title: lethe
pairing: mirsan
prompt: the last day
(When she looks at me from across the river, I think this could be her last day on Earth, and I smile back, waving as the sun spills between my fingers.)
Naraku never had anything on her, not really, because she was the only one I'd ever let between my ribs, so that she could own the spaces where my breath met my blood. I'd touch her in places I knew would make her angry; when she'd slap me and I felt the sting all the way to my chest, and I'd think ah, yes, there are your hands, these are your nails in my heart, this only hurts because I love you so.
(She's dressed in her killing clothes, that green-and-purple garb that made my heart ache with a desire for domesticity, deadlier than her slayer suit or Hiraikotsu or miasma-tarnished blades could ever be.)
Sometimes I'd be angry with myself for letting her wound me like that, but I'd be angry with so much love that I'd keep quiet. It wasn't her fault, anyhow; Sango was a warrior just as much as she was a woman, and it was only natural for her to hold the things she'd hunted without fear.
(Promise me we'll die together! she shouts across the running water, grinning, and I smile weakly back, because I feel like she's said it before, but not here.)
Being terminal had offered a special sort of immortality - one learns to live each day to it's fullest if there is a hole in your hand that takes things, makes an empty space between my bones, and it yawns and stretches and hurts with inevitability, a constant reminder of original sin. If the eyes were the window to the soul, then the hands were the language of the body - a dialect of soft touches and furled fists; the phonetics of cold fingers and sweaty palms. Hands spoke for the soul behind every gaze when the blinds were drawn - if the lashes were shuttered-shut, and the window to the soul suddenly became one-way glass.
(After we defeat Naraku! I reply, cupping a hand over my mouth to be heard over the roar of water running over rocks. If we made it out - would you come live with me? Would you bear my children?)
Sometimes I think Naraku was fully aware of the cruelty of the kazaana - by hollowing out a hand, he had effectively silenced half of me; reduced the dialogue of digits to cheap gestures and fumbling fingers, desperately trying to convey I love you even though I shouldn't even though I might hurt you without the non-verbal words to do so.
(She blinks and stares, expression blank. Suddenly the river runs red, and I don't know this place anymore, I don't know if I ever did.
Naraku is dead, she cries over the din, the ripples thick and churning between us, he's been dead for so long now, don't you remember? Don't you remember your promise?
I don't remember Naraku dying. I don't remember the wind tunnel disappearing. I don't remember having three children with the woman across the waves, two girls and a boy. All I remember is a girl of sixteen, poison staining her lips, leaning into her death like she loved me, asking promise me we'll die together? as the world burned black.
This could be her last day, I worry, imagining Sango shoulder a boomerang behind her shoulder blades, right where the almost-spider-scar contorted her skin.
But that's not true, either, because any day could be her last, yes no maybe so, have you met my soul?
The water seems to widen, and I try to reach for her, but Sango only wrings her hands - wrings one ring-finger as though she is trying to tell me something, even though her fingers are devoid of any jewel.)
a/n: i've always thought about the role of lasts plays into mirsan, especially for miroku. to clarify any confusion - one of them is dead, but its up to the reader to decide if it's miroku or sango, and how they died. did they die in naraku's body, or did they live a normal life and die of old age? (also, the river lethe :') ) it's up to your interpretation, honestly!