I am on such a roll, even though it's kinda hard to think with Agent Marmalade squealing madly in her Gravitation overdose of sugary manga boy love state, but I have a secret weapon.  HEADPHONES!!!  Yes, I will triumph, and I will write, and it will be good, and it will apparently be confusing, cause that's my specialty.

*****

Scarlet

Part 8

*****

I expected to have four months of mostly uninterrupted time with Kagura, pretending she was my mate, living like we had always been together and there was nothing else in the world except for us.  Hakkaku was doing a fine job watching out for the tribe, taking care of the boring everyday business of hunting, patrols and such.  No bad news was coming from Ayame's seclusion group, so I figured that had to be a good thing.  I mean, I was pissed at her, but I didn't want her getting attacked and dying pregnant in the wilderness or something like that.  My visits to the tribe became fewer and fewer, and I was having the best time I had in a long time.  For one month.  Then one morning, I woke up to something rather strange.

Silence.

It wasn't odd that it was quiet, really.  I mean, usually there was some sort of fire going, but that wasn't terribly loud, and if it was only coals, that made almost no noise at all.  But Kagura was always bustling around in the morning, and usually as I woke up, I could hear her movements, try to figure out exactly what she would be in the middle of when I opened my eyes and she brought me breakfast.  Cooking, cleaning, soaking rice, mending, perfuming a kimono, grinding herbs, making tea, or a dozen other things.  But sometimes she was out in her garden, or somewhere else, gathering water, picking wild mushrooms, hunting a small animal or three for a special dinner.  Something like that.

So on those mornings, it could be pretty quiet.  But something about this silence bothered me.  It made my head feel odd and a chill run down my spine.  And I had the crazy idea that I just shouldn't open my eyes, because I really didn't want to.  It would be much better if I just stayed asleep for a few hours more.  Days, maybe.  A week.  But if I opened my eyes now, I would be sorry.  But I opened them anyway.

I knew what was wrong as soon as my vision focused.  Kagura was not hunting or gardening or bathing or getting some water.  Kagura was gone.  She had cleaned the cave out.  Other than my clothes, the furs (which I now saw she had taken one of, as well as that linen sheet she loved) and me, there wasn't anything left in that cave.  The shelves hung where I'd put them, lonely and bare on the rough-hewn wall.  The fire was dead, there was no rice cooking over it, and there wasn't anything left in the cave to say she'd been there in the last month, much less the last year.

So then I decided to lay back down and close my eyes and try to think about this without having a panic attack.  The cave was empty.  Or was I having a weird dream?  My plan was to open my eyes again.  This time, if the cave was still empty, I would pinch myself and see if it hurt.  I heard that you aren't supposed to be able to really feel things in dreams.  Now that I had a plan, I felt better.

I opened my eyes.  Everything was still gone.

I pinched myself.  It hurt.

I immediately felt stupid.  And shitty.

Where the hell was Kagura?  I obviously needed a new plan.  One that involved finding her.  I decided that if I sniffed out her trail, this would not be a difficult thing.  I went outside, and tried to pick out the freshest scent, the newest marks that she had passed.  I moved slowly until I found a trail that went dead.  Damn.

So she flew off.  Unless that was the wrong trail.  I went back and tried another.  And another.  I ended up sniffing around that cave and it's vicinity for hours, and all I discovered was that Kagura took too many damn walks, and only one of them led back to anywhere that wasn't the cave.  That first one.  And she'd flown away.  So I was stuck.  My plans were not going well that morning.  I decided that my new plan would be to return to the tribe for a day, come back, and then obviously, everything would be how it had been.  Obviously.  I was just being weird.  She must have said something about this.  She wouldn't just disappear one morning without saying anything.  She loved me.  She'd said it hundreds of times.  I knew she did.

I went back.  I talked to Hakkaku.  I stayed there for hours.  Hakkaku came to ask if everything was all right.  Ever since Ayame left, I hadn't spent more than three hours at a time back at the caves, and that was only when there was some trouble that he needed help with.  I told him that everything was fine, but I was tired.  I decided to get some rest.  I couldn't sleep.  I just kept running over everything Kagura had done and said in the past few days.  Had there been any sort of hint?  Had she seemed like she was going to pick up and disappear?  Truthfully, I had never seen someone do that before, so if there were hints, I would probably have missed them.  And then something struck the back of my mind.

I'm not ready to leave.

What's keeping you here?

Those stupid dreams.  I had never figured them out.  They had seemed so random and pointless.  But then I remembered the first one.  I remembered thinking that I was actually hearing Kagura talk to someone, and that it wasn't a dream at all.  What if that had been the truth?  But if that was the truth, why had she lied when I had asked her about it the first time?

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

Were they talking…about me?  Was I the person that everything was being hidden from?  That would explain why nothing made sense.  But who was she talking to?  And what were they hiding from me?

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

Right now it is.

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

Something…it had to be a thing.  They kept referring to it.  Keeping it hidden, me not seeing it, it being worth something, it belonging to Kagura, not belonging to her.  What was it?  Something Kagura was possessive of.  Something she didn't want to give up, but she was.  It seemed that way, at least.  She'd made a deal, and she had to give something she valued up.  But what for?  Money?  That didn't make sense.  I paid for everything she could ever want.  But maybe…maybe she didn't want to depend on me.  So she'd give something up.  Something to make her free.

I am the wind.  One day, I'll be free.

She had said something like that long ago, when Naraku was still alive.  It was one of the few things she'd said back then that stuck with me.  She wanted to be free.  Would she think that being my consort was it's own sort of prison?  And had she found a way out?  What was it?

"This is stupid."  I sighed and stood up, stretching.  I wasn't going to get any sleep anyway.  So I decided to go for a run and hope it would clear my head.  Obviously, I was getting too stuffed up if I was thinking so hard about those damn stupid dreams.  They were just dreams, after all.  They couldn't tell me anything even if I knew exactly what they were about.

I just wished Kagura was back.

When I went for my run, I ended up at her cave without even thinking about it.

It was still empty, but the furs were there, so I climbed back into them and went to sleep.  I dreamed that Kagura had come back, and that what had just happened had really been the dream, and everything was just as it had been when I fell asleep the night before after making love to her.

When I woke up, she was still gone.

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I went to a human town after I finally got out of the furs three days later.  I was getting really hungry, and I hadn't had anything to drink, either.  I thought that I'd get some food or something, but I ended up with a ridiculous amount of shit on my back before I left that town.  I returned to Kagura's cave and unpacked everything I'd bought.  A set of bowls, a rice cooker, two pairs of chopsticks, a teacup, a drinking glass, a teapot, a mortar and pestle, several neatly packed bundles of food, two kimonos, and one yukata.  It wasn't until I was putting all of it away that I realized I was slowly restocking all of Kagura's belongings, as if I thought that I could bring her back by just buying enough things that she kept.  I even bought fucking chopsticks.  Pathetic.

I tried to make rice.  I burned it.  I ate it anyway.  I used the chopsticks.

I hate fucking chopsticks, but Kagura loves them.  She thinks they're the sign of a cultured person.

I made tea.  I hate fucking tea.  It tastes like boiled tree bark and dirt and grass.  It tastes like shit.  It's Kagura's favorite thing.  I tried to drink it, but I really just liked the smell of it.  It made me feel like Kagura was there.  And when it got cold and I threw it out, it made me feel more alone than ever.

Things went like that for some time.  I lost track of days and weeks.  The only measure of time was the amount of stuff I kept stockpiling for Kagura.  Nothing changed until I had built up a collection of ten bowls, sixteen chopsticks, three teapots with matching sets of teacups, one other teapot, six other teacups, five drinking glasses, two rice cookers, one totally annihilated rice cooker that I cleverly managed to catch on fire while thinking of Kagura instead of paying attention to what I was doing, four plates, fifteen kimonos, five yukatas, three pairs of sandals, and a silver inlaid comb and mirror set.  That day, after I had eaten what tasted like totally flavorless rice and I decided that Kagura obviously made rice three hundred times better than I did, I got up to wash the dishes.

That was when Ginta walked in.

"Come with me." He said, before I could even react to his presence.  "It's time for you to leave."

"Leave?" I blinked at him before I realized what he was saying and then laughed roughly.  "Whatever.  I haven't been back to the cave for…"

"Two months." Ginta supplied helpfully.

"That long?" I considered this and rubbed my chin.  "How is everything?"

"Not good.  There's a battle forming up between our tribe and a local tribe of badger demons." He told me, his tone not changing at all.

"The badgers that live in the south hills?  What the hell?  There's like seven of them." I snorted.

"No, they were building up numbers, they want to take over the mountains here." Ginta explained.

"Well, shit.  Everyone okay?" I wanted to know.  I might have been moping, but I was still the leader of my tribe, and they mattered to me.

"Right now.  But tomorrow we're going into battle.  You're going to come back tonight and lead the charge tomorrow." He told me.

"Sure." This sounded like what I was thinking of doing at the moment anyway.  I didn't understand why he was so grim-faced about it.

"And you're gonna die." He finished.

"What?  Are you kidding me?  Lose?  To badgers?  What do you think I am?  A pup?" I was completely insulted.

"Sometimes." Ginta verified.  "Look, this is how it has to be.  You want Kagura, right?"

"Yeah." I answered immediately, and my eyes went wide.  "Do you know where she is?  She's been missing for…for two and a half months…about."

"She'll be back, I'm sure.  But that won't do you any good if you don't do what I say." Ginta told me.  "I'm not saying you have to really die.  Just pretend.  Let people see you go down hard, and then sneak off.  You can go wherever you want from there.  Come back here if you want to meet your lover, do whatever.  Everyone will think you died, and I'll take over."

"I don't want you in charge." I snarled.

"I don't want you hurting Ayame." He answered back.  "This is the only way I can be with her and you can be with Kagura."

"This is stupid." I said after a long pause.  "Dying to badgers?  It'll look bad."

"Almost as bad as fucking a woman who's supposed to be your mortal enemy behind your mate's back." Ginta retorted.

"When the hell did you get so fucking devious?" I was getting sick of this smart, sneaky Ginta.  It wasn't the guy I remembered.

"Ayame…has lots of problems.  I had to learn to be strong for her.  No one else can protect her from the world.  From herself." He sighed and looked somewhat wistful.

"What…are you talking about?" I wanted to know.

"It's none of your concern.  Just tell me, tomorrow.  You'll be there?" Ginta's eyes glinted hopefully, and for a second, I could remember the days when we were friends, and when he looked up to me and did anything I said, when I was his hero, and when I thought that he must be right, I could really do anything if I put my mind to it.

For Kagura…for her, I would do anything.

I'd die for her.  It wasn't asking too much to pretend to die.  That was easy.

"Ginta." I finally spoke again.  "I want you to know, I really trusted you.  Tomorrow, promise that you won't betray me again.  Be the man that I knew.  Let me trust you one last time."

"Of course." Ginta seemed surprised, even touched.  "I never…meant it to end this way.  If there was something else…if I thought you could make her happy, even.  If you cared…"

"Yeah, I know." I sighed. "I know how you must feel.  I'm in love, too."

"It's hard, ain't it?" he asked me, and we were comrades again for that brief moment, just standing around and talking together about things that we couldn't talk to anyone else about.  But it was okay, because we were comrades, and if you couldn't trust your comrade with your life and your secrets, you couldn't trust anyone.  I smiled at him and patted his shoulder.

"The hardest thing."

*****

The End (Of Part 8, That Is)