A/N: Because I've realized I dislike Sango, and I don't know why. So I had to write something that gave me more compassion for her. And because I was angsty.
Disclaimer: Rated for disturbing..ness. And rapid saturation of angst and mature themes.
Sango cradled an arm over the swell of her belly with something akin to awe.
Life.
She had created life.
Her. The one who had only ever had it in her to create death and chaos. She only knew of bringing about the end, never creating the beginning.
Growth, life, renewal... They were beyond her.
She was the dark, the strong, the unyielding... The girl with a deep, aching chasm where her heart had once been. The broken girl.
She had killed the only thing she ever knew, the little boy with liquid brown eyes and little freckles on his cheek, and a mole on his hip. The boy who giggled, and snorted and grew breathless when you made him laugh long enough.
He had been hers.
And then he died. And no one knew how she ached. How she suffered.
How she sinned.
The monk had thought to love the broken thing she now was, and she had tried to offer up what she had left. But they both knew. Most of Sango had gone into Kohaku's second grave. Like so much grave dirt and mold.
She wanted more for him, she wanted more than anything, in her achy what-was-left, to tell him to leave. All she was good for was death and dying. She was dying, and she had nothing left to die for. But she was oh-so-selfish. When she had time to think, she thought of how she burned even now for her sins.
There was no hell for her kind. The ones who were cut down and left standing, the ones who brought everyone else down with them, who killed what they loved most, and made the other love decay with them she was too damn selfish to unhook her ghoulish claws from her monk's pretty heart.
And now. She had life in her.
Sango stared at her abdomen, only slightly rounded, barely noticeable, and felt something she hadn't felt in a long time.
Her heart. Her soul.
Beating for something else other than the machinations of life.
And she was no longer dead-dying.
She was breathing.
She fisted her hand in the fabric of her pretty summer kimono, and no longer thought the sweeps of cherry blossoms that Kagome had lovingly embroidered on it for her grotesque.
Sango felt the sun warming her loose hair and her shoulders, and she no longer hated it for shining merrily while he was rotting.
"Sango?" Miroku's hand on hers, covering her belly. The warmth of his hand finally thawing her own icy flesh.
And she was crying.
Because she was alive. She was left. She loved still, and she had enough left in her after all to give something. She could give life. Could give her monk what he always asked for. And because she felt the stirrings of love!joy in her gut.
And because she was betraying Kohaku more than ever.
Sango traced circles on her stomach through the fabric, staring aimlessly at the sweep of the forest all around her, and felt lost. She didn't know what to do, now that she had broken away from the smothering overprotectiveness of the monk to get out on her own.
She had felt the overwhelming craving for freedom, and now that she had her few precious moments before he tracked her down and dragged her back into his ever-tightening embrace, she couldn't breathe.
She needed to go back to him. He was her link to life. He and the baby were all that held her here, away from the grave dirt, and the vacant cradle of the earth beside her other half.
And still, Sango sat, and drew ever-increasingly frenetic patterns on her swelling belly, counting her breaths and the thud of her heart beat, and the flash of red on her eyelids every time it didn't stop.
The sun was baking her black, into a burned cadaver, smoking on the grass, and the air was acrid and poisonous, and she was sucking in deep lungfuls, and her insides were turning to beautiful mush. The grass was razor keen, and it was slick-slicing her skin, leaving her with a thousand cuts, and she was dead-dying again.
And she embraced it, because it was what she knew, it was what she had earned.
Because Kohaku suffered less when she suffered more.
"Sango?"
Her eyes flew open, her shoulders already slumping with trepidation, her face already caught in a wince, expecting her monk's beautiful face to be twisted with soft hurt that she had left him.
But it wasn't.
Brown eyes locked onto hers, and her soul tore in two, (one for her and one for him, and neither had one at all) and she locked her arm over her womb and wondered why.
Kohaku kneeled in front of her, his face twisted with confusion, and he placed a hand over hers, feathering light finger-brushes over her skin.
"Is this why you let me die?" His voice cut into her, bringing her heart to life again, and cutting it deftly, so it bled in her chest.
"No." She managed, and clutched herself tighter, trying to keep together, because she was falling apart. Why did she want to stay together again? She wanted to fall into Kohaku. She needed to fall with Kohaku.
"Oh." He leaned over and pushed her arm aside like it was weightless, and pressed his small head to her rounded abdomen. "I can hear the heart beat. Yours too. Will you let him die too?"
"Kohaku." She was dying. Her heart was slipping out of her chest, falling into his lap, and she was dying. She wished it would fall faster. She also wished it wouldn't fall at all. Sango was deep-down selfish.
She wanted to live. She wanted to die. She wanted neither. She didn't want at all.
She wanted Kohaku.
She wanted Miroku.
She wanted so much, it was greedy, she was greedy. She was so bad.
"Don't let him die. I think I love him. I love you, too, even though you let me die. I can't help it, Sango. I want to hate you." He whispered, pressing his cheek into her kimono, wet warm tears soaking through the fabric.
"I know." Hate me. Don't hate me.
"I'll protect him. I'll protect you too. Maybe this time, I'll be the one who takes care of you. I'll keep you from dying. I promise." His solemn brown eyes rose up to peer into her own solemn brown eyes, and she reached forward to rub the bloody tear tracks from his cheeks.
"Okay." She wished he would tear her traitorous heart out instead.
And then he was looking over her shoulder, and hissing, his face twisted nastily, and she turned to see the familiar figure swathed in purple and jet tearing through the barrier of trees. Miroku caught sight of her and nearly tripped over his own feet in apparent relief.
"Sango!" He jogged over to her, collapsing beside her, his shoulder brushing Kohaku's arm, and took her hand into his and shook it with repressed fury and fear. "What possessed you to come out here alone! What if you had been attacked? What if-"
"I'm fine." And she let him pull her to her feet and crush her into a fierce, but cautious hug. His formerly cursed hand smoothed over her abdomen, and she was surprised to find herself leaning into it.
Kohaku gave her a look of pure venom, and then retreated just out of her reach.
He knew she suffered when he was out of reach.
"I'll take you home." Miroku breathed in her ear. "Don't run again, please."
"I won't." She swore, and she was lying.
Kohaku giggled, and her heart soared and crashed and burned.
"Stop ignoring him!" She screamed, and threw her bowl and watched it bounce and cave into a hundred glistening pieces. Sango felt like the bowl of stew, seeping into the wooden floor, leaving solid bits here and there, but never together.
She felt them exchange looks of concern and confusion. All of them. Miroku, Kagome, Inuyasha, Shippo, Kaede... Only Kirara and Kohaku didn't join in. Mostly because Kirara had taken to gluing himself to her hip, or letting Kohaku trail his fingers through the firecat's fur.
And Kohaku was currently prostrating himself in front of Sango and the baby protectively, guarding in case the monk got too close.
Miroku reached for her hand with a soft murmur of soothing intent, but her hand was cradling her getting larger by the day belly, and Kohaku hissed and clawed out at the monk.
Miroku made a noise of surprise and pulled back, his hand scored with several deep scratches that welled up with crimson, and stared at her with surprise.
Sango was staring at her own clawed hand with morbid fascination. Her heart iced over. Her nails were smeared with teardrops of crimson. Monk's blood.
"Don't let him touch my baby or you." Kohaku glared at her, his teeth bared.
She shook her head obediently.
"Sango, this needs to stop! That's my child too! And- and you're my wife. I need to be able to touch you. I want to touch you. Please." Miroku cradled his hand, his face carefully neutral, although she could see the cracks.
Sango was breaking. She was shattering, and no one saw. She wanted to throw herself into Miroku's warm arms, let him thaw her, and fix her, and breathe life into her. But she couldn't.
She owed Kohaku so much. More than he asked for.
"No. No." She shook her head, and felt the edges of her long hair whip her cheeks. Kohaku crawled into the cradle of her lap, and she wrapped him close to her, letting him bury his cheek on the pillow of her swollen belly.
And she wondered why she felt no thrill of heart warmth in being able to hold him anymore. Maybe she was fading faster. Maybe her heart was too far gone for love, or affection.
Maybe he was thieving too much of her heart and soul for her to feel.
Maybe she hated him.
Sango gasped, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
Kohaku gave a hearty snort and giggled breathily into her skin, and she threaded a trembling hand through his hair.
Miroku nodded, his violet eyes darkening briefly before he turned and dug around for a blanket in the corner of their hut. His mouth was tight when he stalked stiffly over to offer her the woolen blanket from a safe distance.
Kohaku glared at him from the warmth of Sango's embrace. "Too close to us. Too close to my baby." He growled.
"Too close." She repeated, sounding broken.
Miroku scowled and took a measured step back and again offered the blanket. "You're going to get cold, wrap this around yourself." He bit out, his tone carefully neutral, void of any betraying emotion he hid.
Miroku was resting against a tree, a few feet away, the maximum distance he would allow her. He watched her with an intensity that made her heart swell and burst in her chest, like someone had reached right into her and squeezed her heart.
She turned away from him and waddled as close to the water as she could. Kohaku followed hungrily, eying her belly possessively.
Sango reached out a hand for him. "Come sit with me, Kohaku. Right here by the water. You can feel the baby kicking."
She didn't try for a smile. She couldn't manage it. Her emotions were wrung dry, and she shuddered as his small frame hunkered down within the safety of her legs, trying to fit himself as close to her as her huge belly would allow.
"Not much longer now, huh?" He breathed excitedly, looking both like the little boy she remembered, and completely at odds with that memory, because of the wicked hunger that darkened his eyes to black, and twisted his mouth into a terrible grin.
She shuddered, and then tried to hide the movement in a shifting of her newfound, awkward dimensions.
"No, not long at all." She repeatedly blankly, watching his reflection ripple across the water's glassy surface.
"Do you love me, Sango?" He watched her in the water's surface as well, gauging her expression. He was more suspicious of her with each passing day.
"More than anything in this world." She breathed, knowing it was the truth.
"Really?" He asked, his eyes narrowed suspiciously, his left hand playing with the end of her kimono absently.
"Cross my heart and hope to die." She promised solemnly, casting a look at the shadowed figure of her lover longingly.
"That's how it should be." He picked up a small stone and dug it happily into the skin of her calf, just shy of breaking the skin.
"Do you love me, Kohaku?" She asked, because she was selfish, and because even now, she was still bound to him. She ran a hand over his back, tracing old scars she could feel through his clothes. Scars she knew like her own. Scars she could see on her eyelids when she closed her eyes at night.
"Yes. I came back for you, didn't I?"
"Yes." She smiled sadly, and then she pushed him.
He fell into the lake with a light cry, and then she was scrambling forward as quickly as she could to the very edge of the water, hearing Miroku getting to his feet as he cried her name, misunderstanding the entire scene. Her new body was hard to move around in, but she managed to push herself forward enough so she could reach Kohaku.
He had begun to get to his feet, his hair dripping a torrent of water into his face so he couldn't see, and she panicked, terrified that he would look at her and she couldn't do it, and she grabbed out for him desperately.
She managed to hook the scrap of material at his neck, and she used it to thrust him under the water. It was surprising hard. He was inhumanly strong, and he fought her even as his head ducked under the water's surface. He flailed, arms and legs lashing out and thumping against her arms and chest with unbelievably sharp blows that knocked the wind out of her.
But she had a core of strength in her that she knew didn't come from herself. Her child lent her a inner vein of iron, and her monk had given her the determination.
She owed Kohaku everything. Everything. More than she had to give.
But her baby was beyond her debts to salve her guilty conscious, and to appease the ghosts of her own creation.
Because she knew he wasn't real.
She didn't cry as she held him under. She had cried all the tears she had when he had died the last time. She wouldn't cry for this fascimile she had constructed in her sick grief, in her black guilt. Because he was worth more than that.
"I love you, Kohaku." She whispered, though, because she couldn't help it, and because she was selfish. Because she wouldn't let him be at peace.
Miroku's arms were around her shoulders, his warm hands cradling her chest, trying to pull her back to him. She let him sweep her back after a last moment of token resistance, and as soon as she pulled her hands back, Kohaku's warped construct faded.
Miroku was planting hot kisses all over her face, whispering nonsensically in between, and cradling her desperately to his chest.
She cried then. Silent sobs, and tears that hurt all fell into the hollow of the monk's chest, and Sango buried herself into him, because she wanted to meld into him. Her heart wouldn't beat for her anymore, and she needed his to teach hers how to do it again.
Because she was letting go of the hurt, of the pain, of the grief, of the dying. Of Kohaku.
Because she was selfish, and she was bad, but mostly because she wanted to be whole again.
"He'll always be with you, Sango. You don't have to remember how he died. Let that go. He doesn't mind." Miroku whispered.
His heart thumped steadily against her back and her heart listened. It was remembering.