In Time, Death

By Alesyira

Summary: Training, part one! To fix any problem, one must first understand what those problems are.

Showoff

- 1988 -

Gatai stood at the edge of the barrier with a stony expression, his arms crossed over his chest as Angara pulled back on the magic that held the platform outside of regular time. He shooed Kagome toward the cabin with a towel so she could change into a clean outfit, noting her half-hearted smile as she slipped past him.

As soon as she was out of earshot, he turned back to Angara with a grim look. "I glanced away for one moment," he said, shaking his head with disappointment. He frowned at the darkening crimson stain in the middle of the platform. He was surprised she could walk away after losing that much blood. "I thought you were going to kill her."

Angara looked past him without a hint of apology in her expression. "I thought I was, too."

His mouth fell open, completely flabbergasted. "Why?"

She pressed a fist to her chin with a pensive look at the cabin door, just barely visible over his shoulder. "I'm not sure I could explain it very well."

"Try me," he demanded, pointing his thumb in the direction of the cabin with a grimace. "If you end the life of that one, you'd better have a damned good reason for me to help you hide the body, because I'm pretty sure Shippo would murder us if he ever found out."

She pressed her hands together and stared at the dark blue tips of her claws. "Shippo has much of her magic, yet she has none of his," she explained.

He shrugged after a moment of consideration. "So? He's a kitsune. They hoard things."

She arched an eyebrow. "How many kitsune do you know?"

He scowled, his annoyance with her evasive responses becoming clear as he replied, "More than enough to know that they all hoard things. Every single one of them. It's a character trait. If you can point out one that doesn't match that description, I'll eat my own arm."

She rolled her eyes and put her fists on her hips. "You know fire, but I know magic. That kind of sharing," she waved with one hand at the cabin, "doesn't just happen unless you're mates or life partners."

Gatai squeezed the bridge of his nose, wondering briefly if he might have a better chance of understanding if he just went to ask their newest student. "Shippo has a lot of weird magic, though."

"From his parents," she said, leaning into his space. "Outside of partnering, youkai can't get permanent additions of her kind of magic unless it's from their parents, at which point they're a halfling of some sort, and Shippo most definitely is not."

He scratched his head, thinking of plausible reasons. "Some of his stories were of her saving his life when he was a tiny tot! Maybe she was like a mother."

She pressed a hand to her face with exasperation. "Fine. It could have been something like that." She crossed her arms with a sigh. "I didn't consider all the possibilities and may have jumped to the wrong conclusion. But in all the years I've known him, I've known her magic. I really believed they had some kind of deep link that kept them connected despite time and distance. To find out that she shared no such bond with him was really upsetting. Surely you can understand why."

Gatai grinned slyly. "Because it means you should have confessed your feelings to him centuries ago?"

She grimaced and turned pink. "No! That's not what I mean!" She rubbed a hand down her face. "It felt like I'd just found out a good friend's wife had been cheating on him for their entire marriage."

Gatai shook his head. "But they aren't married, are they?"

Both of her hands flew to her hair and pulled. "No! You're missing the point!"

"Nah," he laughed and clapped a hand over her shoulder. "I get the point just fine, but you really mean to tell me you'd have killed his priestess if she'd been unfaithful?"

Angara bit the inside of her cheek and glanced away. "It's more than that," she said.

Gatai rolled his eyes. "You ladies mystify me. Always."

"Kagome told me what happened. Her story is…" she trailed off, casting her gaze around with mild confusion. "It fills in some blanks from Shippo's tales, although she probably inspired a thousand new questions I'll want to ask." She pressed her lips together, shaking her head in disbelief. "We don't have enough time for what must be done. She's truly human, and not even a fraction of how old we thought she might be," she sighed. "She told me why he has her magic."

"And?"

She looked at him with a small frown. "I don't know what I should say or think. In the end, it really doesn't matter because she's not here for him right now." She glanced at the cabin door, wondering how much longer the girl might take to reappear. Maybe she'd leave as unexpectedly as she'd arrived and they'd never see her again.

"Okay, fine. Fine. But you aren't going to try to kill her again, are you?"

Angara took a deep breath. "Not today. Or tomorrow." She paused and thought about it for a minute. "Maybe one day, if she proves herself unworthy of the gift she's been given, although she might not live long enough for me to regret staying my hand."

Gatai pinched the bridge of his nose again and squeezed his eyes shut, quietly counting to five. "You're being extra cryptic today." He peered at her once he regained his patience and brushed a chunk of red hair from his view. "Gift?"

"This time magic she has is a gift that she struggles to contain. She is its bearer and guardian. If she cannot find a way to control it without relying on her seal, then perhaps it is better to pass into the hands of someone more capable."

"You can't just hand off power like that," he argued. "Not unless it's…" he trailed off.

"A gift," she finished for him.

"Well, who gave her that gift? Someone must have considered her worthy," he crossed his arms and cast a glance back over his shoulder to see if the girl in question had reappeared. "…Unless she stole it," he muttered, wondering at the possibilities.

"I'm not sure, yet, and I don't think she truly knows, either. Her story can only be told from her point of view. The external forces playing parts in our lives are oftentimes greater than we will ever know."

He laced his fingers together and popped several of the joints with a sigh of relief. "Well then, I guess we'd better get cracking on this puzzle. And by we, I mean you. I don't think there's much I'll be able to do with this one." He snapped his fingers and the drying pool of blood went up in a flash of bright fire, burning quickly through shades of blue and green before sputtering out with a sigh of sparkling grey smoke. "What about that other thing you mentioned earlier, the reason we're keeping the students away?"

She shook her head. "I can tell it's there, but I can't see anything more about it. All I can say is that it feels like a curse. Without more clues, I'm stuck," she admitted with a grimace.

Kagome spoke up from the platform steps behind them. "I tried to explain earlier. Something's wrong with my magic. Nothing was working right this morning, so a curse makes sense."

Angara glanced down at her and shook her head with a small smile. "It's the platform. Once a student has been keyed, it muddles everything and blocks manifestation without an instructor to guide. Try your magic right there, for instance, and you'll see it behaves just fine. You are not broken."

Kagome frowned, but held up her hand and flared her magic around her fingertips, noting with relief that the greyed tips cleared up instantly. "Okay, that's better." She looked up at the two with a grim expression. "But I'm still serious about a curse. Something else has been wrong with me for a few days now."

Angara hopped down from the platform and walked toward one of the benches nearby. "Explain."

Kagome shrugged and followed. "I'm not sure what it is or where it came from."

Gatai sat on the steps and propped an arm on his knee. "Well, what have you noticed? How does it manifest?"

Kagome absently rubbed her fingers before showing them her hand. "My fingers turn a funny color, and…" She cut herself off as her face turned scarlet, and she dropped clumsily onto the seat, nearly missing it entirely.

His eyebrows disappeared beneath his fringe of spiky bangs. "That face says so much yet so little. I could guess, but I don't want to offend."

Kagome cleared her throat. "And I'm not really certain how it works. Shippo was able to trigger it by using kitsune suggestion magic to help me with an injury, and another friend was able to repeat the result while testing a binding spell." She could feel the blush extending down her neck and tilted her head forward to let her hair hide her deepening color.

Gatai choked off a laugh as she shriveled under the weight of her embarrassment. Quickly composing himself, he asked, "And so how do you know it's a curse?"

"I…" she paused, pressing her hands to her face. How much more detail did she want to give? There should easily be enough to express the seriousness of the situation without describing her immeasurable desire to wrap herself around— she shook herself and forcefully pulled her thoughts out of the gutter. "I black out and behave out of character," she said. "Things I normally wouldn't do. It's like a possession…" she paused to shudder with a grimace of distaste, "or a botched spell of control. I've experienced more than my fair share of both to recognize the similarities."

Gatai hummed quietly. "Okay, okay, I get it."

She peeked at him from beneath her hair as she held cool fingers to her cheeks, willing the bright color to be a little less obvious.

He tapped his lip, thoughtful as he looked at his companion. "And Angara's magic did not affect this curse?"

Kagome shook her head.

He glanced up at the clouds and pursed his lips in consideration. "There could be a few different reasons. Perhaps it is the type of magic Angara uses. Was your other friend a male?" He glanced at her and she nodded in response. "So maybe it's only the men." He stood and paced across the yard. "Angara cannot determine more about the magic—this curse—until it does something. While you work with your time magic, we will see about triggering this curse. If Angara can see what it does, we might be able to understand how to control it or eradicate it entirely."

Kagome wasn't so sure she wanted more people to see her act like that, but if it could help her figure out what was wrong and fix it, then a little embarrassment would be worth it.

After another moment, a new thought occurred to her and she glanced between the two of them with no small measure of trepidation. Hopefully Angara wouldn't find her curse to be a good reason to kill her.

The water dragon's daughter displayed impressive control over the new magic Kagome had recently found impossible to contain. As the hours wore on, Angara found dozens of new ways to twist time around them.

When she tweaked Kagome's training outfit back into its original new and crisp condition, she only had a moment to admire the sparkle of the fabric's weave and its precise stitches before Gatai leapt from his spot on the bench.

"Oh, can you try that on my wallet?" he demanded, holding out a shining piece of folded leather. "It's too new and stiff! A couple of years of age outta make it perfect."

Angara reached out for the item with an indulgent smile.

"And this hat!?" He hadn't been wearing a hat at all that day, so Kagome had no idea where it had come from. "And then my jacket." He squealed with a sudden excitement before he dashed away, shouting over his shoulder, "I'm going to get the wine. You've gotta do the wine and my scotch!"

Gatai couldn't help her with the magic, but after their midday break he stepped in to help by reinforcing something she was familiar with.

One of their teaching techniques was to use anything that was known as a tool to support the unknown. In this case, it started with Kagome and Gatai sparring as Angara worked with her magic. She was pulled in every direction she could imagine. The physical work turned out to be a welcome distraction, exhausting and familiar. She happily dodged strikes, jumped over leg sweeps, and rolled with his throws without feeling like her life was in serious danger.

Angara threaded the magic into their repetitive efforts, showing her what it should feel like when the energy could be used responsibly. For Kagome, it was enthralling to experience the shifting flow of movement as time changed so effortlessly within Angara's grasp.

The day was long, and their practice was longer.

The first thing Kagome did when they finally broke for the night was rush to her pouch to fish out the vesper. She honestly appreciated the fact that they were trying to help, but she wondered how much they might be able to accomplish before she was called away again. Last time, it had happened unexpectedly, but she wasn't entirely sure she'd stay very long once leaving became an option.

Error. Bridge components overcharged. Try again later.

What the hell did it mean?

What was overcharged?

Didn't Tek warn her about device overheating? Draining the power source or something? She pushed back the helpless frustration at not understanding her vesper, wishing she'd thought of demanding a printed manual. The device refused to respond to taps or swipes, and requests to call anyone were met with stubborn silence.

As the day's excitement faded in the quiet of the dim cabin, she began to feel more like Angara had spent the day just showing off. Sure, she'd given extensive descriptions of what she was doing and nonstop comments about the way the magic could work. It had even made a little bit of sense, but ultimately it still seemed too big for her to wrap her fingers around.

She pressed the cool metal to her forehead, sighing in misery. She had to be there for a reason, and she needed to figure out how to roll with it. She took a deep breath and absently rubbed at an ache in her now-healed shoulder. Hopefully she could avoid looking like some whining kid that couldn't handle having her existence unraveled, her magic waved beneath her nose by a complete stranger like she was the least qualified time traveler to ever exist.

She hadn't felt this useless since those first days in the past, being chased around by a massive centipede youkai that was insistent on munching the shinies from her flesh.

She stood and cast her gaze around the quiet cabin interior, rubbing the vesper between her fingers. Gatai had mentioned that the place might get cold once the sun went down, but if anything, she felt a little too warm. She put away the malfunctioning communication device and stripped out of her training outfit, grumbling with exhaustion as she folded the fabric and draped it over a nearby chair.

She ate something only out of obligation for her health and then paused in the doorway to her room to drop a barrier around the small space. She wasn't sure if their training regimen included surprise wake-ups at horrendous hours, but she wasn't going to leave her privacy up to chance and the supposed goodwill of strange instructors. She rapped her knuckles once against the nightstand and nodded with approval. The furniture in this little cabin seemed much sturdier than the Reikai's stuff. If nightmares struck again unexpectedly, the furnishings would probably survive.

(She hoped.)

She slid under the covers of the simple bed and was asleep in moments.

AN: This is about a third(?) of the chapter I have been working on. I'd meant to post it all in one go, but it was getting up there in wordcount and it was taking too long to finish, so I've broken off this first portion to share now instead of waiting until I have all of it completed! The rest of it should be coming pretty soon in one or two more posts before Kagome runs off to the next thing...

Also, this is super important: I got really stuck working on this chapter. Frustrated, bored even with the progress. The only thing that kept me from putting it on a long break to hyperfocus on something more rewarding was the sudden drop of a few comments on the fic. it was definitely a much appreciated fuel to help push me through the troublespots. Thank you so much Lady, Gin, and DD