Her heart skipped a beat, and she felt a hot blush fill her cheeks. What was he playing at? That wasn't fair. But she had already said yes…oh, what a cheater he was. But in the pit of her stomach, a terrible feeling of maybe wanting to lose was growing.

"Well then, you lecher," a voice said fondly, "she'll just have to win, won't she?"

Sango looked up into Umao's face, and smiled gratefully. Miroku sighed dramatically.

"Am I so disliked?"

Umao laughed.

"You're not disliked, Friar. Just denied. Come then, Miss Sango, and we'll get you started."

Sango trotted dutifully after Umao, who had somehow gotten her hands on the recipe, and was calling out for ingredients.

"This is pretty simple, isn't it?"

The hunter sighed, and shook her head.

"To you, mayhap it is. But for me…oy…"

Umao gave a throaty chuckle and knelt down to start the fire. Soon a proper blaze was going.

"Sugar and milk first," she said, handing Sango the ingredients. She dumped them in, and Umao handed the recipe back.

"Good luck!" she called as she walked off.

"Aren't you going to help?" Sango asked, panicking a little.

"That'd be cheating!" Umao called over her shoulder, and kept going. Our heroine, now left with the daunting task of cooking butterscotch, rolled up her sleeves and resigned herself to the task.

'No use moaning,' she sighed to herself, looking over the parchment. 'I may as well get this going.'

she sighed to herself, looking over the parchment.

It was moving along well until she came to the 'secret ingredient'. She sighed. Of course Ayame would call it that – it would seem much more fun to her. Vaguely remembering the tiny pouch of powder that the wolf demon had given her, she pulled it out and dropped a pinch in. It dissolved quickly, and Sango looked back at the recipe.

Boil hard…what the hell? She felt a little lost. Most of it had been, so far, add this much of this, dissolve this, put in a pinch of this. Boil hard? For how long? What should it look like? She read on, only to find that it should be 'firm, but not brittle, when a small portion is dropped into cold water'. Oh, great.

She allowed it to rise to a boil, but as she stirred, she noticed little difference. It was still watery, with white particles floating to the top (presumably from the milk). Panicking more than a little she gathered up a bowl of water and dropped a bit it. It exploded into a white, milky cloud and she gave a squeak. What was it doing!

Meanwhile, the contents of her large pot had thickened, and was now more of a paste than anything. Was it going to be brittle now? She was getting more than a little frustrated. She took another portion and dropped it in. It was still sticky when she pulled it out. Firm? Not really…

Sango let it boil awhile longer, before trying it again. Much better! But when she pulled the tiny bit out of the water, it crumbled in her hands. Shite! Now it was brittle. Too late now…

She poured it into a tin pan to let it set, wondering at the expanse of cooking supplies they had here. Then, with a resigned little sigh, she sat back to wait for the butterscotch to harden into…whatever it was going to be. A little over an hour later, she stood up and took a piece from the pan.

"Who'll be the judge?" she asked Miroku. The piece of candy was crumbling in her hand. The Friar grinned cheerily.

"Satoru, I believe."

The child was easy to track down. He was playing in the mud with several other boys from Green Haven, and all of them were coated in it. She smiled, remembering the days when she would have played in the mud with her friends. That was, until, her mother had plucked her out of the filth and insisted that little ladies did not play in the dirt. They stitched, and cooked, and cleaned. Miroku plucked the boy from his mess.

Satoru made a face at him, calling him something that had Sango blushing to her hairline. When the boy saw her, however, he smiled.

"You came back!"

"I said I would, didn't I?"

The boy nodded absently, his eyes drifting down to the candy in her hand. Miroku was the first to notice, and said:

"Would you like to try it?"

Satoru bobbed his head eagerly, and Sango held in a laugh. She handed him the butterscotch, and he popped the whole thing into his mouth at once. He chewed for a moment, and she stood nervously aside Miroku. If she lost, would he really…she dropped that train of thought when the little boy – totally unaware of the weight his answer held – swallowed and blinked.

"…So?" she asked, anxious. He cracked his neck a little, and shrugged before he looked up at her with wide, brown eyes.

"Crumbly," he told her. She sighed.

"Yes, I knew that much. How's the taste?"

Satoru shrugged again.

"It was crumbly," he repeated with distaste, and Sango gave a squeak of dismay. Of course! She remembered doing this with Kohaku – when he had insisted that his story be told in exactly the same words each night. Since it hadn't been exactly the same as the other candy…she groaned and put her head in her hands. Oh, why had they decided to judge it by a child's standard?

The boy, not knowing why she was getting so weird over a crumbly bit of sweet, ran back to play in the mud.

"It looks like a win for you, Friar," she said into her hands. She was fully expecting the strong, callused hands that tugged at her arms and forced her to look up at Miroku, and so wasn't surprised when she found herself looking into eyes that were oddest shade of blue…

He smiled.

"I'll collect later," he told her, and walked off. She groaned, and fell back against a large oak tree. Umao came to stand by her.

"Rotten luck, dear," she sighed. "But at least you're not kissing a pig."

She grinned wickedly.

"Come to think of it…why should kissing Miroku be so horrid for you? He's easy on the eyes, and from the word's said down in Pontefrac he's not totally naïve."

Sango only gave another sigh of discontent. Of course Umao didn't understand, she was married with a child. The same child, come to think of it, who had so casually tossed her this fate. But she couldn't blame him. He was, after all, just a boy. But for her…it was a little different. She hadn't been more than thirteen, perhaps, when she noticed the looks she got.

It hadn't mattered much to her until the blacksmith's son had tried to grab her on her way back from doing the wash. She had wholloped him good, and huffed back home with indignant embarrassment, but her father had avoided the topic quite pointedly. Thinking of it…if it hadn't been for Ayame, she wouldn't have understood why, only a few months later, she woke up with bloody sheets. Thanks to her, by no means did Sango misunderstand what happened between men and women, and why twoing was usually a bad idea if you weren't married. But her experience was somewhat…lacking.

For some reason, this embarrassed her worse than when she had run crying to Ayame when her father had no answers for the blood around her.

Changing the topic, Umao asked if Sango was staying for dinner. The hunter gave a cry of dismay.

"Drat! I'd wished to be back by the evening meal…" she growled, and Inuyasha (who had just walked into the clearing with several plump birds trailing behind him on a string) scoffed.

"Why the hell do you care about the time?"

She stood up, glaring fiercely at him.

"I wasn't supposed to leave!" she snapped back sharply. "Why else would I have been searching for one blasted tree in the middle of the night?"

"Well, you've obviously a lack of wit, then! Do you want a thousand others to find this place?"

"Thus my reason for leaving in the night!"

Shikako laughed at them as he took the birds from Inuyasha.

"You two are almost as grand to watch as the sparring practice!"

Inuyasha glowered at the man.

"Just shut up!" he snapped, and stormed off. Miroku was exiting the hut when the half-demon passed him, and he raised an eyebrow. Upon seeing that Sango wore an equally annoyed expression, he understood.

"Is anything amiss?" he asked, not minding when she snapped at him for asking stupid questions.

"Obviously! I need to get home."

He nodded, and disappeared after the blindfold, which the hunter donned quickly.

"Thank you," she said. He took her hand – the touch sent a sharp tingle through Sango's body – and they were off. At the same place as before, a mile from the edge of the woods, he removed her blindfold.

"Come to look for the tree again," he said with a kind smile. "And don't mind Inuyasha. He gets a little surly sometimes."

"A little?" she scoffed. Miroku sighed, and put a hand on her shoulder.

"You must understand…his past is a dark one. To be accused of killing one's own mother, and not knowing who truly committed the crime is a hard thing to live with. I don't suppose he'll ever go back to village life again."

"He can't, though, can he? Not after…" she paused, the meaning of Miroku's words sinking in. "Oh."

The Friar chucked.

"What a dark mood for us to be in. I suppose I should go now, before I worry you further. Don't be long in returning to us."

Sango nodded, smiling a little. Her mind was away as she walked through the woods, nearer to what Miroku had spoken of than anything. So deep was her thought that the scent of ashes on the wind almost passed her attention.

Almost.

Finding herself at the edge of the clearing, she looked up and was greeted with something unusual and wholly terrible.

Not half a mile from her the ground was charred in every direction. Black, acrid smoke still rose from the smoldering ruins. Charred wood lay everywhere, half-fallen walls of gutted buildings seemed ready to crumble if she had dared to touch them. Not that she could get close enough to the ruins to do so…she was frozen in shock. Embers still glowed in places, and nearby she heard the snap and sputter of a handful of tiny flames that had refused to leave the place she had once called home.

Home…

She stumbled forward at a run. It was happening again. The fire had come back to finish the job it had started years before. It had taken her father and Kohaku, and now it had taken everyone else. Tripping over herself, she fell into the sooty rubble where Ayame and Kouga's home had once stood. She tore through the debris, ignoring the tears that ran down her cheeks and the ashes that began to cling to her. She had to get them out…had to save them! They were still safe! They had to be!

An odd noise met her ears at the next billow of smoky wind that passed her. It was choked, and half formed, a sobbing sort of scream that was almost coherent but not quite. She didn't realize it was her own voice.

Her hands brushed against something solid. She brushed away more of the ashes, and despite the heat around her she felt so very cold…She touched the charred pile gently, for fear that the bones would turn to ash as the rest of her life had, and fly away from her. They were entangled, and bits of flesh still clung to the bones of the wolf demon and his kind mate. A clump of red hair still held fast to one of the skulls, and the cold that had settled into Sango turned to dust. To ash.

"Ashes, ashes, they all fall down…" she whispered, and gave a little laugh, then a hiccup. She was choking on her tears, choking on the smoke, choking on the hot, bitter slap in the face that told her just what had happened while she was gone.

"Oops," she giggled, giving another hiccup. "I guess I messed up."

She hiccuped once more, and choked back a sob. It only half-worked, and came out with the next hysterical little chuckle.

"Oops."

She stumbled to her feet, and wavered where she stood.

"I guess I should have stayed, neh? If I had, I wouldn't have seen this. If I had…" her voice rose to a hysterical pitch, she was screaming through her tears now. "If I had, you would've killed me in my sleep with the rest of them, you God-forsaken sonofabitch!"

She didn't know who she was screaming at, who she was throwing rocks, embers, and wood at. Maybe the fire…maybe the sheriff, maybe whatever creature had set to fire her life. Anger, white-hot, chased the fire through her, letting the scorched remains of her life imprint themselves on her mind to be mulled over late at night.

"Come and finish the job, dammit! You have to finish the job! Come and kill me, too, why don't you! Just kill me!"

She threw another ember at the nothingness around that was quickly finding a place inside her. She tripped again, and fell. This time she didn't stand, but curled herself into a ball and sobbed.

"Just kill me," she whimpered to the air. "Take me too…don't leave me here…"

At the same time as Sango stepped out of the woods Miroku had almost made it back to Green Haven. Kagome ran out to meet him, clutching something to her chest.

"When did you get to Green Haven?" he asked pleasantly, also wondering how she knew the way out. She shrugged.

"Not long ago. Miss Umeko said that Miss Sango left this," the young girl said, holding out Sango's bag. Miroku took it, confused. Couldn't they just return it the next time Sango was there?

Kagome looked away.

"I have a feeling you should return it to her now," she said quietly. "Go quickly – please."

"Far be it for me to refuse the request of a lady," he agreed, and turned around. He started at a brisk walk, which turned into a run when a sudden rush of unease hit him before Kagome was out of sight. He had to hurry.

"Come and finish the job, dammit! You have to finish the job! Come and kill me, too, why don't you! Just kill me!"

He was shocked to see Sango throwing things around, screaming almost incoherently at nothing. And then he noticed her village, or what was left of it.

Dropping the bag, he ran over to her. He didn't catch what she said when she fell, but he didn't miss the look on her face. The pain, the sorrow, and the torture of realizing the ones you cared about were gone forever. He knew what that felt like, and though he tried to deny it, he still remembered every moment of his father's death with crystalline clarity. He heard her choke on a sob, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

She sat up quickly, lashing out at the unknown touch. Perhaps her wish had been granted. Good. She opened her eyes to greet the death she wanted so badly and found a much different sight. Miroku kneeled in the debris next to her.

Sango didn't know what to think, or to say. She didn't even know what she felt now. So she sat mute, confused, staring at Miroku for all the world as if he was a giant lavender teapot or something equally odd.

Miroku, for his own part, covered Sango's hands with his own.

"Would you care for some help with the burials?" he asked. It took a long moment for Sango to process what he was asking, but when she did, she fell into him and cried again, clinging to his robes. He understood, and put his arms around her gently, holding her and rocking her gently; making soft, soothing noises while she waited for her world to stop spinning so fast.

They sat like that until the sun set and longer, and when Sango finally fell asleep, Miroku picked her up – surprised at how light she was – and carried her back to Green Haven. He and Inuyasha would spend the whole of the next day digging through the rubble, uncovering as many bones as they could, and burying each person in a grave of their own.

Itold you all this would be up soon, so that I couldmake up for such a long wait.But…-cackles happily- everyone is back on track now! Things should be a little more in character from now on. Come to think of it, though, it's a little sad that I had to kill off an entire village simply to get Sango back in character. But it was important to my plot, too…(I can just hear Kat-chan now… 'What! You have a plot!')

By the way...just a note, here, for Aamalie-chan (because I'd feel bad about not saying something). I'm not going to be using MSNIM for quite awhile, because of a couple personal things that have been going on. Sorry about that!