Okay, I once made a rule that I'm not allowed to write past three in the morning, because if I do, bad things happen to good chapters.  But I'm on such a ROLL!!!  I can't just quit now…

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Scarlet

Part 9

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"Ginta, can I ask you something?" I was checking the strapping on my armor not because I thought it might be loose, but mostly because I didn't want to look at the youkai beside me, walking with me toward the last battle I'd ever fight for my tribe.

"What?" he didn't sound impatient, but he did sound a bit wary.  It was as though he thought I would ask if I could back out of all this and just spend the rest of my life moping over Kagura and pretending to be in love with Ayame.  Even if Kagura never came back from wherever she went and I spent my life filling that stupid cave with stupid shit I knew she'd love, I wouldn't care.  She was free.  I would be free, too.  I hadn't really thought of it like that before, but it gave me new hope.

"The baby.  Did it come yet?" I asked him.

"Yeah." He answered, and I could hear the smile in his tone.  "A boy."

"What does he look like?" I don't know why I asked.  It just came out.

"Like his mother." The answer came back.  "Just like her."

"That's good, then." I gave a nervous laugh.  "No one will ever know."

"No." he told me.  "No, I guess they won't."

"So, you ready for this?" I asked him, pointing up ahead.  We were nearly on top of the badger tribe's territory.

"Ready to die?" he asked back.

"For her, yeah." I answered, and I knew he didn't think I meant Ayame.  Anyone listening would never know what exactly we were talking about in those last moments of semi-friendship, but I knew, and he knew, and that was all that mattered.  "I'd do anything for her."

"She'll come back soon." Ginta promised me, like he knew.  "It's her home.  Only home she has, anyway."

"Yeah, I guess." I shrugged and laughed.  "I guess it's the best I can do to just wait for her.  I'd wait forever.  Till the world rotted away and all that was left was the darkness and my soul, and then I'd find hers."

"How?" he wanted to know.

"Don't you know?" I didn't wait for an answer.  I wasn't expecting one.  "We're bound to each other.  Strongest bond there can be between two souls.  That's what we have."

"But she still left you there." Ginta noted.  "And without a word."

"How did you know that?" My mind flooded with suspicions.  "Did you do something to her?"

"Are you kidding?  I need her around so you'll play nice." Ginta snorted at my idea.  "I could tell.  It's all over your face.  She left you."

"She'll be back." I told him assuredly.  "If not…I'll hunt her down."

"Don't go out hunting.  She might return while you're gone, and then she'll think you left her." Ginta could display wisdom sometimes.  This was one of those times.  But it couldn't last.  Minutes later, we found the badgers.  I killed twenty before I decided that even half of our number could win the battle without me, and then I went down.  It was so fake, I didn't think anyone would buy it.  Before anyone could come to investigate, I took advantage of my speed and escaped.

I ran until night fell and then collapsed in Kagura's furs.

She still wasn't there.

It still felt good to be free, even if I was a coward.

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When I woke up, there was someone else in the cave, and I was so surprised I nearly killed her before I felt the shadow of a memory kick in, and I recognized the pale figure standing at my bedside.  She blinked great, dark eyes at me, holding her mirror and looking on as though it made very little difference to her whether I was awake, asleep, attacking her, or lying on the floor dead.  "Kouga." She said, and even though I had remembered her voice being…somewhat creepy, it was still enough to send shivers down my spine.  "You have awoken."

"What the hell do you want?" What was her name again?  Started with a K…Ka-something.  Kagura's sister.  Her eternally child-like older sister.  A very creepy girl.  But maybe she knew something about where Kagura was.

"I have come to beg your pardon." She spoke like she was half asleep, but still as though it were important to be entirely proper.  It was very strange.  Creepy.

"For…what?" I wondered vaguely if this was a dream, but decided that it was far too weird and scary to be a dream.

"I have caused much pain, and that was not my intention." She told me.  "If I had known, I would never have agreed to help her."

"Help…who?" I wasn't very intelligible yet.  I was still half asleep.

"Kagura." She answered.  "After the master died, she wanted to kill every part of him.  She asked me to help her."

"What did you do?" I was curious, but still confused as hell.  What did this have to do with anything?  At the end of it, would Kagura come back?  I could wait through a weird story for that, definitely.

"She wanted me to extract her soul, to take the piece that was still purely Naraku from within it, and return it to her body as her own, wholly hers."  Kanna explained.  "I did not know what would result.  She did not know.  If we knew, we would have ignored the idea and never done it."

"So…you sucked her soul out?" I was starting to get a vague grasp on this.  A very vague grasp.  "When was this?"

"Two months after Naraku died." Kanna answered.  Okay, so she was apologizing for something that happened years ago.  Sure.  Why not?  "The side effects were unexpected, but I was not witness to them until recently when I began to search for my sister in the mirror's depth once more.  That was when I saw how she had become."

"Um…nicer?" I guessed.

"I broke her soul." Kanna told me.  "Now, Kagura is two people.  She is the woman that you know, and another.  A dark piece.  I would call it Naraku, but that is not quite right.  It is part of her as well, twisted, warped into something evil.  Something dark.  I want to try to fix it."

"You…did what now?" I was back to being totally confused.

"There are two people in Kagura's body." Kanna explained again.  "It is like being possessed, but the possession is from within.  Her own soul is strong, but the second soul is there as well.  It speaks through her, to her, and it can make her do things."

"It speaks…to her?" I had a sudden sinking in my stomach.  I felt like I understood better than I wanted to, suddenly.  "She has conversations with herself?"

"With her other self, yes.  I have seen it.  The dark half, she calls it Naraku, but it is not Naraku.  It needs to be taken away.  It is my fault that it is there.  I made a mistake the first time, and I wish to fix it."  Kanna told me.  "If she will allow it."

"Where is she now?" I asked.  "That mirror…you said you saw things in it.  Where is she?"

"She will arrive her shortly." Kanna answered.  "She had something she needed to do.  A bargain was struck."

"A…bargain?"  I felt sick at that moment.

"She wanted always to be free." She explained.  "She felt that she was trapped with you.  She wanted to be free.  Her inside self told her how she could do it.  She did not like the idea at first.  She thought it would not work.  But her inside self is almost always right.  Her inside self may be dark, but it is very, very clever.  But now it is angry."

"Why?" I couldn't help asking, though I was sure I couldn't really want to know.  All of this was so surreal.

"Kagura gave up something she loved for something she always wanted most, but now she has found that she does not want to be free from you.  She wants to be with you, Kouga." Kanna told me carefully.  "The inside self does not want to be with you.  The inside self wants to kill you for compromising their freedom."

"Um…I didn't mean to…" I was still confused.

"It is all right.  I understand your intentions with my sister.  You proved yourself already today." Kanna must have seen the battle.  The fall.  The escape.

"That wasn't all about her.  I wanted to be free, too." I admitted.

"But to you, freedom includes my sister." She pointed out.  "Belonging to her.  True?"

"True."

"Now we wait." Kanna told me.

"One more thing." I started up again.

"What is that?" she asked, ever proper.

"What…was the thing she gave up?" Kanna turned to me then, her eyes seeming to have sadness in them.  Even pity.

"That is not mine to tell." She answered, her voice mournful.  "I tell you more than I should already.  But that…that is hers.  That was her sacrifice for freedom she did not truly want."

"Can she get it back?" I wanted to know.

"I do not think so." She answered me, and at that moment, conversation was cut off, as Kagura entered the cave.

"I'm…home." She sounded exhausted.  Like she'd walked to the other side of the country and back eight times.  "I'm home."

"Kagura." I leapt up.  I couldn't help it.  Inside self or no inside self, I needed to see her, to feel her, to kiss her.  "Kagura, you're really here."

"It's so dark." Her voice shook as she moved toward the dead fire.  "Why don't you light…Kanna.  It's you, Kanna."

"I have come for what I left behind, sister." She explained neatly.

"I don't think…I wanna see you right now." Kagura addressed the pale girl as she struggled with flint, which I promptly snatched from her.

"Here." I started a fire in almost no time, and Kagura smiled at me weakly, tears rolling down her face.

"It took me forever." She told me.  "Forever to get back here.  I just kept thinking what it would be like to see your face again.  And now you're here."

"I will do it right now, sister.  It will not take long." Kanna had ignored her dismissal, and now she turned her mirror, causing a stream of cloudy white to wisp from her body and into the mirror.  I couldn't think of what to say as Kagura sat there, gasping and looking like she couldn't breathe.  Should I stop Kanna?  But Kanna…why would she make up a story so completely ridiculous?  It had to be true, didn't it?  And then I saw something entangled with the white, like a great parasite of black smoke.  And suddenly I was sure that Kanna had not been lying.

"That is the inside self." Kanna nodded to me, as though reading my mind.  "I will remove it now."  I caught Kagura, who fell limp as the last of her soul left her body, and watched as Kanna seemed to go into a trance.  I carried Kagura back to the furs and laid her down carefully.  At that moment, all I could think of was how we would now have too much stuff because of how much Kagura had taken with her and how much I had subsequently purchased.  Amazing how intelligent you can be, but when it really matters, your mind is suddenly on cave inventory.  "Kouga." Kanna's address woke me from my deep thoughts or lack thereof.

"Yeah?" I answered, trying to seem confident.

"If this does not work, you should kill her." Kanna told me softly, in that expressionless voice that sounded only sad and bored at once.  "She would be sad if anyone else killed her."

"Um…" I couldn't agree to that.  I could never kill Kagura.  Not now.  Not anymore.

"Promise."

"I can't." I was completely honest.

"She will be sad." Kanna repeated.  "Unless you promise."

"I…"  I had said…I'd do anything for her, didn't I?  "Sure.  Fine.  I promise."

"It is easier now." Kanna told me.  "Hearing you made her true self happy.  It is easier."

"Should I…keep talking?" I hadn't thought I could help at all, only sit around and look useless and worried.

"That would be advantageous." Kanna confirmed, and I nodded sharply.

"Kagura, babe, I hope you can hear me."  I began.  "I love you, no matter what you did.  Whatever you gave away, it's fine.  I know what it means to want to be free.  I only just became free.  For you.  I wanted to do anything for you.  Ginta gave me the chance to die for you, and I did.  Now…now we can be together all the time.  But…I'm sorry, because I'm not in charge anymore.  Ginta said…he'd bring me some money still, but we won't have as much as before.  But it's okay.  I bought you a bunch of stuff while you were gone.  I wondered…do you want to stay here?  If you want, we can go wherever it is that you would like to live.  As long as you're there, I don't care.  I'll go anywhere with you, Kagura."

"Good."  Kanna spoke again, and when I looked up, she actually looked tired.  "I will return her."

"And hope." I added, as the white cloud floated back to where it had come from.  Kagura opened her eyes.  "How do you feel?"

"Home." Was all she answered before she fell asleep, utterly exhausted.

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The End (Of Part 9, That Is)