Setting: Manga Canon, post-manga.
Author's Note:
1) These chapters are stand-alone stories in response to various prompts in the Inu Yasha Themes Livejournal community. However, because they are sequels, they cannot be read individually and are therefore grouped together as chapters.
2) This was inspired by a challenge prompt called "Sin" in the Inu Yasha Themes Livejournal community. It was also inspired by the same story I'm writing that inspired my one-shot "Reason to Live".
Summary: Naraku and the jewel have been defeated, but Sango still has unfinished business to resolve.
Debt
She couldn't marry Miroku.
She hadn't told him yet about the bargain she had made with her heart for him. Foul as he was, Naraku hadn't resisted making a crack about it in front of everyone. They all suspected something. They didn't know - couldn't know – just how awful the truth really was.
But her companions wondered.
They wondered at her sad expression. They wondered why she couldn't look either the monk or Rin in the face. They wondered at the way Kohaku cast nervous glances towards his former protector while hovering possessively by her side – and at the way his glances were ignored.
One thing nobody wondered about was the fact that there was clearly something for the daiyoukai to ignore. The knowledge oozed through the air with the persistence of shouki, an insidious miasma that hovered over the village like a storm that was building towards a frightening climax. Even Inuyasha, still lingering beside the useless well, had sensed the electricity riding the air and had wondered.
She had asked for only a conditional reprieve, and those conditions had now been met. Yet, somehow, going to her death without explaining herself seemed like the act of a coward. She would not die that way.
So first she would explain about the debt she had racked up, the sin she had committed in the monk's name, and why she couldn't marry him. First, she would face Miroku.
And then she would face Sesshoumaru.
FIN.