(02/06/05) two months people!
A/N: rawr.
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.
A/N: rawr. do i still got it?He holds her, and laughs.
"Don't be silly, Houshi-sama. We will."
"We will what?" he says with the air of a child who is feigning curiousity with the grounds of embarrassing an adult.
She starts to blush. "You know what I'm talking about."
"Stay up late tonight? Climb a mountain? Go over there and dig a hole?" He points to a spot two feet away, his childish act not giving way to a more mature reasoning that he wants it to.
Not meeting his eyes, she grabs the front of his robes.
"We are going to be married, have children and grow old together," she tells him through gritted teeth. There is pain in her eyes, the pain of wanting, the pain of realizing. The only way to believe is to make him believe for her."We are going to win."
His smile flickers, that everlasting smile of his. As soon as it is gone, it never leaves his face.
"Say it," she says angrily, though she does not mean to. "Say something."
He grins, strained — tired. Sometimes he looks so very tired. "What do you want me to say?"
She wants him to say something to make her happy, and something that is attainable. Is that even possible?
She is not going to push away the prospects of a future any longer. She deserves so much more.
He can't deny her that.
If he had said, "I'm going to live forever," would she believe him? He says what he knows she wants him to say because it will make her happy. Happiness. He wants to give her happiness. So when he says, "we are going to live," she believes him, because she can.
At a time after Naraku is dead, Miroku finds a nice home for the pair of them in her old village. Just the two of them, and Kirara, together but alone, salvaging the wreckage. Somehow, with the smell of past deaths all around them, they build a little hut, to suffice for the night.
Darkened blood stains the wood, and sometimes the foundation crumbles where it is charred, but she thinks it is the most beautiful home in the world, borne of her and her alone.
Afterward, he is tired, so they lie together, with Kirara on her other side, and they sleep.
—
The next morning Sango awakes early to find Kohaku returning to the village, chain dragging in the dirt. Tears fall from her eyes, grief and happiness unable to form any other word but his name.
He smiles weakly, and hugs her back. "I made it, ane-ue."
She doesn't ask how, when, where, what, who— why. All that matters is that he is alive, and all her dreams are coming true.
—
For awhile they live as a family, and they are happy. Sango has never been more happy since the last time she has lived in this village. Weary travellers found by any of them were invited to rest there, and were gladly accepted to settle. Finally, she is able to spread her joy and kindness to everyone.
—
Every day, she ventures outside the village to gather wildflowers. One for every grave. She will never forget them — refuses to forget them. One by one, setting each stem among the dirt, she remembers the first day she heard of their deaths, and wished that everything was a dream; not real.
It's not a graveyard, it's a memorial, she tells herself. A place to remember.
Every day, with each petal, each readied bouquet in her hands, the laughter of children and families is louder and louder, and the memories are kept fresh.
Every day, when she is drawing water and preparing the morning meal, she does not notice that the flowers in the graveyard are gone. They don't wither away, they are not buried under the dirt; maybe they were never there at all.
—
"Ane-ue," Kohaku says as they sit atop a watchtower, one that they were always caught playing in when they were little and innocent and young, not tainted by their futures. "What is life to you?"
Sango muses, looking out onto her village, her home — her beloved home. "This is life," she finally says. "Everything around us. I am so thankful, and happy, that I have you and Miroku and Kirara still with me. Life was returned to us. Life and the joy of it."
"But is it real?"
She gives him an odd look. "Of course it's real, Kohaku!" she almost laughs. "Sometimes, I think about where I was at this time seasons ago, and it's surreal. It's so surreal because I never thought — I never thought I could ever have all of this."
He is still young, and thus, ashamed to admit his tears. His sister rubs his back, not knowing why he's reacting this way. He is saddened, because he knows the truth, he knows what life is, and he cannot help her, for this is where she belongs. She thinks this is where she belongs and for that reason, she won't try to believe his truth.
This is his sister, with a noose around her neck and a sword through her chest, telling him everything was fine.
—
Sango loves Miroku. She loves him. He is her husband.
So she holds him and whispers in his ear, tangles her fingers through his hair. She has dreamt of this for so long, back when she was only a girl. When he laughs with her, in their bed, it catches on the morning air and falls to the earth as dew. This world, this life is so perfect, she murmurs against him, wanting this morning every morning for ever, for always.
She falls on her back and he is propped beside her. We won, right? he asks, and there is something in his eyes, an infinite sadness, perhaps. She smiles for him. It's just like you said, she breathes, thinking that they are very beautiful together.
He built them a home, a home that is perfect because it is for them. At night, when he looks at her with that longing, that care, she wants him to be happy because it is what he did for her. It is what he promised her many moons ago.
So that sadness that she thinks she might have caught in the fluid crystal of his eyes — it can't be, it is not. Because he promised her happiness.
He gave her his word.
And he won't renege on that — he can't do that to her.
—
Soon, Kohaku's small herb garden is overflowing with sprawling plants, and he is seen constructing trellises for them to climb on. The children of the thriving population of their village run through the packed dirt, having just finished the lesson that Sango teaches them today. After lunch, they form a semi-circle around Miroku, and listen to his legends and fables, made so much more wondrous by his rich voice.
She realizes, as she is sharpening a blade from a youkai bone, that she hasn't seen Kagome nor Inuyasha in a while. Shippou is in Kaede's village, she knew, and Inuyasha still wandered. He is a nomad, unable to settle. Perhaps she could convince Miroku to come with her to that village to see them. She misses her old companions, her family from so long ago.
Breathing in, the air seems sweet in her body, and that long ago seemed so long ago that it was another life entirely.
—
On a day when the sun is high and the breeze slow, Sango leaves the village to pick her flowers. She sees a familiar face approaching on the hillside. Her eyes alight in recognition and in memory — for some reason, the life associated with that figure is a blur — she runs downward, accelerating towards him.
"Inuyasha!" she greets him with a happiness he has never known before, waving. That name, one she hasn't had to say for awhile, but has thought about often, feels strange on her tongue.
"Sango." He doesn't sound nearly as happy as she. In fact, he sounds almost disgusted.
"I think Miroku's out and about in the garden," she tells him, clasping her hands behind her back and looking ever so happy it disturbs him more than it comforts him. It's funny, because at one time all he wanted was for this girl to be rid of her pain — but not at this price, never at this price. "Come in," she motions to the fortifications. "Is Kagome-chan coming along soon?"
"She asked me to check on you — see how you were doing," Inuyasha answers, in the same tone, the tone that she thinks is sympathetic and disbelieving.
"She should come," Sango says happily, almost squirming with joy. "She has to see how we've been doing for ourselves." She sighs. "It's just like I've always imagined. I've been thinking —after seeing all the children in the village, Miroku and I really want to have a child too, and I wanted her to help me chose a name. Besides that, it's been so long since I've seen her. Perhaps Miroku, Kohaku, Kirara and I can all go back to the well and wait while you —"
Without the undertones of anguish, of bitterness and a certain disdainful view of life, Inuyasha did not recognize thisnimiety of euphoric, blabbering mess as Sango.
"Sango," he interrupts, nearly snapping at her. "I am going to take you back with me. Kagome — "
She stops and stiffens, her cheerful demeanour fading, diffidence turning to panic. "What's wrong, Inuyasha?" she asks. "Did something happen to Kagome-chan?"
He shakes his head, as though he could make her disappear, and bring back that sullen, hiding Sango. "Come with me, now."
"If it's that important . . ." she trails off, taking a step back. "I'll go get Miroku, Kohaku, and Kirara, okay?"
Suddenly, he grabs her arm. Enough — he's had enough of this. He was never one to prolong the suffering, to allow her to let her spirit further masticate itself between dreams of something she could never have — only if it was deserved, which he thought it was not. "What the fuck is wrong with you, woman? They're not here."
Her eyes narrow. "What are you talking about?"
There is a growling laced through his words. "They're not here. There is no one here."
Now angry, she yanks her arm out of his grasp, his claws catching in the stitching of her kimono. "I'm not going anywhere without telling one of them first."
"They hear you! They hear you because they're fucking spirits, Sango! And they have been for months now!"
Her hands fist at her sides, and she wants to retract that blade hidden along her forearm. "Miroku?" she calls out instead, turning around to look for him. "Kohaku?"
She runs around behind the shed where the weapons are stored, through the gardens of rock and dead weeds, to her own home. "Kirara?"
Kagome had said to see her, to see how dear Sango-chan was. That time that seemed so recent, yet felt like it had happened in a different world; somewhere different, not here. It was that time she had told them flatly that she was leaving on her own, and she had said this with the sickly bile of Naraku's remains moistening her torn and tattered clothing.
The stories had eventually started to reach them — of a strange girl who lived alone, so obsessed with the idea that she would have the life she had always wanted returned to her that it became her. He didn't worry. That human was a taijiya. That human was strong. That human was human. Kagome worried, and so he came.
Inuyasha watches her crawl frantically around a heap of wood and a skeleton, through the ghost of an already dead village, and he looks like he wants to end this all now. For her.
"I don't know where they went," she says, confused. "Maybe one of the children went out to play with Kirara — "
"Sango," he grabs her again, and he hopes it is as painful for her as it is for him, so that she will realize that pain comes with living. "There's no one here."
Again, she pulls away, away from Inuyasha and his lies. She brushes past him roughly, her mind apprising her that she is content and shall stay content; she has reached the apogee of life and will stay there, and leaves the village to search for her husband.
"Sango, I'm taking you back because . . . Kagome worries!"
"Shut up," she yells at him, not turning around. Her head swivels left and right, and she listens for the clash of rings on a staff, the swish of his robes in the circumambient air.
"Bitch, if you're not going to go willingly, I'm just going to take you by force!"
Why doesn't he understand?
She starts to run now, trying to put more distance between herself and Inuyasha. He is cursing, and chasing her. He is a half-demon, and she knows he will catch her, but still, she tries to run.
"You don't listen!"
Her tattered sandal now breaks apart fully, and she falls, tumbling down into a depression that is a perfect half sphere.
"You're fucking crazy," she breathes heavily, when Inuyasha appears above her.
"I'm crazy?" he shouts at her. "Then what does that make you!"
He treads down into the hole, grabs her arm again and pulls her to the surface, where he rears back and strikes her across the face. His claws leave neat little scratches, perfectly uniform, that bleed neat little trails down her cheek.
Inuyasha throws her arm down, and turns away from her, cursing under his breath. Sango touches her cheek, and looks at the blood coating her fingertips.
Then she laughs; because laughter feeds the soul.
—
"You're happy like this; we're happy like this," he says softly, and he is comfort; he is home.
There, in his little words of promise, she forgets that she is dreaming with her eyes open, and falls through a mirror to that beautiful image that he creates for her.
"I know," she says, leaning into him, feeling him against her, unchanging since the first time they'd met.
He holds her, and laughs.