-A/N- WELL, THIS ONE CAME ABOUT COZ I REALLY WANTED TO WRITE SOMETHING INVOLVING OUR VERY FAVORITE NEKOMATA. I AM STILL WORKING HARD ON MY OTHER STORIES, BUT IF YOU GUYS REVIEWED JUST A LITTLE MORE, I COULD GET THE CHAPPIES IN FASTER! SO... REVIEW!! 'K, MOVING ON...

-DISCLAIMER- (SIGH...) NO OWNIN HERE...

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Sango, being already over a month pregnant, was unable to dodge the strike the vicious oni was throwing her, and braced herself for the pain. She didn't feel anything, and when she heard a hiss and a snarl, her eyes snapped open. Kirara had placed herself in front of her master, protecting her from harm. Sango quickly fled the site and motioned the nekomata to follow, but it was too late. The oni gave one last swipe to Kirara's head before shattering under the taijiya's boomerang. Sango and everyone else, Kagome, Shippo, Miroku, and Inuyasha ran over to the injured feline, and Sango pressed her snout to her heart, but Kirara gave one last hazy, glazed stare, took a last shuddering breath, and closed her large red eyes for good. Sango sobbed over her corpse, refusing to let go, even when both Miroku and Inuyasha tried to pull her away together. A burial was held that very hour, but when Sango tried to say something over her faithful cat's grave, she only spit out salty tears, and ran to sit alone by the river. After the burial had been completed and Miroku had said a prayer over the grave, Kagome prepared dinner, but instead of staying inside to eat, she carried a bowl of soup out to her friend. She watched as Sango slowly took the bowl, as a few tears slid into the spoon. She heard a choked sob.

"She... She would always sit with me here. Kirara would, I mean."

She turned to face the younger girl, and Kagome saw, through the window of her eyes, just how broken her soul really was.

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She felt fat, ugly, slow. Kagome was no help, with her nose always stuck in a book from her time on childbirth. Sango watched her turn green looking at the pictures and wondered just how bad it could be. Miroku wasn't much consolation, either. He fed her empty compliments that she knew he didn't mean, because he was never with her and looked happily at her belly, but disdainfully at her. She felt so alone. Before, she didn't have this problem because of Kirara, but now... Occasionally, when they hadn't had another lead on a jewel shard for a while, Inuyasha would come in with Kagome and stare reproachfully at the book that took up so much of her attention. Sometimes he would sneak a glance at her, but would look away when he saw the pain in her eyes.

When she was about 7 1/2 months pregnant, she woke up from a nap with a terrible feeling. She convinced herself it was nothing, and tried to go back to sleep. That morning, 2 village men, who had accompanied Inuyasha and Miroku on a mission to kill a demon, returned home alone. She could hear them talking to Kaede outside.

"I'm so sorry, but the monk was killed by the weasel demons, and Inuyasha stayed behind to carry his body, but he should be arriving soon..."

Sango felt her heart jolt, and she bit her lip to stifle a scream. Suddenly, a sudden pain filtered through her every pore, and she really did scream. Kagome snapped out of the book and watched as Sango's pupils dilated and she screamed with her all. She rushed over, making soothing sounds, book forgotten.

"Sango, honey, I think the baby might be coming."

Her eyes got even wider, if even possible. She shook her head frantically and screwed her eyes shut, trying to block out reality.

"No... NO! It can't be, it still has another 6 weeks to go!"

"Sango, Sango, calm down, it's called premature labor, almost all babies survive it..."

"But what if mine DOESN"T!?"

She was breathing heavily, a cold sweat had broken out all over her body. Kagome wasn't feeling too peachy herself. She ran around the hut frantically, locating items with an urgency that would have frightened anyone.

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Inuyasha had just reached the village, carrying Miroku's lifeless body, when he heard a scream. It made his blood run cold, and he ran as fast as he could with a grown man's corpse in his arms. He laid Miroku down outside Kaede's hut and rushed inside, taking in Sango's panicked form sweating and shaking in fear, and Kagome's also panicked form administering medicinal herbs and trembling with nervousness.

"...should help a little with the pain..." Kagome handed Sango a small cup of tea steeped with an herb meant as a painkiller.

"What? What's happening?" he asked, voice shaky.

"Sango's gone into premature labor. I've just given her some pain medicine. I can't tell what triggered it, though..."

Sango sipped the last of the medicine.

"It was because I heard the villagers outside..." she choked back a sob. "talking about... M-Miroku-u-u..." She was howling profusely at this point, and her face went blank as another contraction hit her.

"What? What's this? What about Miroku?" Kagome looked to Inuyasha for an answer, but he looked away.

"Well, there were a whole of 7 weasel demons, and I couldn't get them all at once... But Miroku...-" something that looked suspiciously like a tear welled up in the corner of his eye and rolled down his cheek, and he swallowed, hard.

Kagome's gaze softened.

"S'ok. You don't have to say any more. Now get, Sango's got a baby to deliver!" She playfully pushed the hanyou out the door and turned back to Sango.

"'K, Sango? I'm gonna have to have you push as hard as you can the next time it hurts."

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Several hours later, as Sango held her newly born child, she marveled at her strange features. For example, both Miroku and she had hair dark in color, but the baby's was the fairest she had ever seen, aside from Inuyasha's, and black at the roots. The skin was as fair as cream, and she had strange black birthmarks both in a diamond on her forehead, and in 2 triangular stripes in her left hip. Her breath caught in her throat as the baby's eyes opened, revealing eyes that were a faded red where they should have been white, with black slanted pupils, just like a cat's

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-A/N- SO, WHADDYA THINK SO FAR? I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO A STORY OF THIS SORT, BECAUSE I'M SO GOOD AT WRITING DARK AND HEAVY. SORRY IT'S SO DEPRESSING, BUT I HAVE TO GET THAT OUT OF THE WAY, OR IT CAN NEVER BE HAPPY! 'IT'S ALWAYS DARKER BEFORE THE DAWN', RIGHT? ANYWAYS, YOU KNOW THE DRILL, READ & REVIEW!

~XIE XIE, JOY