Title: Right Through Me

Author: CinnamonGrrl
Word Count: 200 exactly, not counting the title
Rating: G
Characters: Miroku/Kagome
For: _morbidity’s first line meme

Sometimes it’s all he can do just to take another breath. He doesn’t tell them that his hand hurts, even when he’s not using the Kazaana. They depend on him to be calm, even when the world is falling apart around them and fear is choking him with icy fingers wrapped around his throat.

He fools all of them but her. Inuyasha is too wrapped up in his own drama to look closer, and Sango doesn’t want him any different. Shippo and Kirara are oblivious to the finer nuances. But Kagome… she knows. She knows it’s an act, like the lechery is an act, like his pretending she is just a friend to him is an act. She knows, and yet she says nothing, trusting him to know what is best.

But sometimes, there is a question in her eyes, a plea for him to be honest. But deception has kept him alive, and he is loathe to give it up. He wraps it around him like a blanket, and smiles, and pretends there’s no pain. He has come to depend on the fallacy. If he can pretend to be unaffected, he thinks, then perhaps he actually will be. Someday.