsu at the start, but she’s gotten better since. They hunt small youkai together and prepare dinner together and run after the town children together and dream of children of their own together.
There’s a note of somberness in all that Sango does, though, a shade of apprehension that he’ll leave at the end of all of this, and maybe leave for good. She can’t help but feel that something is being forced, or something is being hidden, and wonders if he’s doing all he can to make her happy because he’s cheating on her, or because his heart is in another village a winding path away.
But she tries to abandon these thoughts, because what he does does make her happy, and after her long, tiresome fight with Naraku, all she wants is happiness.
With him, she can be happy.
(Her hands shake for the first time in months.)
She only has trouble convincing herself of that.
-
“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he says. The wind blows, and they do not touch. He stands with his staff in hand and his eyes lidded and loveless. She’s before him and away from him, and if she’d had something to say to him, she would have said it already.
“I hope you don’t hate me for leaving,” he goes on, “But there’s been an especially bloody youkai massacre, and an entire village has nearly been eradicated. I need to be there to help the citizens that have gotten hurt. I don’t know how long it’ll take, or if the youkai will strike again.”
His last words hit her hard. She trembles, and her resolve of days past flares up.
“I can’t come with you? And is making a living on your own helping hurt people more important…”
She stops.
“I sound childish. Miroku, I’m so sorry. I know I’m being selfish and…”
“It’s alright.” He’s smiling. He’s missed the Sango he knew before their marriage as well. “Just promise me that you’ll be here when I return, and return I will.”
Her breath catches, and she can barely say, “…then promise me that you’ll miss me.”
He turns his back to the wind and walks off.
She understands his yes, and once he’s out of sight, crumples to the ground.
She understands his reasons for leaving, for making a living helping hurt citizens.
She only wishes he’d understand her, because she can’t help but think that maybe he doesn’t recognize that she hurts more than all of those people put together.
-
Sango doesn’t really like to think about the night Kohaku went away, or the night when the youkai slaying village was plundered while she was at Kagewaki’s, but the next time she goes to visit the altar to deliver fresh flowers, she’s since decided that she needs to fill her thoughts with something. Two weeks without Miroku have made her more bored than usual, and even conversations with Wakime have grown dull, even though the other woman always has a lot to say and observe. Even melancholy thoughts are welcome; she simply doesn’t want to consider the empty space her husband has left behind.
“I hope you know that I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” she says. The leaves in the trees shake; so does she. “And I hope you know that I love you both, and I’ll never forgive myself for not being able to do more.”
She breathes, and she coughs on air.
“Sometimes I wish we hadn’t gone to Kagewaki-sama’s palace. Because maybe things would have been different, and father wouldn’t be dead and Kohaku wouldn’t have taken Kirara and run and, we could have been…”
She’s shaking so much now that she can hardly voice the words she’s been keeping inside. Her hands tremble, and she flashes back, suddenly, to her and Miroku’s wedding day, and how they built the altar afterward and she hadn’t cried.
She lets the tears fall to make up for those unshed, and lets the flowers fall with them.
She doesn’t cry for herself. She simply hasn’t until that moment; Miroku has kept her happy, but in his absence, she can’t help but feel empty and alone. She feels empty in a way that her family’s dissolving had never made her feel, and that in turn makes her feel guilty.
She should have fought harder for them, she thinks, should have never held back and fought Naraku to the death for their peace.
She should have at least fought for Kohaku’s life, or for his happiness, even.
But she didn’t, and there’s a twinge of regret that she feels more than anything else that, in not doing so, she lost her own.
-
“Did you know that, maybe, we could have been happy?”
-
“Please watch the hut for me while I’m gone,” she says as she dons a wide-brimmed hat and shifts her grip on her pack. “I’m heading toward Kanazawa… that’s where you husband is stationed, right?”
“I’m… not sure if he’s still there,” Wakime replies. “I could guess that he might have passed through there at some point, and surely there must be soldiers in that area that would know him… I’m just sorry I can’t do more, Sango-chan.”
Sango winces at the word “sorry” and continues, “Well, if anything happens to me, or to Miroku, then I’ll see if I can find someone to send back to you to let you know. And besides, you’re doing enough watching the hut. I’m grateful, Wakime-chan.”
“Thank you.” The smile Wakime gives her is thin; wrinkles drag the corners of her tired eyes down. “But why must you find your husband now? Can you not wait until he returns here to be with him?”
“I would wait,” Sango says. “But I’m just…”
A breath, a tremble, and then words.
“…I’m just tired of being unhappy.”
She takes her first step forward. It’s the farthest she’s walked away for a long, long time.
“I won’t make any promises, but I might be back within the week. And if Miroku returns… please tell him the same.”
She goes forward and doesn’t look back, one hand clutching her pack, the other the strap of Hiraikotsu.
-
She reaches Kanazawa in three days. The journey was exhausting, but what she’ll remember most vividly about the trip is the scent of the wind in her hair and the feel of the sun on her face and this sense of freedom the likes of which she could have never fathomed until then.
At Kanazawa, she tells a soldier that she is the sister of one of the victims of the youkai massacre. Her story is near-transparent, her lie full of holes. But she persists, and the soldier is kind, so he tells her which roads to take to get to the town.
It takes her another day to reach the ruins. A whole half of the town has been burned away; the grass ringing the village is singed, and houses that are still standing lack roofs or have suffered extreme damage that will make the upcoming spring rains unbearable. She almost doesn’t understand why Miroku had to be here for so long; from what she can see, this place is practically unable to be lived in any longer.
Still, there are blankets set up in the dirt streets, where the injured lay in states of varying criticalness. There are a few corpses that are starting to smell. Some families huddle a hundred feet away; they are survivors whose houses can barely stand, and who don’t want to risk being crushed by a falling roof. She spots Miroku right away, consoling a crying child who holds his mother’s hand tight.
She goes over to him.
“Miroku.”
He bristles and looks over his shoulder in disbelief.
“Sango? What are you… what is…”
He never finishes the question.
“You’ve been gone for nearly three weeks. I was getting worried.”
“It’s me that should be worrying. You… you shouldn’t be here, Sango. The youkai have been coming back almost daily, with one counterattack after another, and…”
“And nothing. I’m a demon slayer; I can help.”
She feels something akin to hate when ten seconds go by without him saying anything.
“Please don’t send me away! I traveled for four days trying to find you, and I want to do anything I can to help us both. I want…”
But she is cut off by the cry of the little boy at her feet.
“Youkai! Youkai!”
Both Miroku and Sango wheel about in synchrony, just like they used to back when they were partners and not spouses. Sango had brought along her armor, but it is inappropriate to change here; she needs to make do in her village clothes.
“Sango, stay back!” Miroku holds his left hand out to where she stands behind him. His fingers are spread; it looks as if he believes the five little things could protect her on their own.
“I refuse to. I’m a demon slayer; I’m going to fight.”
To prove a point, she charges in front of him and hurls Hiraikotsu with all of her strength.
It hits the demon dead on, but it falls to the ground upon impact. The demon comes away with barely a gash.
“Hiraikotsu didn’t work on it…” she says in disbelief. “And I have my poisons, but…”
She doesn’t have time to finish the sentence; Miroku is there in battle, and he’s protecting her.
She falls to her knees and searches the pack she must have dropped.
“Poison, poison, poison…”
She supposes Miroku’s sutras are working. She doesn’t know; she’s only watching him fight out of the corner of her eye. She does, however, hear the youkai roar, sense that the light around her has gained a red tint.
She looks up and sees the youkai rear up; it seems to be collecting a red light around its mouth.
“So it’s going to fire at the town…” The sad fact dawns on her, and she knows it’s too late to find a poison that could save the ruins, her husband, herself, anything. Her hands search idly, but now she is watching the fight full on.
She is still watching when Miroku, without a glance behind him, runs forward, plants his feet, and says a word she never thought she’d hear again.
“Kazaana!”
The winds blow around her, and they steal her breath and belief away.
-
The youkai is annihilated and the ruins have temporarily been saved.
Sango feels as if her life has been spared but that her spirit was her sacrifice.
-
The trek home is unsurprisingly awkward. They stay at inns during the evening and share a room, but not a bed. She feels a shock that has not numbed since she saw him fight, since she saw that he truly was lying to her. She says nothing to him; he deserves no words.
Wakime greets them when they return and tells them that she’s cleaned the hut for them.
Miroku tries to be jovial and enters their abode, with a forcedly cheerful, “Welcome home, Sango.”
Her smile is placid.
“It’s good to be home… houshi-sama.”
He disguises his wince as a sneeze.
She, as always, can see right through a lie like that.
-
She disappears often.
Hiraikotsu goes with her.
He does not know where she goes, but she’ll always return with her boomerang on her back and a small pouch of coins in hand. Life is lonely without Sango, and though she is only gone for hours at a time, the hollowness of his heart pounds loudly in his chest at her absence.
He can feel his heartbeat, and also feel the shouki wounds shift in time to the sound. He thinks she doesn’t understand; he’s a dying man, and all he wants is for her to be happy, and if possible, happy with him.
What he doesn’t understand is that he never told her about the shouki, never told her what he needed to say, and so maybe she wouldn’t understand that he’s dying.
-
She comes home one day and refuses to meet his eyes. At dinnertime, she puts rice up to boil and tends the fire, pointedly looking at the flames. How can she expect to see him, after all, if she can’t tell whether his eyes are a lie?
“Sango.”
She prods the kindling with the end of a stick.
“Sango.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I understand that. And…”
“That’s just it.” She sets the stick down neatly on her lap and glares. “You might understand me, but I don’t understand you. Why did you lie to me about the Kazaana?”
He thinks back to the night when he’d come home and she’d asked him to take off the cuff. He can almost feel the shouki tease his heart at the memory. “I’ve told you. I want you to be happy.”
“That’s not good enough.” Her fists are balled; the fire paints them red. “You’ve said it, but after this… I can’t tell whether you mean it. I was very happy being your wife.”
“Was?”
She breathes. “Yes. But if I can’t trust you… I’m better off… I’m…”
She rises.
“Enjoy your dinner, houshi-sama.”
The entrance to their hut flutters behind her.
She sits at her family’s altar for a long, long time. When she stands and brings up dirt and dead flowers with the motion, he’s there behind her.
“Sango, I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m not asking for a second chance. I’m not asking you to make my life happy.”
She lowers her head. He’s right there, and she can look up and see him if she wants to, but she pretends to be more fascinated by the grass regardless.
“Sango, all I want is for you to not be angry. Especially because… Sango, look at me.”
Her eyes are indifferent and uninterested. They almost scare him.
“…the reason I took so long to return from the last village I visited was because I took a detour to see Mushin-sama. He looked at the Kazaana, and told me…” He turns around for a second, as if he expects to see Inu-Yasha and Kagome there hiding in a bush and spying, just like they used to. “The reason I’ve been leaving for such long periods of time is that I’ve always known that the curse of the Kazaana was still upon me. I figured that if I went away and never came back that you would think…”
He lets out a sound that almost seems to be a chuckle.
“It sounds silly now, I know, but I thought that would be the best way to do things at the time. I see differently now; I see that I’ve wronged you, not only as my wife, but as a person, and that… well, you shouldn’t forgive me. But you should hear me and consider my words.”
He begins to turn away.
“Sango, I’m sorry we couldn’t make this work out. If you don’t want me to be your husband anymore, I’ll understand.”
He starts out toward their hut, but then he feels a head on his shoulder.
He notes dully that he still can’t see her eyes, but that he can feel her tears wet his robes.
“Houshi-sama…” Her hands come up now. He reaches behind him to take them. “Houshi-sama… did you…”
Her words shudder, but he can make them out.
“Houshi-sama… did you know that, maybe, we could have been happy?”
His smile is as vibrant as it’s always been.
“Yes, Sango. And I think that if we keep going, we still can be.”
-
She disappears often.
Hiraikotsu goes with her.
But like her weapon, and like him, she always comes back.
-
They visit her family’s altar together now. There is still a tension between the couple, and between Miroku and her family’s memory, but they’re getting better at communicating and, maybe, trusting one another.
“Would you like to lay the flowers, houshi-sama?” She calls him by his title, not because she doesn’t completely trust him, but because it’s familiar, and he’s let her take back that sacrifice.
“I would.”
The petals grace the marker. The grass seems greener than usual today.
“Kohaku still hasn’t been found, right?”
“No, houshi-sama, not yet.”
His staff jingles as he lifts it.
“Perhaps we can search for him one day.”
She smiles, says, “I’d like that.”
Their conversations are still forced, but they’re getting better.
Their journey has not ended, and in some ways has yet to begin, but they’re still meandering the many paths of their lives together.
~
Also, I have neighbors named Kramer. I just found this out today.
This fic was written for a Christmas fic exchange held at the_chasms. I was assigned to write for firegod, whose original request can be found here. Hope they enjoy, and hope whoever else reads this will enjoy it too! Happy holidays and happy New Year.
Complacency
Her first thought is, “I can be happy.”
He holds her close on their wedding day. His arms are secure, his hands do not stray, and his eyes are half-closed, but the parts she can see are warm and full of love.
She feels like smiling for the first time in months.
-
Looking back, her hands tremble at the memory.
The flowers in her hands fall to the ground.
-
They move in to a small town by a river, two days’ walk from Musashi’s Domain. They have a little house, and he makes a modest living by traveling to nearby villages to heal soldiers that are still fighting in the feudal wars. The roads that extend from their village are many, and diverge as well; he is gone for days, or sometimes weeks, but he always comes back, with open arms and eyes full of love.
He always comes back, but he never stays.
-
They’ve been married for a month, and already it feels like she’s been living off of him her whole life. She makes a point to exercise daily, but her joints feel old and worn and useless. She’s out of practice; Hiraikotsu hasn’t been touched since Naraku’s fall, and she feels as if she’d shucked her armor for the last time then.
She thinks sometimes that she misses her old life, when she had a goal in mind and had the power to work toward it.
She thinks that fighting was somehow easier than standing still, reliving the same schedule, the same day, over and over again without him.
But with him, life is brighter, she thinks.
With him, she has his love, and it’s enough.
-
“Off to visit your family’s altar again?” asks Wakime, one of the village women. Wakime has a fair face, but eyes that sag at the edges and make her look older than she is. She has a husband that fights in the wars; Wakime doesn’t understand the fighting, but she supports him.
“Yes,” Sango says, fingering the slender stems of the flowers she holds.
“It’s been awhile hasn’t it?” Wakime lets the laundry in her hands drop, and she looks up at Sango from her kneeled position, her eyes raised with curiosity.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I’ve noticed… your husband…” Wakime swallows her words and, with a new breath, disgorges others. “You only visit the altar when your husband is gone.”
Sango smiles. “You’ve noticed then… I bear no grudge against Miroku, but I find it easiest to talk with my family when I’m alone.”
Miroku. It’s taken time to get used to the name. Calling him by his title had been easier for her for the longest time, and now, with their marriage, she’d been required to cast away what was simplest for her.
Then she thinks of Hiraikotsu, sitting alone in the back of their modest hut, and she recognizes (not for the first time) that sometimes things must be sacrificed for greater happiness.
“I see then, Sango-chan. Well, I won’t keep you. Please talk to your family.”
Sango nods and walks away.
She leaves behind her shadow of doubt that marriage was the best choice for her.
-
“Hello, father, Kohaku,” she says as she approaches the marker. Her hands are still, as they have always been; she can’t remember the last time she gave way to panic or worry. “How are you both today?”
There’s no answer, except for the tiny sound a trees’ leaves make when they rub against each other. Sango has a small smile on her face; her cheeks are rosy, and she’s trying not to cry.
“And mother’s well, too?”
She lays the white flowers on the altar. There is grass starting to grow on the earth above the marker. Spring is here; life is returning.
Miroku will be home tomorrow.
“Good. I’m glad.”
-
“Why do you still wear these?” She slides her hand beneath the prayer beads and runs her fingers across the cuff that separates her skin from his.
“It’s a constant reminder of what I had to lose in order to gain vengeance for my father and grandfather,” he says, easily. He closes his eyes and wraps his left arm around her waist, breathing in the scent of her hair. She smells like flowers and earth and that evening’s dinner.
“But the curse is gone,” she says, turning so that her cheek rests on his bare chest. “You have no reason not to let your hand breathe every once and a while.”
“That my father and grandfather died because of Naraku is something that will never change,” he replies as he gently slides her hand away from the cuff. He moves the now free appendage to her hair, which he strokes, idly. “Why should the status of the cuff on my hand change as well?”
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“I have an answer for that.” He leans back so that he rests fully upon the ground, and the movement brings her to rest fully on top of him. “I don’t want you to worry about me. I want you to live a relaxing life and to be happy.”
“I think I’d be happier if I saw you more often.” She can’t bring herself to meet his eyes. “And I don’t train as much as I used to, so I feel unproductive, almost lazy.”
“I won’t be leaving now for a while; there’s a lull in the wars. I can stay here for a few weeks, and I’ll spend each and every minute in your presence. We can train together; you can polish your skills with Hiraikotsu.”
There’s a pause. She’s still looking away from him.
“Sango… would that be alright?”
When she still won’t answer, he rests the fingertips of his right hand against her cheek (deliberately trying to prevent the prayer beads from touching her) and moves them slightly toward his face. She travels the rest of the distance to his lips on her own.
“I love you,” he tells her, not for the first time. “I only want you to be happy.”
She knows that she’s happiest when she’s with him. She’d known that right from the start, from the moment she’d first wedded him.
But she doesn’t say this. She tells him, “Okay,” and kisses him and says his name.
She doesn’t say that it’s moments like these when she loves him most.
-
He stays with her for three weeks. They train together, like he promised; she’d been rusty with Hiraikotsu at the start, but she’s gotten better since. They hunt small youkai together and prepare dinner together and run after the town children together and dream of children of their own together.
There’s a note of somberness in all that Sango does, though, a shade of apprehension that he’ll leave at the end of all of this, and maybe leave for good. She can’t help but feel that something is being forced, or something is being hidden, and wonders if he’s doing all he can to make her happy because he’s cheating on her, or because his heart is in another village a winding path away.
But she tries to abandon these thoughts, because what he does does make her happy, and after her long, tiresome fight with Naraku, all she wants is happiness.
With him, she can be happy.
(Her hands shake for the first time in months.)
She only has trouble convincing herself of that.
-
“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he says. The wind blows, and they do not touch. He stands with his staff in hand and his eyes lidded and loveless. She’s before him and away from him, and if she’d had something to say to him, she would have said it already.
“I hope you don’t hate me for leaving,” he goes on, “But there’s been an especially bloody youkai massacre, and an entire village has nearly been eradicated. I need to be there to help the citizens that have gotten hurt. I don’t know how long it’ll take, or if the youkai will strike again.”
His last words hit her hard. She trembles, and her resolve of days past flares up.
“I can’t come with you? And is making a living on your own helping hurt people more important…”
She stops.
“I sound childish. Miroku, I’m so sorry. I know I’m being selfish and…”
“It’s alright.” He’s smiling. He’s missed the Sango he knew before their marriage as well. “Just promise me that you’ll be here when I return, and return I will.”
Her breath catches, and she can barely say, “…then promise me that you’ll miss me.”
He turns his back to the wind and walks off.
She understands his yes, and once he’s out of sight, crumples to the ground.
She understands his reasons for leaving, for making a living helping hurt citizens.
She only wishes he’d understand her, because she can’t help but think that maybe he doesn’t recognize that she hurts more than all of those people put together.
-
Sango doesn’t really like to think about the night Kohaku went away, or the night when the youkai slaying village was plundered while she was at Kagewaki’s, but the next time she goes to visit the altar to deliver fresh flowers, she’s since decided that she needs to fill her thoughts with something. Two weeks without Miroku have made her more bored than usual, and even conversations with Wakime have grown dull, even though the other woman always has a lot to say and observe. Even melancholy thoughts are welcome; she simply doesn’t want to consider the empty space her husband has left behind.
“I hope you know that I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” she says. The leaves in the trees shake; so does she. “And I hope you know that I love you both, and I’ll never forgive myself for not being able to do more.”
She breathes, and she coughs on air.
“Sometimes I wish we hadn’t gone to Kagewaki-sama’s palace. Because maybe things would have been different, and father wouldn’t be dead and Kohaku wouldn’t have taken Kirara and run and, we could have been…”
She’s shaking so much now that she can hardly voice the words she’s been keeping inside. Her hands tremble, and she flashes back, suddenly, to her and Miroku’s wedding day, and how they built the altar afterward and she hadn’t cried.
She lets the tears fall to make up for those unshed, and lets the flowers fall with them.
She doesn’t cry for herself. She simply hasn’t until that moment; Miroku has kept her happy, but in his absence, she can’t help but feel empty and alone. She feels empty in a way that her family’s dissolving had never made her feel, and that in turn makes her feel guilty.
She should have fought harder for them, she thinks, should have never held back and fought Naraku to the death for their peace.
She should have at least fought for Kohaku’s life, or for his happiness, even.
But she didn’t, and there’s a twinge of regret that she feels more than anything else that, in not doing so, she lost her own.
-
“Did you know that, maybe, we could have been happy?”
-
“Please watch the hut for me while I’m gone,” she says as she dons a wide-brimmed hat and shifts her grip on her pack. “I’m heading toward Kanazawa… that’s where you husband is stationed, right?”
“I’m… not sure if he’s still there,” Wakime replies. “I could guess that he might have passed through there at some point, and surely there must be soldiers in that area that would know him… I’m just sorry I can’t do more, Sango-chan.”
Sango winces at the word “sorry” and continues, “Well, if anything happens to me, or to Miroku, then I’ll see if I can find someone to send back to you to let you know. And besides, you’re doing enough watching the hut. I’m grateful, Wakime-chan.”
“Thank you.” The smile Wakime gives her is thin; wrinkles drag the corners of her tired eyes down. “But why must you find your husband now? Can you not wait until he returns here to be with him?”
“I would wait,” Sango says. “But I’m just…”
A breath, a tremble, and then words.
“…I’m just tired of being unhappy.”
She takes her first step forward. It’s the farthest she’s walked away for a long, long time.
“I won’t make any promises, but I might be back within the week. And if Miroku returns… please tell him the same.”
She goes forward and doesn’t look back, one hand clutching her pack, the other the strap of Hiraikotsu.
-
She reaches Kanazawa in three days. The journey was exhausting, but what she’ll remember most vividly about the trip is the scent of the wind in her hair and the feel of the sun on her face and this sense of freedom the likes of which she could have never fathomed until then.
At Kanazawa, she tells a soldier that she is the sister of one of the victims of the youkai massacre. Her story is near-transparent, her lie full of holes. But she persists, and the soldier is kind, so he tells her which roads to take to get to the town.
It takes her another day to reach the ruins. A whole half of the town has been burned away; the grass ringing the village is singed, and houses that are still standing lack roofs or have suffered extreme damage that will make the upcoming spring rains unbearable. She almost doesn’t understand why Miroku had to be here for so long; from what she can see, this place is practically unable to be lived in any longer.
Still, there are blankets set up in the dirt streets, where the injured lay in states of varying criticalness. There are a few corpses that are starting to smell. Some families huddle a hundred feet away; they are survivors whose houses can barely stand, and who don’t want to risk being crushed by a falling roof. She spots Miroku right away, consoling a crying child who holds his mother’s hand tight.
She goes over to him.
“Miroku.”
He bristles and looks over his shoulder in disbelief.
“Sango? What are you… what is…”
He never finishes the question.
“You’ve been gone for nearly three weeks. I was getting worried.”
“It’s me that should be worrying. You… you shouldn’t be here, Sango. The youkai have been coming back almost daily, with one counterattack after another, and…”
“And nothing. I’m a demon slayer; I can help.”
She feels something akin to hate when ten seconds go by without him saying anything.
“Please don’t send me away! I traveled for four days trying to find you, and I want to do anything I can to help us both. I want…”
But she is cut off by the cry of the little boy at her feet.
“Youkai! Youkai!”
Both Miroku and Sango wheel about in synchrony, just like they used to back when they were partners and not spouses. Sango had brought along her armor, but it is inappropriate to change here; she needs to make do in her village clothes.
“Sango, stay back!” Miroku holds his left hand out to where she stands behind him. His fingers are spread; it looks as if he believes the five little things could protect her on their own.
“I refuse to. I’m a demon slayer; I’m going to fight.”
To prove a point, she charges in front of him and hurls Hiraikotsu with all of her strength.
It hits the demon dead on, but it falls to the ground upon impact. The demon comes away with barely a gash.
“Hiraikotsu didn’t work on it…” she says in disbelief. “And I have my poisons, but…”
She doesn’t have time to finish the sentence; Miroku is there in battle, and he’s protecting her.
She falls to her knees and searches the pack she must have dropped.
“Poison, poison, poison…”
She supposes Miroku’s sutras are working. She doesn’t know; she’s only watching him fight out of the corner of her eye. She does, however, hear the youkai roar, sense that the light around her has gained a red tint.
She looks up and sees the youkai rear up; it seems to be collecting a red light around its mouth.
“So it’s going to fire at the town…” The sad fact dawns on her, and she knows it’s too late to find a poison that could save the ruins, her husband, herself, anything. Her hands search idly, but now she is watching the fight full on.
She is still watching when Miroku, without a glance behind him, runs forward, plants his feet, and says a word she never thought she’d hear again.
“Kazaana!”
The winds blow around her, and they steal her breath and belief away.
-
The youkai is annihilated and the ruins have temporarily been saved.
Sango feels as if her life has been spared but that her spirit was her sacrifice.
-
The trek home is unsurprisingly awkward. They stay at inns during the evening and share a room, but not a bed. She feels a shock that has not numbed since she saw him fight, since she saw that he truly was lying to her. She says nothing to him; he deserves no words.
Wakime greets them when they return and tells them that she’s cleaned the hut for them.
Miroku tries to be jovial and enters their abode, with a forcedly cheerful, “Welcome home, Sango.”
Her smile is placid.
“It’s good to be home… houshi-sama.”
He disguises his wince as a sneeze.
She, as always, can see right through a lie like that.
-
She disappears often.
Hiraikotsu goes with her.
He does not know where she goes, but she’ll always return with her boomerang on her back and a small pouch of coins in hand. Life is lonely without Sango, and though she is only gone for hours at a time, the hollowness of his heart pounds loudly in his chest at her absence.
He can feel his heartbeat, and also feel the shouki wounds shift in time to the sound. He thinks she doesn’t understand; he’s a dying man, and all he wants is for her to be happy, and if possible, happy with him.
What he doesn’t understand is that he never told her about the shouki, never told her what he needed to say, and so maybe she wouldn’t understand that he’s dying.
-
She comes home one day and refuses to meet his eyes. At dinnertime, she puts rice up to boil and tends the fire, pointedly looking at the flames. How can she expect to see him, after all, if she can’t tell whether his eyes are a lie?
“Sango.”
She prods the kindling with the end of a stick.
“Sango.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I understand that. And…”
“That’s just it.” She sets the stick down neatly on her lap and glares. “You might understand me, but I don’t understand you. Why did you lie to me about the Kazaana?”
He thinks back to the night when he’d come home and she’d asked him to take off the cuff. He can almost feel the shouki tease his heart at the memory. “I’ve told you. I want you to be happy.”
“That’s not good enough.” Her fists are balled; the fire paints them red. “You’ve said it, but after this… I can’t tell whether you mean it. I was very happy being your wife.”
“Was?”
She breathes. “Yes. But if I can’t trust you… I’m better off… I’m…”
She rises.
“Enjoy your dinner, houshi-sama.”
The entrance to their hut flutters behind her.
She sits at her family’s altar for a long, long time. When she stands and brings up dirt and dead flowers with the motion, he’s there behind her.
“Sango, I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m not asking for a second chance. I’m not asking you to make my life happy.”
She lowers her head. He’s right there, and she can look up and see him if she wants to, but she pretends to be more fascinated by the grass regardless.
“Sango, all I want is for you to not be angry. Especially because… Sango, look at me.”
Her eyes are indifferent and uninterested. They almost scare him.
“…the reason I took so long to return from the last village I visited was because I took a detour to see Mushin-sama. He looked at the Kazaana, and told me…” He turns around for a second, as if he expects to see Inu-Yasha and Kagome there hiding in a bush and spying, just like they used to. “The reason I’ve been leaving for such long periods of time is that I’ve always known that the curse of the Kazaana was still upon me. I figured that if I went away and never came back that you would think…”
He lets out a sound that almost seems to be a chuckle.
“It sounds silly now, I know, but I thought that would be the best way to do things at the time. I see differently now; I see that I’ve wronged you, not only as my wife, but as a person, and that… well, you shouldn’t forgive me. But you should hear me and consider my words.”
He begins to turn away.
“Sango, I’m sorry we couldn’t make this work out. If you don’t want me to be your husband anymore, I’ll understand.”
He starts out toward their hut, but then he feels a head on his shoulder.
He notes dully that he still can’t see her eyes, but that he can feel her tears wet his robes.
“Houshi-sama…” Her hands come up now. He reaches behind him to take them. “Houshi-sama… did you…”
Her words shudder, but he can make them out.
“Houshi-sama… did you know that, maybe, we could have been happy?”
His smile is as vibrant as it’s always been.
“Yes, Sango. And I think that if we keep going, we still can be.”
-
She disappears often.
Hiraikotsu goes with her.
But like her weapon, and like him, she always comes back.
-
They visit her family’s altar together now. There is still a tension between the couple, and between Miroku and her family’s memory, but they’re getting better at communicating and, maybe, trusting one another.
“Would you like to lay the flowers, houshi-sama?” She calls him by his title, not because she doesn’t completely trust him, but because it’s familiar, and he’s let her take back that sacrifice.
“I would.”
The petals grace the marker. The grass seems greener than usual today.
“Kohaku still hasn’t been found, right?”
“No, houshi-sama, not yet.”
His staff jingles as he lifts it.
“Perhaps we can search for him one day.”
She smiles, says, “I’d like that.”
Their conversations are still forced, but they’re getting better.
Their journey has not ended, and in some ways has yet to begin, but they’re still meandering the many paths of their lives together.
~
Also, I have neighbors named Kramer. I just found this out today.