I don't wanna see the day, my words cannot make it safe -- Her heart in my hands, it's too bad, no regrets... -- I don't wanna see the day, her tears are falling on my grave -- This is my one chance, to take back, no regrets...
The Fall of Troy -- F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X.
Miroku came slowly back to consciousness and shook his head to clear the cobwebs, instantly regretting it as pain exploded behind his eyes.
"I really, really need to stop doing that," he muttered. He didn't attempt to stand this time, having a vague recollection of what happened the last time he tried such a thing, and simply waited for the fog in his brain to clear. Slowly, but surely, the haze started to dissipate and he sat up straighter.
The first thing he noticed was the blood red moon hanging in the pitch black sky, the next thing he noticed was the chanting. He struggled to his knees and instinctively brought his hand to his face, rubbing it over his weary features, and rocked back, stunned.
He was no longer chained. Gingerly, he pushed himself to his feet and swayed before righting himself. His mind froze, unable to completely process what he was seeing. Sango was still chained to the altar, her cinnamon eyes wide and her mouth open in screaming defiance, but he could hear nothing, nothing at all.
Around her in a wide circle, stood the women they'd discovered and Mari, Michi's sister. They were dressed in ceremonial kimonos and their pulsating bellies had been exposed. Miroku watched in horror as the pulsating offspring withered and quivered under their flesh and saw the skin underneath start to glow a sickly shade of green. Mesmerized, he remained riveted as the chanting grew louder and louder and louder.
He covered his ears, the volume becoming painful. Abruptly, it reached a crescendo and a loud ripping sound was heard as deformed, ugly demons ripped out of the girls' wombs, mewling and making sounds not unlike nails scrapping down a chalkboard.
The girls all dropped simultaneously, their blood staining the ground. Miroku opened his mouth to scream, but someone beat him to it. He glanced to his right and saw Michi; his eyes reflect the pain of a thousand lifetimes, as he gazed in horrified fascination at the deformed lump that was now feasting on his sister's blood.
"Mari! Kami no, please no, Mari!"
Miroku made a move to step towards the boy, to shield him but Toyotomi's voice echoed across the field, halting him.
"The beasts are born, the ground is stained with innocent blood…let the sacrifice begin!"
He started muttering, twisted, harsh words from a language that was never meant to be spoken on earth. Miroku's head started to spin again and a strange heat started pulsing in his gut. The same green light that had been inside the dead girl's now pulsed in his abdomen and he felt his mind fade.
He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and snapped them open again, desperate to keep his wits, and paused.
The field was gone and in its place a sunny spring meadow had replaced the horrific vision of dead innocents and his beloved chained to an altar. Beyond him he saw Goshinboku as he never seen it before. InuYasha's forest was gone and the god tree stood proud and strong and very, very alone.
Under the towering tree he watched a familiar, yet altered scenario taking place. One he'd never forget as long as he lived. His friends sat under Goshinboku, picnicking and laughing while he stood apart clenching his cursed hand and cursing the gods.
It was a recreation of the day he'd left them for parts unknown and it was just as painful to watch two years later as it had been to live through. Kami, he looked so young, not that two years was all that long, but the way he felt now and the way he'd felt then…he might as well be an old man. His gaze was drawn as it always was to Sango. She sat next to her brother and that cautious optimism he loved so much glimmered in her cinnamon eyes.
Despair gripped his heart. He should never have left her, but what choice did he have? She was alive and although he'd broken her heart, his actions had more than likely saved her life. Miroku was no fool. He knew that unless someone was around to hold her back and keep her from him while his kazaana claimed him, she would have joined him in the void.
She would have tried to save him even though she would have known that once the void ripped, he would have been lost.
That was his Sango. She loved like no one he'd ever known, selflessly and with her whole heart. She may have learned to guard it well, but that only made the moments when he'd glimpsed her emotions that much sweeter to behold. Her walls never kept her from feeling.
Miroku shook his head. The nagging sense that something was wrong with this picture wouldn't leave him. He blinked and swayed.
Why was he seeing Sango like this? Why was he thinking of her in the past tense? She'd been with him, hadn't she? They had journeyed together, made love to each other, were on the verge of becoming something greater than they'd been before, weren't they?
He frowned and his head swam. He could have sworn…
Rapidly, the scene shifted again, and this time instead of laughing and smiling with their friends, Sango was a few feet away from him, withering naked on the ground and screaming while a man with long dark hair moved over her.
Pain gripped his chest and he screamed her name. The dark haired man looked up and his blood ran cold.
"Naraku," he whispered in revulsion and then louder, "Naraku!"
The demon that had cursed his family and tormented his dreams looked up at him with that annoyingly superior look and continued to pound his cock into Sango. She was screaming and crying and begging him to help her.
Again the sense of wrongness overtook him, but before he could follow the vague niggling notion, the demon fucking his beloved spoke.
"See monk, there is nothing you can possess which I can not take from you. Your grandfather, your father, your friends, and now…your vile and weak woman."
"I'll kill you!" Miroku yelled and Naraku smirked. "You have the means monk. Look in your left hand."
Confused, he looked down and discovered an ornate dagger the likes of which he'd never seen before gripped tightly in his fingers.
The sense of something not quite right came over him once more, but it was killed by Sango's sudden scream. Angered beyond reason, Miroku approached Naraku. Sango was sobbing now and he could here her calling his name, begging him.
"Yes monk, come closer, come and drive the dagger into my back."
As if in a trance and filled with white hot rage, Miroku approached the two. The sense that something was amiss was now beating against the back of his head, trying to stop him, but as he watched Naraku move between the slayer's legs. All reason fled.
Snarling much like InuYasha, Miroku raised the dagger and prepared to strike.
Sango struggled harder against her chains and screamed.
"Toyotomi, you bastard, what have you done to him!" The Lord stepped forward and gazed amusedly at the entranced monk as he moved towards her.
Sango could hear Michi in the background sobbing as if his heart had burst, but she couldn't allow herself to focus on him right now. Desperate, she started pleading, her eyes full of all the love and despair pouring from her bleeding heart.
"Miroku, please. This isn't you. You have to fight him Miroku. You must!"
The monk's indigo eyes, usually so full of mischief and life, gazed at her, dead…soulless. Sango pulled her chains and started thrashing.
"Dammit monk, come to your senses! You have to fight dammit!" She cursed him and begged him but nothing seemed to stop him from coming closer and closer with the razor sharp dagger. When he reached her side and raised the pointed steel, she closed her eyes tightly and mentally prepared herself. His hand quivered above her heart. He was preparing to strike the death blow.
She was going to die at the hands of the man she loved with all her heart and soul. Hysterical laughter churned in her gut, and she bit her lips to contain it. She bit so hard that blood tricked from the soft flesh and down her chin.
"Miroku…I love you," she whispered. Above her his arm started to descend and the dark, crushing evil flared to a crescendo. Sango murmured her goodbyes to the people she'd come to love. InuYasha, Shippo, Isamu and his little daughter, Riko and Benji, her beloved little brother, and lastly Kagome, the girl from the future who'd become the sister of her soul.
Her own soul rebelled at the travesty. She didn't want to die. Despite everything, the years of traveling with Miroku and watching him flirt with other women, her brother's worsening mental state, the death of her father and her people, her despair over Miroku's abandonment. Despite all of the heartache, she wanted to live.
Kami, it wasn't fair! She'd finally reached a point where she understood how precious the time she'd been given was, and it was about to be stolen from her by the man she'd given everything to.
She gritted her teeth. This couldn't be her fate. The gods would not be this cruel. In one final effort and a split second before the knife would have pierced her heart she gathered her breath and screamed to the heavens.
"Miroku, I love you! Fight for me!"
The knife tip pierced her flesh, she felt her body sag. It was too late, she'd hadn't reached him. Seconds ticked, and Sango waited, waited for the specter of unforgiving death to rip her shattered soul from her body, but as the moments passed she become aware of something.
There was only a pin prick of pain. Bewildered, she opened her eyes and gasped. Miroku was still above her, his biceps straining and his face flushed. She looked down and saw only the very tip of the blade embedded in her chest. It was the size of a bee sting. Awed, she met his gaze and hope bloomed full blown. He was fighting! He was fighting Toyotomi's hold on his psyche!
"That's it monk. Keep fighting him and when we get out of here I swear by Kami that I will spend as many nights as it takes, in the first inn we come to, fulfilling every lecherous fantasy you've ever had about me. And then of course you're going to fulfill your promise to me and marry me, wind tunnel or no."
A strained chuckle passed through his lips and the glaze over his eyes dimmed as he rasped.
"My dear, naïve Sango. You shouldn't make such promises. Because if I had my way I would satisfy you over and over and keep you there until you couldn't so much as lift your little finger. Besides, we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of my fantasies involving you. After all…I can be very, very creative."
Heat slammed into her gut and she couldn't help the laugh that bubbled to her lips. Trust her hentai houshi to respond to sexual promises in the face of imminent death.
Miroku was sweating with the effort of keeping the blade from her heart, but his gaze was becoming clearer by the second. He looked away from her to Toyotomi. The Lord of the Southern Lands was gazing at them in disbelief.
"No," he whispered. "It's not possible," and then he screamed. "No! Kill her! You must kill her!"
Miroku gritted his teeth against the pull of the other man's voice and felt his arms quiver. With a strength born of his will and his love he cried.
"No!" And strangely enough a phrase that he'd heard his friend Father Manuel utter many times popped into his head. "Get thee behind me Satan! You have no power over me!"
A flash of blue energy erupted and flashed across the ground like a sonic boom. Toyotomi screamed and suddenly Miroku found himself free. Wasting no time, he pulled the enchanted knife away from Sango's chest and attacked her bonds. The chains snapped and he pulled her away from the altar just as a screaming black presence roared from the stone statue near Toyotomi.
The disembodied voice Sango had heard in Toyotomi's bedchamber echoed across the plains.
"No, no, no, no, I will not be defeated. This is my time, my world. You will not take my destiny from me!"
The presence shot from the statue and in a cloud of inky black entered Toyotomi through his eyes and open mouth. The Lord was frozen in a silent scream, his body twitching as the evil from the statue poured into him. When it was over silence, raw and ominous, descended over the sacrificial ground and Toyotomi turned towards them like a marionette on strings. His movements were jerky and unnatural and his eyes, sweet Kami…his eyes.
His eyes were deep, dark, empty sockets of flame and his voice echoed like the rasping of a snake's tongue on cold stone.
"You may have prevented me from obtaining my full power, but it will not save you, monk. I will torture you and the taijiya until you beg for death. I will mare her sweet flesh in front of you until she is so twisted and ugly not even the very demons she's fought will want her. I will do it so her screams stain your ears and her torments cause your eyes to bleed."
With a growl, he raised his hands and purple lightening shot from his fingertips. "Look out," Sango cried and pushed Miroku to the left while she rolled right. The being infecting Toyotomi followed her.
Miroku had been unprepared for her shove and thus he hit his head on the wall near Michi when he landed. Groaning, he sat up and watched in terror as his taijiya danced and tumbled in a display of raw, physical grace, away from the deadly magic streaming from the demon's hands.
He felt his heart seize. Sango, as talented as she was, couldn't keep up such a pace indefinitely, and without weapons they had no way of defending themselves against this enemy. They were well and truly done for if he didn't think of something, and think of it fast.
He shoved his fingers into his robes and pulled out the one sutra he'd manage to finagle with a bit of slight of hand and dumb luck. The gold paper shimmered under the blood-red moon and a crazy, reckless, and suicidal plan began to form.
He looked from the sutra to the blade in his hand and back to the sutra. It glowed faintly with the power of an entire sect of Buddhist monks. Some of which, had surpassed Miroku in power, and all of which had exceeded him in wisdom. They had given him the sutras, knowing full well what he might call on them to do one day.
That day had come. Miroku looked at Sango, his beautiful, sensual, loving, taijiya as she did a handspring away from the demon and rolled near the altar. Kami, she was the most fascinating creature on the planet and the love he felt for her was unlike anything he'd ever known.
She was going to hate him again.
Surprisingly, the thought did not trouble him as much as it should have. At the end of the day, she'd be alive, and time, he knew, healed all scars, even the ones people thought would never fade. A strange kind of peace enveloped him and he used the knife to free a sobbing Michi from his chains.
The boy tried to run to his fallen sister, but Miroku caught him and held him tight.
"Let me go, let me go! I have to get to Mari!" The monk's gripped tightened and he muttered softly.
"No Michi, it's over. She's gone." The boy struggled some more, trying to break his iron grip, but Miroku didn't lessen his hold.
"No please! I can still save her! Let me go." With an impatient sigh he turned Michi around to face him and shook him. This jarred him enough to make him meet his eyes.
"Michi, you must stop. You must listen. Your sister is gone, but you might still be saved."
The boy started shaking his head and muttering how it didn't matter. Miroku shook him again.
"It does matter. Mari would want you to live, Michi, she'd want you to live and grow and become the man she'd always wanted you to become. She would not want you to dishonor her memory by throwing your own life away. Come boy, have courage!"
Something in Miroku's voice must have gotten through to him for he stilled. The monk smiled.
"All right here's the plan." He told him and the boy's eyes went wide.
"B-But that means." Miroku impatiently waved him away.
"Yes, but it can't be helped. Michi, you must promise me, you must hold her if she tries to break through."
Helplessly, he nodded and Miroku nodded back. "Okay then, are we ready." Resolve tightened his youthful features.
"All right then…go!"
They sprinted towards the altar, neither one of them looked back.
Sango was about to dive to the right when she saw Miroku and Michi barreling towards her at breakneck speeds. Before she could part her lips to say anything, Miroku had reached her, knocked her back onto the stone, and the boy had jumped up next to her.
"Miroku, what…" He cut her off with a quick, fierce kiss and pulled away, his indigo orbs boring into hers.
"I love you, Sango," he whispered, harshly. Her eyes went wide and confusion clouded her gaze, but before she could say anything, before she could question his intent, he raised his left hand, slapped the golden sutra on the stone altar, and murmured a few words. Power flared, not only his own, but the power of the sect that the sutra had stored and a golden light formed a barrier around the altar and its occupants.
Purple lightening hit the shield and Sango flinched, but it bounced away harmlessly. Still a bit baffled, Sango kept her eyes trained on Miroku. He was gazing at her with such a look of longing, love, and profound sadness that she felt her heart weep.
"Miroku," she whispered. He grinned at her, reckless and beautiful.
"I love you." he said again. "I'll love you forever." He briefly caressed her cheek. "Until we meet again in the next life, my love."
Sango heard the words, but she didn't process what they meant until she watched him turn towards Toyotomi with a half mad, half elated gleam in his eyes. Suddenly, like the flick of one of Kagome's light switches, it dawned on her.
"No," she breathed and then louder as fear slammed into her gut. "No houshi, you can't!" She screamed. He didn't turn back to her and in desperation she started beating her fists against the energy field, causing it to pulse. Michi clasped his arms around her waist and tried to hold her still, but she fought him like a wild cat.
She watched him in growing horror as he faced Toyotomi, or more correctly, the thing Toyotomi had become, and didn't notice the tears streaming down her cheeks.
The demon before him was pacing and snarling, displeased by the turn of events. A few more moments and he'd have had the taijiya in his power.
"You think your little protective shield will keep her safe for long, monk? You're more foolish than I thought."
Miroku said nothing. Calm and detached he unwounded his prayer beads and leveled his wind tunnel at the demon before him. The sucking void caught him off guard, but he was powerful enough to dig in and hold his ground. Snarling, he spat.
"You think to defeat me with that! It was my power, monk, which cursed you as such. Naraku, that great pretender, absorbed part of my essence into that travesty he called a body, long before your grandfather ever set foot in my lands. I practically created your void and thus there is no way you will be able to hurt me with it. I will simply take it away from you."
Miroku stilled, the irony of the situation not lost on him. All this time he'd sought a way to rid himself of his curse and now the means to his end stood before him. It was enough to cause hysterical laughter to grip his chest. He stamped it down and raised the knife in his left hand, to the side of his right.
"You may have created the void, but not even you are powerful enough to stop it when it is fully unleashed."
With that he sliced his palm and the resounding pressure nearly threw him off his feet. Sango was screaming and wailing and crying, but Miroku barely heard her. All sound was muffled as the vacuum rolled over him.
Even Toyotomi's screams of anger were muffled and stilted. Everything around him swirled, as the void grew and the vortex widened, trees, rocks, shrubs, everything was sucked in by the force of the black pit. Toyotomi tried to dig in, but with a cry of rage, he too, was sucked into the void. The black essence attempted to flee from his body as it was pulled back and struggled to re-enter the statue, but soon even the base of the heavy statue shifted and flew towards the wind tunnel.
The disembodied scream of the demon echoed around him and he looked back to meet Sango's tear clouded eyes. She was yelling herself hoarse and beating against the barrier, desperate to reach him.
"Good-bye, Sango," he whispered, just as the darkness crept down his arms and engulfed him. In the blink of an instant, he was gone and the swirling darkness vanished as quickly as it had come.
The shield that had kept Sango and Michi safe from the void collapsed, now that Miroku was no longer there to feed it and Sango buckled, curled into a ball, and wept with deep, gut retching sobs of despair.
The rest…was silence.