Mending

Author : Saraste
Fandom : Inuyasha
Pairings : MirokuxSango, past InuyashaxKagome, past Kouga/Inuyasha
Rating : PG-13
Genre : Slash with a side-serving of het(non-explicit), Family, Angst
Warnings : MPREG
A/N: THIS IS A REVISION OF THE FORMER CHAPTER TWO. I rewrote it after a comment I received, sharing it into two chapters. Just means that I added some stuff at the beginning and chopped off the end and added stuff to it so it filled out to become a chapter.

* * * * * * *


“Here, have some tea,” Sango laid a cup down in the floor in front of Kouga. The man didn't acknowledge her other than nodding absently, he kept on looking at the child he held in his arms protectively, his and Inuyasha's daughter. A child he'd very nearly lost that afternoon.


He still saw Inuyasha taking a swing at him, and her, in his minds eye. Kouga shuddered.


The taijiya and ookami were sitting on the floor of her and Miroku's hut. She had led him there to calm down after Inuyasha's violent outburst. The hut wasn't grand but it was large and homey with lots of room for the baby. It was lived in. A home.


Unlike the hut Inuyasha resided in, a ghost of a place, memory haunting every inch of wood. A cage for a mourning soul. But neither Sango nor Miroku had gotten Inuyasha to leave the place and it's oppressing memories. They hardly got him to do anything.


And now this.

The ookami's arrival had stirred Inuyasha out of his month long stupor but the reason of Kouga's arrival had taken all the surviving members of the former Shard seekers by surprise. The former taijiya smiled sadly as she looked at the tiny girl bundled up in the ookami's protective arms. She was beautiful with her tussled black but white hair and the ears on her head, twitching adorably as she slept, were an undeniable proof of her origins.


Sango sat down next to Kouga as he continued to sit rigidly, hands shaking, gripping his daughter protectively. He'd almost lost her today.


I knew I shouldn't have come...


“Kouga?” Sango asked softly, her voice soothing, snapping Kouga out of his little world. He finally turned to her, a haunted look on his face.


“I never expected him to hate me this much. I mean, what we did, how she came to be,” he nodded towards his daughter, “it was cheating on Kagome but it was just a one off thing. But I couldn't believe he'd hate me as much as to go all youkai and try and...” He choked up and ran a finger on his daughters soft cheek.


“With his history you'd think that family would be the one thing Inuyasha wouldn't...”


His daughter's pale blue eyes opened and sought out his, her face lighting up in a beatific smile. She gurgled happily and grabbed onto Kouga's finger with her small hand as he wriggled it in front of her. Then she snatched the finger as her personal toy. Sucking at it eagerly, she quickly fell asleep again.


Kouga smiled at her warmly.


“You love her very much, don't you?” Sango asked, smiling at them. She shifted slightly on her spot, her back was aching again. Her hand caressed her swollen midsection, feeling a fluttering sense of movement against her palm. She really couldn't wait for the baby to come. Only some weeks and then...


“She's my world.” He raised her up and kissed her cheek, hugging her tiny form close. “My Aiko...I love her more than everything. More than I loved---” Kouga stopped abruptly and looked to Sango in panic.


“More than you ever loved Inuyasha, right?” Sango sighed and looked at the ookami. Men were dense, Kouga as much as Inuyasha had always been. Poor Inuyasha...


“I see him in her, very day. She's a constant reminder of what we had, even for only one night. My little loved one... Inuyasha only looked troubled afterwards, when he left in the morning, but there wasn't hatred then, that came after. And I was angry, so angry at him..” Kouga raised his head wearily. “He really hates me, doesn't he?”


Sango averted his eyes, sighing deeply. “I think” she said finally, turning back to look at him, her eyes flickering briefly over his sleeping daughters tiny face, “that he hates the world. He hasn't come to terms with his loss.”


A shadow passed over her face. ”Inuyasha loved her very much, as you know. And still...” The former taijiya frowned. “Still there is something, something not quite right...”


“What do you mean?” Kouga asked.


“His grief is so all consuming. So intense. But it is to be expected, knowing now that you two were intimate...” she coughed delicately, her warm brown eyes straying over to Aiko, “Now I think that maybe Inuyasha has been feeling guilty over it but it still doesn't explain it all.”


They sat in silence for a short while, both immersed in their own thoughts.


But their thoughts weren't that dissimilar, they were both thinking about Kagome. She had been a dear friend to both and her passing had left a rift in their lives that would never be fixed, could never be mended.


She was now only a sweet memory of a laughing, exuberant girl that had left their lives as abruptly as she'd come. Neither would never forget her.


Kouga was the first to speak. “I... Could you take me to Kagome's grave?”

Sango simply nodded.


* * *

“She would have had our baby...”


Miroku turned around at Inuyasha's raspy voice. The hanyou's eyes swam with tears as he lay there on the floor of the hut, restrained by ofuda's. The revelation stabbed at Miroku's heart. The loss his friend had suffered had been beyond anything he could ever have imagined even before now, but the hanyou's revelation made it even more heart breaking. To have lost both Kagome and their unborn child...


“Inuyasha...” He wanted to ask why his friend hadn't told him. Why Inuyasha hadn't shared his burden, a burden too much for anyone to bear alone. Miroku couldn't even begin to think what he'd do if something similar would happen to Sango.


Inuyasha's head snapped sharply at Miroku's direction, his eyes full of feverish emotion, pain, anger... “She would have had our pup and then she was gone and I couldn't save her! And our baby...” He inhaled a shaky breath, the loss fresh again, the pain acute, time hadn't lessened the hurt not one bit. But now, lest he go mad, his mind had sought out someone to blame. Someone to accuse of the hurt and searing pain in his heart. Someone to hold resposible.


“It's all that damned bastards fault!”


Going from sorrow to anger in a flash, the look on his face, the glint of red eyes, made Miroku flinch and back away from him. The monk held his shakujo in front of him, his other hand fumbling for more ofuda. Inuyasha cried in rage and struggled against his binds.


“Calm down.” Miroku talked to him in a soothing tone, not abandoning his position. Inuyasha's volatile moods to unpredictable to be taken too lightly. Better be safe than much sorry later. Then he thought of something, a last resort to calm his friend before he needed to restrain him more. “Kagome would not want you to behave this way, Inuyasha.”


The rage melted into sorrow in the blink of an eye. Hearing her name, the mention of her was too much for Inuyasha. He broke and the red melted from his eyes. And he cried, the mere mention of her name once again opening the flow of tears that had been absent for months after Kagome's passing, the hanyou's grief being expressed through his adamant attempt at trying to starve himself in hopes of joining her on the other side, hoping he was human enough to get there. But now the raw sorrow made him cry again, made him shed tears for her sake as much as his own. Made the pain and sorrow show, made him show emotion again apart from the stupor he'd been in.


Miroku just looked at him, tears flowing down his own cheeks too.


What Kagome must have felt as she'd been attacked? If she'd had time to think anything. Let alone feel, apart from the demons claws digging into her gut and probably killing her baby even before it's mother drew her last breath. She'd choked on her own blood. They could only hope that she'd already passed out from the blood loss before it had happened.


At least she'd been happy for the short while she and Inuyasha had been mates. But that did not justify her violent demise at such a young age. Nor their unborn child's. Nothing could. The monk murmured a short prayer to her soul, the baby's soul, letting his tears come as they would.


“Miroku, I want to go see her grave...”


Inuyasha's voice broke the silence after what seemed like hours. Miroku couldn't really deny his friend this one want. To visit the grave of his dead beloved was what Inuyasha needed and Miroku would not stop him. So he answered the only way he could.


“Of course, let's go see her...”