Disclaimer: I do NOT own Inuyasha or any of its characters.
Warning: for those who like bright and happy stories, avoid this fic like the devil. I put this under the angst genre for a reason folks...
5 years can be fleeting as anger.
5 years can also be as long as eternity.
In 5 years, a man can lose all hope of freedom.
In 5 years, a woman can lose all will to live.
In 5 years, something bright and holy can be reduced to something dark and desecrated.
In 5 years, something strong and determined can be reduced to something weak and timid.
The brightest torch, when carried into the darkness for too long, will sputter and soon die...yet, the smallest light can become a shining beacon when coaxed to do so...
5 years gone...
5 years of pain...
5 years of healing...
It's been three weeks since Naraku's destruction at the hands of Inuyasha.
I still remember it now- we'd tracked the bastard down all the way to Iga, a fitting place for him since that was where the infamous Iga ninjas hid in the shadows and slew men as children squish insects.
So many participated in the final battle- everyone from Kouga to Sesshomaru to even Kikyou. Said battle may not have happened if Kouga and Inuyasha hadn't been distracted over Myoumaru's death a week before, but in the end, I suppose it didn't really matter.
Sesshomaru is currently residing in his castle, the one he inherited from his father. Since Kagura the Wind Witch had been killed a few months before, I can't say who Sesshomaru will ever be with.
We have had word from the North that Kouga and his wolf tribe had decided to shift themselves northwards, and that Ayama had finally accepted Kouga's hand in marriage (if wolf demons have such a thing).
As for the undead priestess Kikyou, Inuyasha had finally made amends with her- two days after the battle, after a quick patch up, Inuyasha had disappeared into the forest. We gave up after a few hours of searching, Houshi-sama, Kagome and I, But soon, perhaps to the smell of cooking ramen, Inuyasha limped his way back to the hut we call home. We later learned that Kikyou had finally accepted death and had been layed to rest peacefully.
Kohaku resides with us now- Sesshomaru, in an act of unexpected charity, had revived him with his sword, Tenseiga. I'm not sure if I'd ever been that happy since the beginning of my journey with the group of people I now call family.
The Shikon-no-Tama, the little jewel that started all of this, was purified as a last act of Kikyou before she passed on. In a flash of light, the little orb disappeared and two spirits, one human and the other like a great demon-serpent, stopped their fighting and ascended towards the heavens.
Anyways, Inuyasha and Kagome are heading back to modern Japan for "Children's Day", a future holiday where the boys are prayed for by parents for future luck. They will be gone for only a few days, but what does Kagome-chan mean by "hooking up?" I tried to ask her before she hurried away, but she said that she left the stove on.
Since when did we have a stove?
-Sango
The waterfall.
Sango listened to it roar as she added the final notes to her journal that she kept with her- unbeknownst to her friends, she was more literate than she let on and had been keeping the journal for a while. While her calligraphy paled in comparison to that of Kagome's and Miroku's, she knew a surprising amount of vocabulary and grammar, especially since she was brought up to be a huntress, not a scholar.
With a small smile she looked at the monk meditating as usual, complete with lotus position and the calm, non-chalant face that she was so used to looking at. Sango could never figure out how monks could sit under a large waterfall and clear their minds with the ambient sounds gushing into their brains and the heavy, cold water flowing around and onto them. Then she remembered that lunch was soon.
"Houshi-sama!" she called.
Said monk opened his eyes and gave her a smile to show Sango that he was listening.
"Lunch should be ready soon, you might want to start drying off!" Luckily, Kagome brought them plenty of future supplies from her time, including, of course, towels.
Shippo and Kirara (who had a surprising affinity for water despite her being feline) hopped out of the water and toweled off, Kirara spraying Shippo with water as she shook herself like a dog first.
"Come on," urged Sango. "I'm hungry from lazing around all day, and for once it's not ramen again."
"Hooray!" shouted Shippo. Ramen was tasty, he would admit that, though he did not love the pre-fried noodles as nearly as much as Inuyasha did. The kitsune was glad for a cuisine change.
Miroku finally stepped out of the water, his white everyday clothes clinging to his body like a second skin. He gave Sango a cheerful smile and said, "Let's head back, shall we?" He picked up his staff, which he carried out of habit, and briskly walked off. Sango casually noticed that Miroku stopped wearing the glove and beads on his right hand- for a few days after Naraku's demise, Miroku kept them on as a reminder of his long and arduous journey.
'Gee, I'm so used to houshi-sama wearing those monk robes that I forget exactly how muscular he is...' noted Sango. 'Now that I tihink about it, most of the boys, even men in my village never had that kind of body-'
"Sango?" Miroku's voice cut into her thoughts.
"Hai?"
"Is there something on my pants? You seem to be looking at them for some reason..."
Sango pretended to check over her diary to hide her blush. "W-what? I don't know what you're talking about..."
Miroku merely gave her a curious glance and walked off.
Sango let out a silent sigh of relief and followed the monk, the demon cat, and the hyperactive fox back to the village where warm food and a warmer house awaited them.
Life was good.
#Later#
"Shippo, is this really necessary!"
A distressed Miroku tried to plead with Shippo as the fox cub maliciously walked towards him with a pawful of flour in hand.
Sango, while petting Kirara from the sidelines, noted, "Those were the terms, houshi-sama. Shippo guesses three of your riddles, you have to be his personal doll for the rest of the day."
Miroku silently cursed Shippo's superior riddling abilities.
They went through a series of costumes, from people they knew (Sango had to take a few minutes to get her wind back after Shippo dressed Miroku in his impression of Koharu-they could only guess at where Shippo got all of these clothes) to a few of Shippo's creations. Soon, even Miroku began to enjoy himself while Kaede watched from the back of the hut with amusement on her face.
"Let's dress you up as Moushin!" cried Shippo.
"Ha! That one I'll do gladly." Miroku donned his priest robes, stuffed the robes over his stomach with cloth, grabbed a jug of pottery and began singing drunken songs.
Even Kaede roared with laughter on that one.
Soon...
"Tadaima!" called out Kohaku. He had been out for a quick errand to a nearby village for herbs that grew only in that region. He set his sickle aside and gratefully received some dinner. After a hard day of trekking through the woods, he was glad to have food, family and entertainment all ready for him.
"Let's do Inuyasha!"
"Nani?"
Shippo looked almost sinister as he grabbed some red cloth (again, from who-knows-where), some flour, and a pair of paper triangles. A quick fix up and...
"There!"
Sango was quite impressed with Shippo's art work- of course, it was impossible to duplicate Inuyasha's gruff face and yellow eyes, but with a few touch ups the hair, ears and clothing looked almost identical to that of the hanyou's.
"Good work Shippo!" praised Sango. "Just don't let Inuyasha see this..."
"Alright, ye three, it grows late and this old bag of bones wishes to rest her eyes." said Kaede. Shippo, quite exhausted from the day's "work", began cleaning up his tools of mischief.
"You have to wear that all night, you know," commented Shippo casually as he stuffed a blue length of cloth into a bag.
"Eh!"
"Yep, you agreed to a day, so you still have to be my dress-up doll until tomorrow night," said Shippo, with the air of an experienced businessman.
Miroku merely groaned and lied down on his futon, while Kaede put out the fire and prepared her own bed.
"Oyasumi, everyone...#yawn#"
And there was silence.
#A few hours later#
Sango usually wasn't one to dream- in order to maintain consistent morale and concentration, tayi-jia were trained from birth to keep out nighttime illusions through rigorous training and potent herbs. When a dream did arise, however, they were seen as omens of the near future (or an indication that the slayer-in-training needed more medication).
Sango saw a dead spider, its legs curled up and pointing towards the red sky. From the spider came smaller spiders- the mother's offspring. Most of the eggs inside the mother failed to hatch, but the ones that did burst forth from their encasings and crawled out into the world.
All of the brood but one left the quickly decaying carcass, scuttling towards a grove of trees in the distance or burrowing into the ground. The one that was left, however, crawled about looking for other life forms- the first to be found was a small beetle. Sango expected the spider to kill the beetle and consume it, but instead the spider (which was several times smaller than the beetle) rode up upon its back and seemed to command it as a samurai would to his steed. The small spider continued to ride about, slowly growing in size as it took over more and more organisms. Finally, when it reached the size of a large dog, it came to a young raccoon that was sleeping near an enormous. Near it were two cats, a baby fox, and an ancient owl.
What the spider did next was most curious- it flicked one of its many arms at the slumbering raccoon and a smaller spider came forth, biting each of the sleeping victims to ensure that hey would not awake unexpectedly. Several strong wolves bounded forward afterwards and carried off the raccoon. After the abduction of the raccoon, the spider and its minions scuttled off into the distant mountains, which Sango noted off hand as northward.
The creatures that were with the raccoon searched and searched, following tracks northward, but either they had lost the scent or gave up- they could not find their companion. Then the sun and the moon zoomed overhead, like toy balls on a string when a child swings them over his head in a circle. Months flashed by in mere moments, until the spider, now bloated and horrid, ambled with its minions back to the great tree, where the resident animals were still residing. A flash, then the animals were upon the spider, rending and clawing and biting until the disgusting creature fled with the remainder of its pack. The only one left alive was an emaciated creature, barely alive and with scars entrenched in its flesh, its patches of fur doing nothing to cover its body. Sango then realized that this was the raccoon...
She would have see more, but then she had heard her name from the still-black sky.
#The morning#
"Sango, wake up."
Sango opened her heavy eyelids and peered into the face of a stricken Kagome.
"K-Kagome-chan, what's wrong?"
"Miroku-sama...he's missing, Sango-chan..."
Sango could say nothing.
#Later#
"We're positive he'd been kidnapped," said Kagome as she paced around the floor of the hut. "His bed sheets show signs of some light struggle, so we think that both he and the rest of you might have been gassed. That would tell us why you were all out cold for two days."
"But who would do such a thing?" asked Kaede as she tried to calm down a wailing Shippo. Even Kirara looked depressed as she simply lied down on the floor and stopped swishing her tail.
"We really don't know..." Kagome shook her head. "But we have to search for him regardless."
"Keh, and how?" asked Inuyasha scornfully. "No scent, no tracks, no nothin'. "
"Inuyasha!" yelled Kagome angrily. "Aren't you worried about Miroku-sama!"
"Of course I do, wench!" shouted back Inuyasha. "Just don't go rushing off into things!"
"You just say that cuz' you don't care about him!" Kagome was so angry that she didn't think about what she was saying.
Silence. Everyone in the room could feel it, like the dread calm before a storm-
"Of course I fucking care about the monk, bitch," gnashed out Inuyasha, his voice cold and deadly. "He'd been a brother to me over the years. He's saved my life, this worthless hanyou's life, and hadn't asked for a word of thanks about it." His voice was crescendoing into a raging storm-" He's saved all of your miserable lives at least once, and hasn't asked for thanks about that either. He's knocked sense into me more times than I can count, and you say that I don't CARE ABOUT HIM!"
Kagome trembled and slowly retreated toward the wall.
"YOU don't know a thing about me, stupid girl!" he shouted at her. "You think that I'm a jerkwad all the time, don't you!" He pounded a fist into the hut's wall, making a nice hole in it. "
Kagome was now sinking towards the ground, knees bent.
"I-I-Inuyasha..." whimpered Kagome.
"I know I can be cold-hearted bastard sometimes, but I know where my loyalties lie, and I DO get worried whenever one of you bakas get hurt. So don't you EVER say that I don't care."
Kagome only looked back at him with terror glistening in her eyes.
Inuyasha glared and breathed harshly for a few moments more, then sighed and plopped down on the floor.
"Sorry I got pissy like that...I'm just worried as hell about the houshi too." He let out another sigh and leaned his head against the wall.
Silence overtook the room once more.
Sango finally spoke up, her voice ragged and eyes blank; "I had a dream last night..." she whispered.
"Huh?" questioned everybody, including the sopping-wet Shippo.
Sango explained her dream to everyone in the room.
"I know this might sound crazy," implored Sango, "but I know for a fact that this dream didn't appear in my head randomly."
Kaede pondered at the omens, wondering at what they could possibly mean. "I must wonder...who is the spider? And why did he kidnap houshi-dono?"
"I don't know..." replied Sango. "The only thing that seems to be sure is that something put us all deeper in sleep that night so that we wouldn't wake up..." The next part she could hardly bear to say- "And that we won't be able to-to find h-h-him in the near fut-t-ure..." She struggled to keep her voice steady. Kagome crawled over to her friend and put a comforting arm around her.
For the third time, the room was enveloped in silence.
Inuyasha was the first to break it- "Well, I don't care about a stupid dream, I'm going after him. You said the spider went north?"
"Hai," replied Sango.
"Then let's hurry on up- maybe we can still catch up to the bastards before they get far." Inuyasha stood up and patiently waited for Kagome and Sango to pack supplies they would need for the journey. Sango gave Kohaku one last peck on the cheek (the boy was still out due to the knock out gas) and started for the door.
"Don't worry, Sango-chan," comforted Kagome as they took the northward path. "We'll find him, I promise."
Sango received the words with a smile, but inside, she knew that it would not happen.
Dreams are such fickle things...
They searched up north for weeks on end, asking the locals for clues or sightings of any large caravans. But for all of their hard work, they received nothing but bad news and worse feelings.
The one who took all of this in the hardest was Sango- she never said anything, but Kagome noted her friend skipping out on meals and slowly becoming paler and paler, as if a flame insider her was beginning to die down.
As the weeks went by without the monk, Sango became more and more despondent and uncoordinated, as if she was constantly in a dream. She would drop things and stand there, gazing northward as if expecting something to come up the road ; at other times, she would suddenly excuse herself and go outside- Kagome or Inuyasha often found her near the waterfall that Mrioku enjoyed meditating in so much. Once or twice Sango was discovered unconscious and half-drowned.
At night, she called out Miroku's name silently, her hands flailing as if she was attempting to hold onto something that was not there. Sometimes, the monk's name would come out as sobs- other times, they were mere whispers barely heard by even Inuyasha's sensitive ears.
The months and years flowed by, the river of time stopping for no one. Not unexpectedly, Inuyasha and Kagome were wed two years after Miroku's dissapearance and had two wonderful children- a black haired, normal eared boy who looked very much like the human Inuyasha and a white haired, dog-eared girl who resembled Kagome, Their names, respectively, were Taisho and Izayoi, after Inuyasha's deceased parents. Sango would still remember and smile about their small but wonderful wedding in feudal Japan.
Shippo had grown a few feet and was now up to Iuyasha's chest, though his boyish face and mischief did not change in the slightest. He had recently discovered a young vixen residing in Inuyasha's forest, a beautiful kitsune named Kuniko- Inuyasha, of course, was quick to taunt Shippo the first day he met Kuniko and Shippo together, but Kagome's "Osuwari!" put a swift stopper to the taunting.
Kohaku was a happy young teen now, with constant visits from Rin from the west. Sesshomaru never showed his face to the villagers or to the Inuyasha-gumi, but Kagome had a hunch that Sesshomaru was nearby, watching his surrogate daughter laugh in the sun with the boy he had resurrected years before. Being the scholarly type, Kohaku put away his kusarigama and picked up the calligraphy pen- soon, he was the village scribe and adored by all for his wonderful ink paintings and writings.
Kaede passed on to the next world, as her age finally set in. She died in the company of her "children", whom she had known for so long in the little hut. Shrine duties went to Kagome and her children, though she still had to leave for her world periodically for college. Of course, there was still the verbal brawl between Inuyasha and Kagome over how long she got to stay in her time, but a few "sit" commands put an end to the commotion. Later, it was agreed that could spend five days a weeks in her world until the college years were over.
However, despite all of these occurrences, nothing much changed for Sango herself- she would baby sit for Kagome often and watch Kohaku and Rin chase each other outside, but her loss still took its toll on her. Sango looked at the world with a gaunt and haunted face, with blank eyes gazing at both everything and nothing, and spoke little. She still cried out for Miroku at night, and still ate little- luckily for her, time passed like a swift river for her, so her suffering was not as harsh as it might have been.
5 years gone...
5 years of pain...