InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Eight-Fold Path ❯ Scattered Thoughts ( Chapter 7 )

Scattered Thoughts

 

 

Sango finally slept, somehow oblivious to (or perhaps simply understanding of) the feelings racing through Miroku's head. The noisy, unwanted thoughts - truths and lies and what they meant for his life - chased each other as InuYasha had once pursued Shippou after a particularly deceptive interaction. Miroku believed, upon further reflection, that his current line of thought would have a similarly painful and unresolved ending.

 

“If you hold it in much longer, you will be lost to dukkha.”

 

Dukkha… The old drunkard had often attempted to speak with Miroku about his mother. Miroku had declined each time; though he never stated it explicitly, Miroku never truly felt he had a right to speak of the woman who died bringing him into the world. Dukkha-dukkha… pain-of-pain, pain of death... of his mother's death. He'd come to terms with his father's demise. Miroku had avenged his father by assisting in killing Naraku, by putting Kagome and InuYasha on the correct path.

 

Dukkha-dukkha. Miroku sighed. Pain-of-pain… if he persisted of the wrong path, he would be lost to dukkha, as Mushin had said. But what right did he have to grieve the woman he killed - to release the tension, the guilt of taking a woman's life?

 

Sango groaned and shifted, drawing Miroku's attention from his tortuous thoughts. Even in sleep Sango guarded Haruo as fiercely as one of their own, an arm firmly wrapped around his son with her hand balled into a fist. The boy's hand, so much smaller, was fisted right next to hers.

 

Haruo's right hand…

 

“I killed my mother with my bare hand…”

 

He had admitted the truth to Sango, and she'd refused to see it as fact. Perhaps his wording could have been better chosen, he admitted… killing somebody with bare hands implied a gruesome death, filled with blood and gore and violence. But having one's body compacted via magical force to fit through a hole roughly the size of three needle tips was certainly no picnic.

 

“If it was Haruo's fault… then it was Kohaku's fault he killed father and the others.”

 

That was a lie if he'd ever heard one. The situations were not even remotely similar! Kohaku had been controlled; Naraku had literally forced Kohaku's hand. `I may not have chosen to kill mother,' Miroku thought mulishly, `but the fact of the matter is that had I not been born, she would still be alive.' He ignored the whisper in the back of his head that said his mother had plied his father for the seed that brought him into fruition. His mother had taken the first step toward her death willingly in the hopes of bearing the husband she loved an heir.

 

“He told me that he'd been with other women. I just… I never thought he'd have a child already.”

 

His eyes remained focused on where Sango lay, wrapped snugly around the child whom anybody would believe was hers. She claimed Haruo as hers to others, refused to hear otherwise. Was there a more understanding woman on the face of the planet? He'd seen what jealousy wrought in a woman: anger, sadness, dangerous rages and heartbreaking tears.

 

He should have known she'd handle the situation so much differently than Kagome had dealt with InuYasha's previous love. Of course, there was no woman for Sango to compete with… just the results of what still felt, in his heart, like an infidelity even though the event had occurred months before he'd met the beautiful taijya.

 

“The truth, boy, is there if you look hard enough for it.”

 

Miroku snorted as fragments of Mushin's insistent speech rattled through his skull. `Meddling old man,' he mulishly mused. `What does he know?' Truth… Kagome had always bandied a phrase in the time of their journey…

 

Oh, yes. “The truth will set you free.” Miroku rolled his eyes, free in the darkness, away from prying friends and family alike, to throw off the cloak of the wise and compassionate and share his true feelings… ones he tried to hide from even the woman closest to him.

 

After all, what was the truth but another interpretation of a lie? Miroku was the master of deciphering fact from fiction. He was a monk by trade but a conman by nature; he was well aware that truth wore many masks and could be used for many purposes.

 

There was only one truth to the conversations he'd held with Sango that night, though.

 

He had, in fact, killed his mother… and was directly responsible for the death of a young woman who had no idea what to expect come the birth of her first -and only - child. Worse, the guilt of that would haunt him the rest of his life.

 

---

“The Eight-Fold Path” is a serialized fic, written based on prompts from the mirsan_fics community on LiveJournal.

 

“Scattered Thoughts” was originally posted July 17, 2009

 

Word Count: 786

 

Prompt: “Lies”

 

A/N: This fic was nominated at the Feudal Association for both Best Drama and Best Romance: Alt Pairing. It came in second for the first and tied for first for the latter and I'd love to thank everybody who voted.

 

“Eight-Fold Path” has also been nominated for numerous awards at Eikyuu Kosai (the Mir/San pairing awards) and the InuYasha Fan Guild. Thank you for the nominations! Eikyuu Kosai's voting has begun - seconding at the IYFG begins July 26.