AN: I uploaded this about a week ago, and it got shoved almost immediately to the third page, thus I'm uploading it again. Hopefully people will actually be able to read it this time.
Future Lovin' Part 6
The house was eerily silent when Mrs. Higurashi stepped through the front door. True, Sango was ill, but she would expect Miroku to be making some sort of noise, watching the television if nothing else. When she crept upstairs, she was surprised to find Sango awake and sitting up in bed, and Miroku perched on Kagome's desk chair, Buyo in his lap. It looked almost exactly like it had when she left. Except neither of them was looking at the other... in fact, they were pointedly ignoring each other.
Brow furrowed, Mrs. Higurashi stepped to the bed and reached into the brown paper bag she had brought from the pharmacist. She pulled out a glass bottle filled with a dark syrupy liquid and measured out a dosage in a small plastic cup, handing it to Sango as soon as she was finished. "It doesn't taste very good, but it will help with the fever and upset stomach."
She hovered as Sango downed the cup in one gulp and screwed the corner of her mouth up. "It's not the worst cure I've had to drink," the taija-ya commented.
Mrs. Higurashi smiled and gently pressed on Sango's shoulders, forcing her to lie down. "Now, get some rest-"
Sango struggled. "But I've had plenty of rest! I want-"
Mrs. Higurashi placed a finger on the younger woman's lips. "It's not a matter of want; you _need_ rest. The sooner you rest, the sooner you'll get better, and the sooner you can be out and about the city again. Speaking of which, Miroku..." she turned to address the monk, but found the chair empty.
She made a small, thoughtful noise in the back of her throat. "Well, all the better for him to get some fresh air. Sleep tight, Sango." Mrs. Higurashi slipped fully into mothering mode as she pulled the sheets up around Sango's chin and patted her on the head. "I don't want to see you downstairs until you're feeling 100% better, got that?"
At Sango's nod, Mrs. Higurashi left the room, closing the door with a soft click behind her.
*****
Miroku reverently approached the giant Goshimboku, much more ancient now than in his time, and knelt in the grass at its base. How many times had he seen Kagome and Inuyasha sit in that exact same spot four hundred years in the past? How many times had he mentally replaced that with a vision of himself and Sango sitting as comfortably and as close as they?
The monk shook his head. He was still angry at her... right? Yeah! Of course! Angry... well, maybe not angry, but upset... maybe even... well, okay, so maybe, just maybe, he wasn't upset anymore. Maybe he was even a tiny, minuscule, extremely small bit remorseful that he had _been_ angry. But still! She wouldn't apologize for the whole Hojo thing! She still ran away... or puked on him to delay the inevitable. He would get an apology out of her!
But did he really need one? Hadn't he already forgiven her?
Miroku clenched his hands in the grass. He had. It was forgiven, not quite forgotten, but almost. He just wanted it back to normal, Sango and him hunting down Shikon shards with Inuyasha, Kagome, and Shippo. Sango slapping him for groping her. Sango and him fighting youkai side by side. Sango and him, Sango and him, Sango and him... The phrase rotated around in his head. It had come to the point where he almost couldn't separate them. He was nothing without Sango... but the question was, was she anything without him?
Could she survive without him? Oddly, he would like the answer to be both "Yes," and "No." He wanted her to need him like he needed her, but he also didn't want her too dependent on a man likely to be consumed by his own hand sometime in the near future. He glanced at his cursed hand and saw it was full of grass. Dropping the grass to the ground and wiping his slightly green hand on his jeans, he let his gaze wander across the yard.
The house stood before him, two stories tall, obscuring his view of the city. The wellhouse was set to the left of the house, within easy walking distance, but the reason why eluded him. The well was there long before the house, and it had always been a dry well, why not build the house further back where there could be a _real_ well? And why even erect a shelter over the well in the first place? So small pets and children couldn't fall in? But Kagome-sama had, so that safeguard didn't really work...
Miroku rubbed the bridge of his nose. Too many questions and not enough ways of finding the answers.
He plucked at the grass again and found himself yearning for his shakujo. He hadn't had it with him when he fell through the well, and now he wanted to grip it, feel the familiar weight in his hand. Pride kept him from being comforted by Sango's presence, and he was feeling awfully lonely. Silly, that he was attached so much to an overgrown stick.
A breeze blew past him, tickling his hair into his ear and bringing with it the sound of chimes. Miroku tilted his head. There were no wind chimes around the shrine; he had not seen or heard them before, and he should have since it was usually quite windy on top of the hill.
The sound came again, seemingly from a small shed on the opposite side of the Goshimboku. Miroku stood and headed towards it. He had noticed the building on his brief exploration of the shrine grounds a few days past. When he had slid open the door, the smell of rotten wood and old paper had assailed his nostrils, and he had quickly left it to decay. The quick look at the interior had revealed it to be a storage facility as it was filled with boxes and tables piled high with what could only be described as junk. Perhaps there was a wind chime located within?
This time, he held his breath before opening the door and stepped back for a minute to let it air out a bit. It was dark inside, but enough light spilled through the open door for Miroku to see what was nearest him. There were the same boxes and tables from his previous examination, but as he turned in a slow circle, he saw something leaning against the wall next to the door. Two things actually, both taller than him and very very recognizable. One was broad and bent in the middle, a stripe of dark material wrapped around both ends. The other was long and thing, a staff with a dull golden head... with rings attached to it that chimed gently together in a breeze that did not blow into the building.
A chill swept from the crown of Miroku's head to his toes, leaving the hair along his arms, legs, and the back of his neck standing erect. Hiraikotsu and his shakujo, familiar yet different. These looked mostly the same, except the cloth on the boomerang was tattered and beginning to fall off the bone like some decaying piece of flesh, and the shakujo was covered in cobwebs. Why were their weapons stored in the Higurashi shrine? And why had the staff called to him?
The rings on the staff chimed again, and Miroku slowly backed out of the shed. The staff was his, and yet it was not. He would not feel comfortable holding an item that had no right being where it was. But he still had a burning desire to know why the staff was there... perhaps Higurashi-jiisan would know; after all, it was his shrine.
*****
The room smelled of herbs and age, not dissimilar to Kaede's hut, but it looked far different. A sleeping mat was rolled up in the corner, a pile of blankets folded beside it. A low table, covered in odd-looking items- including a mummified kappa hand- was set in the room's center. Grandpa Higurashi was nowhere to be seen.
Miroku advanced towards the table, kneeling to examine the artifacts more closely. A wad of glossy paper tucked between a box full of Shikon no Tama replicas connected to small chains and a book detailing the various uses of sake in Shinto ceremonies caught Miroku's attention. He had never seen paper reflect light like that before.
Picking the paper up, he unraveled it and stared at the picture on top. A naked woman, breasts dangling, smiled seductively at him from the front page of the magazine. Miroku flipped quickly from one page to the next, marveling at the amount of flesh flagrantly displayed.
The door sliding open startled him; and, stuffing the magazine up his shirt, he spun around, guilty expression in place. Grandpa hobbled in, surprised to see him.
"Eh, Miroku... looking for something?"
Miroku nodded, edging around the old man towards the door. "You, actually." He hoped the outline of the magazine was not visible through his shirt. "I was wondering if you knew anything about the... um, shakujo in the storage shed."
"Shakujo?" Grandpa squeezed one eye shut and screwed one corner of his mouth up as he thought. "Ah, yes! There's a legend around that shakujo! One about the storage shed too, but I'll get to that another time. The shakujo, yes; it belonged to the wandering monk who founded this shrine." Grandpa stomped the floor to emphasize his words and then sank on to his knees, Miroku copying the movement a second later. "He left his native village to fight an ancient evil and once he had conquered it, found he had no purpose in life any more. And so he wandered. One night he came to a small village to spend the night, but this village was beset by so many demons that the townsfolk asked him to stay. Having nothing better to do, he did. For weeks, then months, and finally years.
"He became so comfortable in this village that even after demon attacks became less frequent he stayed. And one day, out exploring, he stumbled across a dry well that he had never noticed before deep in the forest. Lying beside this well was a beautiful girl dressed in the strange clothing of another world, a small multi-tailed dog guarding her and a large boomerang- that'd be the one in the shed- propped against the well.
"As is the case with most legends, the girl woke, and she and the monk fell instantly in love. The monk shirked off his vows of chastity (along with his robes), and the two had wild sex into the night. Anyway, the next morning the monk, in thanks for finally getting laid," Grandpa smirked, "vowed to build the shrine in which we stand."
Miroku's eyebrow raised slightly. "Interesting... is there," he paused to choose the best words, "any truth to this at all?" Some of the story sounded vaguely like their situation- the strangely-dressed girl and the well for instance, but Sango had the boomerang not Kagome, and Kirara was certainly no dog... unless, time had distorted the truth combining the two-tailed cat and Inuyasha. Now _that_ was certainly funny. Inuyasha reduced to the role of a bit character.
Grandpa snorted. "There's always some truth to any legend, boy. Some have more, some have less, but this particular one... I really have no idea."
Miroku sighed. "I guess I'll never really know then..." Until I found the shrine, he finished in his mind, and then berated himself. He did not know if he even did- would? Already had?- found it; Grandpa's story was filled with so many half-truths and outright lies that the shrine may not have been founded by a "wandering monk."
Before Grandpa could respond, Mrs. Higurashi's voice floated to them from the kitchen, calling them to dinner. Grandpa climbed to his feet. "Off with you, lad. Go check on that Sango of yours before we eat."
Miroku followed his instructions, heading off down the hallway as Grandpa descended the stairs. Sango of mine? Hmm, my Sango, the thought pleased him greatly. Sango was sleeping when he popped his head into the room, so he left her in peace and stopped by the living room on his way to the kitchen to hide the dirty magazine beneath a couch cushion. He needed to show it to Inuyasha the next time he saw the hanyou.
Future Lovin' Part 6
The house was eerily silent when Mrs. Higurashi stepped through the front door. True, Sango was ill, but she would expect Miroku to be making some sort of noise, watching the television if nothing else. When she crept upstairs, she was surprised to find Sango awake and sitting up in bed, and Miroku perched on Kagome's desk chair, Buyo in his lap. It looked almost exactly like it had when she left. Except neither of them was looking at the other... in fact, they were pointedly ignoring each other.
Brow furrowed, Mrs. Higurashi stepped to the bed and reached into the brown paper bag she had brought from the pharmacist. She pulled out a glass bottle filled with a dark syrupy liquid and measured out a dosage in a small plastic cup, handing it to Sango as soon as she was finished. "It doesn't taste very good, but it will help with the fever and upset stomach."
She hovered as Sango downed the cup in one gulp and screwed the corner of her mouth up. "It's not the worst cure I've had to drink," the taija-ya commented.
Mrs. Higurashi smiled and gently pressed on Sango's shoulders, forcing her to lie down. "Now, get some rest-"
Sango struggled. "But I've had plenty of rest! I want-"
Mrs. Higurashi placed a finger on the younger woman's lips. "It's not a matter of want; you _need_ rest. The sooner you rest, the sooner you'll get better, and the sooner you can be out and about the city again. Speaking of which, Miroku..." she turned to address the monk, but found the chair empty.
She made a small, thoughtful noise in the back of her throat. "Well, all the better for him to get some fresh air. Sleep tight, Sango." Mrs. Higurashi slipped fully into mothering mode as she pulled the sheets up around Sango's chin and patted her on the head. "I don't want to see you downstairs until you're feeling 100% better, got that?"
At Sango's nod, Mrs. Higurashi left the room, closing the door with a soft click behind her.
*****
Miroku reverently approached the giant Goshimboku, much more ancient now than in his time, and knelt in the grass at its base. How many times had he seen Kagome and Inuyasha sit in that exact same spot four hundred years in the past? How many times had he mentally replaced that with a vision of himself and Sango sitting as comfortably and as close as they?
The monk shook his head. He was still angry at her... right? Yeah! Of course! Angry... well, maybe not angry, but upset... maybe even... well, okay, so maybe, just maybe, he wasn't upset anymore. Maybe he was even a tiny, minuscule, extremely small bit remorseful that he had _been_ angry. But still! She wouldn't apologize for the whole Hojo thing! She still ran away... or puked on him to delay the inevitable. He would get an apology out of her!
But did he really need one? Hadn't he already forgiven her?
Miroku clenched his hands in the grass. He had. It was forgiven, not quite forgotten, but almost. He just wanted it back to normal, Sango and him hunting down Shikon shards with Inuyasha, Kagome, and Shippo. Sango slapping him for groping her. Sango and him fighting youkai side by side. Sango and him, Sango and him, Sango and him... The phrase rotated around in his head. It had come to the point where he almost couldn't separate them. He was nothing without Sango... but the question was, was she anything without him?
Could she survive without him? Oddly, he would like the answer to be both "Yes," and "No." He wanted her to need him like he needed her, but he also didn't want her too dependent on a man likely to be consumed by his own hand sometime in the near future. He glanced at his cursed hand and saw it was full of grass. Dropping the grass to the ground and wiping his slightly green hand on his jeans, he let his gaze wander across the yard.
The house stood before him, two stories tall, obscuring his view of the city. The wellhouse was set to the left of the house, within easy walking distance, but the reason why eluded him. The well was there long before the house, and it had always been a dry well, why not build the house further back where there could be a _real_ well? And why even erect a shelter over the well in the first place? So small pets and children couldn't fall in? But Kagome-sama had, so that safeguard didn't really work...
Miroku rubbed the bridge of his nose. Too many questions and not enough ways of finding the answers.
He plucked at the grass again and found himself yearning for his shakujo. He hadn't had it with him when he fell through the well, and now he wanted to grip it, feel the familiar weight in his hand. Pride kept him from being comforted by Sango's presence, and he was feeling awfully lonely. Silly, that he was attached so much to an overgrown stick.
A breeze blew past him, tickling his hair into his ear and bringing with it the sound of chimes. Miroku tilted his head. There were no wind chimes around the shrine; he had not seen or heard them before, and he should have since it was usually quite windy on top of the hill.
The sound came again, seemingly from a small shed on the opposite side of the Goshimboku. Miroku stood and headed towards it. He had noticed the building on his brief exploration of the shrine grounds a few days past. When he had slid open the door, the smell of rotten wood and old paper had assailed his nostrils, and he had quickly left it to decay. The quick look at the interior had revealed it to be a storage facility as it was filled with boxes and tables piled high with what could only be described as junk. Perhaps there was a wind chime located within?
This time, he held his breath before opening the door and stepped back for a minute to let it air out a bit. It was dark inside, but enough light spilled through the open door for Miroku to see what was nearest him. There were the same boxes and tables from his previous examination, but as he turned in a slow circle, he saw something leaning against the wall next to the door. Two things actually, both taller than him and very very recognizable. One was broad and bent in the middle, a stripe of dark material wrapped around both ends. The other was long and thing, a staff with a dull golden head... with rings attached to it that chimed gently together in a breeze that did not blow into the building.
A chill swept from the crown of Miroku's head to his toes, leaving the hair along his arms, legs, and the back of his neck standing erect. Hiraikotsu and his shakujo, familiar yet different. These looked mostly the same, except the cloth on the boomerang was tattered and beginning to fall off the bone like some decaying piece of flesh, and the shakujo was covered in cobwebs. Why were their weapons stored in the Higurashi shrine? And why had the staff called to him?
The rings on the staff chimed again, and Miroku slowly backed out of the shed. The staff was his, and yet it was not. He would not feel comfortable holding an item that had no right being where it was. But he still had a burning desire to know why the staff was there... perhaps Higurashi-jiisan would know; after all, it was his shrine.
*****
The room smelled of herbs and age, not dissimilar to Kaede's hut, but it looked far different. A sleeping mat was rolled up in the corner, a pile of blankets folded beside it. A low table, covered in odd-looking items- including a mummified kappa hand- was set in the room's center. Grandpa Higurashi was nowhere to be seen.
Miroku advanced towards the table, kneeling to examine the artifacts more closely. A wad of glossy paper tucked between a box full of Shikon no Tama replicas connected to small chains and a book detailing the various uses of sake in Shinto ceremonies caught Miroku's attention. He had never seen paper reflect light like that before.
Picking the paper up, he unraveled it and stared at the picture on top. A naked woman, breasts dangling, smiled seductively at him from the front page of the magazine. Miroku flipped quickly from one page to the next, marveling at the amount of flesh flagrantly displayed.
The door sliding open startled him; and, stuffing the magazine up his shirt, he spun around, guilty expression in place. Grandpa hobbled in, surprised to see him.
"Eh, Miroku... looking for something?"
Miroku nodded, edging around the old man towards the door. "You, actually." He hoped the outline of the magazine was not visible through his shirt. "I was wondering if you knew anything about the... um, shakujo in the storage shed."
"Shakujo?" Grandpa squeezed one eye shut and screwed one corner of his mouth up as he thought. "Ah, yes! There's a legend around that shakujo! One about the storage shed too, but I'll get to that another time. The shakujo, yes; it belonged to the wandering monk who founded this shrine." Grandpa stomped the floor to emphasize his words and then sank on to his knees, Miroku copying the movement a second later. "He left his native village to fight an ancient evil and once he had conquered it, found he had no purpose in life any more. And so he wandered. One night he came to a small village to spend the night, but this village was beset by so many demons that the townsfolk asked him to stay. Having nothing better to do, he did. For weeks, then months, and finally years.
"He became so comfortable in this village that even after demon attacks became less frequent he stayed. And one day, out exploring, he stumbled across a dry well that he had never noticed before deep in the forest. Lying beside this well was a beautiful girl dressed in the strange clothing of another world, a small multi-tailed dog guarding her and a large boomerang- that'd be the one in the shed- propped against the well.
"As is the case with most legends, the girl woke, and she and the monk fell instantly in love. The monk shirked off his vows of chastity (along with his robes), and the two had wild sex into the night. Anyway, the next morning the monk, in thanks for finally getting laid," Grandpa smirked, "vowed to build the shrine in which we stand."
Miroku's eyebrow raised slightly. "Interesting... is there," he paused to choose the best words, "any truth to this at all?" Some of the story sounded vaguely like their situation- the strangely-dressed girl and the well for instance, but Sango had the boomerang not Kagome, and Kirara was certainly no dog... unless, time had distorted the truth combining the two-tailed cat and Inuyasha. Now _that_ was certainly funny. Inuyasha reduced to the role of a bit character.
Grandpa snorted. "There's always some truth to any legend, boy. Some have more, some have less, but this particular one... I really have no idea."
Miroku sighed. "I guess I'll never really know then..." Until I found the shrine, he finished in his mind, and then berated himself. He did not know if he even did- would? Already had?- found it; Grandpa's story was filled with so many half-truths and outright lies that the shrine may not have been founded by a "wandering monk."
Before Grandpa could respond, Mrs. Higurashi's voice floated to them from the kitchen, calling them to dinner. Grandpa climbed to his feet. "Off with you, lad. Go check on that Sango of yours before we eat."
Miroku followed his instructions, heading off down the hallway as Grandpa descended the stairs. Sango of mine? Hmm, my Sango, the thought pleased him greatly. Sango was sleeping when he popped his head into the room, so he left her in peace and stopped by the living room on his way to the kitchen to hide the dirty magazine beneath a couch cushion. He needed to show it to Inuyasha the next time he saw the hanyou.