As far as Miroku could tell, the fight began in the red light of sunset. Sango, his ethereal wife, paced, fumed, and stuttered against the warm glow of the descending sun. She was red-faced, her shade bleeding into the yellow to orange to red sky. He should have been more ashamed, or more frightened, at least, of the way her hands opened then clamped shut erratically at her sides. Instead he was intrigued, his eyes following the red hot mess of her anger.

He sputtered that he was sorry in a sort of numb, obligate king of way. He wanted her to simmer down. She only tsked at him in response, and he sighed.

Shamefully, when she approached him with the smoke of a fire misting from her mouth, his only reaction had been to kiss her. His wife, who he'd just spent an inordinate amount of time from. She'd protested only at first, her lips tugging against his as though she meant to keep spitting flames at him while he worked at dousing them away. She melted when he took her face between his hands, the heat hissing as it steamed off her body.

Miroku had been absent from the village he shared with his small family for a month at best. He'd gone, lead footed, to answer a call for a demon extermination, as was his job. "Come back quicker this time," Sango had pleaded to him the morning of his departure, his two daughters wrapped around her legs, peering up at him with uncertain tears swirling around in their eyes. "It's frightening for us when you're gone too long."

If Miroku had known he'd end up moving further into the warring states than he initially intended, he wouldn't have promised his pretty, purse-lipped wife that he'd be home soon. A simple extermination proved to be more arduous than he first thought, and as he chased his prey across the country the weeks began to blur until he finally wound up home, a significant amount of money in his pockets, but too many cuts and bruises in his skin. His wife had blanched at the sight of them.

"I want you to promise me, and I mean really promise me," Sango said to him as she pulled away from his kiss, the antagonism falling from her. She furled her hands into his robes and pressed her forehead hard against his chest. The red of the sunset changed to a deep blue. "That you'll take me next time. The girls would be fine with InuYasha, and our son is nearly old enough for solid food. Rin could care for him."

"An exterminating husband and wife duo," he said, musing. "With you by my side my efficacy would surely quadruple."

"Damn right," she mumbled into the fabric of his robes. He folded her in his arms, glad that the red had faded enough for him to (safely) do so.

"I promise," he breathed into her hair. "I wouldn't dare turn down such a positive business opportunity."