The Pain In My Heart

Title : The Pain In My Heart
Author : Saraste
Fandom : Inuyasha
Pairing : Miroku/Inuyasha
Rating : PG-13 (albeit this chapter deals with heavy issues morally)
Word Count: 6030
Warnings : disfiguration, mpreg, angst, dark
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Inuyasha depicted herein who belong to Rumiko Takahashi and the publishers of the series and the company who made the anime, I only borrow them in this work of fiction which I do for no monetary profit.
Summary : Inuyasha is unlucky enough to accidentally cross paths with Naraku while alone, Naraku beats him near to death and rapes him. Will Miroku be able to pick up the pieces of Inuyasha's shattered heart and make him whole? And once the unecpected consequences of Inuyasha's rape come to light, will his and Miroku's love be able to bring them together again and pull Inuyasha away from a sinister fate?
A/N: Yes, I'm thisevil. Look, there's PLOT!

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“You are a damned fool, houshi-sama”.

The words had been uttered with a low voice but were esily heard in the quiet of the field. He had been rather difficult to find, again, but she'd persevered. It was easier today as she had help, the man walked a few steps behind her. They found the monk attempting to meditate, or trying to look like he was, in the middle of a field some ways out of Kaede's village.

Miroku looked up at Sango, only noticing she'd come to stand by him when she'd spoken, her tone harsh and judgemental. Like always now.

It had been a month since Inuyasha had left, left in the dead of night without nothing but a note written by Kagome to say that she and Shippou had gone with Inuyasha and his brother. It felt like an eternity had passed since that morning.

They would have followed them, save for the last words... don't come. They'd made the monk rage, drop to his knees and beat the ground, screaming and weeping.

Miroku had been beating himself up for his idiotic behaviour towards Inuyasha every day since then. If he truly loved the hanyou all he should want would be to see him smile and be happy.

And he hadn't been able to give Inuyasha that. He'd been selfish. Succumbing to his inner struggles he had all but driven the hanyou away, pregnant and scared and sick as he was. His love hadn't been enough to make him see sense. To realize that all Inuyasha needed was his love and acceptance. Whatever befell them. And he'd failed. Because he was a fool, a coward, a man worthy of his bad reputation.

“The slayer's right... You love that idiot so why not just go after him anyhow?”

Miroku glared at the ookami sourly. Why did he have to be there? And why did he care?

“Why won't you go after Kagome, yourself?” he retorted coldly, his eyes narrowing dangerously. He did not like the ookami being there at all. Vitnessing first hand the way Inuyasha's absence hurt him. Seeing someone who could love without restraint gnawed at Miroku's heart, there was no complications as far as he could discern, in the relations between the wolf and the absent miko.

Kouga had come into the village that afternoon in search of Kagome. He'd been sorely disappointed to not find her there. And then he'd refused to leave before he was filled in on what she had been doing and where she now was. He was being a royal pain in the ass. Poking and prodding at things that should have been left undisturbed.

But there was another reason Miroku disliked him. He'd been the first to burst out the news that Inuaysha was impregnated by Naraku's seed. Driving his lover to run as fast as he could, spending strength and health he could ill afford to part with. Collapsing in the forest and nigh bleeding to death, his body giving out.

And while it was quite unfair and unreasonable, the monk hated Kouga a bit for it. If he'd just kept his mouth shut or been a bit more eloquent on the subject...

But reason it as much as he did, Miroku knew that as soon as Inuyasha had gotten better, or had not been so ill with the poison to begin with, he would have realized the truth on his own. When he'd seemed so shocked at the news, it had been clear that Inuyasha hadn't known that he could conceive. And Miroku had spent many a long night thinking how differently it would have all turned out had he been unable to. Or how sweet and utterly wonderful it would all have been if the child had been his...

So in the end Inuaysha would have known, even when he'd probably have denied it at first. But what really rattled Miroku was the fact that Naraku had seen Inuyasha. Open and vulnerable in ways the monk himself never had. He'd perverted an act of intimacy, something Miroku had thought he would have shared with Inuaysha by now had the attack not happened, perverted it into something cruel and painful. Taking away Inuyasha's choice and violating his body and mind. Leaving him on the brink of death. Leaving behind a bitter-sweet gift. A child. Begun in violence and saved by it's 'mothers' kind and forgiving heart. For it was as innocent as Inuaysha had been, not to be blamed for it's origins. Of it's conception through hate and terror, pain and humiliation.

What had made Miroku reel was that the child could have been his. Should have been his. Theirs. A child born out of love, mutual sharing of their passion, an embrace of pleasure, not pain. A child of love.

The child Inuyasha carried had been an accident. An unexpected result of the hanyou's humiliation. Innocent. Because it really hadn't been able to choose it's parents, the way it had been conceived.

And as long as Miroku could not accept it, accept the child's innocence, he and Inuyasha could never be. No matter the love they shared between them. Naraku's evil reach was long. His corruption still at work even now in the separation of the lovers.

Inuaysha had not even left him with a proper farewell.

“Don't want to rattle the old dog.”

Kouga's voice pierced into Miroku's inner thoughts and shook him out of them again. Out into the world where everything seemed to remind him of Inuyasha's absence, a world where he didn't really see the world around him, the beauty of a summer's day because he was so preoccupied with beating himself up. Miroku knew that he needed to focus on something else, for a while at least. Be it even the annoying youkai. Yet he'd lost the end of the conversation, immersed in his thoughts.

“What?” Miroku retorted, the tail of their conversation eluding him as his mind was still buzzing with his dark and dreary thoughts.

“Well it would be a bit awkward of me showing up there, I don't exactly get along with 'im.”

“Sesshoumaru?” Miroku asked wearily, folding his hands on his lap. He sighed. They would not let him think in peace and now he couldn't even try and meditate. He sighed again.

“Yeah, we're not enemies or anything but we don't get along...”

“That sounds like you and...” Miroku stopped mid-sentence, unable to utter his absent lover's name. It pained him too much.

Thankfully the conversation seemed to be at an end. With Kouga at least. But Sango, she wouldn't let the issue go.

“You're a damned fool, Miroku. I know Inuyasha hasn't always been easy to deal with but this, how you treat him now, it's unacceptable.”

Her tone was harsh. Harsher than it usually was when she was displeased with him, which had been often in the past. Before. When his hands had wandered. Before he had noticed Inuyasha's beauty, seen him, she had been an attraction to him. Something he wanted to touch, someone he'd have maybe wanted to kiss, love and bed. For a time. But then, by chance, Inuyasha had really crashed into his consciousness as someone who wasn't a mere friend. Beautiful and fierce and utterly desirable. And he'd been lost ever since.

“Don't you think I don't know that!?”

The monk sprang to his feet, deciding it was time to go. They could follow him around. Hopefully they'd leave him in peace for at least a brief time.

Miroku turned his back and strode away from the two, one who he called friend, a sister he never had and the one who was, what, on his way to becoming a friend. Maybe. But he needed to be away. Away and alone with his dark thoughts, his self loathing. It ate away at him, gnawing and twisting in his gut. And he deserved every single moment of misery.

Because he'd hurt Inuyasha so. He'd made him cry. He'd broken his heat.

* * * *

“You're an idiot!”

Miroku stiffened and his hands gripped his staff tightly. He should have known, it was the wolf. Again. Ever and always haunting his steps and berating him for allowing Inuyasha to leave. As if he would have stopped his lover had he been able to. He would have wanted to be able to, of course.

“What do you care, you always hated Inuyasha, remember?” the monk said without even turning to look at the youkai. Instead, he let his eyes linger on the play of the light on the gently swaying water. He'd once again wandered off to where Inuyasha had loved to sit. The place where his presence seemed to still linger. A place where he could say his name.

He thought that visibly ignoring the wolf would prompt him to leave. No such luck, however. Kouga walked to him and sat down next to him on the grass. They both looked at the river but not at each other, at least Miroku did not look, he couldn't tell whether the wolf was looking at him, like he thought he was. Must be. The wolf always had to push, he had no sense of decency.

“Maybe I don't,” the wolf finally said, and now Miroku did know that he was in fact surveying the stream, he chanced a look. “Don't seem fair now, when he's lost it all, to hate his guts. And after...”

Kouga let the words linger in the air between them, unsaid. He couldn't put the assault on his long time rival to words and the monk was glad for it. Glad and surprised, he'd have thought that the wolf prince would rub it in, say that Inuyasha had got what he deserved. But even he, it seemed, wasn't that cruel.

“And besides, Kagome said that she likes me...” Kouga sounded wistful, his mind clearly slipping into reverie over his last meeting with Kagome.

Something had passed between the two, Miroku was sure of it. The wolf's coming here into Kaede's village and staying there, it was too out of the norm to be regular. And it was suspicious enough to even jar him out of his stupor, the state of moroseness which Inuyasha's leaving had prompted. His life was so empty without his lover.

But now, all Miroku could do was look at Kouga in amazement. This was something he'd not expected ever to hear from him. The wolf grinned at him, baring his canines. Then his pale blue eyes became serious and bored into his. The monk sighed. What now?

“You really are an idiot, you know that, monk?” the wolf repeated solemnly, his tone more grave than Miroku would ever thought it could be when they were talking about the person they were.

“Did Sango put you up to this?” Miroku countered, lazily flicking a small pebble into the stream, making the surface of the water scatter, the reflection of the skies above, so peaceful and serene, exploded into a burst of colours.

Miroku was peeved.

What right did the wolf have to come and berate him, flaunt his own success in amorous relations to his face. To him who'd lost all but his own life. A life now hollow by what it lacked. Who was Kouga to judge him? They weren't even friends, only chance-comrades in arms. Not even his heart, which had begun to see Kagome as a very dear friend and should have been happy for her sake, not even that penetrated through his gloom. Meddling women! That's all they were. Meddlers, never could leave well enough alone. And Sango of all people, the one he thought he was closest with after Inuyasha. “If she did, tell her to mind her own damn business...”

“The taijiya?” Kouga glanced at Miroku, “nahh, she don't talk to me about you, much. Threatens to kill me if I hurt Kagome, though. In much detail. Repeatedly.”

The monk heard the wolf shudder, shake off the memory of Sango at her scariest. He chuckled briefly, unable to help himself. “Sango is a fierce friend. I'd try and keep her happy if I were you.”

“Point taken, thanks, monk,” Kouga sounded genuinely thankful.

“Miroku, just call me Miroku.” What point was there of him hating the wolf, really? And maybe a little politeness would make him leave. “Kouga.”

“Whatever you like,” the wolf drawled.

“Don't make an enemy out of her,” he reminded him. “She will kill you. Make good her threat. All of them.”

Miroku let his staff drop over his knees again with a soft jingle and concealed his hands in the dark folds of his robes. Looking at the water streaming undisturbed again, mirroring the softly gliding white clouds and the vivid blue of the sky, he breathed in a deep heartfelt sigh.

“I know,” Kouga said. He had seen her looks and Sango had talked to him at length about what would happen if Kafome became unhappy on account of him. Really using quite graphic descriptions. The ookami shuddered anew at the memory.

The wolf said no more, nor did the monk and they sat in shared silence. The other's morose, the other's pensive. Evening fell upon them, the water gently streaming by, the light fading as the rays of the dying sun kissed the treetops in farewell for the night. Both were without the company of the one they loved, sharing a mutual camaraderie of loneliness. Two men united through their longing.

He was as much of an idiot as Kouga had said to him.

And yet, for days on he did nothing. He stayed at the village while Sango stared at him all day long with a frown, her gaze yelling 'coward' to her every time their eyes met. The weather was sunny but did nothing to lighten his mood, shake away the clouds of doom which clouded his mind. There was no easy way to chase away the storm raging inside him. He only spoke when spoken to, did what tasks Kaede set out for him to do, wondered in passing if he should be looking at the shards. He should, shouldn't he?

They had been putting it off far too long. But there had been no clues, no word of Naraku's whereabouts. It seemed he had vanished to thin air. And, in the moments when thoughts of Inuyasha weren't the main focus of his thoughts, Miroku knew that Naraku had to be up to something. Some new kind of evil designed to kill them all.

One night he sat by the fire and stared at his hand. The curse was there, nigh staring at him. What if he never did go back into searching the Shikon no Tama? And one day, his doom would come and take away all the pain he had, wiped out all he had, was, could have been. Would he become a fading memory to Inuaysha then? Or would the hanyou remember? Kisses and warm loving words, the future that had been theirs but which had been undone by one man's foolish actions... Would he remember and suffer in silence?

Or was he already dead by Naraku's poison?

And that thought made him flinch anew. For surely he'd know. There would have been word sent to them had Inuaysha met his death while battling the poison still in his system. Naraku's assault was long and unexpected, his evil lingering in the very blood running through his lovers veins. And at that moment, Miroku physically ached to be by Inuyasha's side. His arm throbbed briefly and he gasped.

And he knew.

There wouldn't be much time for him to fret. Not much time at all. The rip in his hand was starting to keep him on his toes, throwing him reminders of it's existence. If Naraku lived much longer, the curse would claim him. Rip him open and consume him into nothingness. It made him feel ill.

“Will you rather die having done nothing, and never see him again?”

Sango's words cut into him. Miroku turned his head and looked at her. She had her back to the wall behind and was studying him. He looked the other way. He sighed deep. Why did she have to be so perceptive? He was glad Kaede was momentarily away and Kouga was somewhere in the woods, running, or whatever it was he did in the night. The monk was glad this discussion was private.

“Honestly, no. But I...,” he paused. He didn't know what he could say. Wasn't sure what he thought. And yet he knew. Knew it deep down. It was etched into his heart, that if he never saw Inuyasha again, he might as well be dead already. “No. I'd have nothing better than see him again. To say I'm sorry.”

“To say you love him,” she interjected. Kirara cuddled to her side and she pet her idly.

“That too.” Miroku sighed.

He looked at his hand again. Against the fire it was a mere outline, details omitted by it's remaining in shade, and he couldn't really tell his flesh apart from the cloth and beads. It felt normal again now. Had it really pulsed? Maybe. Or he was imagining things. Yet he knew it had been acting up more and more for months, while he'd been ignoring it for Inuyasha's benefit. His focus all on him. He sighed and looked at her, knowing she observed him with a keen eye.

“We should be getting back to looking at the Shards, even without Kagome,” Sango looked at him, winding her arms tightly around her knees. Her eyes bore into him.

He knew she was getting restless. Ever since they had met her she'd been driven by the sole objective of collecting the Shards and defeating Naraku. Getting her brother back, even when he might remember the horror's he'd taken a part in. Because he was all she had left.

“Naraku needs to be killed, if a way can be found with which to kill him, we must find it.” She sounded so eager, eager for battle, the blood bounding in her ears. Anything but this sitting around and doing nothing even when they knew not where their objective lay. Always the warrior.

“Yes,” he replied. He closed his hand to a fist and lowered it, meeting her brown eyes which stared at him over the fire pit between them.

“You don't have that much time left, do you?” she asked softly. She was compassionate, anxious and a bit afraid. It was hidden beneath the eager note of her voice but still there. Fear. To face the battle alone now that their troupe was so diminished. Scattered. Dispirited. And she was right to be so. Naraku's long absence was alarming. There was no knowing which devilry he was up to. They had no idea what plan he had to get rid of them and possess all the Shards their side had.

And he could not lie to her. Wouldn't. Not about this. She needed to know. And he needed to hear himself say it aloud. Maybe then he'd kick himself into action.

“No,” he replied curtly. And he felt a pain in his heart. “I wish I hadn't hurt Inuyasha so. I need all the time I can have with him. Because...” he stopped short, looked at Sango.

She smiled wryly at him.

“Because you don't think that we can beat Naraku?” she filled out his words. His worst fears.

“Yes.”

And they looked at each other, comrades in arms, siblings via shared tragedy. And she sighed, and he looked away. The hut was dark around them, illuminated only by the fire burning slowly. The wood crackled and the wind rattled the roof outside.

“Neither do I.”

And they fell to silence. Nothing more needed to be said. Both felt the weight of their words on their shoulders, their hearts cold because they were sure to face an enemy they mightn't be able to beat. It horrified them. The helplessness of admitting there was nothing to be done but to persevere and try their hardest. They might kill Naraku, die trying. Or kill him and die then, wearied out by the battle. But to win and live? Not the slayer nor the monk saw fit to entertain such a flight of fancy.

They were doomed.

* * *

He was so distracted that he couldn't even meditate.

It had been his morning ritual for as long as he could remember, his earliest memories, the few happy one's he had of his father before his kazaana had consumed him, were of them meditating together when he was a small child. His father would wake him up and take him by the hand, they would go outside to greet the newborn day and meditate. His father's presence near him, it was easy to fall into the mindset of meditation. After his father's untimely, yet all too sudden, death, meditation hadn't come easy for young Miroku. Something in him had broken, he had lost his family and become the bearer of the curse in one single soul crushing moment. Right after he'd seen his father consumed, he'd crouched down with pain lacing through his right hand, his days numbered from thereon. The bane to demons a death sentence to him. Wild and unpredictable.

And then when he had needed the connection, needed to calm his mind and reach some semblance of equilibrium, then it had felt impossible and hard to come by. But he'd persevered and found his calm again, and become the young man whose holy powers were formidable enough for Naraku to device a ploy against him lest he become consumed by the kazaana. He was in control of his curse, his meditation keeping it in check and himself sane, sane with the daily knowing that he was a marked man. His days would be numbered before he lived to be much older than what he was now. A few years was what he'd thought he still had but now, in the past months, he knew he didn't even have that. And it had been scattering his thoughts, reminding him of the days after his fathers death.

This was worse.

Every time he sat down, breathed in deep and tried to gain that elusive state of meditation, Inuyasha popped into his head. His face, bandaged or bleeding and horribly disfigured, never the face of happier days, with golden eyes shining with rare mirth, lips in a smile. Or the hanyou's voice ringing in his ears, sobbing at nightmares or bellowing with his usual defiance against a stronger foe which had been his doom. Inuyasha was in his head, in his thoughts, deep and ingrained. The memory of brief sweet kisses just out of his reach, the flesh memory of holding his lover as he shook in the wake of his horrors eluding him.

And the guilt.

The guilt thumped inside his head, it beat a rhythm of accusation. He should have known better than to ever hurt Inuaysha. He hadn't had a happy life before they all had met, only after Inuyasha's release from the Goshinboku had the hanyou really known friendship in full. And in the end, love. It gnawed at Miroku that he had been such a coward, that he hadn't been able to tell Inuaysha he loved him before he had been damaged and tampered with. He had, he had told him he loved him, sealed their affection with kisses, held his broken lover during endless nights when he'd wept, gasped in pain, held his hand. And then taken his heart and smashed it into pieces the moment the hanyou needed him the most.

One wrong move, and just because he'd not been able to contain himself. Because he'd been a coward.

And an idiot.

A damned fool.

Miroku shook his head, he felt the weight of his actions heavily, his body feeling too much, perceiving the world in a way which was not conductive to regaining his equilibrium, his focus. And yet he needed his focus. To beat Naraku, maybe then his traitorous morality, the thing which had deceived him, would accept Inuyasha's child as innocent to the act of it's conception. With Naraku dead, there'd be a chance that Miroku could see his lover's child as Inuyasha's only. Even when the child would never be that. The monk wondered if he'd ever be able to look at the child and not remember who had been it's other parent. To not flinch, contain the look of dislike in his eyes.

If the child lived. If Inuaysha lived through the birth.

And that scared Miroku the most now. It was a thought he tried to keep at bay because it terrified him, making his blood run cold. Inuaysha had seemed better before he'd left but the months of illness had wrecked his health. The poison which ran through the hanyou's veins had damaged his usual regenerative abilities. It had been evident with how slowly he had healed from the initial attack. It had taken months for scars to form on the deep gashes on his body which Naraku had left behind. And his eyes, those eyes which Miroku had always looked at with admiration, those lively eyes, they were gone forever. It had only been once that he'd seen what lay beneath the bandages and it had been enough to inspire many a sleepless night. And Inuaysha had still been ailing from them by the time Lord Sesshoumaru had showed up and ruined everything.

If Inuyasha's brother had only stayed away, away from their lives.

And that was selfish of him, incredibly selfish. He was jealous to the Lord of the West for his connection with Inuyasha, for their family connection. He had no family of blood any more, his last known relative having been his dead father. Yet he had been happy to see Inuyasha forge a shaky familiarity with his brother, a new connection after years of discord. Miroku blamed Sesshoumaru for taking his lover away, he must have agreed to his newly reconciled brother's hasty decision, it had to have been hasty, it was a lie to which the monk clung to.

Family, it was all about family, family and honour for the taiyoukai. He'd come and announced his brother's pregnancy in the wake of Kouga's blurted, ill-considered words, and saved the frail life of his brother's baby. It didn't matter to Miroku that Inuyasha would probably have died from the averted miscarriage, he had convinced himself that in that event, Sesshoumaru surely would have resurrected his brother with his life giving sword.

He hadn't considered the implications to his lover's shaky mind. Not at the time. But he had thoght long and hard about it. That Inuyasha clung to the child, a being that was his own flesh and blood, his precious child, as he clung to sanity. Anything to keep his mind from sinking into shadows.

And he knew that Inuaysha needed to love the child, if his thoughts had been the same as his own, the monk shuddered to think what would be the outcome. Loving his child to allay hovering madness, Inuyasha was stronger than he ever was. Seeing his child's innocence.

How could Miroku deny him that? Deny him the happiness which the thought of the child brought Inuyasha. A child who might end up killing him. The monk wondered whether Inuaysha had thought about how much of a strain the pregnancy was to his body, his ill and broken body. That by carrying the child, he might die? That thought was quickly shoved to the back of Miroku's mind, along with his own steadily approaching doom. If he thought about either of them dying, he'd weep. He didn't fear their death in battle, they had both stared it right in the face in the heat of a skirmish, because it would have seemed more natural. But to be consumed by the curse in his hand or for Inuaysha to die after his body being weakened by Naraku's atrocious attack, while he gave birth to the bastards child... Those were not options that he considered with a light heart, an easy heart. They made him break out in sweat and his heart beat fast, his mind reeling.

The thought that he'd never see Inuyasha again. Not in this world. It scared him to death.

“Trouble?”

She was a miracle. In his head he praised her for breaking his morose, if needed, thoughts. Maybe she could distract him enough so he could meditate and in doing so be more attuned to his powers. He would surely need them in the coming days. And the thought of going off with the slayer and the wolf chief, facing their common foe, it brought Inuyasha back. Damnation.

“Yes, I do not seem to get Inuyasha out of my thoughts. I cannot meditate when he is all over my head, it breaks my concentration,” he said to her, craning his head up to look at her.

The morning sun shone behind her, making her a dark outline, with him unable to see her expression. Which he did see was that she had her slayer's outfit on. So it had been decided. And well so, for he knew himself to be too much of a coward to leave the lethargy of staying in Kaede's village, waiting for his imminent death. “Oh, I see...” he said.

“We have to leave, the longer we linger, the smaller the chance to beat Naraku.” She moved a few steps so he could see her better. Her face was grim and determined, Kirara was perched on her shoulder, nuzzling her cheek. And her eyes smiled for that small comfort.

“I know,” Miroku said. “That is why I was hoping to meditate, I need to be able to fight him with all of my abilities.”

“And you think too much, yes?” She asked, absently petting her furry companion.

“Yes, that is the heart of it,” he admitted. “I know I need to fight so Inuaysha won't...” he couldn't get the words out, shook his head but the image haunted his mind. “Naraku needs to die.” He held his hand, his cursed hand. It twinged, more a ghostly reminder than a sign of the curse winding to it's obliterating end. “I need the chance to apologize to Inuaysha.” He sighed.

For from what Musshin had told him and how he'd himself felt in the past and now in the month's that had passed... He knew he was dying day by day, the curse throbbing each night with renewed malice, ticking away his remaining days. Pushing him towards his future of being consumed by nothingness.

“Before I die.”

And she sighed, even while he knew she'd been expecting it. She had seen him cringe at times, stop and look at his hand. Stare at it like he had that night few days ago. His doom was coming and she'd seen it. Knew it and was sorry for him.

“So we kill Naraku before that happens, then.”

Easy for her to say that, so easy. He chuckled darkly and she sighed again, realizing the absurdity of her words.

“I wish it was that easy as saying so,” Miroku murmured, looking at his hand. He drew it closed into a fist.

“Yes.” She complied, her hand gently stroking Kirara's head while the neko purred lazily. “And do not claim all of the world's suffering as your own. We other's suffer too, not just you and Inuyasha.” She sounded so sad and he knew he'd been acting stupidly. It was easy to forget the sadness of others when his own mind was so filled with loss.

For through Naraku's death, she might get her brother back. If not the way he'd once been.

“Won't you care that he'll probably remember?” he asked before he could help himself.

She stiffened and a single sob escaped her lips, it was almost a sigh masquerading as a tear. She turned her head so he wouldn't see what he suspected were there, tears in her pretty eyes. She was face to face with her companion now, closing her eyes as Kirara pressed against her face in comfort, sensing her distress.

“No I won't. As long as he lives.” And she looked at him. “I'm no better than you, I should wish him dead, for with him remembering how our father died, by his hand... It's more than I'd hope for anyone to have to bear on their conscience, even if he was used.”

“We always want them to live, no matter what...” Miroku sighed. Life was hard and the fates were surely against them all. Why did they all have to be so damaged?

“Yes, oh we want them to live. I should wish him dead already, go to death with him because I was powerless to stop him. I will kill Naraku for ever harming him, making him go through that, even if he might not remember at all times... And then I'll die with him. If need be.”

She was so determined. And he knew she might just go through with all that she'd said. Join her brother in death because he was the last thing that she had. Her remaining family who'd killed both their father and almost her too.

She was so much stronger than him.

Yet he'd die for Inuyasha, gladly. He'd die if it would mean that the attack on his lover had never taken place, he'd die in a heartbeat. He often wished he'd been the one to cross paths with Naraku that ill-fated day. His mortal human body wouldn't have lasted. He would have died in Naraku's hands. And then Inuyasha would have found his degraded body and been heartbroken. But he'd have been alive and unblemished and could have found someone else to love. Maybe even still reconcile with his brother. Maybe. But past was not something to be changed. At least such a power had not been granted to him. It was another thing for Kagome to be pulled into the past than for him to go back to the day of Inuyasha's attack and prevent it. He was no-one's reincarnation.

And yet he would die for him. Die for Inuyasha in battle if need be, hoping only that, when they were done, Naraku would be gone and the whole world well rid of his evil.

“I'll die for him.” His words held a finality in them. And he knew she knew he did not talk about her brother, of course.

Seemed both had someone to die for but no-one to live for. He did but he wouldn't live if Naraku didn't die. So he would be content to die to assure his demise, if it came to that.

He only hoped he'd been able to see Inuyasha one last time, have one last kiss, tell him how sorry he was for having behaved so inexcusably and cruelly.

“Today?” Miroku asked, closing his eyes and folding his hands, trying to meditate again. He heard her shift beside him as his mind slipped into the comfortable, familiar, calm. So sought after and only found when he'd accepted his fate. Such cruel irony!

“Today,” she confirmed. “I'll leave you to your meditation. I will talk to Kouga, he might come with us. It is a fools errand, but what can we do?”

“It always was a fools errand, Sango my dear.”

“I suspect it was. We'll eat before we leave.”

As her steps moved further away, he slipped deep into meditation.