I'm kinda back on my bullshit. Kinda. In my last attempts to post, I had every intention of keeping up writing, and getting to update my stories every week, but as I tried to get back on my bullshit, my life got back in its own bullshit hard. I ended up in hospital, and have had three operations in the past couple of months. One of the operations worked, the others didn't, so I'm still struggling with some issues. I have other things going on in my life that are causing a lot of stress too. I'm trying to make space to write, but it's not happening anywhere near as much as I'd hoped it would do.

Plugs before reads. If you love this story and cant wait for updates, I do have other stories for you to peruse. Namely: Catch The Rain, an InuYasha fic, Perfidious, a Bankotsu fic, and In The Jaws of the Wolf, a Koga fic. Take your pick, though i cant promise that any of them will be updated soon. Im trying to do what I can, but Im learning my own limitations.

Miasma

Here the power is ruthless and the truth is deaf. Here the air is filled with the miasma of sin.
-Jean Racine

Cool sweat tricked down the back of my neck as I laid in bed, staring up at the dark wooden ceiling above me. I'd been woken from my fitful sleep well over an hour ago and no amount of counting the dark knots in the planks above me I could see through the pitch dark had helped.

Beside me, Naraku's even breathing continued unbroken.

It had been just a few days since he had pushed me to bathe my hands in my true husband's blood and taken the mantle of husband and Lord himself. So much yet so little had changed in that time. Trying to think about it in any capacity left my mind reeling.

Naraku had taken to the role of Lord almost too well. He fit seamlessly into Kagewaki's place, attending meetings and smoothing over the aftermath of Nagasaki's death and the Tsuchigumo's attacks. I'd continued to attend the meetings, keeping up the appearance that the man at my side was Kagewaki Hitomi and still needed the support that I had needed to give him. While Kagewaki surprised me with his prowess with dealing with the nobles and dignitaries we came in contact with, it surprised me none that Naraku dealt with these men with finesse. His words were chosen so carefully, and spoken so smoothly, that he had these men dancing in the palm of his hand. My attendance truly was just a show now, to show the people around us that the sickly son of the great Lord Hitomi had a strong support and would not crumble has they suspected.

In those meetings, I could almost forget the events that led up to now. They were in the realm of what had become my normal. He and I were just a husband and wife dealing with the aftermath of great struggles and paving our own way through the world.

It was when the meetings were over, and the rest of life began that the changed truly had begun to mount.

Kagewaki and I had shared rooms, but we hadn't always stayed together. Some few nights, I had retired back to the room I had been given when I first arrived at the castle. Some nights I was needed to help care for the sick and injured of the castle. I had more than proved my ability as a healer in the wake of the Tsuchigumo. Some nights I stole away with Naraku. In the short time since we had married, I had actually spent more nights away from my husband's bed than in it.

Since Naraku had fit himself into Kagewaki's life, that had changed.

I was in his bed every night. That brought with it a funny sense of familiarity. It wasnt so long ago that Naraku and I were together just about every night. If we didnt retire to my room together, then he was waiting for me in my own bed, ready to pounce the moment I closed the door behind me.

Now there was no sneaking around in the dead of night, or listening out for the patter of the rare servants feet outside the thin fusuma doors.

Now if I wasn't in Naraku's bed by the end of the night, he came to find me and escorted me there himself. It wasn't unpleasant, that change. Some of the greatest times Id had since arriving at the castle had been laid in bed with Naraku, idly chatting and learning about interesting things he would share about his demon life and culture. It was a whole world I never knew existed, and if I had anything going for me, it was a voracity for knowledge.

Really, most changes that had happened in the last few days had been rather pleasant.

My favourite koto had been moved to our rooms. A lot of our downtime between meetings had been spent with Naraku listening to me play, as he often had before.

If I wasnt playing, then we sat and chatted, most often curled up naked with his fingers carding through my hair and my own playing idly with his, as we often had before.

It felt too normal.

It felt like this was what life was supposed to be like here.

It felt normal. It felt right.

Until it didn't.

I got caught on little things.

It was still too soon to break myself of the habit of curating each meal for Kagewaki. Every day I had gotten as far as serving the meal before realising that the effort was for naught. Naraku, imbued with a Demon's strength, didnt need the careful diet Kagewaki did, and in fact, didnt need any diet. He'd expressed, in his usual casually mocking way, a total disinterest in human food. It left me almost every meal with too much on my hands, and often too much of food that I wouldn't naturally choose for myself. I hadn't really taken into account my own food choices when I had been curating meals for Kagewaki. I just ate what was there in front of me. Now I had the choice to think about what i could eat, decide what I fancied and what I didn't. It felt strange after so long with a restricted diet. I could never run down the street for Family Mart karaage again, but I could choose to forgoe rolled egg if I wanted to.

I'd caught myself in moments of mindlessness, too, calling the man oft beside me Kagewaki, or trying to share in one of the few inside jokes that he and I had shared, and either remembered mid-word, or been reminded by Naraku that he was not who I really shared those moments with, though he had all those memories at his fingertips. He understood, but didn't have the sentimentality of the moments to care to banter with me the same way Kagewaki did.

The gentle moments were different. Naraku and I were not short of gentle moments between ourselves, but they were astronomically different. Sometimes it was jarring, to unconsciously expect one action, yet receive another.

What truly got me, though, were the night sweats, the struggles I had in getting back to sleep when I gasped awake with the unsettling feeling that I'd had a nightmare, but the hazy memory of it already slipping away into the abyss. I could only guess what those nightmares were about, and that guessing was what kept me up for countless dark hours. The mind could be a terrible thing.

The cold dark nights, like tonight, were when the facade of the past few days really unravelled.

Unable to face the unsettling chill of a distant nightmare for a fourth night in a row, I slipped out from under the covers of our futon and rose to my feet. Beside me, Naraku stirred slightly, but settled again quickly.

Instead of heading towards the shoji door leading into the rest of the castle, and onwards towards the music room, I made my way to the screen doors leading out into Kagewaki's gardens, bending to pick up the first kimono I could grab from the crumpled mess Naraku had left our clothes in earlier in the night.

I wrapped Naraku's hanjuban around me as I slid open the door and stepped out onto the veranda. If anyone saw me right now, they'd probably die of shame, seeing me so unclothed, or be horrified at the tattoos peeking from the bottom of the hanjuban. Luckily this garden had relative privacy. If I stayed within the confines of Kagewaki's garden, then I wouldn't see anyone else on my impromptu walk.

The moon was large tonight, big and beautiful and dominating a skyline already full of twinkling stars. I'd never quite got views like this in Tokyo or Kyoto. I'd been on trips into more rural areas of Japan before, but it still didnt feel the same as the beauty that laid out before me. This was untarnished.

The dirt was cold under my bare feet as I eased my way off the veranda and down into the garden proper.

Disappearing into the foliage felt like disappearing from the too-loud thoughts in my head. The leaves and flowers brushed against my skin, enveloping me. The garden took me in like an old friend, surrounding me in its beauty and comfort.

The unpleasant chill of sweat on the back of my neck dried as I walked, and soon peace found me.

It was ripped away just as quickly as it was found, when the gardens gave way to the fenced boundaries, and to reality.

A line of graves stretched before me, illuminated by that bright moon I'd just a moment ago admired.

Nausea rippled through me as I took in the sight. Numerous full graves, the smaller grave of Sango's brother, and the uneven mound of dirt that had been Sango's own grave. My arms wrapped around me, seeking comfort over heat as I stared down at the final not-quite-a-grave.

It was the only grave to bear flowers that hadn't already wilted with time. Flowers I had put there myself just a few days ago, when I had buried a bloody scrap of silk in the mound of dirt - the only thing that had been left of my husband bar a puddle of blood and a sullied kaiken, both of which Naraku had taken care of, like they never even existed.

Bar his name, Kagewaki was erased.

With Naraku taking his place, him and I were the only ones that even knew of Kagewaki's death. The man would never get an official grave. He'd never have an official place for people of the castle to mourn him.

I couldn't do anything to fix that, but I could give him something. Even if it was a pitifully small something. Just a place for me to visit to pay my respects.

Respects…

Nausea roiled hot and hard in my belly. Was it right for me to want to pay my respects if I was the one that had cut his life short? Far too short, even with the abysmally low life expectancy of this time. I dont think I had ever actually found out Kagewaki's age, but I knew it was young. He was certainly significantly younger than I was. Twenty four? Twenty five? Was I ever likely to find out?

I crouched before the grave and reached out to touch the small branch of flowers I had broken off a tree to place over his new grave.

I remembered a fleeting conversation we'd had in the early days of knowing each other. He'd said something about being like the flowers in his garden, hadn't he? Delicate and sure to die.

I'd called that conversation depressing, and I was pretty sure I'd mocked him for it.

I didn't think that he would actually succumb to that depressive thought. Even where we were, he was young. He had every chance to get healthy…ish, and thrive, live to be a wise old man. Maybe even stay alive for decades out of pure spite to his childhood ill health. With some encouragement, he had displayed the constitution to do that.

But he had succumbed to the fragile death he thought he would. Like flowers, his life had been pruned.

By me.

The branch was brittle in my fingers as I picked it up, some of the bark flaking away.

I stared down at the delicate pale colour of the blooms. In the dim light, the papery wilting flowers didn't look their usual bright white. They had a purple tinge to them, which reminded me of the favourite kimono he chose to wear.

"I'm-" sorry. That was what Id wanted to say, but they caught on my tongue.

Everything was messy in my head. The apologies I felt I should give, no matter how woefully short they would come in making reparations, just wouldn't spring forward.

I felt them, that shame and horror. of course I did. This man was my husband, even if our marriage was a strong arm.

But every time the apology c\rong armed into this marriage, and my feelings for Kagewaki had never quite bloomed into true love. Maybe if they had, things would

have turned out differently.

But then…maybe they wouldn't have.

The urge to live was strong, and I was only human.

Death scared me. It scared me so much I had thrown my entire life into getting a job that actively fought death at every step. It scared me enough that I had killed a man to keep myself alive.

I wasn't proud of that, but the very fact that I was here right now to feel this shame was the reason I had taken up that kaiken and carved the life out of Kagewaki instead of succumbing to the same fate myself at Naraku's hands alongside Kagewaki.

My choice had kept me alive. Alive to live another day, to walk another step, to do whatever I could to keep my life going and chase that mythical purpose everyone in the world was chasing but so few ever found.

I dropped the branch back onto the grave and stood again, looking down at it with a cold sort of regret before turning away.

I returned to the relative safety of the castle, to Naraku's arms, amd to the dark sleep.

At least I couldn't remember what plagued me in the dark embrace of sleep.

Pub Quiz Time!

Fusuma - a fusuma is a solid panel used to partition rooms in traditional Japanese architecture. Often they were highly decorated in antiquity, but are less decorated nowadays.

Shoji - like fusuma, are partitions, but these are usually made of latticed wood and paper, rather than the more solid wood that fusuma are made of.

Reviews

Crystal Tsukino - Thank you so much for so many wonderful reviews! After so much time away from writing, and still feeling rough from recovery, it was so amazing coming back to so much love for this story and my writing. Thank you for all the support! Ive truly loved reading everything youve had to say, and Im so honoured that you like my characters and plot so much. Coming back to such wonderful reviews makes me so happy, and I hope I can keep writing like this to give you the stories you want to read

xXRitz-aholicXx - Yeah, this story is pretty damn messed up, but sometimes it's fun to write something that isnt your standard romance. This story is definitely veering into Dead Dove territory hard, but its fun to write. Im glad youre enjoying it!

It has been so so long since Ive had the chance to write anything, and genuinely it feels like Ive found a part of myself again. Ive missed this so much.

I hope I can get back into it, and continue writing the story that you all deserve, but I can make no promises for that. Im honestly struggling with my life right now, and I dont know whether I can dedicate the time needed to write, alongside recovering from my operations, getting back to work, planning a move across the county.

So, I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I genuinely hope that I can write more for it soon, but i genuinely cannot promise anything. I'll try not to let it be two years again. I will try my hardest.

But for now Im going to go curl up on the sofa and welcome the sweet embrace of death.

Thank you for reading!