Notes: This is just a random short story I did for my creative writing class.

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Chasing the Sea

I held my breath and willed my heart to slow down as it battered my ribcage. The world felt dizzy and immaterial except for the warm but clammy hand which I held tightly in mine. I knew I was sweating too, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything but his hand, which I only felt out of a kind of mental necessity. It was impossible to think, and the feeling of his pounding pulse from the tiny, dilated veins in his hands was the only thing that kept my own heartbeat from lifting me to my feet. The fear was begging me to run, but I had to ignore it. I had to wait for it. Everything depended on it.
It was hard to believe that I had ever led a normal life or that the boy whose hand I held had ever been away from me, but as the searchlights outside swung erratically back and forth, lengthening and shortening shadows on the wall, my life flickered with the lights’ movement. I had to concentrate to remember anything beyond right now, anything before tonight, but it was better to think of things far away than of what might be the last few moments I would ever draw breath into my lungs. I traced my own footsteps backward in my mind’s eye, trying to get a clear focus on what had led to being crouched tight against the wall, search lights thrashing through the air around me, a hand only slightly larger or stronger than my own the only thing that tethered me to this reality—my only gift and my only curse.
Twenty-four hours ago, Edmund and I had been miles and miles away from here. We had spent the night, like many other nights before, curled up in a nook of an alley, this time in the corner between a wall and the side of concrete steps. Houses and beds had long since become a rare luxury for people like us, hunted nearly to extinction if we did not comply with the testing. Sometimes, on nights like last night, I couldn’t even remember why I’d started to run in the first place. My feet kept moving without will or direction except the distant, now faint, impression of my father’s voice, telling me to head for the sea, or Edmund’s moody and determined urging toward a horizon he had never seen. As my body slumped and then nuzzled into the corner between the wall and the steps, my mind refused to quiet. Each time my head would lull my body would jerk itself awake with a start, so used to being interrupted in any attempt to rest that I’d forgotten how to even try. Edmund must have noticed, because he was the one who broke the silence.
“They take even our dreams from us, don’t they?”
My eyes fluttered back open and I resisted the urge to roll them as the lids drooped back down. It wasn’t entirely unlike Edmund to wax poetic occasionally, but at times it seemed so far out of place that it brought the kind of jaded, ironic smile to my face which mirrored the only kind Edmund ever seemed to have. I didn’t respond though. Instead, I simply looked up and down at Edmund, seeing how his green eyes weren’t even close to closed. He wouldn’t sleep, and somehow that made me relax a little. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always trusted him implicitly, even if at times it’s impossible to actually like him. Maybe both are for the same reason: They caught him once.
He’s never talked about it much, but I think that’s the reason he stays with me. The kinder part of him can’t bear the thought of letting another person go through the testing, can’t bear the thought of them also bearing the searing black mark along their neck. It was simply chance that had brought us together, and every day fate tried to rip us apart. I honestly think he would have left me long since had he not enjoyed rebelling against any force which would presume to control him so much. Maybe he’s just as afraid as I am of being alone.
“Sleep while you can,” he said, his voice still so young that it cracked, but not from fear. He wasn’t any older than me, and yet I was surprised every time I was reminded, because his eyes seemed so old.
I would have argued with him, but I was too tired to try. Instead I rolled my eyes at him again, it being too painful to take him as seriously as he was probably being. When my eyes closed again, my head leaning as comfortably as possibly against the corner of the wall against the stairs, I fell into an uneasy sleep almost immediately. The muscles in my legs stayed tense and taut, being at rest being a completely unnatural state for them. My dreams, just as Edmund had said, were plagued with nightmares of running, of being caught, of never finding anything but this. My dreams weren’t really so far off from my waking. So similar was the fear of both that I almost thought I was still dreaming when Edmund shook me awake.
He hissed a whisper at my ear as his body heat was the first thing I felt as he crouched next to me. I stirred, but at first my exhausted mind didn’t perceive that the shaking was real. I didn’t hear the wailing sirens, only the echoes of them in my dreams.
“Anna,” he tried again.
Finally he succeeded in waking me up, and I gasped as though a bucket of ice cold water had been dumped over me. I made a whimpering sound as I noticed how close the sirens, how close the voices were. I probably would have said something, but Edmund put his arm around the back of my neck, the closest thing he could arrive at to a comforting hug, and his fingertips grazed my lips briefly. His eyes briefly rested on mine, and we both became unnaturally still. As soon as he felt that I was awake but no longer anxiously squirming, his gaze shifted up, as though he could look up and over the steps behind which we crouched. I don’t know, but maybe he could. The red and blue lights flickered on the walls above us from behind, but in my absolute silence I could hear the tires and the motors growing more distant. The longer I was with Edmund, the more intuitive I became about things like that, but I still didn’t quite trust my own judgment.
Minutes crawl by like eternities when you’re sitting still, so used to running. Having to live a life on the run was bad enough, but the worst part of it was when the running stopped. The sound of my own footfalls, of Edmund’s, were the most constant things in my life, and their absence made me keenly aware of everything. It was pins and needles, only worse—I felt like my body was a scrape and that the air was made of salt. As I’ve mentioned, I trusted Edmund implicitly, so I closed my eyes and concentrated on the roll of the sea. We were heading toward the ocean. One day we would reach it. We had to. That’s the one thing about our dream: we didn’t have to worry about being disappointed, because if we ever failed in achieving it, it would be too late to matter.
Eventually, Edmund tapped his fingers against my cheek again, a tad unnecessarily, as he unwrapped his arm from around me. He ran his hand down between us against my arm until he took hold just above my elbow.
“Come on,” he said.
We stood, and without a word we began to run into the night, faint red and blue flickering behind us.
Running, running, until the soles of my feet regained their familiar numbness. I could tell you about how we’d gotten here, but the miles of road, covered with out footprints and exhaust from any sort of vehicle, all run together after years of madness.
When I was afraid, Edmund’s green eyes had a kind of paralytic quality. I longed for it at this moment, my reverie only drawing me back to the present moment, but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t move except for the involuntary quivering of my hand.
Edmund seemed to be momentarily distracted by my hand because he ran his fingertips gently over the back of it. Edmund and I never talked about what exactly we were—friends, allies, something else? But in a way, it didn’t matter. We knew one another; we needed one another, it didn’t matter why. Briefly I was distracted and comforted by the touch, but the distraction was short-lived and dangerous. When the doorframe down the hall broke, the sickening crack of wood shattering to splinters, I couldn’t manage to stifle a yelp. Edmund’s hand released mine and clamped over my mouth, but the sound had already torn out, shattering our silence.
Finally, his eyes met mine and both of looked away at the same time, at the same spot, a meter away from Edmund’s thigh on the floor. The cold, black barrel seemed like obsidian liquid in my eyes, like if it were to be touched it would cut us both and everything around us to ribbons. Just because the people who were chasing us had no qualms with violence, it didn’t make it any easier to realize that violence was likely the only option left. Again, the seconds stretched out into hours it seemed, and adrenaline was acidifying my insides, making my arms heavy and light all at the same time, my knees both buckled and begging me to run at the same time.
It all happened in an instant: The long metal handle on the door across the room slid down. The tumbler inside clicked and the door came ajar with a speed that seemed impossible, but with the same speed Edmund let go of me, pushed me hard against the wall and into the corner, and grabbed for the gun. He had laid it far enough away so that he would have to reach for it. He kept insisting that he would not become a mindless killer. Now, I wished more than anything that he’d already had it in his hand. My mind was preparing before the shot was ever fired. Edmund was of no use to them now; he had been caught and had escaped, he was not a fresh specimen for experimentation. They had already broken everything in him that they found it useful to break. He would die here alone, and I would be taken into the same captivity in which they had held him.
Like I said, we’d never really talked about, but in the mere moments that there were before the trigger was pulled far enough to release the bullet, I considered for the first time how angry it made me that they had hurt him. Not just that they had hurt so many thousands of people—that number was too big to imagine or feel anything for—but they had hurt Edmund. I knew then, also, that once the trigger was pulled that they couldn’t hurt me anymore.
My mind was racing in a way that I cannot explain. My thoughts whirled around in a maelstrom that threatened to make my vision go black. Then, suddenly, it stopped. I heard the cocking of a gun and found that the metal gleam was pointed at me, not at Edmund. The huge man, his face lit by the wavering spotlight like a specter, was holding the gun on me. It’s strange that even though my blood turned to ice, which pumped ever harder through my body, seemed to lacerate my body from my heart out, that the only thing I actually felt was relief. He couldn’t see Edmund, the light had moved away from him. I wanted to close my eyes, because I wasn’t as brave as I dreamed myself to be, but I couldn’t I was truly frozen in fear.
Then, with what I thought would be my last conscious thought, I heard the gun fire. Finally my eyes closed, but the pain never came. I thought that it had been so quick that I hadn’t felt it, and that now I was dead and yet somehow still aware, until I heard a familiar sound that I never thought I’d hear again one way or another.
“Anna?” Edmund croaked. When I opened my eyes he hadn’t moved from his crouched position except for dropping the gun to the floor. He was as pale as I’d ever seen him, and it was only after I followed his eyes that I noticed the huge, fallen man, a gory black puddle forming beneath him in the dark. I comprehended what had happened, but in spite of the fact that the man had been trying to capture and kill us, it was too horrible to think about. Edmund wasn’t moving. He just sat there on his knees. I think we would have both sat there forever had not the sounds outside rattled me from my stupor. I felt a strange surge of strength that I’d never felt before as I got to my feet before Edmund. He stayed still until I dragged him from the floor.
“Come on,” I begged. “We have to go.”
He stammered once, still staring at the fallen man who had slain his blood innocence. I wrapped my hand in his and squeezed it, and finally he looked at me. He nodded once, the color still drained from his face, and we began to run. We so much startled the other men who were searching that we narrowly escaped being captured and killed several times as we ran—but we did escape and we were used to it now.
When we emerged from the building, sticking to the shadows as best we could, and running with the evasive grace that only two people who had spent their lives running away and running together could muster, I could feel that something had changed. Even though I never would have admitted it, prior to that moment I had always somehow viewed Edmund as my superior, but this time I had been the one to pull him to his feet. We were even—equal—now. Somehow that made me respect him more, because now I had the slightest inkling of the weight he felt when he had to pull me along. And I realized, strangely enough, that while I had never understood him until the moment he had pulled the trigger, that suddenly he was human to me. Before, he had always been Edmund—strong, cold, and my companion. Now he was Edmund, my friend, something in him further broken, further fractured, but he was my friend, and I loved him. I couldn’t say anything as we ran, breathless into yet another cold night, but I hoped there would be time. I kept up my running through my thoughts, the familiar numbness creeping back into my feet, as we made our way toward dawn—making our what we both hoped would be our final bid for the sea, for the horizon, for hope.

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What do you think?

Title: Mutually Obsessed
Author: bohemianneko
Fandom: Inuyasha
Pairing: Miroku/Sango
Spoilers: Sporadic, but I’ll warn you through the entire anime and up to the 523rd chapter of the manga.
Special Thanks: The sango_miroku community for their willing assistance. majinzero for being my sounding board and confidant. bluayu for being my best friend and the reason I did this in the first place.
Notes: I’m going to try to make this as dial-up-friendly as possible because I have dial-up. I just recently got back into this fandom after a nearly-five-year hiatus, so if anyone finds anything they consider a discrepancy then, please, let me know.


Miroku
Name Etymology: Miroku’s name comes from a Japanese-Buddhist belief pertaining to a Messiah-like figure. While it is not suggested that Miroku is such a Messiah, this does perhaps indicate that Miroku’s father’s dedication to being a monk was not just in-the-family or centered on need due to the mystical properties of the curse. The choice of a messianic name for Miroku may (or may not) suggest that he brings hope and deliverance to his accursed bloodline. [1]

Miroku was the first of the couple to begin traveling with Inuyasha. Miroku is a traveling Buddhist monk who makes his living by conning villages and rich houses out of food and shelter by having his raccoon-dog companion, Hachi, pose as an evil, demon threat. He performs a mock exorcism and receives the praise and support of the community before moving on again.

His first brush with Inuyasha, Kagome, and Shippou was an attempt to steal Kagome’s jewel shards. After a bumpy start Miroku assimilates himself into the group and is the first to explain Naraku at length. The only weapon Miroku uses offensively is his kazaana (wind tunnel). It is revealed in the series that the kazaana is the mark of a curse set on his family by Naraku. Since his grandfather’s scathe with Naraku, the oldest surviving male must carry the kazaana in his right hand. The kazaana serves as a useful weapon and defensive mechanism, but it expands slowly over time and can be torn, which expedites the process. The ultimate fate of the one who possesses the kazaana is to eventually be swallowed up into the void without a trace. It is Miroku’s personal mission to find Naraku and destroy him to avert this fate to which he had already witnessed his father succumb.

Miroku is useful due to his knowledge of demons and other aspects of their world’s occult. He is highly intelligent and seems to be the wisest and most centered of the group. While some of his practices may lead one to believe otherwise, he is a generally upright and honorable man. One of his more questionable practices is his tendency to “womanize”. He is a shameless and tireless flirt and often asks the attractive women he meets if they would consider bearing his firstborn child. Initially this is seen as simply a severe lack of tact by the others, but they eventually learn that his motivation is directly related to his curse. It would seem that his grandfather and his father had succeeded more in their attempts, but all of them are rooted in a much darker idea: if Miroku, like his forefathers, does not survive to defeat Naraku, he wishes to have a male heir to carry on the battle for his family’s restoration and honor.

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Sango
Name Etymology: Sango’s name is the Japanese word for “coral”. Many of the things associated with her and her past bear the names of various stones. Her armor in the colorized manga is a marbleized pink which reflects the “coral” motif. (In the anime the armor is a darker pink.) Her brother Kohaku’s name can also be traced back to the stone motif and, while his name can mean several different things, it seems to reference topaz, which is also reflected in the color of his armor. Kirara is a reference to mica. The references to stone associated with Sango’s village are never explained, and it may be just the simple use of a very common means of establishing association. It may reference, however, something “stone” or “firm” about the mentality of her people. In order to engage in orderly militaristic activity such as the demon slayers did, one would have to be highly disciplined both physically and spiritually. Such a mentality is often exhibited in Sango’s personality and is highly archetypal. [2, 3]

Sango is the last to come upon Inuyasha’s group and stay. She initially came looking for Inuyasha to try to kill him after hearing Naraku (before she knew his true identity) accuse Inuyasha of destroying her village. Sango was from the village of the demon slayers and had spent her life training to become one. By the time of the tragedy which sets her on the path that leads her to Inuyasha, she was one of the five strongest demon slayers in her village, along with her father and brother.

When the Shikon no Tama shattered, the demon slayers came to possess some of the jewel shards. Naraku decided that he wanted to take the jewel shards they possessed, so he contrived to lure the village’s five most powerful slayers to a castle in which he was posing as a Lord. After defeating the spider demon which Naraku had told them was plaguing the castle, Naraku gains control of Kohaku and makes him kill his fellow villagers including his father. Sango survives the first attempt on her life and tries to free Kohaku but in the process she and Kohaku are both shot full of arrows. What was truly an evil scheme on Naraku’s part is seen only as a tragedy, and Sango, her father, and the other two demon slayers are buried in shallow graves.

Sango, still alive, digs her way out of the grave and is nursed by the yet-incognito Naraku. He intentionally plants the idea that the destruction of her village was Inuyasha’s doing, and she vows to avenge her village. Naraku places a jewel shard in her shoulder, and she is able to hold her own in a fight with Inuyasha, but perhaps only because Inuyasha was intentionally holding back as he did not want to fight her. The truth about what had happened is eventually revealed to Sango and she allies herself, however reluctantly, with Inuyasha and his companions.

What initially started out as a quest for vengeance grows entirely more complicated with the revelation that Naraku had resurrected her little brother, who had died in the arrow attack, and had erased his memories and turned him into a killing machine. Sango’s alliance with the group is eventually made concrete because she feels she must liberate Kohaku at all costs.

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Enter Sango, the Demon Slayer

Sango and Miroku’s relationship begins, as all the other relationships in Inuyasha, out of a kind of perceived necessity. Sango came after Inuyasha because Naraku led her to believe that he had slain her village. Miroku attempts to aid Inuyasha when Sango attacks him, but Naraku uses his Saimyosho to prevent Miroku from using his kazaana. When Naraku’s self-made copy steals Kagome’s jewel shards, Sango becomes suspicious, and she eventually learns the truth about Naraku and realizes that he is her enemy as well as the enemy of Inuyasha and his companions.

During her confrontation with Inuyasha, Sango loses a large quantity of blood from her previous injuries and wounds she sustained from Inuyasha’s defensive maneuvers in spite of the fact that he had held back because he did not want to fight her. This leaves her weak during her first reluctant travels with the group. She is initially reluctant to ally herself with Inuyasha because she has never known demons to be trustworthy, and she also feels that demon slaying is her sole responsibility and that Inuyasha and the others’ help is something of an interference.

As Inuyasha develops, often the group splits with Inuyasha and Kagome (and typically Shippou) going one way and Miroku and Sango (accompanied by Sango’s constant companion Kirara) in the other. This does not imply that the entire group does not share some sort of almost familial relationship. Some might suggest that because we do not actually see interaction between the two sets very often that it implies that they do not care for one another when it is hardly the case. Inuyasha relies heavily upon one assuming that we don’t see every interaction between any of the characters.

What is important, however, about this distribution of forces is that it means something with regard to the exact ways in which the characters relate to one another. Inuyasha and Kagome share a special relationship which, though often strained, binds them together emotionally and makes them very capable of playing off one another intellectually, emotionally, and in combat [4]. The question that remains, then, is what exactly is it that binds Miroku and Sango to one another?

The Tie that Binds

Sango initially bonds with Kagome and seems wary of both the men in the group. She is somewhat reluctant to trust Inuyasha for several reasons related to the circumstances which led her to meeting the group in the first place, and, even after she learns that Inuyasha is a worthy ally, she finds some solace in the sister-like relationship she quickly develops with Kagome after losing all of her family and friends to Naraku’s evil plot. The reason she is reluctant to trust Miroku, however, is on an entirely different wavelength.

Miroku had already established his reputation as the “lecherous monk” before Sango arrived. When he had plotted to steal Kagome’s jewel shards he does so when she is bathing which was in part due to the fact that she would be vulnerable without Inuyasha around but also speaks of his general nature. When Miroku becomes an ally to Inuyasha and Kagome, he also asks Kagome if she will bear his children. He soon gives up on any such enterprise with Kagome when he sees the developing relationship between Kagome and Inuyasha for what it is and seems to respect it.

By the time Sango arrives, Miroku had already shown it to be his habit to ask every eligible woman he meets to bear his children. This habit, among other outwardly flirtatious and sometimes lewd behavior, makes Sango hold the monk in some disdain because it clashes so much with her own sensibilities.

As a demon slayer, Sango is by nature very straight-laced. In order to slay demons and purify demon contaminated objects, she must possess great physical and spiritual discipline. Though Inuyasha does not discuss religion beyond its mythological tenets very often, Sango is often seen praying when there have been a large number of casualties and she frequently pays her respect to her dead father and fellow villagers. Sango often exhibits personality traits that might be perceived as prudish. She slaps Miroku when he gropes her and blushes furiously when he hugs her [5]. Sango does not think as a typical teenager or young adult because she cannot afford to be one. It would seem that her rigorous training and devotion to the Demon Slayers has left her almost innocent to a fault when it comes to some of the more “practical” ways of the world. This is not to say that she is entirely naïve, but rather that she is somewhat innately pure of thought which follows the stereotype of what one would expect a Demon Slayer to be.

Sango and Miroku are polar opposites in many ways, but they also have enough in common to make a good team. During the fighting scenes in Inuyasha, the combat against Naraku or any other enemy is often divided between Inuyasha and Kagome fighting together and Sango and Miroku doing the same. Sango and Miroku rely heavily on spiritual disciplines in their fighting techniques, though Sango's tend to be more physical in their application than mental.

They are friends without question, though Miroku's lecherous tendencies tend to get him in trouble more often than not. He gropes Sango frequently, especially when she is trying to convey something emotionally important by standing near him as she speaks. These advances are almost always met with a slap, but Miroku is undeterred and Sango continues to appreciate his friendship. She develops romantic feelings for him reluctantly and denies them at first. She eventually confides in Kagome that his flirtatious nature toward other women disturbs her and that she does not see a way for a relationship with him to go anywhere for that reason. Miroku shows genuine concern and affection for Sango, but in actual displays it is almost always tempered by groping.

Sango realizes eventually that she is the only woman he has never asked to bear his children and jealously points it out to him. She backs down quickly, however, and his subsequent request is met with her typical dismissal. In the anime, Miroku does eventually propose to Sango, asking her to come and live with him and bear his children if they survive defeating Naraku. While it may seem unromantic to suggest prolonging any further confirmation of their relationship, Miroku actually seems to do this because he does not want to hurt her and is constantly aware of the danger to his life because of the kazaana. Presumably, he would want to avoid causing her any more pain than would be necessary if he were to die in their final fight with Naraku. Sango tearfully accepts and tries to get Miroku to promise her that he will stop flirting with other women. He will not answer her and is met by a dirty look but nothing more. He does, however, stop his advances toward other women after that.

In Chapter 523 of the manga, Sango kisses Miroku while he is unconscious. The manga seems to be reaching a climax and during events prior to that chapter Miroku had taken in something that allowed him to not feel pain. Doing so, he was able to fight on alongside Sango even though his kazaana was badly damaged. After the fight he lapses into unconsciousness and is cared for by Kaede. Sango feels responsible for his injury and stays by his side, asking Kaede if she may have a few moments alone with him. Kaede complies with her request, and when alone with him, Sango reflects on how much Miroku has sacrificed for the sake of herself and her brother and kisses him. It is not known whether or not Miroku was aware of this action.

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Sango/Miroku is in some ways cliché but I find even that aspect of the pairing endearing. I think it is a pairing which is worth following because it examines the age-old dynamic of neither being able to live with one another or without one another. Without at least a little controversy, life wouldn’t be worth it would it?

End Note: This manifesto is probably yet incomplete due to the fact that the manga series is not over. Edits are likely to be made at a later date.

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References and Works Cited:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitreya
[2] http://hagakureproductions.tripod.com/clothes.htm
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohaku_%28InuYasha%29
[4] For more on Inuyasha/Kagome please see haro’s manifesto, Anywhere I Go, I’m Home if You are There Beside Me, on the couple here.
[5] There is at least one example of this in Inuyasha: The Movie 2: The Castle Through the Looking Glass.

Sango and/or Miroku-centric episodes:
Episode:	Episode Title:	Character:
Episode 16	The Mystical Hand of the Amorous Monk Miroku	Miroku
Episode 24	Enter Sango, the Demon Slayer	Sango
Episode 25	Naraku’s Insidious Plot	Sango
Episode 26	Secret of the Jewel of the Four Souls: Revealed	Sango
Episode 27	The Lake of the Evil Water God	brief Sango/Miroku moments
Episode 28	Miroku Falls into a Dangerous Trap	Miroku
Episode 29	Sango’s Suffering and Kohaku’s Life	Sango
Episode 40	The Deadly Trap of the Wind Sorceress, Kagura	Sango and Miroku
Episode 41	Kagura’s Dance and Kanna’s Mirror	Miroku
Episode 49	Kohaku’s Lost Memories	Sango
Episode 50	The Face That Can’t Be Forgotten	Sango
Episode 56	The Lure of Beauty over the Fogs	Miroku, Sango
Episode 59	Sango’s Young Apprentices	Sango
Episode 78	Only You, Sango	Sango, Miroku
Episode 85	Evil Spirits Rising, Demon’s Severed Head	Miroku
Episode 86	The Secret of the Emblem Lady	Miroku, Sango
Episode 93	The Mysterious Pervert Monk Who Comes and Goes	Miroku
Episode 118	The Heart of Mount Hakurei	Sango, Miroku
Episode 119	A Divine and Malicious Saint	Miroku, Sango
Episode 132	The Most Dangerous Confession of Monk Miroku	Miroku, Sango
Episode 135	The Last Banquet of Miroku’s Master	Miroku
Episode 152	Protect and Plunder	Sango
Episode 153	Fate is a Cruel Reunion	Sango
Episode 159	Kohaku’s Resolution and Sango’s Heart	Sango
Episode 161	Miroku’s Old Mistake	Miroku, Sango
Episode 163	Sango, Kirara, Kohaku, the Secret Garden
Information from: http://www.inuyasha-fan.com/episodes.htm