While I'm not always happy with how this turned out, comments on my other story made me want to post something, and at the moment, this is all I have, and my darling Pairaka said I should make it go. I wrote it looooong before "All in the Cards," before I knew Miroku and Sango very well.

The scattered song lyrics are from Tracy Chapman's "Almost," and I don't owe the honeys, though I wish...

Psst, Houshi Lover, if you're reading this will you e-mail me? Or give me your e-mail address? I'd really like to talk to you. :)

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Almost

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He didn't want to tell her - it didn't seem fair.

She was so young, her words had surprised him. Were girls starting to marry right out of high school again?

She had played with her skirt nervously, trying to pull it over her knees, then picking it up, her friend sitting next to her, a comforting hand on a restless arm.

"My husband and I are having trouble having a baby," she'd said shyly, "And I was hoping there was something you could tell me that might help us."

What could he say to that? Why did truth enjoy being so brutal?

He had no choice but to tell her.

The fact that she took the blow without any tears was surprising, but not entirely unexpected. The news would sink in, and the sorrow would come later.

And he could tell shed had more than enough sorrow already.

---Almost got what I want---

Kagome felt her eyes stinging the entire way home, and though Sango had seen in her all stages of emotion before, this time she felt embarrassed. Sango would understand, wouldn't she? But then she might ask why. Why, Kagome? Why cry over a burden that is not yours to bear?

And there were no words that could be said to take away the hurt. A wound can be assured to close, a simple sickness will pass, wet eyes will eventually dry. But when your own body betrayed you, when you were inside looking out and every door opened to a blank wall...who could reassure you?

"I.. "Kagome started, and then faltered.

"You dont need to say anything." Sango's voice was dry and careless. "I should have known."

"Thats silly, how could you have known?! It was the wound on your back that we were all concerned about, and everything else healed so well, how could you have..how could you have known it would..."

Sango shook her head and kept walking, her eyes downcast, watching as she set each foot firmly on the step in front of her before taking the next.

---Almost found what I lost---

Kagome's grandfather had put Miroku to work sweeping the temple steps, and InuYasha laid on the roof, both of them content in their own way, but both in anticipation of their women's return. The anxiety around Miroku was palpable, his concentration nowhere in sight.

He and Sango had been so happy together, in their little house in feudal Japan. What had gone wrong?

Crossing his hands on top of the broom, he rested his chin on them and sighed, long and weary.

InuYasha hadn't asked why they had come to visit in such poor moods with one another, but Miroku was certain that Kagome had learned the reason from Sango and passed it on.

They'd had such fun as newlyweds, staying up all night learning each others secret pleasures and then sleeping late into the day before doing it again. When they were no longer just-married, they'd learned the enjoyment of just walking together, or sleeping together in cool shade on a hot summer day.

And then Kirara had found herself a mate, and soon their small house was filled with small scampering kittens.

They both knew they wanted their own brood for the kittens to play with.

Pleasure turned to duty, and duty turned to discouragement, and discouragement turned to blame, turned to sorrow, to loneliness, to nights on the same futon, opposite ends not separated by a few feet but miles.

Desperation.

With a great exhalation, he flopped down onto the steps and held his head in his hands.

Maybe they'd tried too hard? Maybe if it was fun again...but when it had been fun, it had still been fruitless. It was a last ditch effort to gather the pieces of their relationship to visit Kagome and appeal to her mystical modern science for help, for an answer.

"They're back."

InuYasha was suddenly on the ground in front of them, and in a few moments, the two women came into view, and it was immediately obvious that not all had gone as planned.

Sango walked directly up to Miroku, and without looking at him, spoke quietly but surely.

"I want to go home."

---Almost saved you and myself---

It wasn't that she hadn't wanted to cry.

The news had broken her as surely as it would break her marriage, and she had wanted to sob into Kagome's arms as she'd done so long ago when she'd admitted she was afraid to be alone, that she didn't want to face the world by herself.

Miroku would be devastated, her marriage destroyed, and the sudden truth that yes, she would end up alone after all struck with such a resounding thud that she was numb. And it was into that void that the memories spilled, memories of all the plans they'd made, of all the hopes that youth and time had allowed them...and then all the women whose hands he'd clasped before hers, asking them the same question he'd asked her that day.

She'd said yes.

Yes, she would live with him and bear his children.

Yes, and they would have ten or twenty, and they would be happy together, once his hand was curse-less and her revenge properly carried out. Yes.

The trip back to their house was miserable and silent. Once there, Sango shed her borrowed clothes and crawled into bed, her back to Miroku who was helpless and distraught at her silence.

Obviously, modern science had said nothing good, he knew that. But he wanted to hear it from her. He wanted her to tell him what had happened, what had been said, what made her so unhappy, what made them so unhappy, what threatened a young relationship so terribly?

But she said nothing.

And without her words he could do nothing, nothing but crawl into bed and lay down on what had become his side, looking at her back, and wondering why this would happen where there had been so much love before.

It was that same thought that made Sango so afraid.

Was love enough now? Now that it seemed to have thinned out to tolerance, and soon to...to what?

When he knew, he would leave her, and she would be alone. And although she was almost alone as of late, she knew the utter absence of his presence would bring a destruction at which many demons had attempted but none had succeeded.

---Almost won but it doesn't count, and never does---

He had to do something.

He had beaten the curse that was supposed to end him, and when he was certain he had many years ahead of him, he asked her for her hand for real.

If it was over, what was he going to do? Why had it been worth all the suffering and all the pain if in the end he was going to lose his reward?

Say something, he told himself.

Say anything.

And in his intense study of her back, he looked at the scar there, the remaining memory of an ill-thrown kama. Sango had other scars, he knew that very well. Small ones on her arms, one that he had frequently -at one time- kissed between her breasts, and one small curve on her stomach.

Oh.

Oh, Sango.

Suddenly not touching her seemed like the worst thing in the world, and he lunged for her, surprisingly her utterly with the force with which he wrapped her against his chest, the hand that had borne his sorrow now reaching down to cover the half-moon that bore hers.

"Miroku!" Her voice was shocked - they had not been close in days now, days when minutes used to seem too long.

"Sango, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

Then she cried, and fitting his larger body around hers, he cried with her.

---One day one year five thousand weeks
A life of good works and good deeds
Let me be, let me be closer---

"It had never even occurred to me how badly have been hurt." Miroku's voice was as soft and smooth as the motion of his hand through her dark hair. "And certainly neither Kagome-sama or InuYasha would have known that scar was there."

Her eyes were closed, her head against his chest, but she was not asleep. No, though tears had made her tired, and the weight of their untouchable children was still heavy on her shoulders.

"If I had thought that maybe it would have damaged something, I would never have put us through this. We should probably thank Kagome-chan's doctor for helping us."

"We should, but it wasn't your fault alone. We both wanted something so badly that when it was out of reach we tore at each other in desperate attempts to grab at it."

She sighed, and traced a line down his chest.

"I was afraid you'd go away. You used to be so desperate to have children, my first thought was..." A pause to swallow new tears. "You would leave to find someone who could."

His laugh at her words was low and dark.

"So you still think so little of me."

"It's not that I think little of you,"her hand fisted and her voice turned sharp, but as she felt him wince under her, she calmed again and flattened out her palm once more. "It was that...you used to want a child so badly. And I think...you would have been a good father."

Letting out a slow breath, Miroku gathered her closer, pulling her almost entirely on top of him and speaking into her hair.

"I wanted a child because I was afraid, afraid that I couldn't rise to meet the fate my grandfather and father set out for me, afraid that there would need to be someone else after me. But after I knew you, after I saw what we could be together...I wanted a child because I wanted to have a child with you, Sango."

The words made her throat tighten painfully -it was already sore from too many ragged sobs- and she squeezed her eyes shut to keep them from overflowing yet again. He let her lay there in silence, breathing the scent of the special hair-soap Kagome had given his wife, feeling her wiry-strong and beautifully shaped body alive against him.

And he spoke the question before he had even fully formed it.

"Did the doctor say impossible, or just...improbable?"

Sango raised her head and blinked, then shifted to look at him.

"I cant remember."

A faint hint of a smile crept across her husband's face.

"You would remember if he said impossible. If improbable, it means there's still a chance. A small one, but one that is there nonetheless."

"Miroku," she rolled her eyes and lay back down on him, trying to discredit this shred of hope. And yet... "He said that there were tests that could be done. Perhaps some kind of operation, if the tests showed...there might be some way.."

The young woman could feel his body tensing up with excitement, and she could hear his smile, feel it in the lips in that rested top of her head.

"So it's not all lost. Just almost. There's a chance."

"A slim chance." Sango reminded him, not daring to hope...not yet...

"The world is full of slim chances. It was a slim chance that you and I would meet. It was a slim chance that you and I would fall in love. It was a slim chance that I would even be alive today." Miroku cupped her chin and gently pulled it up. "And so theres still this chance."

And then he kissed her, fully, meaningfully, with as deep a longing as if it was that first kiss all over again, and in a way it was, because they could not remember the last time hed kissed her like sunlight coming in through the windows and warming them.

Which it did, the following morning, on tangled limbs and scattered sheets, and two people whole again. Almost.

---Let me be
Let me be
When I've almost got what I want
And almost found what I lost---