Sango's injuries pulled painfully, jolting her back to half-consciousness. Something had just wrenched her up off the ground. She gasped in several sharp breaths, squeezing her eyes shut against the burning agony of a dozen bleeding wounds.
The air was hot and close around her; something large pressed sharply into her diaphragm, making it even more difficult to breathe. Sango groaned, but whatever was holding her only squeezed more tightly.
From somewhere nearby, she heard something whimper in protest. The voice was high-pitched but familiar. The lump jabbing into her middle squirmed unhappily. Shippou?
Sango opened her eyes, trying to regain her bearings, but everything was dark. Slowly, she realized that it wasn't that everything was dark, but that her face was pressed hard into dark fabric. Dimly, she became aware that it was a person she was crushed so awkwardly against. She could feel taut muscle under that fabric, straining against something, holding her tight as if letting her go would mean letting her die.
A person… wearing dark clothing. No, dark robes…
Houshi-sama?
Her eyes drifted shut again. It was so hard to breathe… there was so much pain…
What's going on? Where is Kagome? Why is Houshi-sama here instead? she wondered, but she did not have the breath to ask. Why is he… protecting me?
She smelled the rank stench of youki and began to understand. The monk must have grabbed her and Shippou, and used his own body to shield them from the miasma. She had no idea where the miasma had come from, wondered furiously what had happened during the time she had been unconscious.
She could already feel her consciousness slipping again as she struggled for air, and thought the monk would have been better served by saving himself than a traitor like her.