Helping Miroku take his robes off, Sango dipped a cloth into a bowl of water and cleaned the small cuts on the monk's arms and torso. She carefully cleaned and bandaged the wound on his head; then she gently wrapped his sore arm with a splint and a sling.
"Thanks," Miroku stated when she had finished.
"No problem," Sango responded packing the supplies.
"So…," the monk said nervously, wanting to ask her about what she had said earlier, but not really knowing how to say it.
"Yeah," she looked up from her work.
"Umm…, about what you said earlier…" he paused trying to come up with the right words, "did you mean it?" Finally, he came out and said it, it had been bothering him all day; during his search for her, after the fall, when she was tending to his wounds, and even now, it was all he could think about.
"Yes."
"Why did you leave? Why didn't you give me a chance to respond?" he asked, slightly confused.
"I thought you would say something perverted," she answered blushing, unable to look at him as she said it.
Suddenly, there was an awkward silence; Sango finished packing the supplies, while Miroku put his robes back on.
"I apologize," the monk said, breaking the silence.
The demon exterminator looked up from her work, "For what?"
"For acting like a hentai."
Sango looked up, surprised; she wasn't expecting him to apologize, she expected him to make an excuse or something, but not apologize. She had no idea how to respond to this, he had caught her off guard.
"Sango, I love you," Miroku continued when she didn't respond.
"W-What?" she asked both confused and shocked; how could he love her and still flirt with all those girls?
"I love you Sango."
"B-But…" she tried, but didn't know how to say everything she felt inside.
"But what?" he hadn't expected this reaction. He kept his calm and composed look on his exterior, even though his head was screaming and his high ego was dropping rapidly.
"Whenever you meet a beautiful, young girl you ask her to bare your child and grab her ass!"
"I'm not that bad, am I?" he asked, trying to sound innocent.
Sango just gave him a glare that unmistakably said 'Yes'.
"Okay, I'm that bad."
"How can you love me if all you ever do is ask other women to bare your child?" Sango asked, her eyes ready to fill with tears.
"Sango, I promise I won't ask any other women to bare my child, only you. You're the only woman I want to bare my child," the young monk told her. He walked toward her, arms open, ready for her to run into them, embracing him; but she didn't, she just stood there.
When Miroku was close enough to embrace her, and just before he did, Sango spoke up, "No."
"Huh?" he stepped back, slightly confused.
"No. You have to prove that you love me. I'm not going to let you hurt me," Sango told him in a somewhat harsh tone.
Feeling the need to support her companion, Kirara nuzzled herself against the demon slayer's leg.
On the verge of tears and not wanting to show the monk how much this hurt her; she, once again, ran from the hut, tears in her eyes. This time, not having the energy to run to the river, she just sat on the hut steps and cried.
With Inuyasha and Kagome
It was later that afternoon, Kagome had now stopped crying, but Inuyasha could still pick up the scent of salt from her tears. The two of them were sitting underneath the scared tree; Kagome was asking Inuyasha random questions about her life, things she couldn't remember; hoping if she talked about it something might trigger another memory to come back to her.
"So, who did I live with in the future?" she questioned.
"Your mother, kid brother, and grandfather."
"And here?"
"Us. Sango, Miroku, Shippo, Kirara, and myself. We traveled around the country searching for sacred jewel shards and fighting demons that possess the shards. We are trying to collect them before Naraku."
"What did Naraku do? All of you seem to have a grudge against him, why?"
"Naraku…is an evil demon who deceives people, he plays with their minds, turns them against one another. He placed a curse on Miroku's family, bestowing them with cursed wind tunnel, which sucks everything in its path into it and, in time, Miroku himself will meet this fate, if Naraku is not destroyed, as did his father and grandfather before him. He set a trap for Sango's family and fellow villagers. The demon exterminators, including Sango, her father and brother were called to a village to destroy the demons, which infested it. With lack of warriors at the village, it was left vulnerable and was attacked by demons that wanted the sacred jewel shards. While the demon exterminators destroyed the demons, Naraku possessed Sango's brother, Kohaku, and made him slaughter the exterminators, his father and attempted to kill Sango, but was killed before he had the chance. Sango seeks revenge for the deaths of her father, brother, and fellow villagers. And I want to avenge Kikyo. Naraku turned her against me and me against her. I tried to steal the sacred jewel from the village, but was pinned to this tree by Kikyo's sacred arrow, until you freed me. Kikyo died that day, Naraku mortally wounded her, disguised as me," the hanyou told her hatred filled his voice.
"How horrible! Naraku is despicable and deserves to be destroyed! But, why do demons want the sacred jewel? What kind of power does it possess?"
"The jewel will grant any wish you want. It has the power to make demons stronger and more powerful, that is why we must collect more shards than Naraku. If he possesses the entire jewel who knows what he'll do."
"Well, what are we waiting for!" Kagome stated, jumping from her seat determined to find more shards and Naraku. "We have to go find these sacred jewel shards!"
"Kagome! We can't. You have to restore your memory. You're more important to us…to me than the jewel shards."
"But…"
"No! I'm not risking it. We can take a break. Even if he does find all the jewel shards, I'll just kill him."
"Okay. Ummm…Inuyasha?" suddenly remembering about the young boy she had seemed to care about so much.
"Yeah?"
"What happened to that little boy? The one that I was with when that man was chasing us?" something caused her to think of the young boy.
"I don't know."
"Can we go look for him? I don't want him to be all by himself."
"Yeah. I'm sure those guys, the 'pooleece', know where he is."
"Do you know who he is? Did I know him?"
"Yes. His name is Souta, he's your brother."
"Oh. What about that lady? The one that was killed?"
"That was your mother," the half demon's voice suddenly dropped to just above a whisper. He knew what it was like to lose a mother; his mother died when he was only a young child.
"Oh," Kagome didn't know what to say to this, all at once she felt completely numb. The numbness lasted only a few seconds; when it finally hit her that her mother had been murdered, she collapsed to her knees and began to sob uncontrollably.
Inuyasha knelt beside the crying girl and held her; not wanting her to go through the same thing he had to, no one to turn to, no one to hold you, nobody's shoulder to cry on.