30 Shards

Title: When it Rains, it Pours
Pairing: Kagome/Miroku
Theme: Kagome - Rain
Genre: Angst, Drama
Rating: PG-13, implied sex, adult themes
Word Count: 663


Kagome had not yet come upon the wisdom to develop a keen sense of self. She would often be swept away beyond even her own knowledge. On more than one occasion she had found herself in circumstances that she had unknowingly created. Each time, she would inwardly curse her foolishness and make a solemn vow that she would continue working on self-possession.

The last such incident occurred like all the rest, like a sudden and unexpected cloudburst. She was traveling with her friends in their interminable search for the deadliest foe. As had occurred on many occasions they had stopped to seek lodgings in a hospitable village. Normally, a field or grove would be good enough, but it had been raining steadily for several days and Kagome felt as though she would never be dry again.

That night, Kagome and Inuyasha squabbled about some stupid detail that neither of them really cared about. Kagome cared for Inuyasha and knew he cared for her. Still, she could not shake the feeling that fights had their way with the two of them, rather than the reverse.

She was stalking her way to the bedroom she shared with Shippou when she passed Miroku in the hallway. He smiled at her warmly and when they passed, she was obliged to turn sideways to give him room. He turned slightly and the two brushed against each other briefly. The moment clutched Kagome’s heart like a fist of ice, however, and seemed endless. She blushed furiously, followed quickly by a heated anger turned inward like a knife.

That night Kagome could not sleep for one moment because of the sting of solitary, of an itch she could not get to. She wondered if the event was foreseeable. She tried to isolate the movement that could have ignited this spark. She could think of no accessible answers or reliable logic however, only mumbling in her fitful dozing, “When it rains, it pours”.

A few days later, a similar catastrophe occurred. They had stopped to rest in the pleasant shade of a spreading oak. Miroku impulsively handed her a buttercup that he found growing beside a root in spite of the recent frost. No one else saw the gesture, or her blush, for which she was exceedingly grateful. It seemed to mean nothing to him more than a simple gift to a friend. She prayed fervently that she would be able to avoid him in the future.

Unfortunately, she underestimated the incredible need created by solitude. Sure enough, she found herself alone with him in another room in another town. A town that must have been at the edge of the world, she thought, because reality and time slipped away.

In that most clandestine of places, created by coincidence and the preoccupation of others, Kagome just gave in. She surrendered her ridiculous sense of self, her armies of self-recrimination, her solitude of a martyred love. In the end she gave herself without ceremony, without any shyness, and with such a fluid intuition that another man might have confused it with experience. But Miroku knew it to be no gift to him at all, only the expelling of an unbearable burden of anxiety and of hate. A small part of him felt some culpability that one burden would replace another, but since it was true for him also, he quickly repressed it.

It could not be said that it was a moment of salvation, at least not a lasting one. When Inuyasha and the others came back to the house they were surprised to find her standing in the open rain, making no effort to seek shelter. She was surrounded by an impenetrable mist of inscrutability and was mentally choosing her confessions and discounting excuses. She did not answer their questions but simply turned her face skyward, thinking that it may cleanse the burning liquid left behind in the pit of her sex. It may even cleanse the remorse of conscience.

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First time I'd ever even considered Mir/Kag. Strange experience it was, too.