Title: Winter's Gift

Author: Saraste

Pairing: Mir/Inu

Warnings: angst, deathfic

I shake you with all my strenght, wishing against all hope that the reality I'm facing wouldn't be true. I cry, unrestrained, it just cannot be so. You were the one supposed to outlive me, dammit! Instead you chose to full fill a dream of mine.

But now, I'd rather that you hadn't.

I brush Kagome's hand away, she's trying to comfort me and get my attention. I won't let her. I need to wallow, need to let the sorrow take me.

I eye my right hand, the beads twisted around it, wishing it would consume me like my grief.

I cry out your name into the heavens. I kiss his cool lips, frozen in that last smile.

I was able yo give you what you wanted..." you smiled. I knew you must have been in so much pain but you still smiled. I looked only at you and kissed you deep.

"Don't leave me..." I pleaded you.

"I love you..." you coughed up blood. "Please, live for me, both of you..."

And then you were gone. Out of the world. From my life but not from my heart.

"Miroku! Miroku!"

There's a slap to my cheek. It stings. I look at Kagome, dazed, wrenched out of my reverie, my justified mourning.

"She needs you!"

"She's the reason he's dead!" I snap back at her, not even appalled by my words.

I huddle down, throwing myself against him, memories flitting through my mind.

"Won't it be wonderful? I've always wished for children..."

"If anything should happen to me, promise you'll care for our baby, promise me!"

"I promise."

"I love you..."

"Love you too..."

"Please, it hurts so much..."

"She looks so like you..."

"Love her, as you have me... I love you both. Miro---"

The fingers were cold now in mine, the body I held against me rigid, lifeless. I caressed his face with my hand, his features forever etching in my fingertips. I reach up a hand and close the open eyelids gently, the golden eyes holding no life in them anymore.

I cry.

"Miroku, you can't let this consume you. Remember how happy he was of the baby?" There are tears in her voice.

"Sango's right, he would have wanted you to live..."

"You can't let her lose both her parents..."

There's a loud, unhappy wail which comes right after her words. So dejected, so aching for love, acceptance.

And then it comes to me, his voice, in one of those last moments.

"She'll be Aiko, beloved child... She's so beautiful. I regret only that I won't get to know and love her... Love her for me?"

"Inuyasha, I can't do this alone!"

I'd just want to die but I can't. She needs me now. I'm all the family she's got. And she's all I have now. My beloved child, my Aiko. I let go of his body and let Sango place my daughter in my arms.

I look at her. Just look at her. Her silvery hair, her ears, her golden eyes all painful reminders of what I have lost. But then she stops wailing suddenly and looks at me. I look back.

And she's my world.