Sango kept her mouth resolutely shut when Inuyasha returned late in the day… with Kagome at his side. She even managed to avoid glancing at the monk, lest she see his inevitable 'I knew it' expression and end up betraying her own feelings about the matter.

She had hoped that somehow Inuyasha and Kagome might patch things up after all. It would be better to have everyone along if they were going on a hunting trip, and that was exactly how she thought of this mission. They had a target. They had a trail. All that remained now was to track down their quarry and make the kill.

If only it were really as easy as it sounded.

She greeted Kagome with a smile, a welcome, and no questions, and then went grimly back to her work. Her armor and weapons were spread around her, much as they would have been back at her village on the night before departing on an excursion. She needed to know exactly what supplies were left in her arsenal, and that all her weapons and armor were in good condition and ready for battle. She might finally be about to have a real chance at taking down her enemy. The last thing she wanted to do was to miss this opportunity due to a lack of preparation.

Even as she worked through the familiar tasks of preparing her gear, she felt all out of sorts: anxious and angry and sad and excited all at once. Just a little more time and this all might be over for good.

And what then? She had hardly stopped to think about the future in all this time. Ever since that fateful day, the future had seemed a distant dream, impossibly far off and out of her reach. With everyone else from the village dead and her brother controlled by her enemy, how could she spare any thought for "after"? Yet now it beckoned, tantalizingly, terrifyingly close.

What would happen when the battle was over? Even if they won in the end… She looked to where Inuyasha, Kagome, and Shippou were clustered and felt fear clutch at her heart. Everyone might go their separate ways again, and she would be alone.

Victory suddenly seemed as hopeless and hollow as defeat. Yes, the other slayers would finally be avenged, but…

Her chest grew tight as grief and fear surged through her. In the end it was her long years of training that saved her; she knew how to breathe through the worst of it, to put the feelings away for another time, to wait until after the hunt. Her stored-up sorrow might overwhelm her one day, but today she needed to be a slayer. For a slayer to become overwhelmed with emotion too often meant that slayer was about to die. And she was not willing to die without killing her enemy or saving her brother.

While Inuyasha and Kagome went inside to greet Kaede, the monk drifted over to where Sango was sitting on the veranda. He had been distant today, seeming lost in his own thoughts. As she prepared for the battle to come, Sango had wondered idly what he might be thinking; she looked up at him now as he approached.

In that moment, in the slanting sunlight of early evening, there was such a beautiful intensity to his face that she could not find it in her to look away. When he directed that gaze toward her, she suddenly understood the effect he had on so many women. Fear and grief were momentarily dislodged from her chest, replaced by something warm and sweet… and a mildly horrifying attraction.

Miroku was a monk and a conman, a thief who had never known a moment of guilt and an incorrigible lech, a man who might treat her earnestly one moment and put his hands where they weren't wanted the next. And she never quite knew which to expect. Yet looking at him now, she could not deny that she had come to treasure his company, and she was glad that they shared a mission in common, and would be embarking on this next part of their journey together. Whatever dangers lay ahead of them, however faint their hope of victory, at least they wouldn't face those dangers alone.