Okay…ribbons in hair?  Check.  Kuma-chan on the monitor?  Check.  Snacks in reaching range?  Wait…gaaaaah!  All the Triscuits are gone?!  People will die!  People will burn!  Everyone will…ooh, Wheat Thins are nummy.  Okay, check on that one.  Green tea?  Check!  Even though I accidentally burned my finger on the pot…owie.  Okay, cool tunes?  Incubus rules.  Check!  Time for another chapter!

*****

Scarlet

Part 7

*****

"Time is running out.  You agreed to this, you understood what it meant.  You said it would be fine.  Everything else is in place."

"I know.  I'm just not ready to leave."

"What's keeping you here?  Didn't we make a deal?"

"We did, but I don't see why I have to go right now.  It's stupid.  Just give me a month."

"In a month, he'll know."

"No he won't."

"He'll know.  I'm surprised he doesn't know already."

"I've been careful."

"You're getting careless, if you ask me.  You're getting sentimental.  Can't bear to do it, can you?"

"Shut up, I told you I'd stick to my end of the bargain, and I will."

"Let me see it."

"No."

"Seriously, what do you take me for?  I just want to see if it's hidden."

"You can't see it, can you?  It's hidden.  So let me stay here."

"Why?"

"What do you care?"

"What do you care?  There's more than this waiting for you.  But you keep stalling."

"I'm not…shhh…"

"Okay, we'll continue this later."

My stirring caused the garbled words to blur and fade away.  Was it a dream?  Maybe I was going crazy, hearing voices in my head.  But this was the second time I had such a strange dream.  No people, no faces, just two voices, discussing something.  What were they talking about?  Keeping something hidden…going somewhere…a deal.  It didn't make any sense to me, and I really hate when things don't make sense, so I promptly forget about them if I possibly can.  Dreams are one of those things you can forget about.

"Hungry?" Kagura was serving me rice, and I smiled at her warmly.  The past two weeks of my life had to have been the closest I had ever been to being free and happy.  Two weeks ago, Ayame had left the den with a small escort and a midwife hired locally.  In my tribe, we have customs about women going into isolation after the sixth month of pregnancy, and so she had left, her belly only slightly larger than it had been when she first spoke to me about her condition.  That wasn't odd, though.  I had never seen women get very big by the sixth month, and some barely showed at all.  Of course, Ginta had volunteered to lead the escort, and I let him go.  I was pissed at them both, but I figured that I'd have less shit to deal with if they were gone for a few months.  Tradition stated that she would stay isolated for four months, but as soon as the baby was born, they would send for me to come see it.  I could spend the next month with her if I wanted to.  But I didn't want to.  This time spent with Kagura, staying with her nearly all the time, only leaving to check with Hakkaku on the condition of the tribe…it was wonderful.  The tribe didn't seem suspicious.  Hakkaku seemed to think I was trying to camp out close to where Ayame was isolated, because I was so worried.  I let him go on thinking that.

"Thanks, Kags." I sat up and leaned over for a peck on the cheek before digging into my food.  Even though I still had an internal hatred of chopsticks, this time with Kagura was teaching me to be a master of the utensil, and I felt less like stabbing the rice until they snapped in half and I'd have an excuse to just scoop my breakfast up with my hands.  "How do you always know when I'll wake up?"

"I…don't." she seemed vaguely surprised by this question, but I gestured to the bowl.  "Oh, that.  The rice stays hot if I just make sure to keep stirring it and not let it dry out."

"Thanks, anyway." I told her.  "No one's made me breakfast since my mother when I was a kid.  It's great."

"What was she like?" Kagura's eyes lit up.  "Your mother, I mean.  You never really…talk about her."

"Strict." I managed after a mouthful of rice.  "Kinda cold."

"But she made you breakfast every morning?"  Kagura frowned.  "That doesn't sound right."

"Well, maybe she just thought it was her duty or something." I suggested.  "My father and her…fuck, it was a miracle he got one kid out of her.  She couldn't stand him."

"Why did they?…" Kagura seemed understandably confused.

"Arranged mating." I clarified.  "She didn't want anything to do with him, and he wasn't too keen on her because she was such a priss about it all the time.  Seemed upset when she passed on, but not all that upset, you know?"

"Do you think…she loved someone else?"  Kagura's eyes flashed a brilliant red, and a smile quirked the edges of her mouth.  "Maybe you weren't even your father's child!  Maybe she had a lover, just like with you and…" her face fell and she cringed.  "Sorry, I know you don't like talking about that."

"No, it's fine, I guess."  I sighed.  "I don't know.  I guess I didn't really get to know my mother that well.  She was…well, she was very beautiful.  And she made me study all the damn time.  She wasn't big on hugging or kissing or anything like that.  But I did look a lot like my father, so it's hard to think that was just coincidence."

"Maybe that's why." Kagura sighed.  "She loved someone else, but her child was your father's.  So she couldn't really attach herself to either of you."

"You seem pretty fascinated by her." I told her as I scraped at the last grains of rice.  "I haven't thought of her in ages."

"But…she was your mother." Kagura told me, as if this should change the way I feel and think.  "Don't you want to know more about her?  To try and understand her?"

"What good will it do now?" I wanted to know.  She stared at me for a long moment and then nodded slightly, taking my dishes and going to wash them in perfect silence.  I was getting dressed when I noticed that her shoulders were shaking as she dallied over cleaning the rice cooker.  "Kagura?" I approached her, wearing only my pelts.  "Are you okay?"  She was crying.  I could hear her hitching and choking breaths this close.

"I'm…fine." She insisted, as though I couldn't tell what was going on.

"No, you're not." I reached out to her, wrapping my arms around her waist and kissing the juncture of her neck and shoulder lightly.  "What's wrong?"

"It's stupid." She told me.  "I can't tell you."

"After listening to Ayame, nothing you say can possibly sound stupid." I told her, nuzzling against her neck as she brushed away her subsiding tears with the back of her wrist.  "Just tell me.  Is it something I said?"

"Sort of." She admitted.  "I just thought…how sad it would be…if your mother really did love you.  How must she feel knowing that you didn't care about her at all?"

"I didn't say that I just didn't care about her." I explained, my voice gentle.  "It was just frustrating.  She never really showed me affection, no matter what I did to please her.  I still cried when she died.  She was my mother, no matter how cold she was.  And she made some damn good breakfast."  That made Kagura laugh, at least, though it was a weak and slightly startled sound.  "Why the sudden concern for my mother?"

"I…don't know, really.  It just seemed…I want to know everything about you, Kouga." She told me.  "It's important to me.  You're important to me."

"Thanks." I kissed her neck again, longer this time.  "Kagura?"

"Mmm?" she loved it when I kissed her neck.

"Is that pot done yet?" And she was laughing again.

"Nearly." She turned, her hands still wet with the hot water she used to clean the dishes.  "I think I'll let it soak."

"How long?" I asked her.

"That depends." She kissed my chin playfully.

"On what?" I had a pretty good idea what it depended on, but I was all for playing along.

"How long you can keep my distracted with other things." She told me.  I was only too willing to help her out there.  But somehow…it was hard to keep my thoughts from wandering to that dream.  What had it been about, anyway?  Who was talking?  I was almost sure one voice was Kagura, but maybe I only thought that because I was always with her.  And did it even matter?  Why was I obsessing?  It was stupid, and not something to think about when you had a beautiful youkai's legs wrapped around your waist, holding her up only with your arms under her thighs as you stumbled toward the furs.  Yeah.  Sex first, thinking later.  Sounded like a plan to me.

I could think about stupid dreams later.  Like when Kagura wasn't grinding into me.

That sounded like a really good idea.

----------

"One month, please."

"You said that last week.  I gave you a week.  That's long enough."

"I'm not ready."

"You're past ready.  You'll spoil everything if you wait too long."

"It won't make any difference if you give me just three more weeks."

"Everyone's waiting on you."

"It's not like it will happen any faster if I do it today."

"I could make it happen faster."

"Don't you dare."

"Why not?  How do you think he hasn't noticed yet?  I'm doing it."

"Don't touch it."

"Stupid, I don't have to touch it."

"You know what I mean."

"Don't be so possessive.  It's not yours."

"Right now it is."

"It'll be worth more once it's gone."

"I hate you."

"I know."

And the sound of sobbing was what woke me up finally, as clear and quickly as if Kagura had cried out my name.  It was the middle of the night this time, the first time I had the dream at night instead of in the morning, just before I woke.  The only light was the glow of the banked fire's coals and the wisps of moonlight filtering in the entrance of Kagura's cave.  And that was when I noticed that Kagura was not beside me, and where she should have been, there was nothing but a cold spot.  She was hunched over beside the fire, and after a few moments, I realized that I had not been imagining that last thing.  She was crying, sobbing brokenly, like someone had just crushed her heart.

"Kagura, what's wrong?" I was clumsy, and it was cold, and I was naked, and it was dark, but I got over to her with no incident, and she leapt up when I touched her shoulder, as though she hadn't noticed my presence until then.

"You're awake?" she sounded shocked, frightened, and still sad about whatever it was that had her crying her heart out.  "Did I wake you?"

"I heard crying." I explained.  I'd heard voices, too, but I knew that was just the dream again.  That was nothing to worry about.  It was stupid to think twice about it.  "Are you hurt?"

"No…I just…let's go to bed." She clutched at my arm and pulled me back toward the furs, and I followed, even though I was still overflowing with questions.

"Kagura, why were you crying?" I asked her as we climbed back into the warm cocoon and she cuddled close to me, letting me surround her in my longer limbs.

"Bad things." She told me, her voice hushed.  "Bad dreams.  It's okay, you chased them away.  You always make them leave."

"Okay," I accepted that.  Kagura hadn't had a good life.  And I knew she was prone to bad dreams.  It made sense.  But it was still weird.  Hadn't she started crying in my dream?  And then when I wake up…she's still crying.  Odd.  But then, I thought maybe it was another one of those moments that just blended from dream to reality without letting you tell the difference between the two.  Obviously, she'd been crying in my dream only because I could hear her crying in real life.  And it woke me up.  "Do you feel better now?"

"Yeah, thanks." She pressed a kiss to the hollow of my throat.  "I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you here, Kouga.  I just don't know."

"What if I died tomorrow?" I asked, merely musing, remembering when she'd asked me the same thing.  Her body went stiff.

"That's not funny, Kouga." She responded almost exactly as I had.

"I wasn't joking." I told her, kissing the top of her head.  There was a long silence, and I thought she just wouldn't answer.

"I'd lose myself." She spoke finally.  "And I'd die."

"Fuck, Kagura…" I didn't know what to say to that.  It sounded pretty scary to me, and I didn't like the idea that if I died, Kagura would just die right after me, like there was no reason for her to live.

"Can we sleep now?" she asked, her tone urgent.  "I'm really tired."

"Sure." I wanted to ask her why she'd say something like that.  How she thought she'd die.  What she meant by losing herself.  If she seriously thought that would happen.  But I don't think I really wanted to know the answers to those questions, so I just went to sleep.

I hoped I wouldn't dream about the voices again.  That dream was bothering me.  It felt wrong.

Kagura felt right.

*****

The End (Of Part 7, That Is)