V.

Enchanted Evening

"Sesshomaru-sama?"

The sound of a girl's voice shattered Kagome's fragile, unmade thoughts, and sent her leaping backwards into the cushion of her chair. Her face flushed furiously, and she turned her eyes towards the child who had entered the room – if nothing else, it kept her attention focused away from Sesshomaru.

Kagome recognized the girl; she had seen her before, hiding in the shadow of Sesshomaru's footsteps, always quick and quiet, smiling and polite.

Rin – that's her name. I haven't seen her in a long time...I wonder why.

Rin closed the library door behind her very quietly, but almost immediately there was a great banging, and Rin bowed hurriedly, allowed words to spill out of her lips.

"Sesshomaru-sama, Kinawai-sama has come and brought his mate! They are...in the Hall?"

She had not to stayed to greet their unannounced guests, but Sesshomaru's ears pinpointed them easily, and he nodded to let the girl know she had been correct.

"Yes. Go outside now, Rin. They will be...taken care of."

"Yes, Sesshomaru-sama."

As quickly, as suddenly as she had appeared, she was gone; with equal speed, Kagome's eyes darted back up to Sesshomaru's face

Kagome was almost saved from whatever Sesshomaru had planned for her by the arrival of those unexpected visitors. She had recognized the banging sound as the opening of enormous doors; now, as they closed, the sound was again audible from within Sesshomaru's library, and the insistent clamor gave her moments of hope.

She was frantic for a moment alone with her thoughts, just a moment, to breathe, to try and understand – but it was not to be.

The moment after hope bruised her mouth with a fiercer kiss than she had ever dreamed of receiving, deeper, darker than the first one. A hot place inside her was yawningly pleased, waking, reaching and simultaneously burrowing further out of sight, burning an emptiness into her blood. Quickly, her lips were torn, and there was no pain where Sesshomaru licked the small stinging wounds, or sucked gently on the drops that threatened to spill.

Liquid undulations of her body moved her, not against her will, but without it, pressed her against hard muscles that were covered by surprisingly warm, soft skin. His haori - where had his haori gone? It didn't matter; to be touched by him was to be electric; the sensation moved the air over her skin with hot wires of desire, prickling downy hairs into stiffness. She was closer to losing her all-important purity that she had ever been before, even in the grips of a love that had actually split her soul.

Now a different fire consumed her with a thousand times more passionate willfulness, and a moaning, growling, snarling noise writhed through her. Every moment that passed, searching for reasons seemed less and less appealing.

Sesshomaru had never believed humans capable of such sounds, and it was that single audible pleading of desire that shocked him away from temptation and back into his own mind. He pulled away from her clinging arms, staggered and passed his hand before his eyes. His tongue darted over his teeth and lips with a mind of its own, searching out every morsel of her that remained, reveling in what was really the most forbidden thing of all - the blood of a miko. But her eyes had regained their red color, darker than before, and she had torn his haori, in the act of pulling it off. As he noticed this he looked down at her, eyes wide, and saw that her breasts were exposed, three layers of rich fabric pulled aside, the obi hopelessly shredded. The mark of his mouth, his teeth, was fresh on her skin, and his hands - his hands were still touching her, still wrapped in the torn fabric.

Her eyes, the sounds she made, the smell of her blood, told him youkai, told him to take her - but she was so human, so fragile looking, her skin so thin – red trickles were painting her pale flesh where his teeth and claws had broken the surface.

The darker half of him had already raised her on a throne of her own blood, to be ravished and swallowed and drowned in himself.

No!

He refused to look back at her, flung open the door and fell out into the hallway, running, running. The taste of her was still thick in his mouth, drawing him, driving him, and he stopped finally with a crunching grasp on the railing encircling a high corridor, where it looked down over the entrance Hall.

His visitor was still standing there, waiting with impatient worries written over his face. Beside him stood another with female scent, features hidden by a hooded cloak. Recognition came almost automatically, coinciding with Rin's assessment – Kinawai, Lord of the North, and his mate, Kasuka. It was said that they were distant cousins, come together to strengthen the family, but Kasuka's exact bloodline had remained as hidden as Kinawai's was prominent. Heir to the Dragon Lords, a Daiyoukai and Lord of Tigers, the secret adaptation of his mother's Dragon forbears had given Kinawai the strengths of both spirits. Kinawai was...unique.

"Sesshomaru-sama, your counsel is needed!"

The Tiger-lord's voice came up at him over the railing, but Sesshomaru spared just one more red-glazed glance for the only one he might have willingly called friend. Then he spun away, and darted quickly into the farther reaches of his home. In secret places and dark, behind the allure of common knowledge on more ordinary shelves, he sought the reality of half a memory that might save him from destruction.

He could not feel such things for a human! It was as simple as that. He would not allow it, nor let such defilement linger with him for longer than need be. It had to be true – true! - before he would give in.

He wanted her, all that soft flesh vulnerable to his claws and fangs, bloody and panting. He needed whatever it was she held out before him in those fragile hands, glowing with a violet and blinding light.

His hands pushed aside ancient records, old scrolls, bound parchment, some of them on the edge of turning to dust in his hands. The room was musky and thick with the scent of paper and years, but he did not move, sorting through shelf after shelf, drawer after drawer, his eyes bright gold and glowing through the shadows. His hands were moving as if guided by an unseen force; he did not know what he was looking for but he knew what he was looking for. In passing, his eyes caught a line of text - "...and it was thus that the shikon no tama was created, more precious than all other gems...".

He let out a breath of contempt and impatience.

That particular fragment was not what he sought, but it sparked thoughts he pushed aside for later. It did not do to forget that his Kagome had restored the shikon no tama - nor that she carried its influence with her at all times. Quickly, his hands flickered through pages, unrolling, untying, his eyes scanning as rapidly as he could manage.

Finally, his fingers closed on a scroll that was, surprisingly, not as old as the rest When he unwrapped it, his eyes widened. The hand - this was his own hand that this was written in. This was what he had been seeking; before he read more than the first character, he knew.

"Of the secrets hidden in the blood, only those of blood and fire shall be revealed. I do not trust history, or my own memory to last forever, but words have power to last..."

There! This was the power of concealment he had been seeking – and the release that could reopen a youkai soul to the power of its blood, the fury and passion that usually came with the first hints of maturity and leapt into life like the seed of the fire blossom. He scanned the page rapidly, his hands shaking, the blood rising again in his eyes. It could be true, it could be – after all, he had no idea at all where Kagome had come from. Her past was like smoke to him, opaque and impenetrable.

"Words have power to last..."

Sesshomaru spoke those words aloud to himself, taking their ancient flavor away with the translation. He clenched the betraying paper tight in one fist. It was telling him to succumb to temptation, that the temptation was a magic purpose, the hunger of Kagome's blood seeking to be released. It was harder than that to believe that a human miko could be his blood match…but she was a miko. His eyes lit suddenly, and he turned away from the dark places walked back towards the light, extinguishing torches behind him.

Perhaps it was fortuitous that Kinawai had come, after all - Kinawai, who was known as the Dragon-eyed, Kinawai, who had the gift of Sight.

If there is something about her that is hidden from me, if there is more to this than demon eyes and blood-scent, he will tell me. I want - I want -

He wanted desperately for it to be true, and did not dare admit it even in his thoughts. As it was, he knew he was being foolish; it had been true until he told her and she had wanted him to give her that release. It had been true while he touched her, and while she reached out to him...it had been true while he took thatkiss from her...and another...and now, now, it was not true?

At the end of the passage leading out to the light, Sesshomaru stopped dead and looked down at his hands. The reason for his discomfort, for the atrocity of his change of heart, was suddenly obvious. It darkened his vision, almost made him sway.

I am - I am afraid.

His own desire, his lust for the miko, was terrifying...but he did not understand. How could it be that he, Sesshomaru, son of the Inu no Taisho, was afraid? Was it...Kagome? But something in that thought did not feel right, and as soon as it came to him he recognized the truth.

She is youkai; I know it. But - if she is not -

He was beginning to feel like his entire life hinged on that if.

"Miroku! Miroku!"

Sango's voice, strained and high-pitched with an edge of fear, shattered the still quiet of the morning. When the sun had peeked its first sleepy rays over the horizon, she had gone to the tree where Inuyasha always sat, staring vaguely into the south after Kagome, who he had lost. She had wanted to try again to get him to talk, to say why or where Kagome had gone, but he was not there; not anywhere in the village, or the forest the bordered it. Even the cave he had thought so secret, betrayed by Kagome's trust in her friends, if not his, showed that he had not visited there for at least days.

"Miroku!"

A tousled head of dark hair poked blinking around the curtain of a small hut, squinting violet-black eyes against the sudden ferocity of the new sun.

"Sa…ango?"

Her name was interrupted by a pearl-toothed yawn.

"It's...barely past dawn. We aren't wandering and fighting any more, you know. Is it possible that one of these mornings I might get to sleep past first light?"

Sango dismissed his words with a glare and a toss of her hair. She had let it grow longer, and she wore it loose and free now that she was not always in battle, but she had yet to grow used to the tickling weight of it.

"Inuyasha is gone, Miroku. I've checked everywhere I can think of – the tree he has been sitting in, the houses in the village, even the cave in the forest. Nothing and no one has seen him since sunset three days ago, and I can't help worrying."

To her disappointment Miroku only shrugged, with a helpless look on his face.

"Frankly, I'm not really surprised. I counted him a friend, traveled with him before we ever knew you…and still I know that he stayed with us and protected us because of Kagome. Because he loved her, and tortured himself for it. To be honest, Sango, I…expected him to leave long before this. I was glad when he stayed, but I did not think it would last forever."

Sango hung her head, all the tense focus going out of her shoulders. She seemed to collapse in on herself like a doll without stuffing.

"I…you're right, of course. But where did he go, Miroku? Where could he possibly have gone?"

Grimly, he stared out towards the horizon, one hand coming up to push sleep-mussed hair away from his face.

"He won't come back here, I know that. There is no place for him here, not without Kagome, and this place is full of memories that must be painful to him. No, he will...he will wander, I suppose. I don't think he's gone to find Kagome, or he would have done so that very night the battle was finished."

Sango shook her head, trying to cling to hope.

"But you and I were wounded, and Shippou was here…he had to come back, just to bring us, and she was…gone. That's all I could ever get him to say – that she was not dead, but gone. And I wondered...if she had gone home, back to her own time - but she didn't, did she, Miroku? She wouldn't, not without saying goodbye."

Miroku peered past her towards the trees, his eyes momentarily blank.

"No, I don't think she would, Sango, but she might not have had a choice. And anyway...do you really think he would sacrifice his life with her for our lives? If Time had taken her, Inuyasha would have gone, too...or we would be on a new quest, searching for a way to bring her back. Something happened and I don't think he'll ever tell us what."

"If we hadn't been -"

He interrupted her anger with a sharp word.

"It isn't your fault, Sango, or mine - Inuyasha wouldn't have let her wander the forests we've seen, the plains we've crossed, just to bring us back here. Our wounds were not that serious, Sango. Neither of us would have suffered from a night on that battlefield any more than we already had. We destroyed the only enemy on that plain; all that was left was death and bones."

He reached across the space that separated them and took her hand, pressed her cold fingers gently between his own.

"We must find our own way, Sango, not linger in memories and hopes that have been taken away. If either of them is meant to come back to us, they will come. Would you search the whole of Nihon?"

Her fingers relaxed in his grip, trembled a little with a bare caress as response.

"Then what do we do? What task is left to us? I won't give up on her - I can't! But now it seems that our little group is really broken – without her, without Inuyasha. I promised I would care for Shippou – I remember that, and so does he. But he is still just a kit, and she's the second mother he has lost, now. He won't even consider that she isn't coming back. It would be too terrible, so I won't do it either; for his sake."

She was asking hopeless questions, asking without the real expectation of an answer that could be followed in a straight line. All logical paths had been emptied of purpose or meaning for her, but Miroku was not so daunted. He had already begun his life over again three times; first, when he was just a child, when he had learned of the nature of his curse, the possibility of his death. A second time, he had started over, when he had left his master's instruction to seek Naraku's death.

Now, this third time, he was beginning again - with Sango, Sango, whose iron beauty had stolen his heart, making all other women seem like fainting flowers in the spring. Now, perhaps he could be a real houshi, living like he was supposed to live. He could take advantage of the leniency afforded by distance and time; he could take a wife, in this village, and no one would complain. Once, he had not even dared to dream, and now he could take a wife and have children whose lives contained no obligation. They would be able to choose their own path, as he had not.

Sango waved her hand in front of his face, amused and perplexedly aggravated by no answer to her questions; not a sound, not a platitude escaped his lips, though he was staring quite alarmingly and contentedly into invisible distances.

"Miroku?"

"I am going to be a houshi."

She was stopped quite short by the ridiculous simplicity of his statement.

"You already are a houshi."

"Not really; not a houshi who is responsible for the healing of the people, not a houshi who protects them from evil and from youkai - not a houshi who can stand in the sight of the kami, and speak for them."

Suddenly his gaze became more intense; he squeezed more tightly the fingers he had not let go of, enveloping the softness and calluses of her hands in his own.

"Such a houshi would need a strong wife, Sango. Danger surrounds this place on all sides, and the shrine I seek to protect must have its servant."

"Miroku."

She spoke softly, as if she did not dare to breathe. They had not spoken of the marriage that they had promised each other since before Naraku was slain, before Kagome had left them. The months since that day had been full of worrying and wondering, trying to build a place for themselves in the peaceful life of the village. She had almost begun to wonder if he had forgotten, if he regretted the promise he had made.

I should have known better.

Smiling, Sango allowed him to keep his hold on her hand; they walked together through the village, talking in quiet words about the battles they had fought, the victory they had won. They did not discuss the future, or the immediate past; they avoided those subjects which were painful, or dark with blood.

Kaede watched them more carefully than usual as they sat for the evening meal; even Shippou's eyes brightened a little, seeing what had always been so obvious to everyone else, finally becoming obvious to the two of them, as well. When Shippou was in bed, Miroku went to stand in the doorway and look out at the moonrise.

"Sango, will you come out and walk with me?"

There had been a time when she would never have trusted him alone in the dark; now, she looked up quickly and then down, nodded so he could not see her blush. He brought her to a shallow depression, not quite a valley, where the trees at the edge of the forest swung around in a narrow 'u' shape. The canopy was open over their heads, and the night revolved around them as they sat hand in hand. The stars became blurs of light in a warm dome of darkness that revealed more than was concealed, that fed half-desperate ardor that had been hidden by the sun.

Fumbling, blushing, Sango gave Miroku her first kiss - and Miroku, knowing that it was, was gentle with her, restrained his passion and led her delicately, his tongue barely brushing past her lips, his hands exerting only the gentlest tug on her shoulders. Her shyness had made him forget that she was a fighting woman - that gentleness was never what she was after. Quickly, her kisses became insistent, her hands tugging, pulling him closer, her mouth greedy, hot -

Slowly, Miroku disentangled himself, and stood. Her eyes were bright, questioning, distressed, and he sighed as he took a step back.

"I am going back into the village now, Sango, back to Kaede's house."

"Mi - Miroku?"

She was more beautiful than ever in her softness, her vulnerability - but that only made it more necessary that he step away now.

"I will not take you into my bed until you are my wife, Sango. You deserve no less, but if I do not go now - "

He smiled, flushed a little.

"Lovely Sango, luscious Sango, you have always underestimated your effect on me. When we are married - "

"Then - marry me soon, Miroku - "

With a little gasp, Sango flushed and clapped her hands over her mouth. What was she saying! Had she really -

"It was always my intention, Sango, but if you will allow it...tomorrow, I will speak to Kaede."

Slowly, she dropped her hands and lifted her eyes, shining over red-blushing cheeks, to meet his gaze. She nodded, wondered if she could become any more red. Tomorrow, he would speak to Kaede.

Tomorrow -

"Good night, Sango."

He turned away then; she was too beautiful, too tempting, kneeling in disarray on the grass.

"Good night, Miroku."

A/N: Much thanks to: foxgodess07, reviewer number one! Anime Lady PIMP, reviewer number two! Chrissie0770, reviewer number three! Annnnd wrecklessangel, reviewer! Number! Four! Phew...um...ok...Kouga's Older Woman - reviewer number 5!(if you think that was an interruption...ahahaha); flynalien, the mighty number six! Seleni, magic number 7, extra thanks for awesome praise :D - and, last but not least, Anime lady PIMP, who gets double props for TWO reviews - 2 and 8, how awesome is that? PHEW! You all ROCK! ahem. Now, chapter five is up! We see Miroku and sango! Annnd..other people. Mwaha.

Not to make this author's note too long or anything, but I just had to say - I have retyped this chapter FIVE TIMES in the last...twelve hours? Because everytime i finished it the page flashed back and it was ALL LOST. moral of the story...I'm typing on word from now on, which has autorecover. HA.

Please Review!

[overexcited by reviews](- should be obvious…)

Final Revisions, complete! Woo! Psyche test, 99! Also woo! I thought I was going to fail, yay! So...more soon, R&R! :D