Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

(11/25/04)

A/N: Yes, I have been working on this since last year. Angst is very special to me and something I work very hard to write properly - that is, if I can write anything properly. And with most of my oneshots, all I want to achieve is capturing emotion.

- May

-

-

Do you see this girl?

Kohaku stares emptily into the mirror held by pale hands that did not twitch, nor quiver.

His master prompts him again. Look at her.

She is a sight, with long bound brown hair, large eyes lined with magenta. There is a glimmer, almost indiscernible, alight in her pupils. For one reason or another, or maybe none at all, he doesn't miss it.

He cannot stop staring. She is sitting below a rich night sky, a deep navy. There is a man next to her. His mouth moves. He smiles. She laughs. She laughs. He purses his lips. He looks at her. She blushes. He touches her hair. She leans to him. They stay like this.

What can you tell me about this girl?

They are startled. She looks up, flustered and blushing still. She moves to stand, but the man takes hold of her hand. She holds up one finger, and says something. He winks. She smiles. She smiles.

She is walking away from him, still blushing. The man looks at his hand.

Then the entity of nothingness wills the image to dissolve, and clutches her mirror to her chest.

"She is happy." She is happy.

"Master?" he startles the boy.

"Kohaku." He motions. "We are leaving."

-

The darkness tell us truth, and we fall, believing his lies.

I betray you.

SHAPESHIFTER

Between life and death, we are one.

-

"Are you cold?" Miroku asked as another breeze flitted over them.

"No," the girl beside him denied quickly. "I just have - a strange feeling." She looked down in embarrassment. "Do you notice it?"

"Like we're being watched," he said softly. He brightened. "But I don't mind that at all."

"Yes, because you don't mind watching others either." A sullen expression crossed her face. "I should have expected you not to mind this - voyeurism."

"You're free to watch me any time, Sango. Bathing, sleeping -" He angled his head to peer at her more closely. " - right now."

Her cheekbones became prominent as she fought back a smile and a blush, clearly emerging unsuccessful in both endeavours. Then, her smile broke to give way to a laugh, that echoed into the night.

"Houshi-sama," she said with a coy countenance. "I'll never figure you out."

He leaned in closer still, until the tip of his nose touched the apple of her cheek. "Good," he said quietly.

Too busy revelling in the heat that radiated off of her skin in waves to see how saucer-like her eyes became, he had to grin.

"I - I just remembered," she said, a little distantly. "I must check on Shippou and Kirara."

She placed a hand flat on the grass to support her as she rose to straighten, but something pulled her back.

"Promise you'll come back," he requested.

Holding up her index finger, she replied. "In a moment."

He winked. "Or you may watch me from a safe distance."

She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a hum. "And you, may not."

Turning around and shaking her head, she smiled and blushed as she walked away, towards the neat rows of houses nearby.

He looked at his hand. From a safe distance.

-

"Won't you close your eyes, Shippou?" Sango said soothingly to the kitsune, pulling the blankets up to his chin.

"I'm trying!" the little cub insisted, kicking his tiny feet beneath the sheet. "Kagome gave me candied apples before she left."

"Why would she do that?" Sango wondered aloud.

"So that I wouldn't tell Inuyasha she was leaving."

She sighed. "I see."

Kirara wandered over sleepily from where she had been napping before Shippou had caused a commotion. Curling up beside him, she mewed as her own feline form of coaxing.

"Sleep," Sango tried again. "Please?"

A chill fell upon her back, and she shivered, suddenly cold to the marrow. A sharp breeze rustled past, rattling the door covering.

"Sango?" the little kitsune whispered. "What was that?"

Glancing over her shoulder, she turned back to Shippou comfortingly. "Please sleep," she whispered. "I'll take care of it," she assured him.

"But Sango -"

The only answer was a sharp breeze that made Kirara's fur stand on end.

-

There was a portion of flattened grass where they had been sitting. He was not there.

Another gust of wind whistled by her ears, and she feared for him. She didn't want to call out for him in the dead of night, and awaken any nearby demons. Instead, she listened, and ducked to the ground.

A chill.

And then she started to run.

The way the winds shifted so suddenly - the way they froze her insides. It couldn't mean . . .

He would go far, far away. As fast as he could before there was a chance that I -

Two figures draped in shadow.

Who were they? What were they doing? Why were they here?

The moon rose a little higher in the sky and the light from it reflected off the sharp edge of a pointed blade, held by a shaking hand.

The smaller figure was mostly obscured by a taller, larger form; a familiar one, which never failed to cause her uneasiness - nervousness. He shifted, turning his captive around slowly, beaming, holding him by the shoulders.

Her heart didn't know whether to cry for relief or pain. Either way, it would cry.

"I have him, Sango." Then he smiled.

"Houshi-sama -" she breathed. "You - is he okay?"

He nodded slightly, his face mostly shadow. "But he is still at unrest."

Her eyes flicked downward from the monk's; the air of indifference and veiled intentions unsettling to her senses. She concentrated on her brother, still and quiet throughout it all, though he refused to meet her eyes. His sister's eyes.

But he wasn't hostile; no, only dormant.

"Kohaku?" she didn't know why she phrased it as a question. Perhaps to make sure it was really him. She reached out.

Miroku quickly moved him out of her reach, and she drew her hand back, surprised.

"Not yet," he lectured, touching the boy on top of his head, almost - condescendingly. "He's still scared."

"How did you find him? When?" Sango demanded, her confusion and frustration levels rising. "What are you talking about?"

"He was wandering . . . I happened to see him, and I held him back," Miroku explained distantly, gripping the boy's shoulders. "He doesn't recognize you."

"I know that," Sango snapped, tight-lipped. "But I am still his sister, and he might be hurt -"

"You want to defeat Naraku, don't you Sango?" Miroku said suddenly, glancing up at her. A hand, the cursed one, remained resting on Kohaku's shoulder blade. "For doing this."

He wasn't indicating it, but she knew he was referring to the silent, impervious shell of a boy barely holding himself up, mindless to what was around him.

"You know I do," Sango whispered. "With everything I have."

"But to do that," Miroku said, playing off her reactions. "We need more power."

"What are you talking about?" she nearly snapped. "Listen, can we please talk about this later? Can we just take Kohaku back to the village with us?"

There was the feeling of something pricking at the back of her neck. Was it fear? Or maybe anxiety. Anxiety that even the monk's attentions could not slake.

She had to have been staring at his face intensely to catch the transmutation between relieved, good-natured smile and mysterious, macabre grin. His expression would flicker between the two emotions often.

He reached towards her, brushing the back of his fingers along her cheekbones and her hair. "You never think about yourself, do you?"

Her face did not flush, instead growing ice cold, and she almost slapped his hand away. Strange, what she wouldn't give for this kind of touch from him - touching her face like this . . .

Her eyes fluttered open - she hadn't noticed closing them - and they filled with pain and confusion as Miroku continued to hold her brother away from her.

"Trust me, Sango. Do you trust me?" A flicker. The words simple; the question simple, but to her, so abstruse. For a moment, there was that warm, gentle smile. It was merely a twitch of his facial muscles now.

"Yes," she said softly. 'I don't. Not right now.'

"Then," he said in a voice low enough for only her to hear, low enough to make her shiver. "I suppose I'll have to apologize."

The world around her turned red as all of a sudden, blood was everywhere. She could barely see it in the dimness of night, but she could smell it, hear it falling upon grass; blood was so familiar.

Events seemed to replay in slow motion, through a blurred lens. Two figures, sharing mellow glances and quiet moments of silence, able to love and not really say it aloud. Then the present, where things had gone from tranquil to chaotic, familiar to strange.

Then, when everything slowed to a crawl in her mind, she could see it so clearly. His hand, his wrist, wrapped with the sealing rosary, coated in red. Her brother, bleeding and twitching but unable to show that he was.

That glimmer, that dreadful little shining sliver between his fingers. He held it up so that it could catch the moonlight. "We need this," he mouthed.

Her brother's body slumped in Miroku's arms as he concentrated on that cursed jewel in his hands. There were the remains of Kohaku's excuse for a life, a shard of the jewel barely visible in Miroku's bloody hands.

"How -" she couldn't finish. Instead, her hand automatically found it's way to the handle of her sword, and she had lunged at him.

Even with all the rage that filled her, there was a hesitation in her swing that he took advantage of, and he twisted her wrist so painfully that her sword fell softly on the grass, along with her brother.

"No, no, Sango, save that energy for Naraku," he said, his voice sounding silky falling on her ears. "Let us say a prayer for Kohaku now."

"How dare you," she spat, twisting out of his grasp and falling to her knees in front of her brother. "How could you say that to me after - after doing this?"

Reaching out, she picked up her sword again, new realization forming in her eyes. She darted around him. "Who are you?" she hissed, pressing her blade up against his throat. "Who are you?"

"I am Miroku -"

"Don't lie!" Sango told him, taking his wrists and holding them together. He wasn't resisting, and he seemed so sure she wouldn't kill him.

"Sango, what are you doing? Why are you doing this?" he asked, the tendons of his neck pressing against her blade as he spoke. "I'm Miroku, your monk - your houshi-sama."

Her hand shook, and with a swift and inhuman strength she'd never known him to possess, he had seized the blade with his bare hands and pushed it away. He reached behind him and grabbed her head, flinging her over his shoulder.

"You don't believe me," he said, almost sadly, as he stood over her and her brother. His hand was not bleeding from holding her sword. "I'm not the one who did this." He gestured to Kohaku's body, staring into her eyes that seemed to ask why. "You did."

And then she was back on her feet, all physical pain forgotten, all inner turmoil consuming her. "You're not him."

Miroku tilted his head a bit, contemplating her. "But I love you, my darling -" he touched her chin, "- exterminator." He grabbed her wrist and pulled at her hair, bringing his face closer and bruising her with a kiss.

"I want you - now," he said in her ear, roughly pulling at her clothing.

She flinched away in disgust - not noticing that he let her - and picked up her sword. She swung at him, but again, with inhuman reflexes, he had darted a few yards away from her.

"Does it hurt, my dear Sango?" he taunted, almost mocking her. He held up the shard. "Would you like me to put this in your back?"

With eyes narrowed to slits, blood pounding in her ears, and rage that seared through her body with a heat she had long forgotten, she made a vow.

"I'll kill you," she vowed, her voice low in the night.

-

He had wanted to get as far away from her as possible. If it were to happen, he didn't want to risk hurting - killing - anyone. Not her. She didn't deserve that.

He had run as fast as his training had allowed, which was a generous speed, until he had reached the end of the land, for it became water. There he sat, making ripples on the surface of the lake, not sure what he was waiting for. His arm to disappear? An unearthly pain?

Then he stiffened considerably when he heard the soft flattening of grass close behind him. He stiffened the way he would if someone had dropped an unbearable weight on his shoulders.

Of course it was her. He could see her reflection on the water.

But he should have heard her coming sooner. Sango - he could always sense her particularly well - more so than others. Either she was deliberately quiet, or perhaps she had been working on her stealth.

It couldn't not be her. That was absurd. The women, the drinks, the general disregard for his own well-bring - in the end, she was always Sango.

"I thought I'd find you here, houshi-sama."

"You should not be here," he said evenly. "You know the dangers of -"

"That's right, I do know the dangers of being around you at a time when - something like that could happen," she replied, standing beside him.

"Then, why did you follow me?"

She didn't answer. Instead, a stone flew through the air and into the water, shattering their shadowy reflections.

"You are a coward."

At this, he grew even more forlorn. "I know."

"You are so many horrible, despicable, dishonourable things," she continued in her honeyed tone. Every syllable beat on him. "So many."

He didn't answer.

"Other men - those who aren't fooled by your silly charades - laugh at you. A decent woman would never let you lay your hands on her. You are cursed - foul, and useless."

He was silent.

"You hurt more people that you have ever helped, monk. Is it even right for me to call you that? Because it's a lie. No one could bring themselves to love you, and that hole in your hand is waiting for you to accept that there will be no one to care when it kills you."

"Stop."

He saw her reflection smile from her position looming over his seated form.

"Except me," she whispered. "I put up with all of the shit you put me through. Maybe it is because I love you, maybe not."

His hands fisted. Some moronic, juvenile part of him was astounded at the admission that maybe . . . maybe.

Standing up, he took a deep and levelling breath before facing her. She only stared back, looking every bit like Sango; smiling like her, smelling like her . . .

"You're not Sango," he said dangerously, seizing her shoulders and holding them down, firm and unwavering. "Who the fuck are you?"

Kazaana taking him in or not, better he find out who this bastard was before he killed them both.

She fell to the ground, let out a small cry, and hastily scrambled to her feet. "How could you do that? I knew that was all you are - a bastard who only cares about himself! If I had married you -"

"You're not Sango!" he near shouted, holding up his staff in offence. He readied to swing at her throat if need be. "I hurt you because you're not Sango! Who are you!"

"How could you say that?" she asked, suddenly becoming disdainful. "It's me," she told him, a tiny smile on the edge of her lips. "Your Sango. Your Sango you love to hurt. You love to hurt me because you think it will make me not want to be with you."

She took a step closer to him. "And I'll always come back to you. Hurt me, and I'll always come back. That's what love is - I thought you loved me."

He directed the edge of his staff at the base of her neck. "If all I ever intended to do was hurt Sango, she wouldn't be stupid enough to keep on coming back to me."

Tiny, crystalline tears formed on the corners of her eyes. "I'm - I'm sorry Houshi-sama!" she said softly, covering her face. "I didn't mean it!"

She turned away from him.

"Sango." He couldn't help himself, not hearing the part of his mind that told him she is now darkness.

He put a hand on her shoulder. "I should tell you -"

Her body shivered unintentionally, and she shrugged his hand away. "Do you want me for sex, houshi-sama?"

"What?" he asked instantly, blind-sided and stunned. "No!"

"Do you want me just to use me? To leave me with your child? Your burden?"

"Stop it," he found himself repeating.

She didn't. "I take it back. I mean it, I mean everything I said. You're a fucking asshole, your father was, his father was, and Naraku did all of us a favour by cursing you. The only flaw in his plan was that the kazaana isn't killing you fast enough. Fuck you, Miroku."

Then she walked away.

-

Standing on the bank of a lake, she saw him. Eyes clouded with anger and the confusion of something lost, she held her blade stiffly, remembering how the edge of it gleamed against the moonlight.

She charged.

He met her strike with his staff, effectively blocking her attack. They exchanged no words, only glances, and a sort of morbid understanding of what they were doing.

She tried to recall every ounce of knowledge she ever had about combat, wanting to pin him to the ground with her sword at his throat - and make him answer.

With a great effort, he overpowered her and she fell to the grass, stealthily rolling out of the fall.

"What's my name, Sango?" he asked gruffly, readying his weapon.

"What?" She was breathing heavily, her hair sticking to her forehead.

"What is my name?" he repeated, a prickling feeling running up his spine.

"You were houshi-sama," she said through gritted teeth; he had gotten in a good shot on her ribs. "I don't know who you are anymore."

She raised her sword.

"Neither do I," he answered.

"You never did," she barely whispered as she thrust it forward.

At that moment, he saw something that made him falter. So did she.

It made him drop his staff, and it made her drive her sword upwards - through his right hand.

Blue beads scattered.

He collapsed against her, and she fell to her knees with him, dropping her sword. It wouldn't change a thing.

Standing behind her with a smirk so familiar on her face was Sango. Behind him, staring at them in the same, satisfied manner - Miroku.

Then both clones, both fakes, became Naraku.

His left hand laced through hers, and squeezed.

"Houshi-sama -"

"I know, I know."

The winds began to swirl.

"At least we. . . "

She nodded against his shoulder, reaching around to hold his back, bracing him. "I'm sorry."

Wetness. He let her cry. There was no more time for "sorry" and "I didn't mean it". All the death wishes and insults they could hurl at Naraku wouldn't save them. He had done the same thing twice - and it had worked. They, as humans, had given him the doubts - never weaknesses - to manipulate.

All that was left to feel was acceptance, and a sadness that it had to be this way.

Naraku - was not a hanyou, and the only thing human of his was his shadow. After all he'd done to both of them - to those before them - to a priestess and a half-demon . . .

Maybe he loved the anger and heartbreak that accompanied betrayal, loss, and the realization that everything wasn't. He loved it so obsessively so, that when he killed that human part of him, it indeed became a shadow.

He was one step ahead of them, and always would be.

They were dying - were both going to die, but the winds were so loud it seemed a waste of their voices to talk; to give Naraku - wherever he was - the satisfaction of hearing everything they wanted to say. To hear tearful apologies, whispered confessions - if they did, it would be only for them.

But death was so close, and their souls had already long drifted away - but this time, they were together.

A few moments ago, they were laughing.

"Maybe . . . there is a chance you can still run."

Yesterday, they were in the sunshower, lying in the grass. He had said something to make her laugh.

"Naraku will kill me."

She couldn't remember how long ago it was, but he was holding her.

"Maybe Inuyasha will get here in time -"

He wanted to marry her, but she told him to slow down - slow down because this wasn't the time.

"And maybe not. What will he do, Miroku? Do you want him to witness this?"

He held her and everything was orange and shaded and time had stopped. Just for them.

"Either way he will blame himself . . ."

They wouldn't have enjoyed each other that much had they known they were going to die this way.

"Miroku, don't you remember?"

She smiled.

"If you can't come with me - at least let me die with you."

He frowned.

"You were never supposed to die."

She touched his face.

"My luck had to run out sometime."

He breathed her in, fading and thinking vaguely that he'd like to kiss her.

"This moment - is ours and ours alone."

-

The first thing they found was Kohaku.

The first thing he smelled was blood.

-

"They were all here," Inuyasha muttered under his breath. "Miroku, Sango, Kohaku, and Naraku."

Kagome circled the crater once again, tears streaming from her eyes and her hands balled into fists.

"How did this happen?" she screamed at him. "Why weren't they able to hold him off?"

"I don't know!" he yelled back at her. 'Kohaku, Sango and Naraku. Miroku, and Naraku. Sango, and Naraku. They met with one another, separately, and then their scents all gather here. But the only blood spilt is -'

"Kikyou . . . "

"What?" Kagome looked at him, removing her hands from her face to reveal bloodshot eyes.

"Kikyou and I . . ." he said distantly, ignoring her. 'Miroku and Kohaku's scents don't meet.'

"Inuyasha, what are you -"

He stood at the edge of the depression in the earth, staring into the centre stiffly. "At least they were together."

Kagome moved to stand at his side, her shoulders beginning to tremble. "They were together when they died," he said to her. Still, she was confused.

"Why did Sango stay with him?" she demanded, not even for a moment expecting a proper answer.

"They were tricked." Now he spoke to himself. "They knew they were tricked."

The same way that he was.

"I despise you with my last breath. My spirit will not forget that all consuming hatred. So long that you live, my spirit can not be free."

'Kikyou . . . Kikyou said that when she . . . '

A realization made too late to save their lives - but early enough to save their souls.

"Inuyasha, you and I were fated never to meet again."

Unlike Kikyou, and himself.

He walked past Kagome, past the crater, to the banks of the lake, and stood before a bloodied sword embedded in the dirt, a rosary strung around the hilt.