Griddlebone (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ladygriddlebone) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly2024-05-06 08:25 pm
ladygriddlebone) wrote in fandomweekly2024-05-06 08:25 pm
Entry tags:
[#219] By His Side (InuYasha)
Theme Prompt: #219 - Stress
Title: By His Side
Fandom: InuYasha
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 874
Summary: Sango waits at Miroku's side.
Note: Snuck this in I think technically after the deadline, but I didn't see a voting post yet. If that's against the rules, I can delete the post or am fine being disqualified from voting.
It was a long time before Miroku slept. Sango sat beside him as the day slipped away, and grieved.
It was quiet in the rundown little hut, save for the unhealthy rasping as Miroku breathed. The sounds of their friends setting up camp occasionally carried in from outside, but those sounds were muted and distant. Sango felt almost as if she and Miroku now occupied a world apart.
And she was glad of that. She did not know what she would say to him, much less to the others. He was not likely to die from this; she had been given to understand that the kazaana killed in bits and pieces, up until the horrifying end. And that end was yet a long way off. Relatively speaking.
He might have a few more months. At best a few more years. The curse would claim him, then, and he would be lost to her—the same as everyone else she had known and loved. Her past was filled with graves and angry ghosts.
Small mercy that there would be no grave for Miroku when the kazaana was done with him.
There would be nothing left at all. Only memory.
She watched him sleep and fought back angry, futile tears.
Whatever future awaited him, it wasn’t enough time. Not nearly enough. She wanted to walk beside this man, to live at his side until they were both old and gray, until age carried them both to the next world. She wanted it more than anything, even as she knew it would never happen.
Amid the growing shadows, she stared impossibility in the face and did not back down. She had crawled out of her own grave when she should have been dead. Her quest for vengeance had brought her to Miroku, to her other friends, to this hut at this moment. To a love she had never expected to feel after so much sorrow and pain.
What did impossible matter to one such as her? What hold did “never” have on her?
The curse could be broken. There was a way. And that meant it could be done.
She clung to that knowledge in the face of everything else, and of Miroku’s frightening silence. Fear flashed through her, jolting her out of her thoughts and back into the musty and crumbling hut, its hold broken only when she saw the reassuring rise and fall of the monk’s chest. He still breathed, after all. But instead of the terrible rasping from before, his breathing had eased into something more normal and much quieter.
Sango knew enough of healing to know she must watch closely for other signs of change, that this was no indication the worst had passed. She was accustomed to the angry red of healing wounds, the purple-yellow-green of deep bruises on the mend. But with Miroku there was no visible trauma. There was no obvious source of injury, only the ravening void in his hand, covered by an innocuous gauntlet, sealed away by a string of prayer beads.
And, too, there was the strain of the curse, a constant stress on his body and mind, which only showed when he was too deeply asleep to hide it.
As he was now.
She ached to her core, seeing him like this. His beloved face, taut with pain and fear.
She yearned to touch him. To caress his face, to run her fingers through his hair, to kiss him before it was too late.
How much more would it hurt, she wondered idly, to lose him after such intimacy? It might be worth the risk of finding out. Miroku would not object, surely, to being woken with a kiss.
At that moment his eyes fluttered slowly open, saving her from the torture of deciding what to do. Kagome had left medicine and water, along with instructions should Miroku regain consciousness. Better to follow directions than think about temptation just now.
But as she helped him sit up, helped him to swallow the medicine and some water, she found herself babbling in response to something he’d said. She had shared precious little of her past with him, but some of it came spilling out now regardless. You’re good at this, he’d said, she realized. Mending injuries. Well, of course. She came from a village of demon slayers.
She was a slayer of demons, herself.
She caught herself, forced the words to stop. Proximity to the monk, and fear for him, had scattered her wits.
Now was not the time. Now she must be strong, so that she could accomplish her aims. But no amount of resolve could freeze her heart. She could not leave him so abruptly, or so coldly.
“Don’t be so quick to throw your life away,” she told him, finding words at last.
Her traitorous hand had reached for him almost without her knowledge. Even now, the fingers slipped through his hair. A daring act. An overreach. But one that had fixed his gaze on her, and that dark and smoldering gaze stole her breath away—and all power of speech with it.
Don’t die, Miroku, she thought. There is time to save you yet, and I intend to make the most of it.
Title: By His Side
Fandom: InuYasha
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 874
Summary: Sango waits at Miroku's side.
Note: Snuck this in I think technically after the deadline, but I didn't see a voting post yet. If that's against the rules, I can delete the post or am fine being disqualified from voting.
It was a long time before Miroku slept. Sango sat beside him as the day slipped away, and grieved.
It was quiet in the rundown little hut, save for the unhealthy rasping as Miroku breathed. The sounds of their friends setting up camp occasionally carried in from outside, but those sounds were muted and distant. Sango felt almost as if she and Miroku now occupied a world apart.
And she was glad of that. She did not know what she would say to him, much less to the others. He was not likely to die from this; she had been given to understand that the kazaana killed in bits and pieces, up until the horrifying end. And that end was yet a long way off. Relatively speaking.
He might have a few more months. At best a few more years. The curse would claim him, then, and he would be lost to her—the same as everyone else she had known and loved. Her past was filled with graves and angry ghosts.
Small mercy that there would be no grave for Miroku when the kazaana was done with him.
There would be nothing left at all. Only memory.
She watched him sleep and fought back angry, futile tears.
Whatever future awaited him, it wasn’t enough time. Not nearly enough. She wanted to walk beside this man, to live at his side until they were both old and gray, until age carried them both to the next world. She wanted it more than anything, even as she knew it would never happen.
Amid the growing shadows, she stared impossibility in the face and did not back down. She had crawled out of her own grave when she should have been dead. Her quest for vengeance had brought her to Miroku, to her other friends, to this hut at this moment. To a love she had never expected to feel after so much sorrow and pain.
What did impossible matter to one such as her? What hold did “never” have on her?
The curse could be broken. There was a way. And that meant it could be done.
She clung to that knowledge in the face of everything else, and of Miroku’s frightening silence. Fear flashed through her, jolting her out of her thoughts and back into the musty and crumbling hut, its hold broken only when she saw the reassuring rise and fall of the monk’s chest. He still breathed, after all. But instead of the terrible rasping from before, his breathing had eased into something more normal and much quieter.
Sango knew enough of healing to know she must watch closely for other signs of change, that this was no indication the worst had passed. She was accustomed to the angry red of healing wounds, the purple-yellow-green of deep bruises on the mend. But with Miroku there was no visible trauma. There was no obvious source of injury, only the ravening void in his hand, covered by an innocuous gauntlet, sealed away by a string of prayer beads.
And, too, there was the strain of the curse, a constant stress on his body and mind, which only showed when he was too deeply asleep to hide it.
As he was now.
She ached to her core, seeing him like this. His beloved face, taut with pain and fear.
She yearned to touch him. To caress his face, to run her fingers through his hair, to kiss him before it was too late.
How much more would it hurt, she wondered idly, to lose him after such intimacy? It might be worth the risk of finding out. Miroku would not object, surely, to being woken with a kiss.
At that moment his eyes fluttered slowly open, saving her from the torture of deciding what to do. Kagome had left medicine and water, along with instructions should Miroku regain consciousness. Better to follow directions than think about temptation just now.
But as she helped him sit up, helped him to swallow the medicine and some water, she found herself babbling in response to something he’d said. She had shared precious little of her past with him, but some of it came spilling out now regardless. You’re good at this, he’d said, she realized. Mending injuries. Well, of course. She came from a village of demon slayers.
She was a slayer of demons, herself.
She caught herself, forced the words to stop. Proximity to the monk, and fear for him, had scattered her wits.
Now was not the time. Now she must be strong, so that she could accomplish her aims. But no amount of resolve could freeze her heart. She could not leave him so abruptly, or so coldly.
“Don’t be so quick to throw your life away,” she told him, finding words at last.
Her traitorous hand had reached for him almost without her knowledge. Even now, the fingers slipped through his hair. A daring act. An overreach. But one that had fixed his gaze on her, and that dark and smoldering gaze stole her breath away—and all power of speech with it.
Don’t die, Miroku, she thought. There is time to save you yet, and I intend to make the most of it.
no subject
no subject